Introducing Professor Driscoll: Rhymes and their reasons: Poems of cradles and bough-breakings, too, moon-jumping cows and ten kids in a shoe (Nursery rhymes)
Rhymes that prompt laughter (If that's what you're after) (Nonsense verse)
Nineteen lines but just two rhymes (Villanelle)
There once was a poem so outrageous, read aloud, it became quite contagious (Limerick)
Haikus have three lines and seventeen syllables simple, beautiful (Haiku)
Gather round for a story of heroes and glory (Narrative verse)
My dear, aren't you smitten by these words that I've written? (Lyric verse)
Poem fantastic (Though usually old) that may teach a lesson (So it's often retold) (Ballad)
Sheep, shepherds, and other sappy stuff (Pastoral)
Poems of feelings and hearts shining bright (They're a pleasure to hear, but a devil to write) (Sonnet)
When you haven't got time to think of a rhyme (Free verse)
Alphabet poems, riddles, epitaphs, and other unusual styles (Poems peculiar)
Poetry's greats: Rulers of rhyme, legends of the lyric and superstars of the spoken word: First poet: Homer (c. 700-800 B.C.)
Bard: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Free spirit: John Milton (1608-1674)
Artist: William Blake (1757-1827)
People's poet: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Daughter, wife, and poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Poet of "Fantastic Terrors": Edgar Allan Poe
Rebel without applause: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Voice of America: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Poet of heaven and earth: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Poems of everyday beauty: Robert Frost (1875-1963)
Adventurer: Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Englishman in Bombay: Rudyard Kipling (1863-1936)
Good poet for bad children: Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
American spirit: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Thinker: W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
Brave new voice: Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Beat of the city: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919- )
Irish eye: Seamus Heaney (1939- )
Visions of Mexico: Octavio Paz (1914-1998)
Caged bird's song: Maya Angelou (1928- ).
