An Introduction to Poetic Meter
When I started writing poetry seriously, I hated meter. I only cared about how the words appeared on the page, not how they sounded. Once I learned that poetry could be a visual art and not just auditory, I dedicated myself to the former and forswore the latter. Since then, I’ve been learning how to utilize both senses with poetry.
Meter is how we talk about the rhythm of the syllables in poetry. Some are stressed--given more weight, slowed down, maybe a bit louder--and others are unstressed--faster, lighter, quieter. Like downbeats and accents in music, stresses in poetry create rhythm.
Stressed and unstressed syllables are the neutrons and protons of poetry, and the different atoms they create are called feet. We classify these feet as either duple (two syllables) or triple (three syllables). Here are all the kinds of feet we can create in English, with a “u” meaning unstressed and a “/” meaning stressed:
Duple Feet
trochee: / u ex: soda, trochee, tumblr
iamb: u / ex: impress, exert, improve
spondee: / /
pyrrhic: u u
Triple Feet
dactyl: / u u ex: Galaga, anapest
amphibrach: u / u ex: safari, recorder
anapest: u u / ex: understand, comprehend
Spondaic and pyrrhic feet are only ever used as substitutions rather than entire lines. A spondee can sound like “touchdown” or “birdbath,” or maybe it’s two stressed words next to each other. Pyrrhic feet are trickier to spot, so I’ll have Tennyson help us out. I will use bolding to show stresses and a | to separate feet.
Tis bet | ter to | have loved | and lost
Than nev | er to | have loved | at all.
In both lines, feet 1, 3, and 4 are iambs, and foot 2 is pyrrhic. Maybe you could read it as all iambs, but I don’t care to stress prepositions unless necessary. I like meter to at least resemble normal speech and not be a stilted sing-song-y pattern.
Generally speaking, metrical schemes are based on iambs, trochees, dactyls, or anapests (nobody cares about amphibrachs for some reason). Then we pick out how many feet we want in a line. One is monometer, two is dimeter, three is trimeter, four is tetrameter, then pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, and octometer.
Figure out the type of feet, count how many there are per line, and BAM! you have a metrical scheme. “Fleas” is trochaic monometer, “i lik the bred” is iambic dimeter, and most everyone who has taken an English class has heard of iambic pentameter. We tend to stick to a very few sets of meters, but in theory, you can make any kind you like. Trochaic tetrameter? Anapestic trimeter? Iambic octometer? Amphibrachic monometer? Go crazy!
This isn’t even touching what meter can do or my own nuances / theories about scansion (reading for meter). But now you know how to read the language of meter, and you can impress your professors with “trochaic trimeter” or “pyrrhic substitution.”