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FORM OF POETRY
Susan Tichy 


FORM & GENRE LISTS, page 8

Genres (or kinds):  Aubade  /  Epigram  /  Epistle  /  Ars Poetica  /  Nocturne  / Elegy  /   Ekphrasis  /   

Carpe Diem  /  Pastoral  /  City Poem  /  Satire  /  Ode  /  Dramatic Monologue & Other Persona Poems  /

Woman's Complaint  /  Defense of Women  /  Farewell to Husband/Legacy to Children  / 

Elegy for Infant




Aubade:

Donne: The Sun Rising 265

In the Modern volume:

Sitwell: Aubade 426

Rosenberg: Break of Day in the Trenches 505


Epigram:

Jonson: To the Reader, To Dr. Empirick 291, On S;pies, To Fool or Knave 292, Playwright 293, On Gut 296

Herrick: Upon Julia's Breasts, Upon a Child That Died 321, Upon Julia's Clothes, Upon Prue His Maid, Upon Ben Jonson 323

Crashaw: On the Baptized Ethiope, To the Infant Martyrs 422, Upon the Infant Martyrs 423

Goldsmith: When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly 627

Landor: Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher, Death Stands Above Me Whispering Low, Death of the Day, all 764

Byron: Stanzas (When man hath no freedom to fight for at home) 792 [this is the poem recited by Breaker Morant in jail in the movie]

Melville: Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem, Greek Architecture 957

Dickinson: #185 Faith is a fine invention 1011, #1763 Fame is a bee 1025

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 1074, Crossing Alone the Nighted Ferry 1075

MacDiarmid: Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries 1268

E.Thomas: In Memoriam (Easter 1915) 1148, The Owl 1148


Epistle:

Johnson: Inviting a Friend to Supper 294

Pope: Epistile to Dr. Arbuthnot 565

Montagu: Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband 580

Bradstreet: A Letter to Her Husband 420

Johnson: The Vanity of Human Wishes 597

Leapor: Epistle of Deborah Dough 617

Williams: This Is Just to Say 1164

Kumin: Letters 274


Ars Poetica (including women's poems on vocation):

Pope: Essay on Criticism 539

Bradstreet: The Prologue 417, The Author to Her Book 419

Cavendish: An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book 455

Finch: The Introduction 522

Coleridge: The Aeolian Harp 739

Barrett Browning: from Aurora Leigh 857, To a Musical Instrument 860

Dickinson: #341 After great pain a formal feeling comes 1015, #435 Much madness is divinest sense 1015, #505 I would not paint a picture 1016, #569 I reckon when I count at all 1017, #613 They shut me up in prose 1018, #709 Publication is the auction 1020, #754 My life had stood a loaded gun 1021, # 1129 Tell all the truth but tell it slant 1024

Yeats: Adam's Curse 1086, The Circus Animal's Desertion 1101, Under Ben Bulben 1103

Stevens: The Snow Man 1150, Anecdote of the Jar 1154, The Poems of Our Climate 1160, The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm 1161, Table Talk 1161, A Room on a Garden 1162, Of Mere Being 1162

Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow 1166, Poem (As the cat) 1167, A Sort of Song 1168

Moore: Poetry 438

Niedecker: Poet's Work

In the Contemporary volume:

O'Hara: Why I Am Not a Painter 369

Wilbur: The Writer 200

Duncan: Poetry, A Natural Thing 152, Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow 151

Creeley: I Keep to Myself Such Measures 332

Snyder: Rip-Rap 537, Axe Handles 541

Strand: Keeping Things Whole 621, Eating Poetry 621

Harrison: Self Justification 678





Nocturne:

Finch: A Nocturnal Reverie 519

Williams: To the Moon 695

Smith: Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening 653

Coleridge: Frost at Midnight 742

Whitman: By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame 971

Arnold: Dover Beach 999

Hopkins: I Wake and Feelthe Fell of Dark Not Day 1065

E.Thomas: Rain 1148

In the Modern volume:

Frost: I have been acquainted with the Night 217


Elegy:

Surrey: Wyatt Resteth Here 124

Tichborne: Tichborne's Elegy 139

Jonson: Elegy for His Son 291, Elegy for His Daughter 291, Epitaph on Elizabeth LH 296, A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme 300,

