If I understand your question correctly, I would suggest that
what is popular and recurring in terms of poetry would be difficult to ascertain as different
people are drawn by different kinds of poetry, just as they are with songs, novels, movies, etc.
Art speaks differently to different people based upon their preferences and personal
experiences.
In my opinion, I believe that the most popular kind of
poem is narrative. This is a broad term that describes poetry that has a plot: in other words, it
tells a story. These kinds of poems are traditionally some of the longest existing poems in our
language.
Lilia Melani, at Brooklyn College, provides an in-depth
and articulate explanation of the importance and characteristics of the ballad.
The ballad (which is often associated with a song) is a very popular form of narrative poetry,
specifically the folk ballad.
The ballads tell of love, death, the
supernatural, or a combination of
these.
Though generally
short in nature and often anonymous, other kinds of ballads are fashioned after this early poetic
form, including literary ballads.
Some of the
most wonderfully romantic poems are narrative in nature, and would be considered literary
ballads. For example, " href="http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-highwayman/">The Highwayman," written by
Alfred Noyes (1880-1958), tells the story of a highwayman and his love, Bess. This poem is about
love, death and the supernatural. It is as haunting as it is
beautiful.
And still on a winter's night, they say, when
the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy
seas,
When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor,
The
highwayman comes riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman comes riding, up
to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and
clangs in the dark inn-yard,
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked
and barred,
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting
there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter--
Bess, the landlord's
daughter--
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black
hair.
The beauty of these
poems are not just in the content, but with the techniques they use to appeal to one's ear, for
poems have a musical quality and are best when read aloud. (Before people could write, poems were
passed down word-of-mouth, known as the href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oral+tradition">oral tradition. People
were enchanted in listening rather than reading.)
Examples of the
devices most often used in poetry (often referred to as href="http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html">figurative
language) are href="http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html">rhyme
(internal and end), href="http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html">meter
(rhythm), href="http://www.orangeusd.k12.ca.us/yorba/literary_elements.htm">onomatopoeia,
repetition, similes and metaphors. All of these assist the reader in drawing a picture in one's
mind of the story being told (which is known as "imagery").
Form
with ballads is often seen in four-line stanzas, that may be a pair of rhyming couplets, or a
rhyme of the second and fourth line, etc., or may use stanzas longer than four lines (as with
literary ballads). The rhythm and rhyme will provide the structural basis for the poem, and the
literary devices employed (that appeal to the ear) will "musically" display
the content of the poem to the reader/listener.
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