Free verse

Free verse: a type of poem that doesn't have pattern, meter, rhyme.
ex: The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Elegies

Elegies: a type of poem for the dead.
ex:

I before my death,  Have composed,  An elegy of the Earth,  Which (after war)  Roodali of the Air will sing,  Weeping and wailing,  Sitting amid the burnt  Decomposed bodies

Odes

Odes: a poem that is written on a particular subject.
ex:

Ode To A Nightingale

by
John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

Sonnet

Sonnet: a type of poem that is written in 14 lines.
ex:

Red Blushed And All Cut UpBy Paul McCann

Talking to myself there
Someone had overheard.
I was lost for a word.
There was nothing to share.
Embarrassed I was there.
Left awkward and absurd .
A broken wingless bird.
With nowhere to fly there.
Caught red faced there was I.
Didn't want to be seen.
I just wanted to die.
I just wanted to scream.
I'm so terribly shy.
Lost for words it would seem.

Lyric

Lyric: a type of poem that express personal feelings.
ex:

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through - 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My Mind was going numb -  And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then - ”

Epic

Epic: a narrative poem that tells about a heroes.
ex:

Tiddalick - The Frog Who Caused a Flood

In the time of dreaming
Before the earth was old
Myths were in the making
Legends yet untold

Here began a story
Of one huge enormous frog
Solemn in his glory
He drank from every bog

Tiddalick the great one
Had to quench his mighty thirst
He drank from all the waterholes
So much he nearly burst

He drained the lake and river
The stream and billabong
Soon there was no water left
It was very wrong .....

Ballads

Ballads: a poem that tells a simple story and can be sung as a song.
ex:

 The Mermaid

by
Unknown author

Oh the ocean waves may roll,
And the stormy winds may blow,
While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
And the land lubbers lay down below.