Stanza Breaks

Regardless of whether a poem describes, tells a story, contrasts, puzzles, or poses questions, it can be made more inviting by stanza breaks. After all, a solid block of print, like a dense thicket, looks hard to squeeze through. Where prose would start a new paragraph to signal a major shift in person, place, time, or event, a poem can begin a new stanza. With white spaces to rest in, the poem appears airier and easier to travel through, one stanza at a time.

Stanza breaks are also useful for adding emphasis. Blocks of print of similar appearance imply ideas of equal weight. Conversely, any idea set apart draws more attention to itself. For example, “Glimpsing the Dark” could be laid out two different ways. The first, using three separate stanzas, visually suggests that the ideas in each (the wind, shivering, and a realization) are of like importance:
                
          A wild wind howls
          cracks through my black window.
          Your half of the bed
          waits white and cold.
 
          I shiver, think of you
          deep some December night
          married to the ground.
 
          Lightning: how alone
          one from two can feel
          and, one night, will.

However, reducing the stanza breaks to only one, before the final line, not only looks but feels different. Against the preceding mass of print, the single line stands out, as if the speaker is stunned by the sudden realization that death is inevitable:      

          A wild wind howls
          cracks through my black window.
          Your half of the bed
          waits white and cold.
          I shiver, think of you
          deep some December night
          married to the ground.
          Lightning: how alone
          one from two can feel
         
          and, one night, will.