Structure and Poetry: What Your Students Need to Know (+11 Great Poems)

“If it’s square, it’s a sonnet.”

Thomas C. Foster may have removed this chapter about structure and poetry from his AP-Lit favorite How to Read Literature Like a Professor (and, fine, we don’t blame him—it didn’t really fit in a guide that was really more about symbolism in novels), but his pithy saying has stuck with us since that early edition of his classic book.

Structure and poetry go together like peanut butter and jelly. Poems just look different on the page—it’s our first clue that we’re dealing with poetry, not prose.

When we’re teaching poetry to our PreAP, honors, and AP Lit students, it’s essential that we spend time helping them understand the intimate relationship between structure and poetry. Yes, because it’s a key feature of the genre, but more importantly because understanding the relationship between structure and poetry is a reliably useful tool they can use to unlock meaning in this notoriously tricky genre.

(This is not to say that understanding structure and poetry isn’t also helpful to our standard-level students. It definitely is, but a deep discussion of structure and poetry is often far more than our standard-level students need, particularly if, like us, you find it more effective to weave the occasional poem into an essential questions unit rather than devoting a full unit to the genre.)

Immediately after our week-long introduction to poetry lesson in AP Literature, we dive into the relationship between structure and poetry.

Why Teach Structure and Poetry Early On?

As we mentioned above, structure is one of the defining features of poetry. It’s tough to get very far in any meaningful discussion of poetry without considering the question of why it looks the way it does.

Our primary textbook for AP Literature was Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, and in the introduction to the chapter on form and structure, the editors explain that the two should be interrelated: the external form of a poem should reinforce its internal structure and meaning.

Ultimately, poetry follows the same “rules” as prose: it must be organized in a way that helps readers make meaning. There’s a reason, after all, that the College Board’s AP Literature Course and Exam Description references the same Enduring Understanding in all nine units, regardless of genre: “The arrangement of the parts and sections of a text, the relationship of the parts to each other, and the sequence in which the text reveals information are all structural choices made by a writer that contribute to the reader’s interpretation of a text.”

Strangely, our textbook placed its discussion of structure and form toward the end of the poetry unit (Chapter 14 out of 16). We followed that order for a few years, but we eventually realized that it was far more helpful to students if a discussion of structure and poetry came first: when students recognize the way a poem’s outer form points toward its internal structure of ideas, they get big clues that help them unravel the poem’s meaning.

Sometimes those clues are as simple as identifying key ideas one stanza at a time to avoid overwhelm, but when students can identify a poem as an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet, they know that the beginning of line 9 will include a shift, and they can look for the contrast between the octave and sestet. 

When they can identify a poem as an English (or Elizabethan or Shakespearean) sonnet, they know that the last two lines will essentially summarize or comment on the twelve lines that came before. 

And when they recognize that they’re reading a villanelle, they know the intertwining refrain will be key to interpreting the poem’s meaning.

As students become more attuned to the way poems are organized, they’re more prepared to notice breaks in the pattern, which become points of emphasis, or the effect of reading a poem written in free verse, without clear stanzas, meter, or even punctuation.

When our students recognize that poetry, just like prose, is organized and follows predictable rules (that can, of course, be broken), the genre starts to become less mysterious; instead, it’s a puzzle that they can, in fact, solve.

Structure and Poetry: The “Must Cover” Terms

When it comes to poetry, it’s easy to get caught up in all the technical terms, and when it comes to structure and poetry, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the many different poetic forms.

We’re always for keeping it simple and practical, however, so these are the terms we consider essentials for our students.

Line

It’s difficult to define a line of poetry—it’s fairly self-explanatory—but students do need to be able to recognize one and know that it functions as a poem’s basic unit of organization.

Stanza

A grouping of lines in a poem; can vary in length, but there are common groupings like couplets (two lines), tercets (three lines), quatrains (four lines), sestets (six lines), and octaves (eight lines). We like to describe this to students as a poem’s version of a paragraph.

Meter

A means of measuring and describing rhythmic language; involves arranging the accents of language into apparently equal intervals of time; described by the type of foot (iamb, trochee, spondee, anapest, or dactyl) and the number of feet in a line (dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, etc.).

