11 Unique and Lesser-Known Poem Styles You Might Not Be Familiar With

Thanks to Shakespeare (and Petrarch before him), sonnets are likely something you’ve encountered—even if the specifics of what defines a sonnet escape you. The concise five-seven-five syllable structure of a haiku has also made it a globally beloved poetic form. However, clerihews, than-bauks, and these other poetic styles haven’t gained the same widespread recognition. That doesn’t make them any less enjoyable.

1. Clerihew

The clerihew takes its name from its creator, English author Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who recalled writing his first one as a schoolboy in the 1890s. It focused on Sir Humphry Davy (spelled as Humphrey by Bentley), the 19th-century chemist known for discovering sodium and other elements. The first clerihew went as follows:

Sir Humphrey DavyDetested gravy.He lived in the odiumOf having discovered Sodium.

In certain versions, Bentley swapped detested with abominated or was not fond of, showcasing how little he prioritized meter in these poems. In fact, clerihews are often deliberately irregular in rhythm (and not entirely historically precise) to enhance their playful, humorous tone. 

To be considered a classic clerihew, your poem must adhere to these guidelines:

• It must consist of four lines.
• The first and second lines should rhyme, as should the third and fourth.
• It should focus on a person, whose name appears in the opening line.

2. Double Dactyl

In 1951, poet Anthony Hecht, with the assistance of editor Naomi Pascal and her husband, classics scholar Paul Pascal, created a new poetic form inspired by the brevity and wit of clerihews but with a stronger emphasis on structure. The double dactyl consists of two quatrains sharing the same meter. The first three lines contain six syllables each, with stress on the first and fourth syllables. (A dactyl is a three-syllable unit with the first syllable stressed and the next two unstressed, making each line a double dactyl, hence the name.) The final line of each stanza includes only the first four syllables of a double dactyl: one stressed, two unstressed, and one stressed.

Double dactyl poems also come with a few additional rules:

• The opening line must be nonsensical, often using phrases like higgledy-piggledy or jiggery-pokery.
• The second line must feature a person’s name. (It must fit the double dactyl meter, so not all six-syllable names work. Matthew McConaughey fits; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar does not.)
• The final line of the first stanza must rhyme with the final line of the second stanza.
• One of the six-syllable lines must consist of a single word. This can appear anywhere in the poem, though Hecht favored placing it as the sixth line.

Here’s an example, inspired by Theodore Roosevelt’s famous insults directed at William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan:

Higgledy-piggledyTheodore RooseveltLoved to sling barbs he dreamedUp on his own.

Taft he called "flubdub" mostEnthusiasticallyBryan he labeled a"Human trombone."

3. Fibonacci Poem

The Fibonacci sequence is a numerical pattern where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones. It begins with 0 and follows this sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. In a Fibonacci poem, this pattern dictates the syllable count for each line. The first two lines contain one syllable each; the third line has two syllables (one plus one); the fourth line has three syllables (one plus two); and so forth. It usually concludes after reaching eight syllables, totaling 20 syllables spread across six lines.

As Deborah Haar Clark noted for the Poetry Foundation, Fibonacci poetry has been explored for centuries. However, the modern six-line, 20-syllable version gained popularity through writer Gregory K. Pincus, who shared one on his blog in 2006. His “Fib,” as he called it, went viral, inspiring countless others to create their own Fibs.

4. American Cinquain

The American cinquain is a unique five-line poetic form created by Adelaide Crapsey, whose cinquains were only published posthumously in 1914. The structure follows a specific syllable pattern: two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, and eight in the fourth, with the fifth line returning to two syllables. Half of the syllables in each line are stressed, and Crapsey often used iambic meter, where stress falls on every second syllable. Here’s her cinquain “The Warning,” composed between 1911 and 1913:

Just now,Out of the strangeStill dusk ... as strange, as still ...A white moth flew. Why am I grownSo cold?

