Understanding Rhythm and Meter in Poetry

The phrase “meter in poetry” probably conjures thoughts of high school English class: Shakespeare’s iambs or, more broadly, the term “iambic pentameter.” In other words, it’s a phrase that smacks of the 17th century. What use does it have in the 21st century, particularly among poets who never use meter in poetry?

Indeed, metric poetry is a needle in the contemporary haystack—but, some contemporary poets still use meter. And, even if the phrase “dactylic hexameter” gives you hives, there’s still something to learn from paying attention to the stresses in language. Rhythm and meter in poetry are essential tools for any poet, whether that poet knows it or not.

So, what is rhythm and meter in poetry? How do you even think about these terms of art? This article demystifies these stodgy literary devices so that, even if you never write an Elizabethan sonnet or interlocking rubaiyat, you’ll still have a richer understanding of sound for your own poetic practice.

To start with the basics, what is rhythm in poetry?

What is Rhythm in Poetry?

When you think of rhythm, you probably think of the movement you hear through music. Concretely, rhythm describes a pattern of something—so, in music, the rhythm is the pattern of beats that scaffolds the sound of the song.

It’s a similar thing in poetry. Rhythm in poetry is the pattern of stresses heard within the sounds of the words. All poems have a rhythm; when writing a poem in meter, the pattern of syllabic stresses is much more regular and intentional.

Rhythm in poetry is the pattern of stresses heard within the sounds of the words.

Now, rhythm includes more than just syllabic stresses. A poem’s rhythm is influenced by the poem’s volume, pitch, the presence of single- or multiple-syllable words, the presence of soft or hard consonants, the poem’s pauses and overall speed. But, for the purposes of this article, we are going to dissect syllabic stresses, as these are the backbones of rhythm and meter in poetry.

What are “Stresses”?

Stresses are the syllables that are, or aren’t, emphasized in a word. A stressed syllable is the one that gets emphasized; an unstressed syllable is spoken less emphatically.

Take, for example, the word “poetry.” Poetry has 3 syllables: po-e-try. But those syllables aren’t pronounced with equal weight: you say “po” and “try” with a little more force than you say the “e”. Those forceful syllables are “stressed” while the “e” is unstressed.

The pattern of stresses in a poem is called its “prosody,” and the act of identifying those stresses is called “scansion”—a practice we look at later in this article.

Stresses are the syllables that are, or aren’t, emphasized in a word. A stressed syllable is the one that gets emphasized; an unstressed syllable is spoken less emphatically.

When rhythm and meter in poetry are used intentionally, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables can impact the reader in both subtle and profound ways. Let’s dive a little deeper into meter.

What is Meter in Poetry?

Meter refers to both the rhythm and length of a line of poetry. In other words, meter is the rhythmic structure, or the scaffolding of sound present in the poem’s architecture. Some forms of poetry require a specific meter, such as the Italian or Elizabethan Sonnet, which require the poem to use iambic pentameter.

Meter refers to both the rhythm and length of a line of poetry.

What is Iambic Meter in Poetry?

If you know anything about meter in poetry, then you’ve heard of iambic meter. This is the most used form of meter in English-language poetry, renowned and often utilized by poets like Shakespeare—who specifically utilized iambic pentameter.

Let’s break down what “iambic pentameter” means. The meter of a poem is composed of two structures: its rhythm and its length. Rhythm, as we’ve discussed, is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem. In this case, the rhythm is “iambic,” which we will define in a moment. In poetic terminology, one unit of sound (in this case, one iamb) is called a “foot.”

“Pentameter” refers to the length of the line. A poem written in pentameter has 5 “feet,” with “penta” being the Greek suffix for “5.”

So, a poem in iambic pentameter is a poem in which each line has 5 iambs.

So, a poem in iambic pentameter is a poem in which each line has 5 iambs.

What is an iamb? An iamb is an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. Some words are naturally iambic, such as the words “aback,” “besiege,” “resort,” or “fulfill.” You can also hear iambic pentameter in motion with these opening lines from Shakespeare 18:

Notice the repetitive motion of the language as you read it, and perhaps even read it out loud. There’s a natural cycling of stressed and unstressed syllables, a light push and pull tension in the words themselves.

Iambs are the most used feet in metered poetry. This is primarily because iambic meter most closely resembles the natural rhythm of human speech.

Iambs are the most used feet in metered poetry. This is primarily because iambic meter most closely resembles the natural rhythm of human speech.

