Find out how many VERSES a POEM has

In the literature the distinction is often made between prose writing and verse writing. The second is the primary structure that allows you to give a meter, style and tone to the poems. The verse constitutes the basic unit of poetry. But do poems have a specific number of verses? Under what rules is established the number of verses that can be written or not? To respond to these types of concerns, in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we will study how many verses does a poem have.

Before answering our question about how many verses a poem has, it is worth giving a general definition. According to the RAE, the verse is understood as "word or set of words subject to measure and cadence, or only to cadence." The verses are in charge of establishing the metric (the number of syllables in a poem or verse), a rhythm and a rhyme in our composition.

Similarly, a set of verses allows you to have a stanza, which is defined as the paragraphs or sets of verses that comprise a poem.

Verse example

For the avoidance of doubt, let's see, for example, these two stanzas each composed of four lines of the poem

The enemy by Charles Baudelare:

My youth was but a dark storm,

Crossed here and there by bright suns;

Thunder and rain have made such a mess

That there are very few red berries left in my garden.

Behold, I have reached the autumn of ideas,

And that it is necessary to use the shovel and rakes

To accommodate the flooded lands again,

Where the water burrows holes as big as graves.

Types of verses

It is worth making a clarification. In poems, the verses are usually divided according to their rhyme and number of syllables. In the first case we find two types of verses:

• The consonants: it is when two verses coincide in ending in the same syllable. Both the vowels and consonants rhyme in that last word of the verse.
• The assonance: it occurs when only the vowel of the last word of the verses rhymes.

In the second case there are also two types of verses:

• Those of major art: It has nine or more syllables in the verse.
• Those of minor art: It has between two and eight syllables.

In itself, and although it seems strange, poetry does not delimit or establish a number of verses determined in the poems. Can be written from 2 or more verses, with the limit that the author wants to establish.

However, there is one exception: the types of stanzas. In addition to the explanation of the types of stanza we will elaborate on the sonnet, since it specifies a number of verses and is common in the poetry of the Castilian language.

The types of stanzas

Although we could not say that the stanzas determine how many verses a poem has, the number of verses in a poem does determine the type of stanzas. Thus, they are divided from the stanzas that have two verses to those that have fourteen:

1. Semi-detached: They are the stanzas that only consist of two verses of major or minor art and with any type of rhyme.
2. Third: It is composed of three verses of minor art with consonant rhyme.
3. Quartet: stanzas of four verses that are subdivided into round, serventesio, quatrain and cuaderna via.
4. Quintet: They have five verses of major art and consonant rhyme, in turn limerick and lyre are other forms of five-line stanzas with other characteristics.
5. Broken foot: It is a stanza that has six verses of minor art and consonant rhyme.
6. Royal Octave: It is composed of eight verses in major art and consonant rhyme. In its counterpart the leaflet, it has eight verses of minor art and consonant rhyme.
7. Tenth: they are stanzas that are made up of ten verses in minor art with consonant rhyme.
8. Sonnet: it comprises fourteen verses of major art.

The sonnet

In the way in which the verses are organized in a stanza, the sonnet is one of the most widely used and known. With a varied theme that goes from love to desire and joy, they are a way of writing poetry in the that four stanzas are used: two stanzas of four lines and two stanzas of three lines, all in major art.

In order to understand the sonnet structure and see how it limits the number of verses to fourteen, let's see this example from Lope de Vega:

A sonnet tells me to do Violante,

that in my life I have been in such a predicament;

fourteen verses say it is a sonnet:

mocking mocking go the three in front.

I thought it would not find a consonant

and I'm in the middle of another quartet;

but if I see myself in the first triplet

there is nothing in quartets that scares me.

For the first triplet I am entering

and it seems that I entered on the right foot,

Well, end with this verse I am giving.

I'm already in the second

and I still suspect that I am finishing the thirteen verses;

count if there are fourteen, and it is done.