Stichic describes poetry that is organized in long passages of lines (or couplets, or triplets), as opposed to strophic poetry, which consists of recurring stanzas (or strophes). Epics, narratives, and discursive or conversational poems are often stichic in structure. Greek drama consists of portions that are stichic, punctuated with the strophes of the choral odes. "Stichic" comes from the Greek word for a line of poetry.

Well-known examples of stichic poems include the classical Greek and Latin epics, Dante's Divine Comedy (which also has some strophic characteristics), some of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Milton's Paradise Lost, Wordsworth's Prelude--and indeed anything in blank verse or rhyming couplets, whether closed, open, or enjambed. Almost all poetic drama in English is stichic.

Ballads, songs, hymns, and lyrics are strophic poems. The Horatian and the true Pindaric odes are strophic, but the irregular ode is more nearly stichic. Some long narrative poems, such as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes, are strophic.