Many classical forms of poetry employ set meter and rhyme schemes. Improve Your Writing Skills With Structure, Rhythm, and Rhyme
Although we’ll only discuss a handful of poetic structures, hundreds of other poetic forms exist and would be just as worthy of your attention. Then, we’ll talk about free verse, blackout poetry, and other freeform types of poetry. In this article, we’ll provide instructions for creative writing within structured poetic forms: sonnets, haiku, blank verse, and acrostics. The same way an artist will master figure drawing and landscapes before tackling abstract art, writing poetry usually begins with composing verses within a rigid structure. Instead of trying to discover the outer boundaries of what a poem can be, let’s agree to start from the assumption that poems can exist without any concrete limits. Rest assured, that circular logic will leave you scratching your head. Merriam Webster defines a poem as, “a composition in verse,” and “something suggesting a poem (as in expressiveness, lyricism, or formal grace).” Then, they go on to define “verse” as poetry.
Just when you think you have a definition, you come across an exciting poem that undermines your classification system. Like art, poetry can be hard to pin down. Almost any written words on the page can be a poem.
