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 …