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What is the difference between 'stanza' and 'verse' in English Literature (Poetry)? I've read one of my classmate's essays and the word 'verse' cropped up - I thought that the word 'verse' was usually used for song/lyrics and was quite confused when it was used in that context (Poem analysis).

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  • The Norton Anthology of Poetry provides a good glossary of literary and poetic terms here.
    – jeffclef
    May 21, 2012 at 16:43
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    Song lyrics are poetry, and many poems were written as songs or in imitation of song forms.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Aug 19, 2012 at 0:44

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From what I'm reading here.

  1. A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse.

The two are synonyms.

From: Dictionary.com

But I think the difference is that a stanza is more about structure, whereas a verse is less about rhyming scheme and more just a way to identify sections of a piece of writing.

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    I won't downvote your explanation but encourage you to edit your response to be more idiomatic. "Rhyme scheme" is the preferred phrase among poets. "(A) stanza" and "(a) verse" may be synonymous when they refer specifically to a unit of a poem or scripture (not sections of any piece of writing). Stanzas, which may or may not have a predetermined meter or rhyme scheme, are formal units of larger poems; they are often identified by the number of lines they contain (a Petrarchan sonnet has two stanzas: an octet and sestet); "Verse" (no article) is synonymous with the whole of poetry.
    – jeffclef
    May 21, 2012 at 17:18
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    @jeffclef You seem to have this down pretty well. Why don't you just type up a better answer?
    – MikeVaughan
    Aug 24, 2012 at 0:51
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Verse refers any text presented over multiple lines, where the line breaks are deliberate and integral to the work itself, such as in conventional poems. This is as opposed to prose, which is text arranged in paragraphs, such as in a typical Wikipedia article.

Thus, verse can refer to any number of lines grouped together, whether it be an entire poem, or just a section of it.

Stanza, meanwhile, specifically refers to a formally defined unit of a poem, much like a paragraph in an essay.

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