Additionally, meter is a kind of mnemonic device. Before the printing press, literature was more of an oral tradition than a written one, and devices like meter and rhyme helped the performer remember the order of the words themselves—while also enhancing the experience of the language. There’s also something to be said about how iambs mimic the ba-DUM ba-DUM of the human heart, though that might just be an arbitrary poetic observation.

Other Types of Meter and Rhythm in Poetry

While iambs are frequent visitors of metered poetry, poetic meter has a rich and textured history, and other patterns of syllabic stress have been used since the dawn of literature. Here’s a full breakdown of meter and rhythm in poetry:

Line Length in Poetry

The chart below defines the length of a line based on the number of “feet.”

In English-language poetry, it is rare for a poem’s line to run longer than the hexameter, though certainly decameter poems exist.

Rhythm in Poetry

This chart names most of the rhythms used throughout classical poetry. Stresses are italicized under the examples of these rhythms.

Do note that, like in the above Shakespeare sonnet, an iambic poem doesn’t have to use solely iambic words. In other words, the pattern of stresses flows across words; these examples only showcase the pattern of stresses in each form of poetic rhythm.

The “Seas,” or Bahr, in Arabic-Language Poetry

The bulk of this article dissects rhythm and meter in poetry of English-language origin. However, it’s worth noting that meter varies across the tapestry of world languages. For example, French poetry often uses Alexandrian lines, which are lines composed in iambic hexameter and structured to include half-lines, broken by caesuras, with heavy emphases on syllables 6 and 12.

Arabic-language poetry gets a shoutout for using a different way of thinking about meter. In Arabic poems, meter defines not the stresses of syllables, but the pattern of vowels and consonants, as well as the lengths of those vowels (short, medium, and long). These patterns are fixed and predetermined: in classical Arabic poetry, there are only a certain number of patterns allowed. One unit of sound in these patterns is called a bahr, the Arabic word for “sea.” These patterns of sound must be the same from line to line, in poems that are typically rhymed and often written in couplets (such as the ghazal).

It’s hard to explain this in English, as there are no good equivalents (that I know of) in English-language poetry, so understanding this form of meter requires both the ability to read Arabic and the ability to identify variance in Arabic sounds. Nonetheless, the Wikipedia entry on Arabic prosody gives a good cursory explanation for poetic bahr, and I would love to see this way of thinking about language enacted in an English-language poem.

How to Identify Meter in Poetry

Perhaps the hardest part of reading and writing metered poetry is identifying the stresses of the words themselves. This is certainly true for the author of this article. It feels easy to psych yourself out of the correct pronunciation of something. Is it po-e-try, or po-e-try? It’s also true that an individual’s accent or dialect also impacts the way they might pronounce a word, or even how many syllables are in that word. (Is it pronounced “po-em” or “pome”?)

If you struggle similarly, here are some useful rules of thumb for identifying stressed and unstressed syllables.

Stressed syllables:

• Often end on a percussive sound. So, if a syllable ends on a hard sound like B, P, T, D, G, or K, it is often stressed.
  • Examples: impound, beckon, complete.
• Are often the second syllable in a two syllable word, especially if the first syllable is a prefix.
  • Examples: decide, release, compose.
• Are sometimes the penultimate syllable in a 3+ syllable word. This is especially true for words that end in -ic, -sion, -tion, -ial, or -ive.
  • Examples: official, confusion, dramatic, education, information, consideration, attractive.
• Are sometimes the third-to-last syllable in a 3+ syllable word. This is especially true for words that end in suffixes like -cy, -ty, -al.
  • Examples: democracy, lexical, authority.
• Are often the suffixes -nese, -eer, -ique, or -ette.
  • Examples: Chinese, buccaneer, technique, kitchenette.
• Are often found in words that convey essential information. This includes action verbs, concrete nouns, and the kinds of words that convey a sense of importance and urgency.
  • Examples: quickly, rushed, happiness, love.

Unstressed syllables:

• Often end on short vowel sounds or on soft consonants.
  • Examples: assumes, never, wholesale, know.
• Are often prefixes.
  • Examples: Reward, describe.
• Are sometimes suffixes, particularly ones with short vowels.
  • Examples: singularity, lexicography.
• Are usually pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and other “connective tissue” words.
  • Examples: He, she, it, they, to, from, on, a, an the, and, but, or, nor.
• Are sometimes, with exceptions, the second word of a compound word.
  • Examples: blackboard, toothpaste, schoolbus.

