"Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng."

from "Metrical Feet—A Lesson for a Boy," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

That's right, we're talking about meter—all those scary words and old-fashioned concepts of what makes a poem.  Trochee, Iamb, Dactyl, Anapest: the whole lot.  And by the time we're done, you can go around spouting phrases that make you look fantastically smart.  (For example, a recent conversation with my coworker:  "Thank you for the poem; it wasn't actually dactylic, but it did have some great anapestic lines."  "....Was that even English?")

In essence, meter is all about syllables and stress.  We know how to count syllables for haiku and other eastern fixed forms; meter is just an extension of that concept.  In spoken language, there is emphasis on certain parts of words.  For example, the word London.  Two syllables, emphasis on the first syllable.  London, not London.  We call emphasized syllables stressed, and syllables that aren't emphasized are called unstressed. Once you have an idea where the stresses are, look for patterns.

Let's take the first line from Coleridge's poem above:

"Trochee trips from long to short"

When you mark the stressed syllables:

"Trochee trips from long to short"

Note how every other syllable is stressed?  You can then break it up like this:

"Trochee / trips from / long to / short"

The patterns you've found and marked off are called feet.  Remember those scary words from the beginning?  Trochee, iamb, dactyl, and anapest?  Those are all types of feet.  They're names for the four basic patterns you find when breaking lines up in to stressed and unstressed syllables.  See, a lot simpler than it first looks.  Syllables and stress, and the patterns they make.

In the rest of this tutorial, I'll define the four feet, giving examples and a few words about their uses.  I'll also include two lesser feet: spondees and pyrrhic (mostly because Coleridge mentioned spondees in his poem).  By the end, hopefully you will have an understanding of the basics of meter—and maybe be willing to try it out for yourself!




Let's get started:



Iamb (Iambic): bah-BUM

"Iambics march from short to long…"

The iamb is by far and away the most commonly used foot.  Shakespeare is perhaps its most well-known propagator; he wrote almost strictly in iambs (seriously.  Go check it out.)

For a more contemporary example, let's look at Philip Larkin's poem, "This Be the Verse."

"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do."

Now, noting where the stresses are:

"They fuck / you up, / your mum / and dad.
  They may / not mean / to, but / they do."

It's interesting that Larkin chose iambs for this particular poem.  I've heard them compared to heartbeats.  They are also theorized to be the closest to natural speech.





Trochee (Trochaic):  BUM-bah

"Trochee trips from long to short…"

The trochee is the opposite of the iamb, and only slightly less popular.  It can be a little more difficult to work with (you can't start with 'the,' 'a' or 'and'), but certainly no less fun.  Check out John Donne's "Song":

"Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root
  Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot."

And with stresses:

"Go and / catch a / falling / star,
Get with / child a / mandrake / root
  Tell me / where all / past years / are,
Or who / cleft the / Devil's / foot."

Trochees are a bit more lighthearted than iambs.  They bounce along, like someone skipping.  They can add a singsong element to a poem.





Anapest (Anapestic): bah-bah-BUM

"With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng."

Anapests are a personal favorite.  They are frequently used in humorous poems (the last two lines of limericks are anapestic).  Making them subtle takes skill, as in Elise Paschen's "Confederacy":

"Wear the heart like a home
as in Patsy Cline's song"

Marking the stresses:

"Wear the heart / like a home
as in Pat / sy Cline's song"

Anapests can have a galloping, or rocking sound.  I've seen them used very effectively to create a rollicking rhythm (for humorous or rowdy topics), or to give a sense of the sea and waves.  If this is not something you are going for, using a word to bridge between anapests (as Paschen did with "Patsy") can help to minimize the effect.




Dactyl (Dactylic):  BUM-bah-bah

"Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable"

The dactyl is the opposite of the anapest: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones.  As with anapests, dactyls can have a singsong quality.  See this line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline":

"This is the forest primeval.  The murmuring pines and the hemlocks"

And with stresses:

"This is the / Forest prim / eval.  The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks"

Note how "Primeval" is broken up, just as "Patsy" was in Paschen's poem.  Once again, this helps to make the flow a little smoother.  Dactyls have the same rhythm as a waltz.  Here, Longfellow gives an eerie twist to the gentle musicality of dactyls; there's almost the sound of a children's song, put in to a spooky context.




I promised to explain spondees and pyrrhic back at the beginning.  These two are not really part of the metrical feet, as iambs, trochees, anapests and dactyls are.  They're more often used to transition between two different types of feet (iamb to trochee, anapest to iamb, and so on).

A pyrrhic (pyrrhic in adjective form, as well) is two unstressed syllables together.

A spondee (spondaic) is two stressed syllables together.

An example of both can be found in this selection from Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool":

"Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool.  We
Left school. We…."

Noting the stresses:

"Seven / at the / Golden / Shovel.

We real cool.  We
  Left school.  We…"

Pyrrhic: "at the."  Spondee: the entire body of the poem.  If you're interested in spondees, I highly recommend reading the rest of "We Real Cool."  It's the only entirely spondaic (granted, less the opening lines) poem I have come across.




I hope this introduction has been helpful.  If you are interested in learning more advanced meter, I recommend Meter, Rhyme and Free Verse, by G. S. Fraser.  It's intense, but worth it.  If you would like to see more examples of well-used meter in a modern context, check out any of Philip Larkin's works (High Windows is a masterpiece), or delve into the New Formalists (the collection A Formal Feeling Comes contains both informative essays, and excellent examples of what meter can do for a poem).