So it is Wikipediaed: couplet, tercet, quatrain, quintain, sextain, septet, octave. Throws me off a bit…I would have guessed quintet, sextet, and octet instead of quintain, sextain and octave. Also, I want names for one and nine-line stanzas.

I have to learn the names of everything, now, to teach. This is a pain. It’s not that I don’t like stanzas, or meter, I just find that calling them by their proper names removes both my enthusiasm for them and my ability to execute them. I love lines that have eight syllables and four beats, but use the word “tetrameter,” and my interest in them shrivels up.

I do like the names of form structures (sonnet, sestina, etc.) for some reason. But I don’t like theme categories (lyric, narrative).

Anyways, this is beside the point. It is not about what I do or don’t like, any more, it’s about being a teacher of poetry stuff who knows what they’re talking about. Terms, terms, terms. It is only within the last two years that I have memorized the difference between simile and metaphor – and it’s about as shaky as my ability to go back and forth between stage left/stage right and house left/house right.