Poetry made up of lines of the same approximate meter and length, not broken up into stanzas, is called stichic (as opposed to stanzaic). Most poetry from the Old English period is considered stichic. Most English poetry written in blank verse, such as the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton, is stichic. A more contemporary example is Joanna Baillie's "Hay making" 1979 Greek epic, in dactylic hexameter, as is Latin epic whether in hexameter or (in very old poets) Saturnian. Poetic dramatic dialogue, whether in English iambic pentameter or Greek iambic trimeter, also tends to be stichic in nature.
HINT:
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Stichic
- Stichic in the context of Strophe
Stichic in the context of Strophe
A strophe (/ˈstroʊfiː/) is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of varying line length. Strophic poetry is to be contrasted with poems composed line-by-line non-stanzaically, such as Greek epic poems or English blank verse, to which the term stichic applies.
In its original Greek setting, "strophe, antistrophe and epode were a kind of stanza framed only for the music", as John Milton wrote in the preface to Samson Agonistes, with the strophe chanted by a Greek chorus as it moved from right to left across the scene.
View the full Wikipedia page for Strophe