Meter and Feet

 

 

Marking meter in poetry is also called scansion.

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Now for some notes:

Stress= /  (ictus)             Unstressed= U (breve) or  – (macron)

Iamb: one unstressed and one stressed syllable ( U / )  = iambic

Trochee: one stressed and one unstressed syllable ( / U ) = trochaic

Anapest: two unstressed and one stressed syllable ( U U / ) =anapestic

Dactyl: one stressed and two unstressed syllables ( / U U ) = dactylic

Spondee: two stressed syllable ( / / ) = spondaic

Disyllable Feet (2 syllables in each foot)

Trisyllable Feet (3 syllables in each foot)

Standard Poetic Feet: 

• A “foot” refers to one unit (consists of two or three syllables) of poetic meter.
• Meter defines the number of feet in a single line of poetry.

1 foot= monometer

2 feet: dimeter

3 feet: trimeter

4 feet: tetrameter

5 feet: pentameter

6 feet: hexameter

7 feet: heptameter

8 feet: octameter

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Examples:

from “A Bird, came down the Walk”

u     /     u      /      u      /         u     /              (iambic trimeter)

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon

/               /      u     /       u       /                     (spondee, 2 iambs)

Leap, plashless as they swim.                                          *plashless= splashless

 

excerpt from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

/       u    /      u  /       u         /     u      /     u    /    u    /      u      /        u               (trochaic octameter)

Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary.

 

Your turn:

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the house.

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Online Practice

Practice with Mr. Cooney’s English Class.

Practice prosody (the patterns of sound and rhythm used in poetry) here.

Practice online with the University of Virginia’s interactive tutorial. 

 

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Additional Information:

Caesura (II) is indicated with a double-pipe (II) and signals a brief pause outside of the metrical rhythm.

• initial caesura: near the beginning of the line
• medial caesura: near the middle of the line
• terminal caesura: (You guessed it!) near the end of the line