Styles of Poetry: Ballad, Sonnet, Triolet, Haiku, Senryu, and Tanka

This article outlines six poetry styles, describing their origins, typical structures (including rhyme and meter), and distinguishing features. It highlights ballad storytelling, sonnet varieties, the triolet's repetition, haiku and senryu's brevity and focus, and the lyrical tanka. The piece encourages practice and journaling.

Poetry channels the poet's voice into compact forms that shape meaning and feeling. Below are six traditional styles - how they work and what to notice when you read or write them.

Ballad

Ballads tell a story. Originating as oral folk songs, they later moved into written literature. Ballads commonly use quatrains (four-line stanzas) with alternating line lengths - often iambic tetrameter followed by iambic trimeter - and a rhyme that frequently falls on the second and fourth lines (ABCB). Ballads emphasize narrative momentum and repeated refrains.

Sonnet

The sonnet is a 14-line lyric that became prominent in 13th-century Italy and spread across Europe. English-language sonnets usually use iambic pentameter. Major sonnet types:

• Petrarchan (Italian): an octave followed by a sestet; a common rhyme pattern is ABBAABBA for the octave with varied sestet patterns (for example CDECDE).

• Shakespearean (English): three quatrains plus a final couplet, typically ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

• Spenserian: links the quatrains through a chained rhyme scheme, commonly ABAB BCB CCDC EE.

Triolet

A triolet is an eight-line French-derived form built on repetition. Lines 1 and 2 return at lines 4 and 8, creating the rhyme pattern ABaAabAB (uppercase indicates repeated lines). Triolets rely on repeating a memorable phrase to create emphasis and circularity.

Haiku

Haiku comes from Japanese short-poem traditions and focuses on a moment in nature. In Japanese the form counts morae (sound units), usually totaling 17 (often rendered 5-7-5). In English practice, poets often approximate that pattern with 5-7-5 syllables, though many contemporary English haiku favor shorter, looser syllable counts. Traditional haiku commonly include a seasonal reference (kigo) and a cutting word (kireji) or an equivalent break in thought. Haiku are typically unrhymed.

Senryu

Senryu resembles haiku in length and form but centers on human nature, social observation, irony, or humor rather than seasonal or natural imagery. Like haiku, senryu are usually short and unrhymed; in Japanese the unit is morae, and in English poets often use a 5-7-5 syllable pattern or a briefer lineation.

Tanka

Tanka is an older Japanese lyrical form of five lines with a traditional 31-mora pattern (5-7-5-7-7). In English the pattern is often rendered as syllables. Tanka tends to be personal and lyrical, allowing more development of feeling or narrative than haiku.

Try them out

These forms give different constraints and freedoms. Try writing a ballad to tell a short story, a sonnet to work through an argument, a triolet for a repeated refrain, or a haiku, senryu, or tanka to capture a focused moment. Keep a journal of experiments - revisiting drafts often reveals stronger imagery and clearer voice.