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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Today we'll be focusing on verses and stanzas, which are parts of poems. [Coop discussing parts of poems]

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So…if you’ve ever got a poem on your operating table, you’ll know what it is you’re looking at

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Let’s go ahead and take a look at an actual poem to show you what we mean.

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Here’s the first section of Mary's Lamb.

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“Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, [Mary's lamb poem scribbled on paper]

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And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go;

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He followed her to school one day - That was against the rule,

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It made the children laugh and play, To see a lamb at school.”

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First of all, where was the teacher while all this was going on? Seems like grounds

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for disciplinary action if you ask us…

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Anyway, let's start with the term “verse”. [Dino talking about verse]

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A verse is just a single line of a poem. So if we take a look at our sample from Mary's

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Lamb, any time there's a line break – that is, the words stop on one line and start on

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a new line – we identify a separate verse.

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If it were all on ONE line, that would be a uni-verse…which would just be plain confusing. [A poem in the universe]

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But…as written…if someone were to ask you to read one verse from this poem, you

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could say, “Mary had a little lamb,” and be correct. Or you could go with “The lamb [Woman reading a poem]

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was sure to go.” Pick your poison.

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Next is a stanza, which isn't quite as simple. See, a stanza is a group of four or more verses

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that all fit together with the same rhyming scheme.

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So let's take a gander at our poem again, but this time we’ll look for rhymes. [Girl looking through binoculars]

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The first four lines end with “lamb, snow, went, go.” Lamb and went don't rhyme, but

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snow and go do.

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In the next section, we have “day, rule, play, school.” Day and play rhyme, and so

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do rule and school.

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We can see that these two different sections are grouped together in order to rhyme, so

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it's safe to say that the first four verses here are one stanza… [First stanza of poem highlighted]

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…and the next four lines here are a stanza…

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…because they are groups of at least four lines that rhyme with each other.

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Great. So a verse is just another word for a line of poetry, and a stanza is a group

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of verses that rhyme. [Dino summarizing verse and stanzas]

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Of course, all of this goes out the window if we're talking about “Free Verse poetry”. [Man jumps out of a window]

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Free Verse is another type of poem, like limerick, or haiku.

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But unlike a limerick, which has set rules, free verse is a style that is basically a

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total free-for-all, where the writer can make and break any rule in the book.

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It can rhyme, but it doesn’t have to, and usually doesn’t. It can be short, or long, [Different types of poems on a PC screen]

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or anywhere in between. It can make lots of sense and tell a story, or it can be a series

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of totally random words.

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Let’s be honest. It is utter chaos. [A cow mooing in a field]

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Remember how Mary's Lamb had a rhyming structure and told a story about Mary and her little

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lamb?

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Well now take a look at this poem, which is a free verse poem, called Fog, by Carl Sandburg.

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“The fog comes on little cat feet.

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It sits looking over harbor and city

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on silent haunches and then moves on.”

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No rhyming there! No real structure. Hard to find any stanzas. And fog on little cat [Cat walks across a poem]

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feet sure sounds strange. That right there is definitely a free verse poem.

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What makes free verse poetry so much fun is that, because there are no rules, a writer [Girl taking selfie outside the White House]

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can do anything they want.

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Looking to spice up a shopping list? How about:

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“Orange juice, milk and a dozen eggs

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drop, drop, drop one by one into the cart [A free verse poem of a shopping list]

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whoops shouldn’t have put the eggs in first.”

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Not bad, right? Move over, Carl Sandburg. [Person shoves book off a table]

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