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Play with the stanza forms as you write. Experiment. Try longer and shorter stanzas. Try different rhyme schemes. Mix them up to see which stanza most benefits the draft-in-progress.

PRACTICE SESSION

1. Write a draft in iambic pentameter, in rhymed couplets. Use only slant rhymes. Begin the draft with a visual image and follow with an aural image. Include two similes.

2. Write a draft in iambic tetrameter, in quatrains, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef and so on. Select ten words at random from the dictionary; use at least five in the draft.

3. Write a draft in terza rims, with both true and slant rhymes. Include a ringing bell in the draft. End the draft with a rhymed couplet.

The Ballad

Stanza forms are the building blocks of poetic forms. The ballad is one of the oldest forms. It was originally sung, accompanied by music, to tell stories. It was a part of the oral tradition, before written literature was widely available. It's still primarily a narrative form today. (It's still a musical form today, too, especially in folk and popular music.) The ballad is composed of quatrain stanzas. The first and third lines are written in iambic tetrameter, the second and fourth lines in iambic trimeter. The second and fourth lines rhyme (xaxa xbxb and so on), which gives this form its songlike quality. Here's a traditional English ballad (its author is unknown, and in its numerous retellings, more than forty versions of this ballad have sprung up):

THE UNQUIET GRAVE

The wind doth blow today, my love,

And a few small drops of rain;

I never had but one true-love,

In cold grave she was lain.

I'll do as much for my true-love

As any young man may:

I'll sit and mourn all at her grave

For twelvemonth and a day

The twelvemonth and a day being up

The dead began to speak:

"Oh who sits weeping at my grave

And will not let me sleep?"

"'Tis I, my love, sits on your grave

And will not let you sleep;

For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips

And that is all I seek."

"You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips,

But my breath smells earthy strong;

If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips

Your time will not be long.

"'Tis down in yonder garden green,

Love, where we used to walk,

The finest flower that ere was seen

Is withered to a stalk.

"The stalk is withered dry, my love,

So will our hearts decay;

So make yourself content, my love,

Till God calls you away."

If you're familiar with the American folk songs about Casey Jones and Tom Dooley, you're already familiar with the ballad form and its ability to tell stories. Its meter and simple rhyme scheme lend easily to song, and the form is versatile: It may have any number of stanzas, however many it takes to tell the story. "The Unquiet Grave" is one of the shorter traditional ballads. Others run twenty, thirty or forty stanzas. The length depends only on the story the ballad tells.

The Sonnet

The sonnet is a more concise and regimented form. The term sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, "little song." That phrase perfectly describes the form, which is limited to fourteen lines, a "little" poem by most standards. The sonnet was developed in Italy in the thirteenth century. It spread through Europe and arrived in England in the sixteenth century. Through its travels and translations, the sonnet has developed several different forms, all of which, however, call for fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and a sophisticated rhyme scheme.

The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet, after Francesco Petrarch, who along with Dante perfected the form in Italian) is composed of two quatrains (an eight-line unit called the octave) and two tercets (a six-line unit called the sestet). These stanzas are distinguished by their rhyme scheme rather than by blank lines; the sonnet does not use stanzas, per se, but runs continuously for its fourteen lines. The octave is rhymed abbaabba, and it presents the poem's situation, a conflict or challenge. The sestet can be rhymed