Metre

Metre in Poetry

By the end of this you should be able to:
+ read a line of poetry and work out where the stresses should be
+ name some basic metric feet and the effects created by them

Stress in English

It is natural to stress some syllables and not others in English.

EXAMPLE: in ‘Elephant’, the stress goes on the first ‘eh’ sound.

E-le-phant

The other two syllables are unstressed. Try putting the stress on the last syllable: it doesn’t sound natural.

Rhyme sometimes tells you where to put the stresses, as you can see from the nursery rhyme below:

(By the way: Stressed syllable = emboldened
Unstressed syllable = plain)

Up Jack got and home did trot as fast as he could caper

He went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper

Q: What are the effects of this metre?
(It has a sing-song quality, but also a feeling of predictability, of ‘safeness’)

Rhythm refers to the way a poem is to be read out loud.

Our natural speech pattern in English is said to be the iamb: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, like so: di dum

Shakespeare’s poetry, especially in his plays, often relies upon the use of iambic pentameter, that is, each line is ten syllables, five unstressed, five stressed.

If you put the stresses into most famous speech from Hamlet in this pattern, it would look like this:

To be or not to be; that is the question

Yet, in poetry, we should remember that emphasis is King!

Try reading it out loud: it sounds lifeless and formulaic. This is because a live reading would bring to life the stress patterns of real speech, which is unpredictable and prone to emphasising important words.

Bearing that in mind, where should the stresses go? Experiment with different ways of saying this line. What does Hamlet mean?

Your answer should look something like this:
To be or not to be; that is the question

This ensures the focus is a burning issue of life or death for Hamlet, so when Shakespeare or any other writer departs from a regular metre, you should ask yourself why. Usually it is to try and shift focus – the writer is trying to highlight something important.

Q. How do newsreaders use metre? Note the syllables they stress and those they do not. Would you read that line in a similar manner, or does it sound ‘unnatural’?

Here are some basic metric feet, or rhythms which poets commonly use, and words which obey the stress pattern. I have also included a brief comment on each to help you write about metre.

Iambic: ~ / ‘forgive’ ‘return’ = rhythm of natural speech
= sombre effect; stressed syllable first

Trochaic: / ~ ‘hollow’ ‘empty’ = often used in nursery rhymes, a strong metrical pattern

Dactylic: / ~ ~ ‘elephant’ ‘heavily’ = when repeated, waltz-like

Anapestic: ~ ~ / ‘intervene’ ‘supersede’ = adds excitement

Punctuation

The following tet is an extract from Macbeth, Act II, Sc. ii. The Macbeths have just murdered Duncan.

‘LADY M. Did you not speak?

MACB. When?

LADY M. Now.

MACB. As I descended?

LADY M. Ay.

MACB. Hark!--Who lies i’ the second chamber?

LADY M. Donalbain.’

Q. Where are the pauses being deployed?
(Think about the mood and tension implied.)

To what effect have they been placed there?

Caesura – a pause occurring in the middle of a line

‘HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
…
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.’

Pauses slow the pace here, creating an effect of time winding down. Why does the poet want to do that?

(Caesura can be seen as doing the opposite of enjambement, which tends to make you read a poem at a faster pace than if it was end-stopped.)