Meter of poetry

Yes, what about you?

If you read a lot of poetry, you will notice that some has a decent meter, and some has no discernible meter. Even some lyric poetry has no meter, but the singer puts it in.

Poetry has many, many types of meter, and no two of them read alike. Each meter is specific, and has rules.

Sadly, when most think about poetry they think only about the sing-song iambic pentameter. Much good poetry has been written using this meter, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride. In this poem, the meter, if read properly, sounds like a galloping horse. http://www.legallanguage.com/resources/poems/midnightride/

If you don't know the various meters and forms and structures, or what a metric foot is and how to use it, you aren't writing metered poetry, you're just writing prose, or, at best, free verse, which is seldom poetry, either.

jaus tail said:

Hello,

When you write/read a poetry do you read it as a song, meter or as prose?

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Yes.

When I write or read metrical poetry, I write or read it as metrical poetry.

Jamesaritchie said:

Sadly, when most think about poetry they think only about the sing-song iambic pentameter. Much good poetry has been written using this meter, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Paul Revere's Ride. In this poem, the meter, if read properly, sounds like a galloping horse. http://www.legallanguage.com/resources/poems/midnightride/]

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1. It's not iambic pentameter; look at all the nine-syllable lines.

2. It's a mix of iambs and anapests; it's the anapests that sound gallopy.

3. If you have lots of nine-syllable lines, the poem isn't iambic pentameter; that requires a ten-syllable line.

5. Longfellow tends to scatter anapests in his poems like daisies in a meadow. It's one of the things you can use to blind-test identify Longfellow.

The sound galloping does have three hoof beats...