Long, Medium and Short poems

[desiresjab]

First of all, what are they? Where does one stop and the other begin? Does a poem have to be epic length before it is a long poem?

My longest poem is eight pages. It seemed like a long poem when I was writing it, but I am sure many would consider it a short or medium poem.

Maybe it varies for everyone. Is there an official standard? Perhaps it has more to do with the kind of development that takes place than the number of lines--up to a point at least I guess that could be true.

[MorpheusSandman]

Answering this question one runs into the continuum paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy) (I call it a paradox rather than a fallacy because it really just illustrates how arbitrary it is to draw a dividing line through continuums). I think it makes most sense to define poetry by line-count rather than using vague adjectives like short/long; either that, or only use short/long as relative standards. So we may say that Stevens' 240-line (I think it is) Auroras of Autumn is a "long poem" of Stevens (as it is one of his longest ones), while Wordsworth's Intimations is a "medium poem" of about the same number of lines in Wordsworth's canon, since his Prelude is MUCH longer.

If we WERE to draw some arbitrary lines, I think it would be helpful to at least have more than three lengths:

Very Short - < 40 lines (because most books have less than 40 lines per page)
Short - 40-100 lines
Medium - 100-200
Long - 200-600
Very long - > 600 lines

Once you get over 600 lines you're getting into "short-story" length territory, or the length of typical "Books" of epic poetry. My longest poem is still ongoing with the line count at just over 400 lines (in Ottava Rima, no less). I don't know if it's possible to write poems of that length in any other mode but narrative, unless it's divided into sections like Stevens' long poems.

[YesNo]

My standard for long and short is the page. If it is less than a page, it is short. If I have to turn the page to finish it, it is long.

If one judges long and short by the number of lines a particular reader will continue reading the poem before stopping, then many long poems could be considered short.

[mortalterror]

My longest poem is still ongoing with the line count at just over 400 lines (in Ottava Rima, no less).
RESPECT! Go Morpheus, GO!

[cacian]

My standard for long and short is the page. If it is less than a page, it is short. If I have to turn the page to finish it, it is long.

If one judges long and short by the number of lines a particular reader will continue reading the poem before stopping, then many long poems could be considered short.

in my mind a poem means short. I can't imagine long it loses the meaning what a poem means I think.

[MorpheusSandman]

in my mind a poem means short. I can't imagine long it loses the meaning what a poem means I think.This is because you associate poetry with short lyric poetry, but short lyric poetry is only one kind of poetry. The earliest poetry was epic poetry, which were as long as modern novels are. Is Paradise Lost not a poem?

[MorpheusSandman]

RESPECT! Go Morpheus, GO!You should probably save your respect and encouragement until you've read it (if you even want to)! :D It's really in need of editing (and finishing; I think I'm close), and I know there are some clunky sections. It started out just me being inspired to try my hand at the form itself as I had been reading Yeats and Byron at the time, but it quickly turned into the medium I used to express a rather traumatic experience I had with a flood about a year back. The work (as it stands) bears marks of that trying to shift it from one thing into something quite different.

[cacian]

This is because you associate poetry with short lyric poetry, but short lyric poetry is only one kind of poetry. The earliest poetry was epic poetry, which were as long as modern novels are. Is Paradise Lost not a poem?

well to me it is a story because it has characters.

[Whosis]

It would be difficult to judge long and short for prose poems as there are no length restrictions, but for known forms of poetry, the longest poem is not that long. The sonnet is one of the longest forms, and it is only 14 lines long.

Short: haiku - 3 lines
Medium: limerick - 5 lines
Long: sonnet - 14 lines
villanelle - 19 lines

[desiresjab]

Those prose poems are sure long. snzzz...snzzz. Those rhyming poems are sure short. Those free verse poems seem awful long. Those confessional snapshots about someone having another epiphanous memory involving their mother or father which you can't figure out why it should be important or entertaining or amusing to you and should be in their personal journal instead of a poetry journal anyway, sure are long for scrawny little short things.

That Inferno sure was short. So was that Illiad.

[MorpheusSandman]

well to me it is a story because it has characters.Poems can have stories and characters. It's more common to define poetry by what form the writing takes rather than by if it's narrative (story/characters) or lyric.

[MorpheusSandman]

The sonnet is one of the longest forms, and it is only 14 lines long.

Short: haiku - 3 lines
Medium: limerick - 5 lines
Long: sonnet - 14 lines
villanelle - 19 linesSestinas have 39 lines. They're also a pain in the head to write.

[YesNo]

A poem's best when it is brief.
That gives the readers some relief.
Before their pain insists they quit,
They find they've read the whole of it.

