So you’ve begun to dip your toes into poetry and are seeing all sorts of bizarre terms pop up. What in the world is “iambic pentameter” meant to be? How are poems full of “feet”?  What about dactyls and octets and monostichs?

All these terms relate to something known as Meter. Meter is the underlying structure to the rhythms of poetry. It is a very close analogy to music theory in music. Almost all poetry before 1900 was written with some type of meter. And even our modern Free Verse (which is non-metrical by definition) benefits from moments of metered poetry. This blog is meant to be a comprehensive guide into Meter and many of the terms that comprise it. Due to its length, I've decided to split it into two parts.

Is this even important?

Your time is valuable, so it’s worth considering whether learning the basics of meter is even important. Surely you can still enjoy poetry without thinking through syllables and stresses, line lengths and so on?

I can’t truly answer that question for you, and you probably can’t either. What I can say (and even promise), however, is that this information will only have a positive benefit to your enjoyment of poetry.

I’ve found that knowledge is a multiplier when it comes to enjoyment. Having even the slightest grasp on the basics of poetry can enormously benefit your experience with it. This goes for all categories of art appreciation. The more music theory you know, the more you will understand what each composer is doing. The more you train your eyes to follow brush strokes and perspective, the more you can glean from a painting. And the more you understand the mechanics of poetry, how syllables are arranged to create each effect, the more you will understand the poet and the meaning that they wrote into their poem.

Meter

In this introduction we will go through the four main components to a poem’s meter: (Part 1) syllables and feet, and (Part 2) lines and stanzas. With each section there will be optional poems/excerpts for you to read. Take advantage of these to see the practical effect that each feature has on the poem as a whole.

Syllables

As we speak words, we naturally stress some syllables more than other ones. For example, when you just read “syllables,” without a doubt you would have stressed it as SYL-la-bles. To do otherwise would feel awkward (try saying it as syl-LA-bles). Now, since I’m writing in prose I wasn’t wasting any effort on ordering the syllables of my sentence. But consider these lines from a Tennyson poem:

The splendor falls on castle walls,
And snowy summits old in story:

Focus now on which syllables you stress as you read this. Presumably you would have spoken it something like the following (I have capitalized the stressed syllables, along with marking a “-” above an unstressed syllable and a “/” above a stressed):

  -          /        -        /       -       /     -        /
The SPLENdor FALLS on CASTle WALLS,
   -         /      -       /      -      /      -       /    -
And SNOWy SUMMits OLD in STORy:

Tennyson has ordered these words such that there is a regular pattern of unstressed-stressed syllables. Notice how there is always one unstressed syllable between each stressed syllable. This effect serves to create the rhythmic motion of the words as we read them.

Isn't this interesting? One of the great benefits of learning meter is realizing the immense order behind the great poetry of history. Far from being merely words written on a passing whim, formal poetry is wonderfully structured in subtle ways.

What I have done above is called Scansion, where marks are placed above syllables indicating their stress. By doing this, you can make explicit the underlying rhythm (a.k.a meter) that the author employed. 

This is one of the core practices for the reader of formal poetry, and you would be taught this skill in any good class on English poetry. As such, it is worthwhile to spend some time with pen and paper scanning poems and checking to see if you are correct. Here are some tips for scanning.

• Make sure to read the line as naturally as possible. Read it a few times and note which syllables your mouth naturally stresses. Sometimes we force patterns onto poetry that don’t match how they would be actually spoken. Your tongue already understands meter; it’s all about getting that understanding into your head.
• You will notice that in some cases there seems to be a spectrum of stress for syllables. One syllable may be stressed more than another syllable, but less than some other syllable. In this case it is all about context. Again, your tongue will know what to do here. As an example, notice how the word “from” is stressed in one line of poetry, but not in another:
  
  he WATCHes FROM his MOUNtain WALLS, (Tennyson, “The Eagle”)
  
  from SEA to SHINing SEA (Bates, “America the Beautiful”)

Feet

Once we’ve made these Scansion marks, the syllables can be grouped together into a series of discrete units, called feet. A foot is merely a repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Tennyson used the ever-popular pattern which contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable ( - / ). This foot is known as an iamb. There are different types of metrical patterns that are often used, each to a unique effect. Here is a table with the names for each of these patterns.

The iamb is the most common foot used in English poetry, required by the sonnet, villanelle, blank/heroic verse, and almost all others. It has been noted by many that this foot creates a rhythm that most naturally matches our regular speech. As such, poems written with iambs don’t feel as obviously metered as others.

Note that a foot only contains a single stressed syllable. As such, you can easily count how long a line of poetry is (stay tuned for Part 2) by simply counting how many stresses there are in that line.

Also notice that iambs and anapests start unstressed and end on a stressed syllable; this is known as rising meter. In reverse, then, trochees and dactyls are considered falling meter. In my experience, the falling meter feet have more of a pounding, serious, and stoic rhythm to them, while the iambs and anapests could be considered lighter and more natural. For example, Dr. Seuss frequently employs anapests, most notably in “The Cat in the Hat.”

Is it actually worthwhile to learn what these different terms mean? Isn’t it all arbitrary naming that someone else has come up with? While the names may be arbitrary, the patterns are not. Poems that utilize different feet have significantly different sounds and rhythms, affecting the overall mood and impression that is left on the reader. The only way to understand this, however, is to read some poems that are written with different feet.

Examples

Check through the following examples; read through them (out loud) and note the difference in how they feel.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
  
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
  
In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
  
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

Practice

Practicing Scansion on various poems is a great exercise for learning how to classify poems. It may seem mundane, but doing so actively exposes the rhythms that the poet used to make the poem sound the way that it does. The more you do it, the more intuitive it will be and the easier it will be to know, just by ear, that a poem was written in a specific meter.

I rarely need to actually use a pen to mark out stresses anymore since it has grown very intuitive for me. Sure, I’ll often count stresses out on my fingers as I read (as my wife chuckles in the background), but I can typically visualize from there what the rhythm is for the meter. This is all a result of having not only read many poems, but also by studying their meter.

Print out poems on paper and scribble on them! Screenshot poems on your phone and use the image editor. Or, if you’re so bold, buy a cheap anthology of poems as a workbook and scribble your scansion into it.