Replying on Stanza works the way it does on paper. Some responses are letters — written at the foot of the poem, addressed to the whole piece. Others are margin notes — small thoughts left beside a single line, exactly where that line moved you. This article covers both, along with the settling window: the short pause after publishing that lets a poem become final before notes and critiques attach to it.
Letters: the Correspondence
Replies to a poem are letters, and together they form the poem’s Correspondence. Each writer’s letters carry their own ink colour, drawn from their profile theme, so an exchange between two voices reads like one.
To respond to someone’s letter, choose write back. Write-backs thread beneath the letter they answer, joined by a dotted stitch, so every exchange stays together.
When the poet joins their own Correspondence, their letters carry a small ✒ Poet badge — you always know when the author has written back.
You can Cheer or Tomato a letter just as you would a poem. Encores are reserved for the poems themselves.
Leaving a margin note
Some thoughts belong to one line, not the whole poem. A margin note lets you leave them there.
- On the web: move your cursor over a line and a faint ✎ appears in the margin. Click it and a composer opens with the line quoted above it, so you are never writing into the void.
- On your phone: tap the line you want to annotate. The note sheet rises with the quoted line and a place for your words.
Your note lives on that line. On wide screens it sits in the margin beside the poem, joined to its line by a dotted thread. On phones, an annotated line carries a soft underline and a small dot showing how many notes it holds — the poem’s typography is never disturbed.
A margin note is a reply in every way that matters: the poet is notified, the poet and other readers can write back to it, and the same community guidelines apply. Notes can be Cheered (and Tomatoed) like any letter.
When a line gathers notes
A striking line tends to collect more than one note. Tap or click an annotated line and a drawer opens listing every note on that line — read them, write back, or add your own alongside.
Prefer to read the poem unadorned? Whenever a poem has notes, a show/hide toggle appears. Hide the margin and Stanza remembers your choice on that device. A poem with no notes never shows margin chrome at all.
The settling window
When you publish a poem, it gets a short settling period (currently 30 minutes). During that window you can still adjust the title and the text — a chance to catch the typo you only ever see after pressing publish.
When the window closes, the poem settles: the title and body lock, and margin notes and critiques open. The two are connected on purpose — a note is anchored to the exact words of a line, and a critique judges a finished piece. Both deserve text that will not shift beneath them.
Letters are different: readers can write to your Correspondence from the moment you publish.
After a poem settles, you can still change its settings at any time — content warnings, whether comments are open, the Margin notes toggle, and its appearance. And deleting is always available: if a settled poem needs rework, delete and repost is the escape hatch.
If a line is removed
Anchors only ever attach to settled text, so a note cannot lose its line through ordinary editing. But if a line is removed — for example by moderation — the notes on it are not lost. Each note keeps its quote of the line as it stood and moves into the Correspondence, shown with that quote in italics above it. Your words survive even when the line does not.
The poet’s Margin notes toggle
Every poem accepts margin notes by default. If you would rather keep the margin of a particular piece closed, turn off Margin notes in the Settings section when composing or editing that poem.
Turning the margin off later never deletes anything readers have written. Existing notes simply fall back into the Correspondence, each with its preserved quote. Turn the margin back on and they return to their lines.