Poetry by the Numbers: (2) 3 and 4-Line Stanzas

             We call them “innings,” now, but originally time divisions in baseball were called “stanzas,” as we call the divisions in poems.  The word derives from a 16^th Italian word meaning ‘standing place.’  Sometimes students call stanzas “paragraphs,” and metaphorically speaking, stanza breaks in poetry function like paragraph breaks in prose—drop and add white space.  Shift in focus.

            Numbers are meaningful as we saw in Poetry by the Numbers: (1) What Numbers Can Mean, so, too, are the sizes and patterns of stanzas in poems.  When I was writing a poem about gender politics in baseball (note the epigraph below), I divided the lines into four-line stanzas to reflect the geometry of the baseball diamond.  I might have opted for nine stanzas to reflect the nine innings of a standard game—but the theme here is that there’s something missing, an imbalance, in the way women and men are recognized as poets.  So it’s six innings, to return the favor, for this poem:

                       Breaking Ball

           Some writers like to use the word stanza for inning,

               but I don’t.  Baseball is a sport, not poetry.

                              —David H. Martinez, The Book of Baseball Literacy

But David, poetry is a sport, not baseball—

and it’s for the boys. Who’s always up

but the Collinses and Dickeys?

When it’s Olds, it’s that she has a bat,

so to speak, in every poem.

No, the Babe in the bullpen is the ballgirl.

Stevie, Anne, Sylvia had to strike

themselves out for a scoring position

in the major leagues of all-time.

Emily had to make an appeal play

of her shut out. Come on, guys,

of course poetry is a sport. Why else

do I wind up winding up pompons in the stands?

I get The Lip for my line drives.

My hot doggerels are checked in a hawking tray.

At best, like Pam, I’m an ump in the Triple As,

out of the box, always behind the plate. Oh 

change-up Sadaharu Oh for Oh Susanna

when poetry is not just a sport but is

baseball—the growing of green turf

around our altar of dust—

the hush, The Big Hurt,

the crack, the song—

the ball we watch like the Sun—

            One of the oldest poetic forms is the ballad—four-line stanzas with regular rhyme schemes.  The name “ballad” derives from the same root as “ballet,” and it was originally a “dance song,” sung while dancing. That the ballad has four lines and a regular tempo is appropriate to its dancing origins—balanced, rhythmic, easily agreed-upon steps for the couples dancing.  Imagine dancing in a couple to a ballad—it becomes a body chant, mesmerizing, and conducive to intimacy. Here are the first three stanzas of one of my favorites, a traditional English folksong:

                           Greensleeves

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold

Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

These four-line stanzas, called “quatrains,” offer us the comfort of the number 4—completion, balance, predictability—especially when offering a ‘standing place’ for romantic love—which is fraught and destabilizing by its nature.

Consider, now, the effect if we divide “Greensleeves” into tercets, 3-line stanzas, instead:

Greensleeves

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold

Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

            If the number 4 is universally the number of balance and completeness, then threes are essentially unstable, incomplete—a sense that something is missing, a sense of longing and vigilance—as if waiting for the lover’s attention, for the lover to show some sign of recognition.

            The hesitation at the first stanza break of the tercet version, on the word “long,” introduces a sense of weariness, yearning, and loss—even whininess that could be off-putting to or guilting of the lover.  Whereas the quatrain version, ending in “Delighting in your company,” with a period at the end of the quatrain, is more assertive and flattering.  We have a resting place, a secure standing from which to launch into the next stanza.  We have the lover’s attention.

            Consider, Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle, a form built predominantly on tercets:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

            The tercets, again, offer an experience of instability, waiting for the fourth line and the rhyme to complement/complete the second line.  Notice, too, that the last stanza, a quatrain, does offer us the delayed stability, but, especially given a theme of the poem, we get a sense of it’s-too-late finality—after five stanzas of instable tercets, the final stanza has the sense of giving up.

            It is no surprise that the villanelle form is almost universally about loss—except for instances in which the poet is parodying the form, itself. 

            Relineate my poem into tercets.  Compare the two versions. What effects do you get?  Commit to writing two poems: one in quatrains, one in tercets. Compare the results and the experience.  What happens when you restanza them into each other’s form?

                        In our next post, we will consider the effect of five-line stanzas. 

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://athletics.millikin.edu/news/2018/12/7/workman-family-baseball-field-construction-update.aspx

Text:

Rich, Susanna. “Breaking Ball.”  Spitball 62 Spring (2006): 7.Works Cited:

Because I Can Teach Link:

Poetry by the Numbers: (1) What Numbers Can Mean