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What Is a Lyric Poem? Definition, Forms and Examples

A lyric poem is a short poem in which a single voice speaks about what it feels or notices in a moment, rather than telling a story. The word comes from the lyre, the stringed instrument that accompanied sung poetry in ancient Greece, and the name has kept the association with music ever since. If you can imagine the poem being said aloud by one person standing still, it is probably a lyric.

This guide covers how lyric differs from narrative and dramatic poetry, the forms inside the family, and three original examples with notes on where the lyric quality comes from.

What the word means, and how it is used today

Modern criticism groups poetry into three broad kinds: narrative poetry tells a story, dramatic poetry is spoken by characters as if on stage, and lyric poetry presents a feeling or a perception as it happens. The labels describe the centre of gravity rather than a fence.

Three features do most of the work in identifying a lyric: brevity, a first-person voice, and the absence of plot. A ninety-line poem that follows a hero through a battle is narrative; a poem about standing at a window when the news arrives is lyric. The readiest test is a question: does the poem want you to know what happened, or what it was like?

How lyric differs from narrative and dramatic poetry

The time column repays a second look: a lyric can spend twenty lines on one second, treating a moment as if it were the whole subject.

The forms inside the lyric family

• The song. The oldest member, and the reason the family is named after an instrument. Repetition and a refrain do the structural work, which is why the refrain is so common here.
• The sonnet. Fourteen lines with a turn in the middle or at the end; a tight frame for a single argument that changes direction once.
• The ode. A lyric of formal address, usually elevated in tone, speaking to an object, a season or a person.
• The elegy. A lyric of mourning that moves through grief towards some kind of settlement.
• The haiku. A very short lyric of perception, built on a cut between two images rather than a developing feeling.
• Free verse lyric. The dominant modern shape: no fixed metre or rhyme, with line breaks and rhythm carrying the music, as set out in how line breaks work.

The parts a lyric is built from

1. The speaker. The voice of the poem, which is not the author. Keeping the two apart is the most useful habit a reader of lyric can build, because a poem spoken by a soldier is not a confession by the person who wrote it.
2. The situation. Where the speaker is and what has just happened, even if the poem never says so directly. Most lyric poems imply a room, a weather, an hour.
3. The turn. A shift in direction or feeling, often around two-thirds of the way through. In sonnets it is called the volta; in free verse it often arrives as a plain short line after a long one.
4. Imagery and figurative language. The concrete particulars that carry the feeling, since abstract statements of emotion rarely move anyone. How to choose them is the subject of imagery in poetry.
5. Music. Metre, stress, line length and sound repetition. In traditional verse this is metre and rhyme; in free verse it is rhythm and the placement of pauses. Metre is worth learning even if you never write a line of it, because it trains the ear.

Three short lyric examples, with notes

The three poems below were written for this page.

1. Winter window

The glass is cold against my forehead. Two crows work the frozen lawn, patient as postmen. Somewhere a kettle takes its time. I am not waiting for anything. I am not waiting for anything.

Nothing happens, and that is the design. The repeated last line states the poem's own condition, and the repetition is what turns a description into a feeling. Delete it and the poem becomes a list of objects.

2. The last bus

You always took the last bus. Now I take it, and it is not late, and the driver says good evening the way he always did, and the seats are the same blue, and I sit where you sat and get off at the stop after yours.

This one borrows narrative materials — a habitual act, a change in it — and stays a lyric because nothing develops: the poem is held inside one repeated evening. The turn comes at the last line, where the speaker changes one habit without explaining why, and the reader supplies the reason.

3. Instructions for a stranger

If the light over the stairs is dead, do not fix it; I like the dark that arrives a step before the landing. If the tap drips, it has always dripped. If someone knocks after ten, that is no one. Keep the key. Keep the key.

The addressee is absent throughout, which is a common lyric move: an address that cannot be answered keeps the poem in one tense. The conditions build a person's habits, and the imperative in the last line converts instructions into a wish.

Five exercises for writing a lyric

1. Start from a place, not a theme. Name the room, the weather and the hour in the first three lines, and let the feeling grow from there instead of announcing it.
2. Replace every abstraction with something visible. "I was sad" becomes the cold glass on your forehead. If a line can be photographed, keep it.
3. Keep "I" to what it notices. A speaker who reports what is in front of them is credible; a speaker who explains their own emotions is not.
4. Build one turn. Plan a single change of direction near the end, and let the last lines arrive without explanation. The checklists in revising a poem are useful here.
5. Read it aloud twice. Once for the sense, once for the pauses. Any line you stumble over in the second reading has unfinished music.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a poem a lyric poem?

Three things together: it is short, it is spoken in the first person, and its centre of gravity is a feeling or a moment of thought rather than a sequence of events. A poem can tell a small story and still be lyric, as long as the story exists to serve the feeling and not the other way round.

Does a lyric poem have to rhyme?

No. Rhyme is one way of giving a lyric its music, and for centuries it was the common way, but free verse lyric poems rely on rhythm, line breaks and sound repetition instead. The music is not optional; the rhyme is.

Is a lyric poem always about the poet's own feelings?

No, and this is where readers get caught. The speaker of a lyric poem is a constructed voice, not the author's diary. A poet can write a lyric in the voice of a soldier, a stranger on a platform or someone long dead, and the feeling is still lyric because it is presented as experience rather than told as a story.

How long is a lyric poem?

Traditionally short enough to be sung or held in the memory, which in practice means anything from a few lines to a page or two. Very long poems can contain lyric passages, but once a poem is organised around a plot it is usually read as narrative poetry instead.

What is the difference between a lyric and an ode?

An ode is a lyric poem with a formal address and a ceremonial tone, usually longer and more elevated in diction. Lyric is the wider family; the ode, the sonnet, the elegy and the song are all members of it.