5. Tanka

A tanka, meaning “short poem,” is an ancient Japanese form consisting of 31 syllables. Originally written on a single line, modern English tankas—and translations of Japanese tankas—are typically divided into five lines with a syllable pattern of five, seven, five, seven, seven. While tankas don’t require rhyme or a strict meter, they follow informal guidelines regarding content. The first three lines, known as kami-no-ku, often begin with a concrete description, transitioning to a metaphorical idea by the third line. This abstract theme is then expanded in the final two lines, called shimo-no-ku.

Below is the second stanza of Sadakichi Hartmann’s six-tanka poem, titled simply “Tanka” and featured in his 1904 collection Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems. 

Ah, were the white waves,Far on the shimmering sea,That the moon shine laves,Dream flowers drifting to me - I would cull them, love, for thee.

6. Than-bauk

This Burmese poetic style is concise and witty, consisting of only three lines, each with four syllables. The final syllable of the first line rhymes with the third syllable of the second line and the second syllable of the third line. Here’s a sorrowful than-bauk about someone enduring pain:

I stubbed my toeOn the low curb.Oh no, it hurts.

7. Triolet

The triolet, derived from an old French term meaning clover leaf, gets its name because the first line is repeated three times throughout the poem: it appears as the fourth and seventh lines. The second line is repeated as the eighth line. The third and fifth lines rhyme with the first, while the sixth line rhymes with the second. Originating in medieval France, the triolet later gained popularity in Germany and the UK. A famous English example is Thomas Hardy’s “How Great My Grief:

How great my grief, my joys how few,Since first it was my fate to know thee!- Have the slow years not brought to viewHow great my grief, my joys how few,Nor memory shaped old times anew,Nor loving-kindness helped to show theeHow great my grief, my joys how fewSince first it was my fate to know thee?

8. Nonet

In a nonet, rhyme, theme, and meter are irrelevant—what matters is the line length and syllable count. A nonet consists of exactly nine lines: the first line has nine syllables, and each subsequent line loses one syllable. Thus, the second line has eight syllables, the third has seven, and so on until the final line, which has just one syllable. Here’s an example to demonstrate the idea:

A nonet's first line comprises nineIts second line only has eightThe third line contains sevenThe fourth line has six, and Then five for the fifthFour for the sixthSeventh? ThreeEighth? TwoOne

9. Golden Shovel

Terrance Hayes’s 2010 National Book Award-winning collection Lighthead includes a poem titled “The Golden Shovel,” where each line concludes with a word from Gwendolyn Brooks’s iconic poem “We Real Cool.” Reading the final word (or sometimes syllable) of each line in “The Golden Shovel” essentially reproduces “We Real Cool.” Hayes also drew the poem’s title from the epigraph of Brooks’s work: “The Pool Players./Seven at the Golden Shovel.”

“The Golden Shovel” inspired a new poetic form, the “golden shovel,” which adheres to Hayes’s structure. While some poets have written golden shovels inspired by other Brooks poems, you can base yours on the works of your favorite poet.

10. Elfchen

Referred to as an “elevenie” in English, the German elfchen (meaning “little eleven” or “tiny eleven”) consists of 11 words divided into five lines: one word, followed by two, then three, then four, and ending with one word. The opening line typically introduces a single-word concept, idea, or object, which the subsequent lines elaborate on—its actions, appearance, or emotional impact. The final line often serves as a synonym or a broader reflection of the initial word. 

If you were taught to write elevenies in school, you might recall your teacher imposing specific rules, such as requiring the first word to be a noun and the second line to include only adjectives. However, in practice, these details are flexible. Here’s an elfchen celebrating dedicated educators:

TeachersGuiding poetryTo inspire kidsEnhancing their language skillsChampions!

11. Monostich

The term monostich is thought to originate from an ancient Greek word meaning “one verse” or “single line.” While it can describe a single line within a larger poem, a monostich can also stand alone as a complete poem consisting of just one line. If the intricate syllable patterns of double dactyls or the repetitive rhymes of triolets feel too demanding, you can simply write “This is a poem” and consider it done. That, too, is a monostich.