• Note: It’s not necessary that students have a deep understanding of meter at this point, but it’s helpful for them to recognize the term since the use of a regular pattern of meter characterizes some forms of poetry.

Rhyme

The repetition of the accented vowel sound and any consonant sounds that follow it in two words within close proximity to one another (Examples: cat—hat; later—alligator, shake—snake).

• Note: We deal more fully with rhyme later in the unit when we discuss sound devices, but identifying the rhyme scheme of a poem can help students identify its form, so they need to be familiar with the term.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem written (almost always) in iambic pentameter that follows a set rhyme scheme.

English / Elizabethan / Shakespearean sonnet

A sonnet divided into three quatrains and a concluding couplet that follows the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. (Examples: any of Shakespeare’s sonnets or “Death, be not proud” by John Donne)

Italian / Petrarchan sonnet

A sonnet divided into an octave and a sestet; the octave has a rhyme scheme of abbaabba, and the sestet has two rhyme sounds, like cdcdcd or cdecde. (Examples: “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats or “The world is too much with us” by William Wordsworth)

Terms relating to sonnets are, by far, the most important terms for your students to know. The division of a sonnet—three quatrains and a concluding couplet or octave and sestet—aligns with the organization of ideas. Sonnets are common in general, and they feature frequently on the AP exam in particular, so being able to recognize that a poem is a sonnet (and which type) quickly gives students a huge clue as they’re working out its meaning.

A Few Additional Terms to Know

Shift (or Volta)

While students don’t need to memorize a definition of this term, per se, or even know the technical term volta, they need to know that sonnets often feature a noticeable shift in thought (generally in line 9 in an Italian sonnet; in line 13 in an English sonnet), which is key to understanding the poem’s meaning.

Villanelle

A nineteen-line poem with two rhyme sounds divided into five tercets and one quatrain; the first and third lines of the first stanza function as a refrain throughout the poem.

• Note: To be fair, a villanelle probably isn’t a need to know term since it’s not that common; however, if you’re going to teach Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” an excellent poem (see below), you’ll need to cover the form. It’s also, because it’s so complicated, a great example of showing students how a poem’s form reinforces its meaning.

Refrain

A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines in a poem; usually repeated according to a set pattern.

Free Verse

A poem in which the only necessary distinction between the poem and prose is the division into lines: there is no set meter, rhyme scheme, or stanzaic form.

If the poems you’re teaching adhere to another set form, it’s worth covering; if not, this list should give your students the basics they need to be successful.

Useful Strategies for Teaching Structure and Poetry

While the majority of our lessons on structure and poetry are discussion-based, there are a few strategies we’ve found to really help students with this particular skill:

#1 Have students label the rhyme scheme, especially if it’s a sonnet.

When students are first learning to differentiate the two types of sonnets, it can be useful for them to label the rhyme scheme at the end of each line. This isn’t a regular practice that we do throughout the year (and rarely does the rhyme scheme carry the weight of a poem’s meaning), but labeling the rhyme scheme makes it easy for beginning poetry students to recognize which type of sonnet they’re dealing with.

#2 Have students draw lines between the divisions of the sonnet.

Once students have determined whether a sonnet is Italian or English, have them draw lines to indicate the units of meaning. In an Italian sonnet, they should draw a line between the octave and the sestet; in an English sonnet, they should draw a line after each quatrain.

As simple as this strategy is, it really helps students to focus on one division of the poem at a time, making the connection between form and structure tangible.

#3 Have students circle “shift” words.

This is generally a good annotation strategy for any type of close reading since it helps students to track the line of reasoning in a text, but when you’re studying structure and poetry, it helps reinforce for students that the shift words (since, although, however, etc.) occur in predictable places (especially in sonnets). This helps them learn to look for those predictable clues when they encounter a new poem they’re struggling to understand.

#4 Have students mirror the poem’s organization in their writing.

