Lesson 3-4 Poetic Form and Structure

Poems are identified as various kinds by their form and structure.  Some poems follow strict rhythms and rhyme schemes; others do not even use punctuation.  Some poems creatively use physical space; others are performed dramatically.  

The physical space occupied by a poem on a page (how it looks when it is written) communicates a message. Sometimes, knowing the forms is helpful: for example, knowing the ballad or narrative structure (you learned this in Lesson 2) can help you understand the meaning of a poem.

Each regular grouping of lines is called a stanza.  A stanza will not only have rhythm but often it conveys a certain unity of thought. This is similar to the structure of paragraphs:  each stanza should contain only one main idea.

	Those Winter Sundays                           Robert Hayden (1913-1980)
Stanza 1	Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
Stanza 2	I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Stanza 3	Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

The division of text into stanzas (a group of lines) or the order of stanzas may suggest the passage of time (eg. stanza 2) or a change of perspective (eg. stanza 3).

A consistent number and length of lines in each stanza may suggest an ordered or dull existence whereas a different number of lines (four lines instead of five) might point to something important or worth emphasizing.