ABSTRACT
Stanza forms are determined by the rhythmic mode, the number of lines and feet per line, and the pattern of end or terminal rhymes. The most profitable way would be to compare the syntax, the rhythm, the stanzaic segmentation, the rhyme technique and the tone of poems composed in the same stanza, and to remember the implications of genre in evaluating stanzaic technique. The hexameter couplet, which dominated French and German drama in the seventeenth century, has never been popular in English. Tercets, like couplets, appear more frequently as parts of bigger units than as stanzas. The quatrain is the most common stanza form in European and American poetry. The Omar Khayyam quatrain or Rubaiyat stanza was adapted to English use by Edward FitzGerald in his translation from the Persian original. Five-line stanzas or cinquains are much less common than quatrains.
