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Traditional Poetry Forms:

  bullet   Acrostic
  bullet   Ballad
  bullet   Cinquain
  bullet   Clerihew
  bullet   Diamante
  bullet   Didactic
  bullet   Epic
  bullet   Epigram
  bullet   Epitaph
  bullet   Etheree
  bullet   Fable
  bullet   Free Verse
  bullet   Ghazal
  bullet   Haiku
  bullet   Katauta
  bullet   Kyrielle
  bullet   Kyrielle Sonnet
  bullet   Lanturne
  bullet   Limerick
  bullet   Minute Poetry
  bullet   Monody
  bullet   Monorhyme
  bullet   Naani
  bullet   Nonet
  bullet   Ode
  bullet   Ottava Rima
  bullet   Palindrome
  bullet   Pantoum
  bullet   Quatern
  bullet   Quatrain
  bullet   Quinzaine
  bullet   Rispetto
  bullet   Rondeau
  bullet   Rondel
  bullet   Rondelet
  bullet   Sedoka
  bullet   Senryu
  bullet   Septolet
  bullet   Sestina
  bullet   Shape Poetry
  bullet   Song
  bullet   Sonnet
  bullet   Tanka
  bullet   Terza Rima
  bullet   Terzanelle
  bullet   Tetractys
  bullet   Tongue Twister
  bullet   Triolet
  bullet   Tyburn
  bullet   Villanelle
 

Clerihew

A Clerihew is a comic verse consisting of two couplets and a specific rhyming scheme, aabb invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) at the age of 16. The poem is about/deals with a person/character within the first rhyme. In most cases, the first line names a person, and the second line ends with something that rhymes with the name of the person.

One of the most remembered Clerihew from Bentley's collection is:

Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Example #1
Garfield the cat
On his rear he sat.
Eating lasagna galore
All about the decor.

Copyright © 2000 James & Marie Summers

Example #2
The Road Runner
always almost a goner;
when attacked in manner dread,
Wile E. suffers intended fate instead ....
 
Copyright © 2004 Alan McAlpine Douglas
 
Example #3
Star Trek's frowning Klingon Worf 
challenges a squeamish metamorph 
to eating a wormlike gagh dinner;
Worf of course was the winner!
 
Copyright © 2004 Diana Dalton
 
Example #4
Corporal Klinger,
M.A.S.H.'s best ringer
in dress, heels and sneer,
won "Kook of the Year."
 
Copyright © 2004 James Dean Chase


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