Verse

Verse is writing arranged in lines that typically exhibit rhythm and sometimes rhyme. In everyday usage, verse refers to poetry, as opposed to prose written in sentences and paragraphs. A verse may be a single line or many lines grouped into stanzas.

Etymology and scope: the word derives from Latin versus, meaning a line or turning, via Old French vers. In English, verse emphasizes lineation and meter, but the term is often used interchangeably with poem.

Forms and structure: Verse is defined by meter, the patterned arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables, and by line breaks. Common meters include iambic pentameter, trochaic tetrameter, and anapestic trimeter. Rhyme schemes can organize lines into patterns such as couplets or quatrains. Free verse lacks regular meter or rhyme, while blank verse uses a consistent meter without rhyme. Enjambment (carrying a sentence across line breaks) and caesura (a pause within a line) contribute to the rhythm and pacing of verse.

Historical overview: Verse appears across cultures in epic, lyric, drama, and religious poetry. In Western literature, formal verse gave way to freer forms in the 19th and 20th centuries, with innovations by poets such as Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound. Non-Western traditions maintain diverse verse systems with distinct metrical and phonetic practices.

Related concepts: versification is the study of verse structure; prosody covers rhythm, intonation, and stress in speech as it relates to verse. The term verse can refer to a single line of poetry as well as to poetry collectively.