The Genres of Poetry

1. Sonnets: Among the most common form of poetry through the ages is the sonnet, which, by the thirteenth century, was a poem of fourteen lines following a set rhyme scheme and logical structure.
2. Jintishi: The jintishi is a Chinese poetic form based on a series of set tonal patterns using the four tones of the classical Chinese language in each couplet: the level, rising, falling and entering tones.
3. Sestina: The sestina has six stanzas, each comprising six unrhymed lines, in which the words at the end of the first stanza’s lines reappear in a rolling pattern in the other stanzas
4. Villanelle: The Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem made up of five triplets with a closing quatrain; the poem is characterized by having two refrains, initially used in the first and third lines of the first stanza, and then alternately used at the close of each subsequent stanza until the final quatrain, which is concluded by the two refrains. The remaining lines of the poem have an a-b alternating rhyme.
5. Pantoum: The pantoum is a rare form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.
6. Tanka: The Tanka is a form of Japanese poetry, generally not possessing rhyme, with five lines structured in a 5-7-5 7-7 patterns. The 5-7-5 phrase (the "upper phrase") and the 7-7 phrase (the "lower phrase") generally show a shift in tone and subject matter.
7. Ode: The ode generally has three parts: a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode. Odes have a formal poetic diction, and generally deal with a serious subject.
8. Ghazal: The ghazal is a form of poetry common in Arabic, Persian and Urdu poetry.
9. Acrostic, in which the first letters of the lines, when read downward, form a word, phrase, or sentence. 
10. Cinquain, a poem that has five lines with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively. 
11. Concrete, a poem that uses typeface, word arrangement, spacing, special characters, and color to dramatize the words’ meaning by the way they look. 
12. Free verse, poetry that is based on the irregular rhythmic cadence or the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of meter.