Discover how to write a poem the EASY way

The poetic language It has a characteristic musicality that can be appreciated especially when the text is recited. This rhythm depends on the verses, stanzas and rhymes used, among other things. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will tell you how to write a poem and, for this, we will see the different types of verses, stanzas and rhymes that are used in Castilian literature.

If you want to know how to write a poem, the first thing you have to bear in mind is that the literary language usually appears in the form of prose or in verse. Although one is usually related to narration and the other to poetry, they do not have to go hand in hand with any literary genre, since there is poetic prose and narration in verse. The differences between prose and verse are fundamentally two:

• Visually, prose presents continuous writing, as it occupies all the space intended for the text. On the other hand, the verse only occupies a part of this space.
• From the point of view of rhythm and acoustics, the elements that make up a text in
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  verse are organized on a regular basis to endow it with musicality, which is not the case with prose texts.

To understand how a verse works, first it is necessary to know how count the syllables, because although in general they coincide with the grammatical syllables, a series of rules must be taken into account. The rules basic refer to the final word from the verse:

• If this is sharp, you must count one syllable too many.
• Yes it is esdrújula de must count one syllable less.

On the other hand there are poetic licenses:

• The sinalefa It allows joining the final vowel of a word with the initial vowel of the next, thus forming a single metric syllable. The umlaut consists of undoing a diphthong to convert it into two metric syllables.
• The syneresis It consists of converting a hiatus into a diphthong to convert it into a metric syllable.

There are also some phenomena of addition (the prosthesis, the epenthesis, the paragoge) or suppression of syllables (apheresis, syncope, apocope), but they are rare.

The verses of the poems

According to the number of syllables the verses They may be:

• From minor art, when they have less than nine syllables: bisyllables (2 syllables), trisyllables (3 syllables), tetrasyllables (4 syllables), pentasyllables (5 syllables), hexasyllables (6 syllables), heptasyllables (7 syllables) and octosyllables (8 syllables).
• From major art, when they have nine or more syllables: eneasyllables (9 syllables), decasyllables (10 syllables), hendecasyllables (11 syllables), dodecasyllables (12 syllables), tridecasyllables (13 syllables), Alexandrines (14 syllables), pentadecasyllables (15 syllables).

Verses of twelve or more syllables are considered compound verses, and are formed by two hemistichs separated by a caesura. The hemistichs can be the same (isostichs) or of different number of verses (heterostichs).

Some measures are considered cult verse (such as the heptasyllables, the eneasyllables, the hendecasyllables or the Alexandrines), while others are more typical of the popular literature (like hexasyllables or octosyllables).

The rhyme consists of the repetition of certain phonemes from the last stressed vowel. When only vowel phonemes are repeated, we talk about assonance rhyme. When all the phonemes are repeated, both the vowels and the consonants, we are faced with a rhyme or perfect.

The rhyme is represented with a letter each time there is rhyme (using a new letter for each new rhyme) and a hyphen for the single verses, that is, those that do not have rhyme. The letters are uppercase when they refer to verses of major art and lowercase when they refer to verses of minor art.

Depending on the arrangement of the rhyme in a text, it can be one of the following types:

• Keep going: a, a, a, a [...]
• Chained: a, b, a, b
• Gemela: a, a, b, b, c, c [...]
• Embraced: a, b, b, a

A stanza it is a structured set of two or more verses. The main stanzas of Castilian literature are the following:

• Semi-detached: two verses of major or minor art with consonant rhyme. Possible rhythmic schemes: aa, AA, aA, Aa.
• Third: three hendecasyllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: A - A.
• Quartet: four hendecasyllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: ABBA
• Round: four eight-syllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: abba
• Serventesio: four hendecasyllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: ABAB
• Quatrain: four eight-syllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: abab
• Couplet: four eight-syllable verses with assonance rhyme. Rhythm scheme: - a - a
• Sash: four Alexandrian verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: AAAA
• Quintet: five verses of major art with consonant rhyme. Rhythmic scheme: any, without leaving any single verse, do not rhyme three in a row and do not end with a couplet.
• Limerick: five verses of minor art with assonance rhyme. Rhythmic scheme: any, without leaving any single verse, do not rhyme three in a row and do not end with a couplet.
• Lira: five verses (three heptasyllables and two hendecasyllables) with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: aBabB
• Sextilla: six verses of minor art with assonance rhyme. Rhythmic scheme: any, without leaving any single verse, do not rhyme three in a row and do not end with a couplet.
• Broken foot couplet: six verses of minor art (8, 8, 4, 8, 8, 4) with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: abcabc
• Royal Octave: eight hendecasyllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm scheme: ABABABCC
• 10th spinel: ten eight-syllable verses with consonant rhyme. Rhythm Scheme: abbaaccddc

Knowing all these elements, you can already know how to write a poem. Get inspired by a topic you want to talk about and unleash your imagination and creativity.