The
term “genre” means “kind” or ”type.” There are three traditional major genres
of poetry and any number of minor ones.
The major genres of
poetry are dramatic poetry,
which is poetry written in dialogue; lyric poetry or songs; and narrative poetry, story poems. Various traditional minor genres of poetry include
bucolics or poems about the countryside, didactics, teaching poems; forensics
or rhetorical poems, speeches; liturgics, or poems of religious ritual;
occasionals, poems about events, and satirics, poems of mockery. But there are
many other categories of poems possible, and recent popular subgenres are
confessionals or poems of remorse, rap, cowboy, and “performance” poetry, to
name a few. Some others, however, are poems of the supernatural, ecological
poetry, feminist poems, anti-war poetry, comics, poems of social conscience,
civil rights, sports, space exploration, and so forth and so on. Here are some
titles of poems that are examples of various genres, most of which can be found
on the Web by using a search engine or simply hitting these links:
Exaggeration: W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening”
Braggadocio: Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Baseball: Herbert Coursen, “National Pastime”
Recurring dreams:
Wesli Court, “The
Obsession”
Funerals: Kenneth Fearing, “Dirge”
Witchcraft: Robert Frost, “The Witch of
Coös”
Popular Music: Dana Gioia, “Cruising with the
Beachboys”
Riddles: Daniel Hoffman, “As I Was Going to St. Ives”
Creation: A. D. Hope, “imperial
Adam”
Racial
prejudice: Langston Hughes, “Go Slow”
Parentage: Weldon Kees, “For My Daughter”
Battle of the
Sexes: Carolyn Kizer, “Semele
Recycled”
Comics: P. J. O’Brien, “Cartoon
Show”
Warfare: Henry Reed, “Naming
of Parts”
Perception: Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
Science Fiction:
Lewis Turco, “Excerpts
from the Latter-Day Chronicle”
Woodslore: David Wagoner, “Staying Alive”
Trash: Richard Wilbur, “Junk”