Browne: On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke 316

Carew: An Elegy upon the death of the Dean of Paul's Dr. John Donne 350

Milton: Lycidas (pastoral elegy) 354, Methought I Saw 379

Philips: Epitaph on Her Son 482

Behn: On the Death of the Late Earl of Rochester 501

Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General 528

Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 609

Elliot: Flowers of the Forest 619

Cowper: Epitaph on a Hare 637

Wordsworth: A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal 722,

Shelley: To Wordsworth 793, Adonais 807

Whitman: Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night 970, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed 978, Reconciliation 978

Tennyson: In Memoriam A.H.H. 899

Browning: Memorabilia 933

Bronte: Remembrance 947

Hardy: Thoughts of Phena 1051, The Voice 1056, During Wind and Rain 1057

Housman: To an Athlete Dying Young 1070


In the Modern Volume:

E. Thomas: The Owl 232

Rosenberg: Dead Man's Dump 507

Tate: Ode to the Confederate Dead 650

Our Bog is Dood 708

Auden: In Memory of W. B. Yeats 798, In Memory of Sigmund Freud 803

Roethke: Elegy for Jane 849


In the Contemporary Volume:

Olson: Pacific Lament 3

Swenson: Staring at the Sea 49

Lowell: For the Union Dead 124

Brooks: Rites for Cousin Vit 144, Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmitt Till 145

Ginsberg: from Kaddish 149

Levertov: The Olga Poems 251

Kumin: How It Is 270 (for Anne Sexton)

Creeley: Mother's Voice 333

O'Hara: The Day Lady Died 365

Goeffrey Hill: several: 581

Strand: Elegy for My Father 623

Clifton: To My Last Period 663, At the cemetery 661,

S. Howe: from Thorow 689

Harper: We Assume, & other poems on the death of his son 699





Carpe Diem:

Ralegh: The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd 140

Marlowe: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 233


Herrick: To the Virgins 320

Campion: My Sweetest Lesbia 249, I Care Not For These Ladies 249

Jonson: Song to Celia 299

Waller: Song (Go lovely rose) 352

Marvell: To His Coy Mistress 435

Lawrence: Self-Protection 1180

Pastoral:God's garden, the seasons, free love, passionate shepherds, simple farmers, noble savages, retreat from society, natural democracy, brutal nature or idyllic nature: pastoral relies on a contrast between rural & urban, natural & artificial, free & constrained. A "nature poem" per se is not necessarily pastoral.

Spenser: from The Shepheardes Calender 147

Jonson: Still to Be Neat 308

Herrick: The Argument of His Book 317, The Vine 317, Delight in Disorder 318

Carew: The Spring 348

Crashaw: The Wish 427

Marvell: The Picture of Little TC in a Prospect of Flowers 439, The Mower Against Gardens 440 (& others), The Garden 442

Cavendish: The Sea Similized to Meadows and Pastures 455

Smith: from Beachy Head 655 (& see link to the whole poem, in readings for Week 7)

Blake: Song (How sweet I roam'd), To the Evening Star 671,
from Songs of Innocence 671-675, from Songs of Experience 678-683

Burns: To a Mouse 684, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Balst 695, (& see links to the bawdy versions of some of his sweeter songs, in readings for Week 7)

Wordsworth: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey 699, The Prelude 715, Resolution and Independence 723, It Is a Beauteous Evening 726, My Heart Leaps Up 728, Ode: Intimations of Immortality 728, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 733, The World Is Too Much With Us 735, The Solitary Reaper 737, Suprised by Joy 737

Clare: Badger 822, Gypsies 823

Bryant: To a Waterfowl 830

Keats: When I Have Fears 832

Longfellow: from Evangeline

Whitman: from Song of Myself  961, Cavalry Crossing a Ford 973, The Dalliance of the Eagles 978, A Noiseless Patient Spider 985, To a Locomotive in Winter 985

Dickinson: #328 A bird came down the walk 1014, #465 I heard a fly buzz when I died 1016, #968 A narrow fellow in the grass 1023, #1068 Further in summer 1023, #1463 A route of evanescence 1024

Hardy: The Darkling Thrush 1052, In Time The Breaking of Nations 1057

Hopkins: God's Grandeur, The Windhover 1062, Pied Beauty, Felix Randal 1063, That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire 1066

Yeats: The Wilde Swans at Coole 1087

Dunbar: A Summer's Night 1117

Frost: Mending Wall 1121, The Wood Pile 1126, The Oven Bird 1128, Birches 1128, Stopping by Woods 1131, To Earthward 1132, Neither Out Far Nor In Deep 1135, Design 1135, Come In 1137, Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same 1137, The Most of It 118, Directive 1139

