What is a poetry stanza?

A stanza in poetry is a group of lines that form a unit within a larger poem. Think of it as a paragraph in prose. Stanzas are separated from each other by a space, allowing the reader to visually recognize the distinct units of thought or structure within the poem. Different types of stanzas have different numbers of lines and rhyming patterns (e.g., couplet, quatrain, sestet, octave).