Explore the Craft of Writing American Verse
Mistress Bradstreet Stanza is a stanzaic verse attributed to American poet John Berryman (1914-1972) patterned after the frame of his 57 stanza poem Homage to Mistress Bradstreet which he said was developed after a life time of studying Yeats.
The defining features of the Mistress Bradstreet Stanza are:
stanzaic, written in any number of octaves.
accentual verse, composed with 5-5-3-4-5-5-3-6 stresses per line.
rhymed, rhyme scheme abcbddba, the a and d rhymes are a constant although occasionally the rhyme changes to abcbd