The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Strophe

Strophe: Most broadly, a poetic stanza; more narrowly, the irregular, unrhymed divisions of a poem. The term strophe may thus be applied to a variety of poetic units, whether quatrains with a set meter and rhyme scheme or the variable verse paragraphs of free verse. Strophe also has other, more specialized meanings dating back to the ancient Greeks, referring to: (1) that part of the Greek choral ode chanted by the chorus as it danced in one direction before retracing its steps during the antistrophe; and (2) the first of three recurrent parts of the Pindaric ode.