Stanza Stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian "stanza" , "room") is a grouped set of lines within a poem, usually set off from other stanzas by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, though stanzas are not strictly required to have either. Even though the term "stanza" is taken from Italian, in the Italian language the word "strofa" is more commonly used. There are many unique . Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains. Other forms are more complex, such as the Spenserian stanza. Fixed verse poems, such as sestinas, can
Verse novel verse novel is the Onegin stanza, invented by Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin". It is an adapted form of the Shakespearean sonnet, retaining the three quatrains plus couplet structure but reducing the metre to iambic tetrameter and specifying a distinct rhyme scheme: the first quatrain is cross-rhymed (ABAB), the second couplet-rhymed ("CCDD"), and the third arch-rhymed (or chiasmic, EFFE), so that the whole is ABABCCDDEFFEGG. Additionally, Pushkin required that the first rhyme in each couplet (the A, C, and E rhymes) be unstressed (or "feminine"), and all others stressed (or "masculine"). In the rhyme scheme notation capitalizing masculine rhymes, this reads