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Poetry Guide > Forms
The form of a poem refers to its overall structure, i.e. the way the poem is presented to the reader or listener.
Particular poetic forms employ various patterns in its meters, rhyming, line lengths, and so on.
List of poetic forms
Combined meters
These forms are referred to as combined measures1, or combined meters, because their structure is built mainly on repetition of various types of meters.
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Other forms
- Haiku
- Sonnets
A brief history of the term
A century and a half ago, poetical forms generally referred to any combination of language that characterizes poetry; for example “a dactyl, a verse, and a stanza are Poetical forms.”1 This definition changed over time, and authors today use the term to classify poems by their structure, for example a poem could be written as a sonnet, couplet, or prose poem.
