Poetry Meters

I've always had a difficult time with poetry. Not only because I didn't understand what it was supposed to mean and represent, but because I didn't know how to figure out the feet and meters even though I've been taught over and over again. However, I finally got it this past semester.

Trochee    / ˘     as in "ugly"
Iamb         ˘ /     as in "because"
Anapest    ˘ ˘ /   as in "intervene"
Dactyl      / ˘ ˘    as in "butterfly"
Spondee  / /      as in "fast paced"
Pyrrhus   ˘ ˘      as in "at the"

Each of those are a foot. Think of / as the sound DUM and ˘ as the sound da.


So ugly is DUM da.
Because is da DUM.
Intervene is da da DUM.
Butterfly is DUM da da.
Fast paced is DUM DUM.
At the is da da.

Does that make sense? I hope so.

So each of those are a foot. How many feet there are in a line determines the meter.

1 foot is a monometer.
2 is a dimeter.
3 is trimeter.
4 is tetrameter.
5 is pentameter.
6 is hexameter.
7 is heptameter.
8 is octameter.

Here's a poem entitled "Incident" written by Countee Cullen we can practice on:


Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

So it's like:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM


da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da


da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

da DUM da DUM da DUM da

The majority is in Iambic Tetrameter. But the poet played with the meter in the 2nd and 3rd stanzas to emphasize the word the boy said and how it messed up the other boy's stride.

It's interesting to me that poetry is much more complicated than people would think. But it's almost like concentrating a story to it's strongest form and using a variety of methods and tools to speak to the reader in a multitude of ways. Poetry really has grown on me.