Well, this is turning into a strange thread. Why it didn't go to "General" in the first place is a mystery, since it seems to concern our own practice, rather than any focus on "mastery".
Anyway, since it is here, I wanted to second Alicia's comments rejecting the notion of stanzas as units of sense. I sometimes like to write through the stanza breaks, especially if there is some degree of narrative energy building up. And since this thread already has many "non-mastery" type poems in it, I will use these examples from my translation:
Meanwhile the other gods, high on Olympus, met in assembly,
awaiting the speech of the father of all; gravely distressed,
recalling the hale and handsome Aegisthus, killed by Orestes,
son of Agamemnon, Zeus began, and spoke to them passionately:
"Shameless, the way these men blame the gods; and from us only
they say come their miseries. Yes, but their recklessness adds to their suffering,
compounding their pains far beyond that apportioned: look at Aegisthus,
greedily stealing the wife of Atrides, murdering the warlord
returning from victory, knowing full well that it would mean ruin.
We had even sent Hermes to tell him: 'don't commit murder;
don't take his wife. Revenge will descend from the son of Agamemnon
that day he matures and longs to go home' - so Hermes had warned him,
wishing him well on behalf of us all. But would he listen?
No, now he pays and suffers the consequence, reaping the vengeance."
Clear-eyed Athena now drove home the message: "Son of Cronus,
surely he goes to a death he well earned. Let such men suffer so.
But Father, please hear me, I grieve for Odysseus, still in his agony,
far from his family, lamenting his fate on his wave-torn island,
hidden among the vast ocean wilderness, home of a goddess,
daughter of Atlas, the deep-dwelling Titan who shoulders the sky.
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Mark Allinson
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