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What are the lines in a poem called?

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In poetry, a line, also known as a stich, is the unit of language into which a poem is divided. This string of words before a break may not necessarily complete a sentence, and its arrangement is often, but not always, organized into stanzas of varying lengths. While the term 'verse' can refer to a single line, it is often used to describe a poem in its entirety. The typography of these lines can reflect aesthetic choices, mimic the cadence of speech in free verse, or separate ideas in continuous form poems.

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Nowadays, a line of poetry is most commonly called just that, a line. A line can be identified as the string of words before a break, even if a sentence is not complete before the break occurs. A line is not the same thing as a sentence in poetry because poets arrange the lines for many different aesthetic reasons, and the line may or may not contain punctuation.

The arrangement of lines on the page, or typography, is often, but not always, arranged in stanzas of a certain number of lines.  For example, a two-line stanza is a couplet, a three-line stanza is a tercet, a four-line stanza is a quatrain, and so on.  Exceptions to stanza form include free verse, which intends to mimic the cadence of human speech and may consist of a single stanza.  

Strictly speaking, a line is a unit of language into which the poem is divided. 

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The word stich, pronounced like "stick," is the word that describes one line of poetry (plural is stichs, pronounced like "sticks"). The word verse can refer to one line of poetry as well, as in a poetic verse, but it can just as often refer to a poem in its entirety. However, it isn't wrong to refer to one line of poetry as a verse.

A stanza is often a regular grouping of several lines which share the same meter and have some kind of rhyme scheme. However, some poems don't have stanzas, as they are written in continuous form. Poems written like this will lack rhythmic, even stanzas, and the poetic lines will simply follow one after another, with line breaks—not to separate stanzas but to separate ideas (like you would use between paragraphs that present different ideas in an essay).

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