5.6 Other stanza lengths

Other stanza lengths include the sestet, and the octave.

You’ve looked at how poems utilise line-breaks and stanzas to evoke a landscape, develop ideas and to present different elements, the juxtaposition of which suggests an argument. You’ve looked at poems which are about themselves – about line-breaks or poetry itself – and found that they are also about something else. Poetry doesn’t always move in a linear fashion, following a single idea or event. It can jump around, moving laterally, thus making unexpected connections and doing several things at once. Poets are the ultimate multi-taskers.

Now check on how the building works are going:

The house that Jack or Jill might build

We know that poems

are made of lines

and lines need line-

breaks,

which we’ve already discussed.

These lines can, in turn, then be grouped together or divided in creative

ways

into equal

or unequal sections

- poetic paragraphs called stanzas or verses …

These lines

may contain rhymes …