EWC 4U1
Stanzaic Patterns and Punctuation
Stanzaic Patterns
Verse – one line
Cinquain – five lines
Couplet – two lines
Sestet – six lines
Tercet – three lines
Septive – seven lines
Quatrain – four lines
Octave – eight lines
Punctuating Poetry
End-stopped line – a line that ends with some sort of punctuation (e.g. period, comma,
question mark, etc.).
Enjambment – A line that continues into the next without any intervening end
punctuation.
Caesura – A break which occurs within the verse, usually marked by punctuation. It is
possible for the caesura to appear at the beginning of the line, and there may be more than
one caesura in a line. (e.g. “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know”).
The Ballad
There are only a few narrative forms in English poetry, and one of the most commonly
used is the ballad. The ballad owes its origin to the oral tradition of story telling which
existed prior to the spread of written language and literacy. The themes of most
traditional ballads are lurid in nature, though modern poets have felt free to use the form
to tell stories about a variety of themes.
Ballads are typically written in quatrains following the rhyme pattern ABXB
(where ‘X’ can rhyme with ‘A’ or not). Ballads are metrical poems, so stanzas 1 and 3
are written in iambic tetrametre and stanzas 2 and 4 are written in iambic trimetre. Within
each stanza the authors usually repeat certain lines (a refrain).
Not all ballads follow this pattern as strictly. For instance, “The Raven” is
balladesque in structure (e.g. rhyme pattern, refrain, etc), though, technically, it is not a
ballad at all. When you write your own ballad, you may vary the traditional structure,
though your stanza and rhyme patterns should be consistent.
The Ode
An ode, unlike a ballad, is not a narrative poem (i.e., it does not tell a story), but instead
reflects on a serious subject or an important occasion (e.g. death, love, friendship,
graduation, etc.).
Odes can be of varied line and stanza length, and may or may not rhyme. That
said, the same rule goes for writing odes as does for writing ballads – be consistent!
Application
1. Read the following poems in 20th Century Anthology and A New Anthology of Verse
paying attention to the authors’ use of enjambment, caesura, end-line punctuation, and
stanzaic pattern as you read. After you’ve read each poem (perhaps several times), I’d
like you to respond to the following three questions for each poem in your Writer’s
Notebook.
1. What was the poem about?
2. Did you recognize the author’s use of alliteration, assonance, punctuation
(e.g. enjambment, caesura), rhyme, and stanzaic pattern?
3. Did you like it? Why/why not?
20th Century Anthology (green text)
- “Ode to a Nightingale” p.521 (Keats)
- “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat” p.507 (Gray)
A New Anthology of Verse (blue text)
- “As I Walked Out One Evening” p.256 (Auden)
- “Ode on a Grecian Urn” p.68 (Keats)
2. Select one of the prompts below and write your own poem (a minimum of four
stanzas).
I.
II.
III.
Write a mock ode in the style of Thomas Gray’s ode. Select a less than serious
subject and then write about it as though it were deadly serious (this is a form
of writing known as burlesque or, more specifically, travesty).
Write an ode discussing the merit of the speaker’s claim in “Ode on a Grecian
Urn”, “truth is beauty, and beauty is truth / that is all ye know, and all ye need
to know.”
Write your own ballad beginning with the opening line, “As I walked out one
evening,” of the Auden poem you just read.