Poetry: Meter

Meter is the established rhythmic pattern for a poem.

In English poetry, we divide lines into feet, which are typically a specific group of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Not this type of stressed.

The type of feet being used determines the first word in the phrase describing the meter, and the number of feet per line determines the second word.

When you have two of a certain type of foot in each line of the poem, it's dimeter. Three feet per line makes trimeter; four makes tetrameter; five makes pentameter; six is hexameter; seven is heptameter; eight is octameter.

Typically, you find the stressed and unstressed syllables that build feet by really over-doing it on the "bounciness" of reading a line. For example, an iamb (or an iambic foot) is made of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (U S). Example:

In there, I found a cat so large,

This is a line consisting of four iambs. When reading it, you naturally stress - just slightly - the words "there," "found," "cat," and "large." Try over-acting it:

In there, I found a cat so large,

See? Those are four iambs. In iambic pentameter, (which is a well-known form of meter because (1) it sounds impressive so people say it to sound smart, and (2) Shakespeare used it in his plays and sonnets) you would have five of those in each line of the poem. Because I only have four, this poem would be in iambic tetrameter.

So we know how to identify an iambic foot, but what about the other kinds of feet?

A trochee (or a trochaic foot) is like a backwards iamb. Where an iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (U S), a trochee is one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable (S U).

Kitchen Lion

I apologize for my inability to write well in trochees (I think they're really hard) but the phrase "Kitchen Lion" is made of two consecutive trochees. You slightly stress the first syllable in each word:

Kitchen Lion

If you used this phrase as one line of your poem, you'd have trochaic dimeter: two trochaic feet per line.
A spondee (or spondaic foot) is two stressed syllables in a row (S S). An anapest (or anapestic foot) is two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed (U U S). A dactyl (or dactylic foot) is a backwards anapest: one stressed followed by two unstressed (S U U). An amphibrach (or amphibrachic foot) is one unstressed, one stressed, and one unstressed (U S U). And finally, a pyrrhic (or pyrrhic foot) is two unstressed syllables in a row (U U).

This is all, of course, in the case of English poetry. Every language has differences in emphasis, how to count feet, and other various factors in determining meter.

Not all poets or poetry styles identify meter as being important, or even a part of poetry. Much free verse poetry doesn't rely on meter because it "feels" like prose (it doesn't rhyme, it doesn't "bounce," and it isn't usually in evenly divided lines).

Want to see how much you learned? Try identifying what these types of meter mean:

dactylic hexameter
trochaic octameter
iambic tetrameter

I'll post the answers on Thursday!