Since this is the English language, there are always exceptions. Loanwords, or words from other languages, are an example of this conundrum, since other languages stress syllables differently. To make matters more complicated, sometimes a syllable that is typically unstressed gets stressed simply because of the word’s importance.

Nonetheless, these general rules of thumb can help you attune your ears to the stresses in the English language. The more you practice this, the easier it gets.

The Art of Scansion

All of these rules about rhythm and meter in poetry culminate in the art of scansion. Scansion is the act of analyzing a poem’s rhythm and meter, and practicing scansion can help you pay closer attention to a poem’s meter—including when a poem deviates from that meter.

Yes, poems that utilize meter do not need to be perfectly metered. When a poem deviates from the expected pattern of syllabic stress, or when a line of poetry has more or less syllables than expected, it can call the reader’s attention to something interesting happening in the poem itself.

But first, let’s look at scansion. When a reader performs scansion, they identify the syllables that are stressed and unstressed. Here’s a simple key for you:

Now, we’re being a little reductive here. Advanced prosodists identify four levels of stresses: unstressed, tertiary stressed, secondary stressed, and strong stressed syllables. This helps to account for differences in stress you might hear between two stressed syllables. But, at this point, we’re already making things complicated, so for now, two levels of stress will suffice.

Now, here’s a tercet from “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath, a poem we’re going to analyze next in this article:

Here are those lines being scanned:

What do you notice? It’s iambic, but not perfectly. A few syllables are stressed when you’d expect them to be unstressed, perhaps imbuing those words with importance or urgency. And, that second line is 9 syllables, not 10, so there’s a lack in this line, perhaps underscoring the exit of both good and evil.

Now, try utilizing scansion yourself while you read the following examples of rhythm and meter in poetry.

Examples of Rhythm and Meter in Poetry

To the uninitiated, metered poetry can make the poem seem stuffy and antiquated. It’s certainly true that some poems of yesteryear smell of Dead White Male Aristocracy. But it’s also true that poets, both classic and contemporary, have wielded the rules of meter to enhance the scope and impact of their poetry.

So, let’s look at some examples of rhythm and meter in poetry. These poems were intentionally chosen for their accessibility: the language might be poetic, but it isn’t impenetrable, the way some metric poems can seem intimidating.

Examples of Iambic Meter in Poetry

Since iambic meter is the most common in English literature, here are a few examples of iambic meter in contemporary poetry.

“Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath

Retrieved here.

This villanelle poem by Sylvia Plath makes expert use of iambic pentameter, as well as of form and language in general. I’m drawn to how the poem uses parentheses to simulate the boundaries of the speaker’s own head, of what’s real and what’s imagined, and of course the poem’s word choice is stunning: seraphim and thunderbirds populate this piece in which one’s relationships and sanity are inextricably intertwined.

But also pay close attention to this poem’s meter—particularly where the poem diverges from an iambic structure. The poem as a whole is iambic, but certain words interrupt the pattern of unstressed-stressed syllables. For example, “hell’s fires fade” is an aberration—stressed-stressed-unstressed-stressed. Other diversions from the pattern include “moon-struck, kissed”, “God topples”, and “thunderbird”—a mythical creature in Native American folklore that controls the weather and the patterns of the seasons, based on its migration.

What do these shifts in prosody accomplish? They call attention to those words, give them additional weight, and perhaps also demonstrate an instability in the speaker’s own psyche. Select aberrations in a poem’s meter can have subtle but profound impacts on the poem’s meaning.

Excerpt from “Differences of Opinion” by Wendy Cope

Retrieved here.

Wendy Cope is a modern treasure, a poet extremely versatile with form, and capable of finding humor in life’s darkness. I really like her interview here—every poet who wants to write good poetry should take her advice to heart.

This is a relatively simple poem in terms of form, but it makes smart decisions. Notice the rhyme scheme: AABBCDCDD. It’s an unusual scheme: the first four lines rhyme simply, the second four lines grow a bit in complexity, and then the final line repeats a rhyme, as though the planet’s shape rhymes with the regularity of this frustrating argument.

Notice, also, the frequency of monosyllabic words. Lines 1, 2, and 4 are completely monosyllabic, and words like “altercations” or “arguments” stand out for being polysyllabic. This is another smart way to think about meter: you can keep things perfectly iambic, but introduce words that stand out for their length or pronunciation so as to highlight them. This rhymed poem in iambic tetrameter uses form to both highlight the silly nature of the argument and the universality of frustratingly inaccurate beliefs.

“Kink” by Imani Davis

Retrieved here.