We’re big believers in the idea that chronological order is the best way to organize most literary analysis essays. When students are explaining their interpretation of an author’s theme, their argument generally works best when it follows the same path the author used to build to that theme in the first place.

And with poetry that follows a set form like a sonnet or villanelle, organizing the argument by stanza helps students to build a logical line of reasoning in their own argument and ensures that their essay covers the entire poem, not just a handful of ideas sprinkled throughout.

Our 3 Go-To Structure and Poetry Recommendations

We use sonnets throughout our entire poetry unit, so some of our favorites work better for introducing other literary devices. But these three are regulars in our curriculum purely for the purpose of introducing the concept of structure and poetry:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” Dylan Thomas

As we mentioned above, this poem is pretty much the entire reason we taught our students the term “villanelle.”

While we like our students to know that the speaker is not the poet, this is one poem where knowing the poet’s background does influence the meaning. Thomas’s father went blind and became ill in his 80s, and instead of the fiery personality he had displayed throughout his life, he became soft and gentle. This bothered Thomas, who urged his father to fight until the end, to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The repeated refrain that intertwines through multiple stanzas presenting different types of men who lived their lives fully to the very end gives the poem a sense of urgency, adding to its haunting beauty.

“On first looking into Chapman’s Homer,” John Keats

Keats’s sonnet clearly aligns with the Italian sonnet form, and it’s a great practice in close reading. Its use of simile and metaphor is often lost on students, who think it’s a poem about traveling or exploration rather than the joyful awe of discovering a new translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

While that particular sense of awe isn’t something many of our students can relate to, they have heard of Homer and Cortez (not always the case with allusions), and once they unlock the figurative language, the meaning is fairly straightforward.

Sonnet 73, William Shakespeare

Surprise, surprise, our exemplar English sonnet is a Shakespearean one!

Sonnet 73, where the speaker praises his listener (perhaps a beloved but not necessarily) for loving him even though he is aging, is a particularly artful use of the sonnet form. Each of the three quatrains presents something that is dying: the year dies with winter, the day dies with sunset, and a fire dies as it burns to ash. But as we move through the quatrains, each thing that is dying gets shorter and shorter, adding a sense of urgency to the speaker’s words.

5 Great Poems for Student Practice with Structure and Poetry

The year we taught AP Literature virtually, thanks to the pandemic, we ended our poetry unit by having students write a poetry analysis essay in groups. To ensure that all groups had a relatively comparable poem, we gave each group a sonnet, which they had to analyze using a discussion format we’d used throughout the year before writing a collaborative essay. 

The activity worked great, and these five sonnets gave students a lot to work with in their analysis.

• “Death, be not proud,” John Donne
• “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room,” William Wordsworth
• “Thou blind man’s mark,” Sir Philip Sydney
  • While this is a great poem to discuss, it was one of the free-response questions on the 2012 AP exam, so it’s pretty easy for students to find resources online. Keep this in mind as you’re making your plans!
• “To Death,” Countess of Winchelsea Anne Finch
• “Well, I have lost you,” Edna St. Vincent Millay

3 Additional Poems That Play with Structure & Form

“Acquainted with the Night,” Robert Frost

Frost’s poem, excellent for discussing symbolism, resembles a sonnet with its fourteen lines of iambic pentameter but follows the rhyme scheme of terza rima, allowing students to see how poets play with traditional forms.

“Delight in Disorder,” Robert Herrick

If you go deep into the background of Petrarchan sonnets, Herrick’s poem is a fun inclusion. Similar to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, Herrick plays with the tradition of moving from top to bottom in the speaker’s praise of a woman, but he uses the tradition for his own, less seductive, purposes.

“In Media Res,” Michael McFee

McFee’s delightful poem describes a middle-aged man’s growing belly, mirrored by the shape of the poem itself as it’s printed on the page.

A discussion of structure and poetry is essential in a poetry unit. Yes, the form can function as a literary device that reinforces meaning, and recognizable forms like the sonnet are “must-covers” if we want to build up our students’ cultural and literary toolkits. But most importantly, covering structure and poetry gives our students a starting place as they work to construct meaning within a genre that never fails to challenge them. 

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