Poetry being as old as civilization itself, it’s amazing to think that in all that time, poets haven’t run out of things to say and ways to play with words. As this list of poem types will show, this literary genre has undergone numerous permutations over the centuries.

ACROSTIC

An acrostic is a form of poetry in which the first letters of each line spell a word or message when read together. For example, in Edgar Allan Poe’s “An Acrostic,” the first letters of each line form the name “Elizabeth.”

BALLAD

Originally intended to be sung to music, ballads are folktales in the form of a narrative poem. Many of these are about heroic legends, but there are also ballads about love and others that are meant to be humorous.

BLANK VERSE

A blank verse is a poem whose lines do not rhyme and is written in iambic pentameter, which is similar to the rhythmic pattern of speech. An example of this type of poem is “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost.

VERSE

A verse consists of a pair of verses that rhyme at the end. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales” in rhyming couplets.

ELEGY

Generally understood as a mourning poem for the dead, an elegy is a type of poem that is sad and solemn in nature. One such lament is “O captain! My captain!” by Walt Whitman.

EPIC

An epic is a narrative poem that recounts the life and adventures of a mythical hero. Among these legendary heroic sagas are the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh and the Anglo-Saxon tale of Beowulf.

EPIGRAM

An epigram is a short, witty poem composed of two lines, as in a couplet. An example from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “What is an epigram? A whole dwarf; / His short body, and his wit his soul.”

FREE PAYMENT

Also called “free verse”, free verse is a poetic form without a fixed style; that is, they may or may not be in rhyme. Author Robert Louis Stevenson had written free verse poems, such as “The Light-Keeper” and “The Cruel Mistress”.

haiku

Generally related to nature themes, the haiku is a type of Japanese poem composed of three lines without rhyme; the first verse of five syllables and the next two of seven and five syllables respectively.

IDYLL

Nostalgic in nature, an idyll is a short poem that tells of an ideally peaceful life in the countryside. An example is “Idylls of the King” by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Limerick

Made famous by the English writer and artist Edward Lear, a limerick is a humorous (sometimes obscenely) poem consisting of five lines. An example from Lear: “There was a young woman from Smyrna / Whose grandmother threatened to burn her; / But she seized the cat and said: ‘Grandma, burn that! / Incongruous old woman from Smyrna!”

LETTER

A lyric a type of poetry that conveys the personal feelings of the poet, as in “Dying” by Emily Dickinson. Odes and sonnets (see below) are forms of lyric poems.

ODE

An ode is a long lyric poem somber and contemplative in nature.

SONNET

From the Italian word “sonetto” (little song), a sonnet is a letter composed of 14 lines in iambic pentameter. William Shakespeare is known to have written 154 sonnets.

We can only hope that this list of poem types grows as time goes on. For while fickle young minds are continually inspired to put their thoughts into words and shape them as ingeniously as they see fit, the evolution of poetry has not yet ceased.