Here’s another poem that really showcases how meter in poetry can synergize with contemporary language. Imani Davis is another modern treasure whose experiments with form yield really interesting results.

On a first read, I love the use of the word “swallowsong” to both fit the poem’s meter and invent something beautiful and richly felt. I also love the different vernaculars here, moving from the poetic to the colloquial, the natural to the profane. Notice how the word choice evolves in this poem: it’s more poetic when the speaker’s desires are fulfilled, more vulgar when in the realm of desires imagined.

But what’s most smart about this poem is how it relinquishes control—how the sonnet’s meter breaks down at the end, especially in the last 3 lines. I’ll only be parroting Davis’s description of their own poem, so I’ll let them explain what’s going on:

“At the poem’s closing, the established metrical pattern is willingly surrendered, obeying the italicized voice of the speaker’s dom. (P.S. I also threw in a nod to ‘Poem’ by Langston Hughes.)”

By treating meter as its own form of control and submission, Davis adds another subtle, contemporary layer to this beautifully formal poem, broadening the ways that poets can and should think about rhythm and meter in poetry.

Other Metrical Examples in Poetry

The iamb predominates metrical poetry, but I want to shout out a couple other contemporary poems that wield different types of prosody.

Trochaic Trimeter (with Hypercatalexis) in “The Anniad” by Gwendolyn Brooks

These stanzas start Brooks’s long heroic poem “The Anniad” (a riff on “The Aeneid,”) out of Brooks’s collection Annie Allen. Annie Allen won Brooks the Pulitzer in 1950, making her the first African American poet to win the award. This poem charts the coming-of-age of a fictional Annie Allen, an African American girl surviving poverty and hardship in midcentury America.

What’s going on with the meter here? It’s trochaic, meaning the pattern is stressed-unstressed syllables (the reverse of an iamb). But then most of the lines have 7 syllables, meaning there’s a half-foot in each line—a term d’arte that doesn’t actually exist, but we’re using it all the same. (The actual term d’arte is hypercatalexis, which is the addition of a syllable in an otherwise metrically complete line.)

The trochee conveys a heroic sense of language, as we lead each line on a stressed syllable, and Brooks also has us end each line on a stressed syllable, too. Or perhaps this poem is secretly iambic, but with the initial unstressed syllable cut off.

Spend some time with these lines and how the meter makes you interpret them. You can find the full poem, as well as some other poems in Annie Allen, here. In any case, pay close attention to where Brooks also interrupts the poem’s meter: “fancying” is a word that calls attention to itself in an octosyllabic line, and some of the lines do end on unstressed syllables.

Dactyls in Annie Finch’s “Love in the Morning”

Retrieved here.

This love poem doesn’t scan perfectly, in the sense that these lines aren’t perfectly dactylic dimeter. But dactyls they certainly are: each line begins on a stressed syllable and is followed, mostly, by two unstressed syllables. If the line has more than 3 syllables, the fourth syllable is stressed as well.

The poem has an unusual cadence as a result of its irregular prosody. But after the pause of each line break, we return to a stressed syllable, and there’s a rhythmic movement in these irregular lines that invites a sense of quiet passion and mystery into the work. Dactyls were often used in heroic poetry, but here, the unstressed syllables provide a soft landing for the poem’s energetic openings, and I love the symmetry of lines like “warmth-given / fire-driven”. I also love “waiting” as its own line, giving us a trochee rather than a dactyl, highlighting the poem’s sense of tension and release, release, tension and release, release.

Why Should Contemporary Poets Care About Rhythm and Meter in Poetry?

If contemporary poetry has no real concern with metered poetry, why should we read or write it?

Simply put, great poets read widely and experiment often. Language has infinite uses and possibilities, and the curious poet will tinker with those possibilities in the search for better words. And, the more you play with language, the more you discover your own voice. You don’t have to publish poetry in spondaic septameter, but you’ll become a stronger poet if you try to write like that. (And besides, if your only goal as a poet is to publish, you’re likely restricting your own growth as an artist.)

By now, you’ll see that contemporary poets like to set rules just to break them, but notice how they break those rules intentionally, inviting richer interpretations of the work. Meter and rhythm in poetry is just one way of creating rules and breaking them, so if you’re too daunted by these rules, start with easier ones. Try to write a poem in which each line is six words; or, write a poem that doesn’t use the letter “e”.

But, most of all, allow yourself to rise to the challenge. Pushing the boundaries of language will always make you a stronger poet, regardless of if the finished product is “worthy of publication”—an arbitrary standard that has no real relationship to what you can and should accomplish.

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