Stanza is a structure of literary poetic composition that is formed by a verse set that have relationships of metrics and meanings to each other.
It is the structure that represents a set of verses that correspond to a line of poetic text.
For studies of modern poetry, stanzas are defined as each section that constitutes a poem. The sections are composed by the gathering of verses, rhymed or not, that have a unity of sense and rhythm. That is, the verse corresponds to a line of the poem, which may or may not be rhymed.
The beginning and end of a stanza within a poem is delimited with blank spaces, as this structure emphasizes the rhythmic pause that must be considered when reading the text.
We can see a good example of stanza, in the structure of the poem "Autopsychography", by Fernando Pessoa:
The poet is a pretender.
pretend so completely
Who even pretends it's pain
The pain that he really feels.
And those who read what he writes,
In pain they feel good,
Not the two he had,
But only the one they don't have.
And so on the wheel rails
It turns, to entertain the reason,
that rope train
That's called heart.
See more about the Verse.
Types of stanza
According to the measure of the verse, the stanza can be presented in three ways:
- Simple, characterized by the verses that make up a poem that have the same measure;
- Composed, which characterizes the formation of verses grouped of different measures;
- Free, when the grouping of verses occurs without any metrical rigor.
stanza classification
According to the number of verses grouped in a poem, the stanza can also receive the following names:
| Number of Verses | Stanza |
|---|---|
| 1 | monastic |
| 2 | Couplet or Pair |
| 3 | triplet or tristic |
| 4 | Quartet or Quad |
| 5 | Quintille, Quintet or Pentastic |
| 6 | Sextile, Sextet or Hexastic |
| 7 | Septilla, Heptet, Heptastic, Seventh or Septena |
| 8 | Octave or Octastic |
| 9 | ninth |
| 10 | tenth or decade |
See also the meaning of Poem and Poetry.