Sandburg: Grass 1147

Stevens: The Snow Man 1150 (read with Frost's "Desert Places"), Anecdote of the Jar 1154, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 1155, A Room on a Garden 1162, Of Mere Being 1162

Bynner: Haskell 1163

Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow 1166, Queen Ann'e Lace 1163,

Lawrence: Snake 1178, Elemental 1178, Trees in the Garden 1179, Bavarian Gentians 1182

In the Modern volume:

Poems by Frost, Roethke 841, Kunitz 758, Jeffers, Niedecker

Cummings: 546 In just spring, My sweet old etcetera, r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r

Rosenberg: Returning We Hear the Larks 506

In the Contemporary volume:

Poems by Ammons (esp Corson's Inlet 290-could also be an ars poetica), Merwin (411, 412), Oliver, Snyder, James Wright, Bly, T. Hughes 558, Stafford (Traveling through the Dark) 83


City Poem (often, ironically, a species of pastoral):

Swift: Description of the Morning, Description of a City Shower 526

Wordsworth: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge 727

Sandburg: Chicago 1146




Satire:

Sidney: What Length of Verse? 190

Donne: Song (Go and catch a falling star) 264, Woman's Constancy 265, Satire III 283,

Dryden: MacFlecknoe 473

Behn: The Disappointment

Swift: Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General 528, sThe Lady's Dressing Room 530

Pope: Rape of the Lock 547, from The Dunciad 576

Wilmot/Rochester: Disabled Debauchee 510, A Satire against Reason 505

Montagu: A Receipt to Cure the Vapors 579

Burns: Holy Willy's Prayer 685

Byron: from Don Juan 769

Clough: The Latest Decalogue 950
, from Dipsychys 951

Lawrence: The English Are So Nice! 1181


Ode:

Jonson: Ode to Himself 304

Milton: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity 359

Marvell: Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell 444

Finch: The Spleen 516

Gray: Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College 606, Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat 608

Collins: One on the Poetical Character 613, Ode to Evening 615

Wordsworth: Intimations of Immortality 728

Coleridge: Dejection: An Ode 760

Shelley: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 794, Mont Blanc 796, Ode to the West Wind 801, To a Skylark 805

Keats: Ode to Psyche 843, Ode to a Nightingale 845, Ode on Melancholy 847, Ode on a Grecian Urn 848, To Autumn 849

Emerson: The Rhodora 851 (read this with Frost's "Design"), The Snow Storm 851

Whitman: Song of Myself 961, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer 969, To a Locomotive in Winter 985

Arnold: Dover Beach 999

In the Modern volume:

Stevens

Zukofsky: To My Wash Stand 738

Moore: An Octopus 441, The Pangolin 448, The Paper Nautilus 451

Auden: In Praise of Limestone 806


In the Contemporary volume:

Bishop: Brazil Jan 1 1502

Clifton: Homage to My Hips 660, Poem to My Uturus 661

Harper: Dear John Dear Coltrane 702


Dramatic Monologue & other Persona Poems:

Donne: The Flea 279

Tennyson: Ulysses 896

Browning: My Last Duchess 911, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister 913, The Bishop Orders His Tomb 915, Fra Lippo Lippi 918, A Toccata of Galuppi's 927, Andrea del Sarto 934

Rossetti: The Convent Threshold 1028

Hardy: Channel Firing 1054

Yeats: An Irish Airman Forsees His Death 1088

Mew: The Farmer's Bride 1112, In Nunhead Cemetery 1113

A. Lowell: Patterns 1140

Williams: The Widow's Lament in Springtime

Lawrence: Love on the Farm 1176


Woman's Complaint/Women's Defense:

Lanyer: from Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum 255

Finch: The Answer 521 (answer to Pope's Impromptu 576), On Myself

Montagu: Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband 580

Barbauld: The Rights of Woman 646


Farewell to a Husband/Legacy to Children:


Bradstreet: Before the Birth of One of Her Children 418

Though rarely represented in canonical anthologies, this genre was extremely common in women's poetry until modern times. Though sometimes kin to a love poem or elegy, it most often was a species of devotional verse, in which the woman composed her soul to face death and consoled and counseled those she loved.


Other genres to watch for:
Lover's Complaint in all its variants,
Dialogue of Body & Sou l/ Good & Evil / Living & Dead etc., Prayer or Devotional Poem, Epithalamion / Prothalamion, Epic, Tribute, Friendship / Women's Friendship, Country Retreat,


Modern Ekphrastic Poems:

Williams: Queen Ann's Lace 1166, The Dance 1169, Pictures from Breughel Modern 310