What is a meter?By Jamie Shin

What is a meter?

Meter in poetry is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

There are many meter patterns are: iambic, trochaic, dactylic, and anapestic (there will be more later on)

What is a foot?Each pair of unstressed and stressed syllables

There are many different foot lengths:

Monometer-One Foot

Dimeter-Two Feet

Trimeter-Three Feet

Tetrameter- Four Feet

Pentameter- Five Feet

..Hexameter

Six Feet

..Heptameter

Seven Feet

..Octameter

Eight Feet

ddd

syllable patterns 1

...Iamb (Iambic)

Unstressed + Stressed

.........Two Syllables

...Trochee (Trochaic)

Stressed + Unstressed

.........Two Syllables

syllable patterns 2

...Spondee (Spondaic)

Stressed + Stressed

.........Two Syllables

...Anapest (Anapestic)

Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed

.........Three Syllables

syllable patterns 3

...Dactyl (Dactylic

Stressed + Unstressed + Unstressed

.........Three Syllables

Catalexis- absence of an unstressed syllable

example 1

ShallI..|..comPARE..|..theeTO..|..aSUM..|..mer’s DAY?

this is an iambic pentameter- there are 5 feet, making it a penta (five) meter, and the syllable pattern is unstressed.. stressed, which makes it a iambic.

example 2This is a trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables) : Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers

This is an anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables) :And the sound | of a voice | that is still

This is a adactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a trochee replaces the last dactyl) :This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks

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