I was at the library the other day looking for a book of poems. When the librarian, a poet herself saw me looking she asked me if she could help. "I'm just looking for a book of poetry I really loved but I can't remember the name."

She smiled and asked me to describe the poem.

"It wasn't too long, but it wasn't short either. It was funny and at the same time heart warming, but not in a cheesy way..."

She smiled again and asked, "was it a limerick, a haiku, perhaps a sonnet?"

I told her that I wasn't sure about all that but that I really liked the way it sounded when I read it.

"Perhaps you recall if it was iambic or whether it had couplets?"

I just shrugged. "I just want to read a poem that makes me happy," I told her.

She found me something that was pretty all right.

I guess my point is that I don't have a very good understanding of the terms in poetry and I wouldn't recognize them as I read, they're basically all greek to me. They tell me nothing about the poem I'm reading. I do know what a Haiku is fwiw.

I could try harder to know more about poetry, but why so long as I find poems I like? I feel like words such as acrostic, madrigal or quatrain are pretentious and keep people from really knowing anything about poetry.

;-)