[cacian]

A poem's best when it is brief.
That gives the readers some relief.
Before their pain insists they quit,
They find they've read the whole of it.

very nice.

a poem is for life
to short it is to light
off the weight it excites.
and a book is for might
you need it to bite
up and down the fight
you turn pages and page
you wish you could age
you want to forget the rage.
reading is
comical sage.

[desiresjab]

So, you other lads and lassies spend your time writing about poetry too. We've all got it--the professor-looking-for-someting-to write-about syndrome. At least those were done well. We might have to change that to the human looking for something to write about syndrome.

Hell, I am busy revolutionizing poetry. It wouldn't be responsible of me if I didn't write about poetry sometimes. Ahem!

Maybe we are overlooking something--word count. Say both poems are five pages long. One of them is skinny, with line skips for new verses, flying right down the page, with two or three syllables per line, the other is in heptameter, solid with no line skips. We can't pretend they are the same length just because they occuy the same number of pages.

Help me find a poem! I remember reading it long ago. It was short by anyone's standard. Short Means Four Lines Or Less[I] made me think of it. The subject was poetry and apparently the poem was a reaction to Ginsberg and some of his school. I only remember a partial phrase, which was something like

Too [I]something to rhyme, too something else to scan...

[YesNo]

Cacian's line about poetry that "you need it to bite" is in my mind and it seems as truthful as anything I've read about poetry. Poetry is most painful when it doesn't bite.

I tried searching for "too ... to scan", but nothing came up. Actually, a lot of stuff came up, but nothing relevant.

Maybe 100 words (or syllables) is a good division between short and long poetry. However, the only thing that makes this "good" is mathematics. One might be able to describe the metrical pattern of a line with mathematics, but going in the other direction does not always work. That is, coming up with some mathematical pattern and then converting it into patterns in a poem doesn't mean it will bite enough to be an interesting poetic form.

Also, if one does pick 100 words as the quality that separates short from long, then one would have to ask which base 100 is in. Is it base 10? Then it is the expected 100 words. Is it base 2? Then it is some other quantity. So forget my suggestion.

[MorpheusSandman]

Hell, I am busy revolutionizing poetry.Heh, good luck. As I mentioned to miyako recently, I don't think such a revolution is really possible today. Too many different niches looking for too many different revolutions. Whatever revolution you may make is bound to only resonate with some.


Maybe we are overlooking something--word count. Say both poems are five pages long. One of them is skinny, with line skips for new verses, flying right down the page, with two or three syllables per line, the other is in heptameter, solid with no line skips. We can't pretend they are the same length just because they occuy the same number of pages.Word count often isn't accessible unless the work is digitized or unless you're REALLY dedicated to go through and count each word. To me, line count is a good middle ground between the unreliability of page count (which depends on page size, font size, margin setting, etc. as much as it does actual length) and the persnicketiness of word count.


Help me find a poem! I remember reading it long ago. It was short by anyone's standard. Short Means Four Lines Or Less[I] made me think of it. The subject was poetry and apparently the poem was a reaction to Ginsberg and some of his school. I only remember a partial phrase, which was something like

Too [I]something to rhyme, too something else to scan...It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't think of it...

[Whosis]

That sestina looks really weird. I think it is at least fair that if a word is going to be repeated, in a villanelle, the whole line is repeated.

[desiresjab]

We could look at length as a property of time. A poem's length must in some way be proportinal to the average time required to read it comfortably. We understand from the outset that the criterion is not perfect and that all poems are not equally easy to read. I like it because it is already solved for a variable that allows me a way of knowing whether or not a poem can fit into my schedule. Word count probably gives me the best estimate for that, in case the lines are quite short or it is a prose poem (ultimate oxymoron).

[YesNo]

Prose poems are pretty moronic. One can skip the oxy part, but I find them enjoyable, and I've even written a few, if they make enough sense to wind me up.

The problem with basing the length of the poem on the amount of time it takes to read it is that once one is convinced the poem doesn't make any sense, it doesn't matter how long or short the poem is, one can stop reading. The poem has been read. That realization could happen after four lines. It takes genius or at least good marketing skills to get people to continue reading nonsense past some number of words. To make that number specific, it might as well be 100.

[MorpheusSandman]

That sestina looks really weird. I think it is at least fair that if a word is going to be repeated, in a villanelle, the whole line is repeated.Well, yeah, sestinas aren't villanelles. Villanelle's refrains are repeated lines, while sestina's refrains are merely end-words. Having written both, sestinas are much harder. I can't say how many I started only to give up on. Once you've found two good lines in a villanelle, the rest is much less difficult.