Stanza

This article is about the term in poetry. For other uses, see Stanza (disambiguation).

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse" (distinct from the refrain, or "chorus").

A stanza consists of a grouping of two or more lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme.The stanza in poetry is analogous with the paragraph that is seen in prose, related thoughts are grouped into units.

In traditional English-language poems, stanzas can be identified and grouped together because they share a rhyme scheme or a fixed number of lines (as in distich/couplet, tercet, quatrain, cinquain/quintain, sestet). In much modern poetry, stanzas may be arbitrarily presented on the printed page because of publishing conventions that employ such features as white space or punctuation.