Readers have always written in the margins. A pencilled star beside a stanza, a note tucked against the line that undid you — it is how poems have been loved for as long as they have been printed. Today, Stanza brings that to the Land of Poets: replies become letters, and margin notes let you leave a thought on the very line that earned it.
Letters at the foot of the poem
Replies now read the way they always deserved to: as Correspondence. Each letter is signed in its writer’s own ink, drawn from their theme, and threaded exchanges are joined by a dotted stitch — like pages sewn together. When you answer someone, you write back. When the poet writes back, their letters carry a small ✒ Poet badge, so you always know the author is in the room. And yes — sending a letter seals it with wax.
Notes in the margin
Sometimes a whole letter is too much, and a single line deserves its own reply. Tap a line on your phone, or hover it on the web and click the faint ✎ in the gutter, and leave a note that lives on that line. On wide screens your note sits in the margin beside the poem, tied to its line by a dotted thread. On phones, an annotated line carries a soft underline and a small dot count — tap it to open the drawer and read every note that line has gathered, or add your own.
Margin notes are true replies: the poet is notified, anyone can write back, and a beloved line can hold a whole conversation without disturbing the poem’s typography by a single pixel.
A poem settles before the margin opens
With notes now anchored to individual lines, we had a decision to make: what happens when a poet edits the line a note points to? Our answer — we wanted notes to attach to a finished poem.
So publishing now comes with a short settling period (currently 30 minutes). While a poem settles, the poet can still fix the title and the text — the typo you only spot after pressing publish. When the window closes, the poem is settled: the text locks, and margin notes and critiques open. Notes attach to lines that will not shift beneath them, and critiques judge the piece the poet actually finished.
Letters are open from the moment of publish — the Correspondence never waits. And a settled poem’s settings (content warnings, comments, the margin itself, appearance) stay editable forever; only the words themselves become permanent. If a settled poem truly needs rework, delete and repost remains yours.
Your margin, your rules
Every poem opens its margin by default, and every poet can close it: a per-poem Margin notes toggle lives in the compose and edit settings. Closing the margin never deletes what readers wrote — their notes fall back into the Correspondence, each keeping its quote of the line it loved. Readers get a say too: whenever a poem has notes, a show/hide toggle lets you read the page clean, and Stanza remembers your choice.
The margin was always where the real conversation happened. Now it has a home here. Publish something, let it settle, and see what your readers leave beside your lines.
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