Most of Brecht's early poems were created on the basis of folk songs and traditions. Most of his narrative poems are written in ballads, with dramatic plots and characters and strict rhyming forms, which is convenient for composition and singing. For example, The Legend of the Dead Soldiers, with its grotesque irony and calm and objective narrative style, shows the dying struggle of German imperialism on the eve of the defeat of the war. Brecht prefers to write "character lyrics" rather than express his feelings directly. He is used to using monologues similar to the performance of characters in plays to reveal their own, social or psychological characteristics. In these poems, the author consciously avoids conveying subjective emotions, but tries to make objective statements and reports. Song of the Prostitute and Yan Ni the Pirate are such poems.
After Brecht joined the revolution, he consciously used poetry as a weapon of struggle. Many of his famous mass songs, such as "Song of Unity" and "Song of the United Front", are not only exquisite works of art, but also timely propaganda materials, which have played a role in mobilizing and educating the revolutionary ranks. Many of Brecht's excellent poems are mostly produced in the experimental process of narrative drama, such as praise for underground work, praise for communism, praise for learning, and doubt for a reader. The obvious feature of these works is the revolutionary enlightenment and guidance to the working class and working people. They don't impress readers with feelings, but stimulate readers' rationality and thinking, so that readers can achieve action through understanding. This is the uniqueness of Brecht's poetry. Brecht's poems often adopt the method of "direct preaching", face the reader's rationality directly and state his understanding of things. In this way, the poet artistically reproduces some revolutionary truths to teach readers a correct understanding of the situation and events. They are educational poems with clear language, vivid metaphors and concise structure.
Brecht also drew lessons from China's classical poetry and Japanese classical haiku, and created a blank lyric poem with irregular rhythm. This kind of poetry makes full use of the characteristics of spoken language, neither coveting flowery rhetoric nor pursuing unrestrained feelings, but selecting the essence from a large number of life materials to express the most essential characteristics of things. For example, in the short poem "Workers Cry for Bread" with only four lines, the author uses a method similar to logical "syllogism" to briefly and vividly show the situation in Germany on the eve of World War II.
Brecht's main poems are Family Instructions (1926), songji (1934), Poems of Svennborg (1939) and Poems of a Hundred Schools (1955). Brecht also wrote a variety of short stories and novels, such as The Three-cent Novel (1934), Julius Caesar's Career (1949) and The Injured Socrates (1949). Dramatic Gadgets (1948) is a summary of his theoretical thinking on narrative drama, and is known as "new poetics".