Narrative or lyric? Epistle or sonnet? Our multi-part series continues with the myriad ways to classify and categorize poems. 

There are many ways to classify poems. The most common way is to first consider whether a poem can be defined as narrative or lyric.

Narrative poems tell a story—The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe is an example. In the poem, Poe writes of a man recalling a dead lover, Lenore. When the man is visited by a talking raven who repeats the word "Nevermore," he must confront that his memories persist, but what they recall will exist "nevermore."

Epic poetry like The Iliad is also considered narrative. Epic poems are very long poems that often tell tales of heroism or adventure. They likely include supernatural events, characters, or creatures.

Lyric poetry is less concerned with conveying a plot or series of events, and focuses instead on an emotional state, thought, or experience. While lyric poetry may linger on details in the physical world, it is grounded in the interior life of the speaker.

Take, for example, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes:

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
    flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
    went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Of course, these categories are flexible. A narrative poem can be very moving, and a lyric poem can concern a series of events. If you aren’t sure whether a poem is thought of as lyric or narrative, that shouldn’t stand in the way of your enjoyment, and there are lots of other ways to categorize poems too.

Form, purpose, procedures
 

You could focus on the form of the poem. A haiku is three lines with five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven in the second. An epistle takes the form of a letter. And you've probably heard of the sonnet, a fourteen-line poem, usually with ten syllables per line, with an alternating rhyme scheme for the first twelve lines, and two rhyming lines at the end called a rhyming couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets are many people's introduction to the form.

There are also poems for different occasions and purposes, and others centered on particular topics. An elegy laments the dead. An epithalamium is for a new bride on her way to the marital bed. A pastoral explores nature. An ekphrastic poem describes a scene or artwork.

We can think about poems in terms of the procedures used by the poet. Consider erasure poetry, in which a poet takes a found text and removes words from it to create something new. We can also categorize poetry by movements or schools, in which poets ascribed to particular aesthetic notions like the OULIPO poets or the Symbolists. And of course, poems can be organized by time and place, such as English Romantic poetry.

Other topics in the Inside Poetry series:

• What Is Poetry, Anyway? 
• Where Do I Find Poems?
• How Should I Read Poems Out Loud?
• What is the Anatomy of a Poem?