Since I sat in Miss Eckman’s 7th Grade English classroom, I’ve been fascinated with the imagists and one-sentence poems.
The imagists were American and British writers in the 20th Century who advocated free verse, common use of language, and concrete images in their writing. Their poems are like snapshots – photographs of a scene. Among my favorite imagists is William Carlos Williams, a medical doctor and poet. Probably his most famous one-sentence poem is “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Another leader in the imagist movement is Ezra Pound. One of his well-known, one-sentence poems is “In a Station of the Metro.”
In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
It’s even possible to write a one-sentence poem that has multiple stanzas. Linda Pastan did that in her poem “The New Dog.”
The New Dog
by Linda Pastan
Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities—
as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.
Learning to write a one-sentence poem with a strong pictorial images teaches the writer to make every word count, to be selective about the words that are included, and to tighten the language to the bare minimum.
Do you have a favorite one-sentence poem? Have you thought about writing one-sentence poems?
Works Cited
Pastan, Linda. “The New Dog.” The Cortland Review. 1999. Web. 4 Aug. 2013.
Pound, Ezra. “In a Station of the Metro.” Poetry Foundation. 2013. Web. 4. Aug. 2013.
Williams, William Carlos. “Red Wheelbarrow.” Poetry Foundation. 2013. Web. 4 Aug. 2013.
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FAQs
John Keats's "Bright star, would I were stedfast" is a one-sentence poem, as are William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow," Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man," and Linda Pastan's "The New Dog." Besides being six to twelve lines long, your poem should have two or more stanzas.
What is a poem with one sentence called? ›
A verse is formally a single metrical line in a poetic composition.
Can a poem be one sentence? ›
If you're writing your piece as a poem, you can use one stanza or many stanzas, but just one sentence (so if you have multiple stanzas, your one sentence would stretch across them). If you're writing prose, your piece will consist of one paragraph that is also a single sentence of whatever length you choose.
How to write one sentence poem? ›
Guidelines:
- Think for a while about the subject of your one-sentence poem, and jot down some ideas, images, and phrases.
- Remember that crucial in creating one-sentence poems, are strong pictorial images and images that appeal to the senses and emotions.
- Don't try to write a long one-sentence poem for starters.
The monostich is a stanza—a whole poem—consisting of just one line.
What is a single sentence example? ›
We played football. She often reads books. They walked to the park. As we can see from these simple sentence examples, each sentence is made up of only a single independent clause.
What is poetry in one sentence? ›
poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
What is the easiest poem to make? ›
Acrostic ✏️
Perhaps the most simple, poetic form. An acrostic is when the first, last or other letters in a line spell out a specific word. The word is the subject of the poem. You'll find examples of acrostics from writing lessons around the world here.
What are the 4 types of sentences in a poem? ›
And all of these sentences can be categorized into 4 types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory; each with its own specific purpose. Punctuation also plays a role in differentiating between these types.
What is it called when a poem is one paragraph? ›
Answer and Explanation: Traditional poetry, featuring a rhythm pattern and definite rhyme scheme, is generally divided into regular sections called stanzas. This structure takes the place of what we identify as paragraphs in prose writing. The format on the page usually skips a line between stanzas.
Although there aren't any hard and fast rules for writing poetry, there are some fundamental guidelines to keep in mind: Show, don't tell. The goal is to provoke an emotion in the reader. Less can be more.
What are 4 sentence poems? ›
In poetry, a quatrain is a verse with four lines. Quatrains are popular in poetry because they are compatible with different rhyme schemes and rhythmic patterns.
What poems are one sentence? ›
One-sentence Poems
- The Red Wheelbarrow. by William Carlos Williams.
- In a Station of the Metro. by Ezra Pound.
- The New Dog. by Linda Pastan. Into the gravity of my life, the serious ceremonies. of polish and paper. and pen, has come.
- Works Cited.
We define short form poetry as anything 9 lines and under, or any poem that uses 60 words or less. The sonnet, for example, is a 14-line poem that often grapples with love, and though sonnets are by no means “long,” they often have abstract qualities not found in short poems.
What is an example of a one-word sentence? ›
A sentence word (also called a one-word sentence) is a single word that forms a full sentence. Henry Sweet described sentence words as 'an area under one's control' and gave words such as "Come!", "John!", "Alas!", "Yes." and "No." as examples of sentence words.
What is sentence one example? ›
A sentence is the basic unit of language. It expresses a complete thought. It does this by following the grammatical basic rules of syntax. For example: "Ram is walking".
What is an example of a short poem? ›
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
