My favorite verse forms

It’s been a long time since I wrote poetry, honestly too long. When I was writing poetry fairly regularly, I wrote a mixture of free verse and formed verse, and enjoyed both. Verse forms are fun because they’re an exercise in constrained writing, which provides just enough structure to make the poem a sort of puzzle to be solved. The rhythm, rhyme, and repetition baked into the form can also improve the experience for the reader, provided it’s done well, of course. So, for the May 2026 bear.blog carnival, I’m writing about my favorite verse forms. Here we go: Sonnet Probably the most famous verse form, other than the haiku (which I think is way overhyped), the sonnet comes in two forms and goes back to 13th-century Sicily. The sonnet is versatile and just about the perfect length for a poem—14 lines or 140 syllables—which gives enough space for a complete thought or two without allowing the writer to ramble. There are two classical sonnet forms, both named for their progenitors. The…