Structure

In a poem, a horizontal line of text is called a line.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

When you put several lines together, you get a stanza.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

A poem consists of one or more lines, which could be divided into stanzas, but it's not required. Take a look at the following poem, twenty lines in four stanzas.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1916)

Stanzas

Lines can be organized into stanzas. Stanzas are separated from each other by extra space. Because stanzas are used so frequently, there are terms for describing how many lines they contain.

couplet – a 2-line stanza
tercet – a 3-line stanza
quatrain – a 4-line stanza
quintet – a 5-line stanza
sestet – a 6-line stanza
septet – a 7-line stanza
octet – a 8-line stanza

Many poets use stanzas according to the above definitions, but it's not a strict requirement. You can, for example, put two couplets together and make a 4-line stanza. Because poetry is widespread and has evolved over the centuries, there are few absolute rules about structure.

The following poem, also by Robert Frost, is composed of four quatrains.

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it — it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less —
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars — on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost (1933)

Enjambment

One might remark that lines look like sentences and stanzas look like paragraphs. That's true from a distance, but when we get into details, we often find clear differences. One big difference is that a line doesn't need to form a complete thought. The following poems are examples of enjambment, which is when a sentence or idea continues from one line into the next.

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon

In the above poem, consider the location of the word "we". Instead of starting lines with it, the author ends them. This creates a distinct rhythm, if you read the poem aloud. Finally, every line ends with "we" except for the last one, which adds weight to it.

The Sky Is Blue

Put things in their place,
My mother shouts. I am standing at
The window, my plastic soldier
at my feet. The sky is blue
and empty. In it floats
the roof of the house across the street.
What place, I ask her.

In the above poem, consider the fourth and fifth lines. "The sky is blue" and "In it floats" both could be pleasant and dreamy, in contrast with the words that follow.

A line can be end-stopped, just like this one,
Or it can show enjambement, just like this
One, where the sense straddles two lines: you feel
As if from shore you’d stepped into a boat.

References

Brooks, G. (1960). We Real Cool. Poets.org.
Frost, R. (1933). Desert Places. Poetry.com.
Frost, R. (1916). The Road Not Taken. Wikisource.
Hollander, J. (1981). Rhyme's Reason. Yale University Press.
Ignatow, D. (1970). Poems, 1934-1969. Wesleyan University Press.
Kearney, D. (n.d.). Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop [MOOC]. Coursera. Retrieved 2024.
Solzman, E. (2012). What is poetry? The Open University. Retrieved 2024.

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