A stanza is a set of two or more verses structured according to its rhythm and measure. For a stanza to be formed, there must be at least two verses. One or more stanzas make up a poem and these may or may not maintain a relationship depending on their form, the use of repetitions and the rhythm or measure of their verses.

Difference between Verse and stanza

What is a verse?

The verse is that set of words that is ordered according to a measure and a rhythm . A verse is the basic unit of the poem, and together, several verses make up a stanza. Each verse is separated from other verses following various stylistic parameters.

Its rhythm is altered by the number of syllables it has and its accents. To obtain its measurement , the accent of its last syllable and the metric licenses that have been used are considered.

The word verse comes from the Latin versus , and means ‘to turn’, ‘to turn towards or against’, ‘line’ or ‘row’. It involves the idea of ​​moving from one sentence to another.

Whoever writes a verse can use resources or metric (poetic) licenses to adjust its measure and syllabic count. Besides that, verse, as an artistic expression and basic unit of poetry, does not necessarily adhere to norms in the same way that other types of texts do.

Characteristics of a verse

• It is the basic unit of a poem.
• It has a rhythm.
• There may be rhyme between one verse and others.
• It has a measure according to the number of its poetic syllables, and this can be different from the total of its grammatical syllables.
• Different metric licenses are used to adjust the number of its poetic syllables (synalephs, dialephs and syneresis).
• It can be simple (11 syllables or less) or compound (12 syllables or more).
• It can be minor art (8 or fewer syllables) or major art (9 or more syllables).
• It must have a pause at the end, and, when composed, its internal pause is known as a caesura .
• It uses stylistic devices (such as enjambment), which do not necessarily follow the grammatical rules that other types of text follow.

What is a stanza?

A stanza is a set of two or more verses that follow a rhythmic structure . A poem can be made up of one or more stanzas.

The word stanza comes from the Greek strophe , and means ‘to turn’ or ‘to turn’ and refers to when the Greek choir in the plays or odes sang, while moving from one place to another in the scene.

The stanzas are classified according to the number of verses and the rhythm they have, within a fixed scheme or rhythmic axis throughout a poem.

Characteristics of a stanza

• It must be made up of at least two verses.
• A poem can have an indefinite number of stanzas.
• The stanzas of a poem can maintain a formal relationship due to repetitions and rhymes.
• A metric scheme is used to visualize both its measurement and its rhyme.
• It can be isometric (verses that have the same number of syllables) or heterometric (verses with different number of syllables).
• It can take an indefinite number of ways.

Number of stanzas in a poem

Poems can have one or more stanzas. When a poem only has one it is known as monostrophic . A poem that has more than one stanza is known as polyestrophic .

Poliestrophic poems differ from each other by the way in which the verses of their stanzas have been written. They can present repetitions of verses or parts of these, as well as the use of shared rhymes between their stanzas. These poems can be:

• Chained : there is a repetition at the end of the lines of the poem, which chains one stanza to the other.
• Loose : its stanzas are independent units, there is no repetition at the end of the verses.
• Parallelistic : they have consonant rhymes at the end of verses and in pairs.
• Engarzados : from the second stanza, each stanza repeats a verse from the first stanza.