{"id":888,"date":"2017-06-23T13:27:31","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T12:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/?page_id=888"},"modified":"2018-02-18T12:49:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-18T12:49:56","slug":"stanza","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/?page_id=888","title":{"rendered":"Stanza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poems often organise their lines into groups and set these groupings\u00a0out on the page as separate units. More often than not, these units will be one of two things: a verse paragraph<\/em> or a stanza<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The difference between a verse paragraph and a stanza can easily be spotted by the way they are\u00a0printed on the page. The poem on the left-hand side of the illustration below, for instance, consists of three stanzas and we know this because there is a whole line space \u2013 a complete stretch of blank page \u2013 between\u00a0each set of lines and the next. The poem on the right, by contrast, consists of two paragraphs and we know this because about half way down, one of the lines does not hug the same left-hand margin as the rest, but it starts at the same point that the line\u00a0above it ends.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Verse paragraphs and stanzas do not only look different on the page, they also serve different purposes and should accordingly be interpreted in different ways.<\/p>\n

A verse paragraph serves the same function as a paragraph does in prose: determined entirely by content, it marks the point at which the poem moves either from one topic to another topic\u00a0or from one aspect of a topic to another aspect of that topic.<\/p>\n

A stanza, on the other hand, is\u00a0first and foremost a\u00a0formal device. It may well be the case (especially in older poetry) that each stanza constitutes a complete unit of sense in itself and that the movement from one stanza to another accordingly also involves a movement from one topic (or one aspect of that topic) to another. This, though, is not necessarily what determines either the size of each stanza or the point at which one stanza breaks off and another begins.<\/p>\n

For this reason, we should treat the stanza in much the same way we have learnt to treat the line: as a\u00a0formal device that conveys meaning in and of itself in a manner that may variously affirm, reflect, deepen, question or even actively work against whatever it is the individual words, phrases and sentences it contains might be thought to say.<\/p>\n

Like the line, moreover, the stanza is distinctive to poetry (which is to say, you will never find stanzas in prose). As such, it is a crucial element in determining what poetry as poetry <\/em>can say, do and, therefore, mean. In order to gain a preliminary sense of\u00a0what stanzas do and thus of the\u00a0contribution\u00a0they make to a poem’s overall effect and meaning, we\u00a0will first familiarise ourselves with the history of the word stanza\u00a0<\/em>and then with the history of the stanza in poetry.<\/p>\n

The stanza as a standing place or room<\/h4>\n

The\u00a0stanza gets its name from the Italian word for a standing place<\/em> or room<\/em>. This is useful to know because it\u00a0offers a visually powerful and effective image for thinking about how individual stanzas work and how they contribute to the poem to which they belong.<\/p>\n

Imagine, that is, that\u00a0a poem is\u00a0a house and that each of its stanzas is one of its rooms. In a real house, the number of rooms, the size and spaciousness\u00a0of each room, the regularity (or otherwise) with which the rooms are structured and distributed throughout the building, and\u00a0the manner in which these rooms\u00a0connect with another, all\u00a0affect the\u00a0kind of life one can live there and\u00a0what it feels like to live that life.\u00a0By\u00a0regulating the pace and rhythm through which we move through the house, and by influencing the thoughts, feelings and\u00a0psychological states we pass through as we do so, the physical structure of the rooms accordingly contributes both individually and collectively to the structure of the life we experience as we carry out our\u00a0various tasks and interact with the other people, animals and objects\u00a0which also reside within those rooms and that house.<\/p>\n

Much the same\u00a0can be said\u00a0of a poem divided into stanzas. If that poem consists of several short stanzas, each of which\u00a0is self-contained\u00a0in meaning\u00a0and ends with a full stop, for instance, the experience of reading it could be likened to the experience of living in a home that consists of several small rooms, each with its own specific function and each with a door at either end that has to be opened and then closed as we move from one area and activity to the next.<\/p>\n

A poem that consists of longer stanzas, on the other hand, might feel rather like living in an open-plan residence, much of which does away with doors\u00a0and internal\u00a0walls and is comprised instead of shared areas of activity that flow into one another and interact without the hindrance of any externally imposed barriers.<\/p>\n

The manner in which the individual rooms of a poem contribute to the experience of moving through that poem, of encountering and interpreting its individual words and phrases, and thus of making sense of the whole will inevitably vary from poem to poem. Nonetheless, to think of its stanzas as rooms in a house will almost always prove a useful point of departure.<\/p>\n

The stanza as a dance floor<\/h4>\n

Many historians of poetry have claimed that stanzas became an integral part of poetry at an early stage of\u00a0its history because of\u00a0poetry\u2019s close association with music. Regardless of whether the words were written to fit the music or the music was composed to\u00a0accompany the words, both needed to conform to the same pattern (or patterns). As with modern-day pop songs and their division into verses, choruses and sometimes one or more movements besides, each group of words had to fit one or other of the piece\u2019s fixed set of repeating tunes. The stanza at this early stage of its history, then, emerged as a useful way of marking in print which group of words corresponded with which tune.<\/p>\n

There are a number of general qualities stanzas acquire from this association with music which might be worth bearing in mind when evaluating the particular contribution they make to a given poem<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. they can often enhance the musical and song-like quality of a poem (in contradistinction to verse paragraphs, for instance, which tend to emphasise the discursive, conversational or argumentative quality of a poem)<\/li>\n
  2. they contribute an extra layer of patterning to the poem (which can then be assessed for such things as its regularity, variety and so on)<\/li>\n
  3. they help instil a sense of movement and even\u00a0sometimes dance in the poem (which is important for creating in the reader a sense that the poem is an activity in which one engages)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This last point is worth emphasising, because occasionally the characterisation of the stanza as a standing place or room has led readers misguidedly to think of the stanza as something static. Rather \u2013 and as I tried to emphasise in the analogy I drew earlier between moving through stanzas and moving through rooms \u2013 it is only a standing place in the sense that it provides the standing room\u00a0within which a\u00a0dance\u00a0or any other kind of movement might take place.<\/p>\n

    With these configurations of the stanza as a standing place, a room, a song and a dance in mind, we will now proceed to outline some strategies for making sense of their presence in\u00a0individual poems.<\/p>\n

    Next: Guidelines and exercises for analysing stanzas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Poems often organise their lines into groups and set these groupings\u00a0out on the page as separate units. More often than not, these units will be one of two things: a verse paragraph or a stanza. The difference between a verse paragraph and a stanza can easily be spotted by the way they are\u00a0printed on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":730,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-888","page","type-page","status-publish","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/888\/revisions\/1781"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/licor.hivolda.no\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}