Tell-Tell's 5 days to better poetry - DAY 3

Heyy! Are you ready for day 3?

DAY 3 ~~~ WHERE DOES YOUR STANZA BREAK?

    I'll assume you already know what a stanza is, either because you have some basic knowledge of poetry or because you have already signed up for 5 days of poetry, so I'll move on to my findings...

My findings:

    On day 1, I told you my lines usually expand upon or refer back to something established by a previous line. Today, as I'm working with stanzas, I found out that mine do follow a pattern: I usually write stanzas of 4 lines when I start writing a poem, and from then, I try to establish a certain number of lines for all stanzas in my poem (for example, one of my poems consists on 3 stanzas of 7 lines each), though I do this consciously.

    I also try to develop a concept or describe a setting or a thing in each stanza, so that the breaks make sense. For that reason, each stanza ends when a sentences ends, whether I put a full stop or not. Furthermore, in some poems, especially those which I have already honed enough, stanzas will have a rhyme scheme, which you might have already noticed on day 1.

Writing a new poem:

    Yay! So far, all exercises included working on previous poems, but today, we're going to create a new one and I am going to do it with YOU! This poem will have three versions according to the exercise suggested by Tell-Tell. Please note this won't be the best poem of mine -- I just wrote a second draft to use in this exercise, no further development.

(Bonus: first draft of the poem. This is an old idea I wrote down last month, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to develop it:)

A broken heart

Uncertain future

What it once was

Was it meant to be?

The songs I did sing

And the weight the words become

Was it true?

Did I feel it all along?

Here's the second draft I wrote in one sitting, the no-stanza-breaks version:

I pulled a dagger through my heart

And shattered the cleaned past

Ripping the veil of a promise

For cheap thrills, flickering light

That fades faster than the melodies that once

Came out of my mouth but

Never came into my mind

Thus I wonder -- what's the source,

How does the Sun always shine

Even when I'm blinded by the flickering lights?

Now, I'll break the poem into couplets:

I pulled a dagger through my heart

And shattered the cleaned past

Ripping the veil of a promise

For cheap thrills, flickering light

That fades faster than the melodies that once

Came out of my mouth but

Never came into my mind

Thus I wonder -- what's the source,

How does the Sun always shine

Even when I'm blinded by the flickering lights?

...And now, into quatrains:

I pulled a dagger through my heart

And shattered the cleaned past

Ripping the veil of a promise

For cheap thrills, flickering light

That fades faster than the melodies that once

Came out of my mouth but

Never came into my mind

Thus I wonder -- what's the source,

How does the Sun always shine

Even when I'm blinded by the flickering lights?

Whoops, it was too short to complete three quatrains.

CONCLUSION AND RESULTS

    That was the exercise. See how the poem feels different? I wrote the second draft with no breaks, so I didn't pay attention to rhyme scheme or giving a proper ending to each couplet or quatrain, and that's why the next two versions felt kinda weird, at least for me. The poem did change a lot as a result, with no version being better than the other for me -- they all deserve development, I'd say.

    However, it was an interesting exercise. What do you think? See you tomorrow!

PS: did you notice the two references to pop songs in the poem?😂