Styles

Acrostic: The first letter of each line spells a word, usually using the same
words as in the title:

Love

Learn as we grow
Or grow as we learn;
Validating
Every desire

Autism:  A separate poetry category for my thoughts, experiences and feelings about spectrum disorders – five of my children have some form of Autism --Aspergers.  It’s emotionally and mentally draining to work with and parent children who are challenged with this disorder so writing often helps release my feelings –and theirs. As many people close to me point out, it's not a death sentence, but it can leave you feeling very out of touch with the children you love the most...so imagine how they feel. My writing attempts to explore this.

Dark Poetry:  Again, I categorize this separately because of the negative nature of this writing. In my opinion, it’s the closest thing to passion without being skin to skin.  Raw, extremely depressing, angry, scary, but very honest and very cathartic. Not for the faint of heart.

Haiku: An unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three
unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all.  Haiku is usually written in the present tense and focuses on nature and seasons, but modern haiku can be written about any subject.  The haiku is usually in present tense. Also see Tanka.

Hay(na)ku: Invented by poet Eileen Tabios, who is also publisher, Meritage Press.
Officially inaugurated on the Web on June 12th, 2003 (Philippine Independence Day).
The form spread through the Web to poets all over the world.
Eileen Tabios initially called the form "the Pinoy Haiku".
Vince Gotera proposed the name "hay(na)ku", and this name has stuck. This corresponds to a Tagalog phrase that means roughly "Oh!" or (in Spanish) "Madre mía".
The last syllable is pronounced "ko" so maybe the final name will be even more independent of haiku: "hay(na)ko".

Some of my favorites in the anthology are Dan Waber's:  Nothing
                                                                                      adds up
                                                                                      Love isn't math

In a traditional Hay(na)ku, there are:

A tercet: 3 lines.
A total of 6 words: 1 in the first line, 2 in the second line, and 3 in the third line.
There is no restriction on syllables or stressed or rhymes.
Variations:
In the 'reverse' haynaku, the longest line is placed first and the shortest last. The total is still 6 words: 3 in the first line, 2 in the second line, and 1 in the third line.
Multiple hay(na)ku can be chained to form a longer poem.
See the anthology for more variations.

Traditional Cinquain:   A short, usually unrhymed poem consisting of twenty-two syllables distributed as 2, 4, 6, 8, 2, in five lines.  It was developed by the Imagist poet, Adelaide Crapsey. Very helpul exercise for imagery skills. Of which I have a severe lacking!

Modern Cinquain: The modern cinquain is based on a word count of words of a certain type as follows:

line 1 - one word (noun) a title or name of the subject
line 2 - two words (adjectives) describing the title
line 3 - three words (verbs) describing an action related to the title
line 4 - four words describing a feeling about the titlem, a complete sentence
line 5 - one word referring back to the title of the poem
Poetry (free verse): Any type of poem or poetry written without adhering to form or rules.  It is the most liberal form of writing poetry but should still have some flow or rythm to it - or not - All poetry has a purpose and it's up the author to determine what it is going to be - or not going to be.

Rain Drop Poetry:   I created this one recently.  It has a sing song quality to it and mirrors the steady beat of a rain drop.  Be careful, it's more difficult than it looks because you don't want to appear trite or insincere.   The poem consists of ten lines. The first, third and ninth line repeat the same three words, and the second and fourth line repeat the same word (thus the rain drop feel to it).  The fifth through eighth lines use the same first word of the first, third and ninth lines, but must relate to the last line (conclusion).  Example:

The Onion

Peel, peel, peel
Pause…
Peel, peel, peel
Pause…
Peel, feel
Peel, think
Peel, listen
Peel, learn
Peel, peel, peel
Cry.

Rondelet: (or roundelay) is a brief French form of poetry. It consists of one stanza, made up of seven lines. It contains a refrain, a strict rhyme scheme and a distinct meter pattern:  AbAabbA.  The capital letters are the refrains, or repeats. The refrain is written in tetra-syllabic  or dimeter and the other lines are twice as long - octasyllabic or tetrameter. The word is from the diminutive of rondel, meaning round. This is the basic structure:

Line 1 :: A -- four syllables
Line 2 :: b -- eight syllables
Line 3 :: A -- repeat of line one
Line 4 :: a -- eight syllables
Line 5 :: b -- eight syllables
Line 6 :: b -- eight syllables
Line 7 :: A -- repeat of line one

Shape or Geometric Poetry: The poem becomes the shape of its subject.  Shape and Concrete Poetry go hand-in-hand; however, Concrete or Visual Poetry don’t have to
take on the particular shape of the poem’s subject, but rather the wording in the poem can emphasize the effect of the words:

a kite sailing in the sky spirals
                                                d
                                                   o
                                                    w
                                                       n
                                                         to the late summer grass

Sonnet:  A poem consisting of 14 lines (iambic pentameter) with a particular rhyming scheme like a Shakespearean (English) sonnet which has three quatrains and a couplet, and rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. An Italian sonnet is composed of an octave, rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet, rhyming cdecde or cdcdcd, or in some variant pattern, but with no closing couplet. Usually, English and Italian Sonnets have 10 syllables per line, but Italian Sonnets can also have 11 syllables per line. French sonnets follow in this same pattern, but normally have 12 syllables per line. Sonnets usually contain a volta, or turn to distract the reader from the monotonous beat of the iambic pentameter. The sonnet is my personal favorite form of poetry.

Tetrameter:  “Tetrameter” means “four measures.”  In English, the most common foot or measure is the iamb, which is a pair of syllables that follow this pattern: ta TUM. Iambic tetrameter has four feet, for a total of eight syllables. A line of poetry is in iambic tetrameter if it follows this pattern: ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM. Some variation is allowed. An extra or missing syllable may be tolerated, and an occasional reversal of the ta TUM pattern (to TA tum) is common; a clever way to avoid monotony.  Example: the first stanza of the introduction to Milton,by William Blake:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

Tanka: is a classic form of Japanese poetry related to the haiku with five unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables.  (5, 7, 5, 7, 7)

Villanelle: A Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem consisting of a very specific rhyming scheme:  aba aba aba aba aba abaa.  The first and the third lines in the first stanza are repeated in alternating order throughout the poem, and appear together in the last couplet (last two lines).