Whether your teacher is doing a unit on poetry or you just feel the urge to express yourself, read on: our comprehensive guide can help you become the class poetry pro.

Types of Poems First thing's first — identify the kind of poem you're writing. Here's a list of common poetry:

Ballad
A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. Do the words "Quoth the raven: 'Nevermore!'" ring a bell?
(Fun fact: Edgar Allen Poe wrote the narrative poem "The Raven," from which that line is taken, backwards, from end to beginning.)

Blank verse (also Free verse)
Poetry that doesn't rhyme but has a set meter and rhythm.

Epic
A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure — the ancient Greeks tended to write a lot of these, as exemplified by Homer (not Simpson, silly; look him up!), who wrote not one, but two epics: The Odyssey and The Illiad.

Haiku
A Japanese poem — composed of 3 unrhymed lines of first 5, then 7, and then 5 syllables — that often reflects on some aspect of nature. This one definitely isn't about nature, but, well, you have to learn about poetry somehow: This elaborate (5)
example of haiku is (7)
not exactly great (5)

Limerick
A light, humorous poem of 5 lines with the rhyme scheme of AABBA. Check out "The Byline" at the bottom of this page as an example.

Lyric
A poem that expresses your thoughts and feelings and may resemble a song in form or style.

Ode
A lyric poem that's serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure. Of course, one can mock this style by doing a poem entitled, say, "An Ode to My Ice Cream Sandwich," detailing why the ice cream sandwich is seriously the best treat on a hot summer's day.

Quatrain A stanza
or poem
of exactly
four lines

Sonnet
A lyric poem that's 14 lines long. You may have heard of a guy named William Shakespeare who wrote a lot of them.

Poetic Terms and Examples

All right, you picked the type of poem you're going to write. Now browse this glossary of terms for techniques that'll help you make your poem flow like sweet honey (that's a simile, by the way).

Alliteration
Repeating the same initial consonant sound in several words within a line or phrase. For example: Alliteration always asks an aspiring author for alike initials again and again.

Antonyms
Words that have opposite meanings.

Assonance
Repeating the same vowel sounds in words that have different consonants within a line or phrase. For example: The hawk cawed at dawn.

Carpe Diem
Latin for "seize the day," a common theme in poetry that emphasizes how life is short so we should make the most of today. It can also be used in everyday conversation:

Karl: "Dude, should I ask Mindy to the Valentine's Day party?"
Ace: "I don't know, man. She's like, the most popular girl in our class."
Karl: "I was thinking I could, you know, seize the day and stuff."
Ace: "Yeah, man! Carpe diem! Ask her!"

Couplet
In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought:

Cheeseburgers are definitely my favorite kind of food
Eating one with French fries puts me in a good mood.

Echo
Repeating sounds, syllables, words, or lines in a poem.

Homonym
Words that have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings, such as the game of pool and a swimming pool.

Homophone
Words that are pronounced alike but are spelled differently and usually have different meanings (to, too, and two; write and right).

Hyperbole
An extreme exaggeration that emphasizes a point but isn't meant to be taken literally. If you were to say, "It's raining buckets!" or, "I'll give you a million dollars for that cookie!" nobody would actually expect buckets to fall from the sky or for you to fork over a million bucks for an Oreo.

Metaphor
Describing something by comparing it to another object or thing without using "like" or "as." "My brain is mushy oatmeal" and "her eyes are lakes of crystal clear liquid" are both metaphors, albeit bad ones.

Meter
The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of stressed syllables.

Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like the thing it stands for (Buzz! Pop! Sizzle! Zoom!).

Personification
A type of metaphor where human characteristics or feelings are given to an animal, object, or idea: the determined little hummingbird or the crying wind.

Rhyme
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of 2 or more words.

Simile
A way of describing something by using "like" or "as" to compare it to something else (My little brother is as dumb as a brick.)

Stanza
Two or more lines of poetry that form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.

Synonyms
Words that have the same or nearly the same meanings.

Tips on Getting Started

Go to a place where you can concentrate.
It's pretty hard to collect your thoughts when your computer is 8 feet away, tempting you to IM your best bud, your friend calls you every 5 minutes to tell you about her crush, or the football game is on the TV in the next room. Go somewhere that's conducive to creating your best work. Some poets need silence to compose quality verse; others thrive surrounded by hustle, bustle, noise, and people. Try writing in a few different places before you commit to a location, whether it's the coffee shop down the street or by the big willow tree in your backyard.

Start writing and don't pick up the pen from the page for at least 5 minutes.
Once you've found a poetry-writing spot, whip out your pen and notebook and start writing. It doesn't really matter about what — just keep the pen on the page for at least 5 minutes. Don't worry about punctuation or spelling or neatness. Nobody's grading this portion of your poetry! This is an exercise to flex the creative muscle in your brain. When the time is up, you may realize that a lot of what you wrote isn't going to make it into your poem — but with a little luck and a lot of writing, you'll find a string of words that you're proud to have created.

Use all your senses.
Refresher course: you have 5 — that's right, 5 — senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. In poetry, you can express them all. In an effective poem, you'll often find that the best lines are the ones where the words describe something so vividly that you can "see" what the author's describing in your imagination. So pay attention to how the distinctive "dings" in your beat-up bicycle look, the taste of your mom's made-from-scratch chocolate-chip banana bread, the scent of laundry just out of the dryer, the way a new pair of running shoes feels, and the sound of a thunderstorm in the distance. All of those sense experiences can easily become a poem.

Play some music.
Poetry is meant to be read aloud, so when you write your descriptive, evocative, expressive, insert-other-adjective-here poem, say the words as you write them. This will help you get a feel for the rhythm of your verse, which is one of the most important aspects of poetry. One of the best ways to do this? If you can deal with the potential distraction, play music while you write. You'll be tapping your foot to your favorite tunes, subconsciously using the rhythm as a frame for your own words.

Look at the mundane in a different way.
Ever get up really, really close to something — so close that you have to adjust your eyes by squinting? Try it sometime. When you look at ordinary objects in a different light or from a new perspective, all of a sudden those things aren't nearly as common. So try something different, like looking at your bedroom while standing on your head or getting as close as you can to the bathroom mirror to describe your own eye. Finding unusual details in stuff you see or do every day is all part of poetry.

Do something out of the ordinary with your words.
The structure of a sentence is less strict in poetry than in your usual Language Arts class. Rearrange the order of your words or try out descriptions you wouldn't normally use. As long as it makes sense, anything goes — if it's complete gibberish though, your teacher won't understand what you're trying to do creatively and you probably won't get the best grade.

The Byline

You'll find this article was written
By a girl who was always quite smitten
With words big and small
She loves vocabulary above all
Cara Pitterman's a nerd, she's admittin'!