NaPoWriMo: Meter

Last week, I promised to tell you about meter in poetry, and I know you're all just going to find this riveting, so let's get to it!

(Wrong types of meter.)

English poems are divided into feet, which are groups of stressed and unstressed syllables.

(Wrong type of feet.)

The types of feet are defined by the number and order of stressed and unstressed syllables. (In the chart below, U means an unstressed syllable and S means a stressed syllable.)

Once you figure out what kind of feet you're using, you count how many are in each line to figure out the type of meter.

So when people talk about iambic pentameter, what do they mean? That each line of the poem contains five sets of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (five iambs, or iambic feet, per line).

So if you have a poem with four sets of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable followed by another unstressed syllable, what do you have?

Besides a headache.

Amphibrachic tetrameter, of course!

This sort of thing is only important if you're writing the types of poems that require certain meters (like a villanelle or a sonnet), or if you're aiming to write in a consistent meter for some other reason. Personally, I find it very difficult to restrict myself with a set type of meter. So if you're like me, just go nuts with your syllables and feet and such.