Why use stanzas

Some poets use stanzas in poetry to group ideas or images that belong together. Others indicate a change in tone, direction, or idea by creating a new stanza.

Some poets play with the suggestion of silence that a stanza break implies, and still others use stanzas and the white spaces that divide them to create visual interest. Many cultures have traditional poetic forms that impose a visual, imagistic, or audio "architecture" on a particular type of poem and force stanza breaks at predictable points. One example is the sonnet. Petrarchian, or Italian, sonnets are organized into two stanzas for a total of 14 lines; the first stanza is composed of eight lines, followed by a six-line stanza.

English, or Shakespearean, sonnets are also 14 lines long but are organized in three quatrains, or four-line stanzas, followed by a couplet, or a two-line stanza. So, in a line poem, the first four lines might be a stanza. You can identify a stanza by the number of lines it has and its rhyme scheme or pattern, such as A-B-A-B.

There are many different types of stanzas. Stanzas are categorized by the number of lines included in them. You will often see an empty line after a stanza in a poem. Take a look at these sonnet examples to see which types of stanzas jump out at you. A tercet is a stanza with three lines that may or may not rhyme. Tercets are also known as triplets. For example:. A quatrain is a stanza with four lines that may or may not rhyme. This famous poem by Dylan Thomas is made up of five tercets ending with a quatrain.

This poem by Emily Dickinson features two sestets, or two stanzas with six lines each. If you have ever sung along to your favorite song, you most likely sang some stanzas.

Songs are simply poetry set to music. With this in mind, you should be able to identify each stanza and its individual length.

Typically, songs consist of at least two verses, a bridge which may or may not repeated , and a chorus that definitely repeats. Just like poems, songs can be ballads. Double Entendre. Dramatic irony. Extended Metaphor. Fairy Tale. Figures of Speech. Literary Device. Pathetic Fallacy.

Plot Twist. Point of View. Red Herring. Rhetorical Device.