Whilst I am well aware of the many of the various structures within poetry, I note that many of us bandy the word Stanza when making comment.

I would like to know their opinion of what they believe a stanza is.and how its constructed and how it differs from that of a Verse or Sonnet?

'One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines. ...' Online Dictionary.

Some other opinions say 'four or more lines'. I've always regarded it as the sort of bite sized chunks that poems sometimes come in. It's only usually the rambling 'free verse' style that avoid stanzas and even they often have bite sized bits but fall down on the 'meter and rhyme' side.

I think 'verse' and 'stanza' can often be completely synonymous...perhaps always?

As for sonnets...well, I would regard

'Shall I compare thee to a summers day
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer's lease has all too short a date.'

as a possible stanza, but, as sonnets are usually written down as 'all of a piece' then others might disagree as there is no break in the text There is, however a natural pause at the end, if only for breath. : )

JMHO

Jx

I also think the two words have become, for all critical purposes, synonymous. They didn't use to be, for verse simply meant rhymed, metrical lines, whether marshalled into stanzas or not.

And, as John says, most of us speak today of stanzas/verses as 'parts' regardless of size. I think 'verse' is more casual, and probably the better word. One line can be a verse. Me? I actually don't use either word much unless the 'parts' are clearly balanced, usually by the number of lines. But I still have to refer to unbalanced parts, which I call verses too. I use the terms alternately for any formal collection of rhymed and metered lines.

The usage may be basically English versus American too.

A sonnet is a 14 line complete poem, rhymed in one of a number of ways, usually iambic pentameter, with specific rules to follow. If you want to be formalist about it. It can be in stanzas, if you want it to be.

A stanza is any combination of lines within a poem, usually in a regular form (quatrains, quintains etc etc...)

Verse either refers to the use of formal devices in poetry (such as rhyme, stress-sylabics, sylabics etc) or to way of dividing lines into verse-paragraphs.

A good book on writing poetry, such as Peter Sansom's book "Writing Poetry", or "Teach Yourself Writing Poetry" by Mathew Sweeney & John Hartley Williams, can offer more specific information.

A sonnet is not divided into stanzas. There are two main types of sonnet: the Petrarchan and the English sonnet. The former is divided into two sections by a 'volta'. The first section is eight lines long and is known as the octave (rhymed abbaabba, the second section is the 'sestet' (rhymed either cdecde or cdcdcd). In the case of the latter the 'volta' comes before the final rhyming couplet. The English sonnet is composed of three quatrains, which must not be called stanzas under any circumstances, and the rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg.

Another form where one must not call the line groups a stanza is the ode, where the line groups are called strophes. Odes are exceptionally complicated affairs, so I suggest that anyone wishing to discuss one does their homework first, or they will expose themselves to comment.

Never use the term verse to refer to a group of lines, as this term refers to one line of a poem.

A stanza is any group of lines in a poem divided by a double space.