Tips to Writing Effective Metrical Poetry

Sep 29, 2011
Glen Miller

Poetry in Nature - Graphics Hunt

A short guide to poetic rhythm, feet, and meter.

What is Poetry?

Poetry is a form of prose that focuses more on the line than on the sentence or paragraph as a whole. Punctuation is used more for emphasis and direction than for dividing sentences and clauses for understanding. Several people have tried to define poetry.

“Poetry is the mother tongue of mankind.” –Johann Georg Hamann

“Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls. –Voltaire

“Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.” –George Gilfillan

“Poetry is the best words in the best order.” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Poetry is the search for the inexplicable.” –Wallace Stevens

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” –Robert Frost

History of Poetry

Poetry was one of the first styles of writing. Poetry is found in The Bible, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tao, Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s plays, and in other epics, plays, and writings all the way up to the present. David’s psalms and Solomon’s songs are poetry for the most part.

What’s the Meter With You?

Meter played a huge part in traditional poetry up to recent times. Many contemporary poets ignore rhyme schemes and meter altogether. This is fine, but some poets still stick with traditional patterns.

Meter is a Matter of Feet

Metrical poetic lines are composed of various combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables. These combinations are called feet. While there are plenty of different kinds of feet, there are only five common feet.

1. Iamb

Approximately 90% of English verse is written in iambs. An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: “a book.” In “a book,” the word “book” is obviously stronger than the simple article “a;” therefore, the combination is an iamb. When words are polysyllabic (containing more than one syllable) you need not make such guesses—simply looking the word up in a dictionary will reveal which syllables in the word are stressed and which are not.

Example: “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?” –Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In this line, “soft,” “light” “yon-,” “win-,” and “breaks” are all stressed. This line is written with four perfect iambs.

2. Trochee

The trochee is the exact opposite of the iamb: It is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. In the word “nothing,” the first syllable is stressed while the second syllable is not. “Heartless,” “never,” and “monkey” are all trochees. Trochees have a slight falling rhythm.

Example: “Double, double, toil and trouble.” –Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this line, “Dou-,” “dou-,” “toil,” and “trou-” are all stressed. Again, a dictionary will help with polysyllabic words.

3. Anapest

The anapest is composed of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. “In the woods” is an anapest. “In” and “the” are unstressed while “woods” is stressed. With the two unstressed syllables before the stress, the anapest has a rising feeling in its rhythm.

Example: “For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” –Edgar Allen Poe. In this line, “moon,” “beams,” bring-,” “dreams,” “beau-,” “An-,” and “Lee” are all stressed. Note that above I said “never” was an iamb. Here, it becomes part of an anapest because of the established rhythm of the line. Part of the confusion with meter comes from the malleability of words and sounds. A master at the craft knows how best to manipulate his or her words.

4. Dactyl

The dactyl is the opposite of the anapest: it’s a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. It is quite uncommon in poetry. Opposite the anapest, dactyls create a falling sensation stronger than that of the trochee. “Heartlessly” is a dactyl.

Example: “Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall.” –Robert Frost’s “The Runaway.” In this line, “Once,” “snow,” “year,” “-ginn-,” and “fall” are all stressed. Notice that the stressed syllable at the end, “fall,” stands on its own without two unstressed syllables following it. Lines tend to end on stressed syllables for effect. Lines that end on unstressed syllables are said to have feminine (or weak) endings. These too can be used to have some sort of effect. When rhyming, it is advised to rhyme on stressed syllables unless there is a good reason not to.

5. Spondee

The spondee is composed of two stressed syllables back to back. It is usually used for effect because of the strength that comes with two stresses so close together.

Example: “Heart, heart…” In one of my own poems, “The Period,” I use the spondee “strong verbs” as a substitution for an iamb because of the force I was trying to create in the line.

Feet Feat

As I said before, lines of poetry are formed by a combination of feet. The number of feet in each line of poetry determines the kind of poem it is.

1. Monometer is a rare line form that contains only one foot.

2. Dimeter is fairly uncommon as well. It contains two feet per line.

3. Trimeter is more common. It has three feet per line.

4. Tetrameter is really common and has four feet in each line.

5. Pentameter is at the center of the English language. It contains five feet. Sonnets and many other forms of poetry take the form of pentameter. Iambic pentameter (a line with five iambs) is the most common poetic line in the English language.

6. Hexameter is fairly common too. It has six feet per line.

7. Heptameter has seven feet.

8. Octometer has eight feet.

Lines composed of seven or more feet (heptameter, octometer, etc.) are often broken down into shorter lines. Heptameter, for example, is sometimes simply broken down into a tetrameter line followed by a trimeter line—the ballad form. Lines that are too long lose their rhythmic effects.

Scansion

Scansion is the exercise of marking stresses in lines of poetry. If you were to scan Shakespeare’s sonnets, you would find most of them to be written almost entirely in iambic pentameter. Anything out of the ordinary is considered a substitution for effect. When scanning, always check polysyllabic words in a dictionary before you do anything else. Note that some monosyllabic words are almost always unstressed—prepositions, articles, etc.

With practice and a little extra reading, you should be well on your way to writing metrical poetry.