Formally Speaking
The French form is 39 lines featuring the intricate repetition of end-words in six stanzas and an envoi.
Sestina
The Italian word for “turn."
Volta
This emerging poet read "Afro-Latinx Manifesto or I Learned to Count Salsa Steps to Laffy Taffy by D4L" during our class visit.
Gabriel Ramirez
This Instagram-famous poet from Toronto is best known for her photograph of her with menstrual blood and is sometimes criticized for writing "Hallmark" verse.
Rupi Kaur
"come celebrate / with me that everyday..." (Lucille Clifton)
"something has tried to kill me/ and has failed."
This form was invented by the poet Terrance Hayes in honor of Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Golden Shovel
The continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break.
This poet started "Poetry for the People" (P4P) an arts/activism program currently at UC Berkeley, founded in 1991.
June Jordan
The Chicago-born singer songwriter whose roots in poetry began with the Dark Noise Collective alongside poets Danez Smith, Fatimah Asghar, and others.
Jamila Woods
"If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write./ If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write. ____________" (Marilyn Chin)
"If you cut my yellow fists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to fight."
This Japanese form is made of a prose poem and a haiku ending that evokes aware, the quality of certain objects to evoke longing, sadness, or immediate sympathy.
Haibun
"Men are so clueless sometimes, / like startled fish / living just to live." (Nicole Sealey)
Simile
This poet wrote: "Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?" a question which boldly appears in the middle of "Twelve Questions."
Bhanu Kapil
The Somali British poet who adapted lines to Beyoncé's 2016 visual album LEMONADE.
"There are days we live/ as if death were nowhere/ in the background; from joy/ to joy to joy, from wing to wing,/from blossom to blossom..." (Li-Young Lee)
"...to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom."
An example of this form is Agha Shahid Ali's "Even the rain" in which the poet addresses the self in the final stanza. i.e. "No one has such small hands, Shahid, not even the rain."
Ghazal
This device repeats a phrase at the beginning of each line. i.e. "She had some horses./ She had horses who were bodies of sand. / She had horses who were maps drawn of blood..." (Joy Harjo)
Anaphora
This poet shows us how to respect the sentence in her poem "38" about the 38 Sioux warriors who were hanged under order of Abraham Lincoln, after the 1862 Sioux uprising, during the same week that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Layli Long Soldier
The Kindergarten Teacher
"They will be better than mangoes, my brothers. / Though I have trouble imagining what that could be. / Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. __________." (Chen Chen)
"Beautiful sons."
"This form includes an ______ letter with an _____ footnote, and an ______ numeral, preferably written right to left as the _______ language is, and vehemently rejects you if you try to read it left to right."
The Arabic
Meter
This Alabama Poet Laureate made history for becoming the first Black poet and the youngest person (at age 31) to hold the position in the 91 years that the state has named a poet laureate.
Ashley M. Jones
"If these words can do anything / if these songs can do anything / I say bless this house / with stars. // __________." (Joy Harjo)
"Transfix us with love."