It's true that this is something that can be well and poorly done--it isn't always sophisticated and exciting, as Katy points out. And yes, there is a lot of free verse out there that seems to adopt tercets or quatrains quite randomly--they look nice, I guess.
And I'd agree that to work it does have to work against the expectation of stanza as a discrete room--a sudden corridor opening up, perhaps. It is especially true of rimed stanzas, I think, where the aural closure works against the opening of syntax. What I love about the Larkin is how the sentence closes (or almost closes with that semi-colon) and the "they" starts a new sentence in the very last syllable of the line.
Also a wonderful enjambment in the Wilbur with that "out".
It strikes me that this is really a syntax issue in some ways. Syntax certainly strikes me as one of those engines that really move a poem, precisely because it can cross borders of lines and stanzas.
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