Quintains, Limericks, and Venus and Adonis Stanzas

AbstractAs we move on from couplets, terza rima, and quatrains, we cross a verse Rubicon, as we now have all the building blocks of the larger and more complex stanza forms. While fixed lyrical forms have far more complex kinds of iteration such as the sestina, the repeating stanza forms all build upon the simple building blocks we have now already examined. The fascinating development we will now see at work in the remaining, more complex forms, is how the addition of a new line or two in the rhyme scheme alters such patterns, creating utterly new patterns that incorporate symmetry and asymmetry simultaneously. One of the tricks to being able to use them well is figuring out how to adapt them for yourselves as modes of expression. Some writers may prefer the more symmetrical forms, others the more asymmetrical ones. Remember that different poets in different times and places have found them all useful.