“Regardless of the motives of the poem, the stanzaic formation should usually be aimed at assisting the reader in “getting what they need” from the material.” – dimitrireyespoet.com
Stanzas dictate how your poem looks on the page
and they’re usually broken down numerically.
If you have a 1 lined stanza, that’s a monastic.
How I wish my silk shirt was a guayabera
If you have a 2 lined stanza, it’s a couplet.
How I wish my silk shirt was a guayabera
short sleeved and woven loose.
A 3 lined stanza is a tercet.
How I wish my silk shirt was
a guayabera short sleeved and woven
loose so the air could breathe through.
A 4 lined stanza is a quatrain.
How I wish my silk shirt was a guayabera
short sleeved and woven loose so the air
could breathe through. How a guayabera
has the power to make people wonder.
A 5 lined stanza is a quintet.
How I wish my silk shirt was a guayabera
short sleeved and woven loose so the air
could breathe through. How a guayabera
has the power to make people wonder
about limbs under flowy sleeves.
And a 6 lined stanza is a sestet.
How I wish my silk shirt was a guayabera short sleeved
and woven loose so the air could breathe through. How
a guayabera has the power to make people wonder about
limbs underneath flowy sleeves, forearms that rests on
the waist of lover, that embraces family, carries boxes,
the implications of hard working biceps smuggled beneath.
An 8 lined stanza is also common. That’s called an octave.
How I wish my silk shirt was a
guayabera short sleeved and woven
loose so the air could breathe through.
How a guayabera has the power to make
people wonder about limbs underneath
flowy sleeves, forearms that rest on the waist
of a lover, that embraces family, carries boxes,
the implications of hard working biceps.
Then there are other stanzaic forms:
Such as a block poem that can be perfect or imperfect. In the following example, the perfect block poem was made using the “justified alignment” tool that can be found on any word processor, while the imperfect block has the standard “left alignment.”
Or the thinner strip stanza. Though this is not technically a stanzaic formation, it’s a style that many poets use. This is an example by Eileen Miles, a poet who is arguably one of the best at the strip stanza.
In closing, there are countless decisions to make when writing a poem, and each line leads to another choice. Regardless of the motives of the poem, the stanzaic formation should usually be aimed at assisting the reader in “getting what they need” from the material.
Note that if a poem you are writing feels haphazard, staccato, or has less of a flow than you’d expect a poem to have, using stanzas will give you some structure. Particularly, with an even number like the couplet, quatrain, sestet, it allows linearity within the complexities of a poem as our subconscious will concentrate on the order.
This can also be applied to a poem that feels tight & succinct. You can revitalize a poem that feels very “clean” by using a stanza with an odd number of lines. For instance, the monastic would make a poem very punchy, as the meaning of every line would rest heavier since generally, an entire thought is created and completed within one line.
Experiment with them all and see what works.
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