Classroom Series: Meter

Finding Your Poetic Rhythm

Jun 23, 2026

Dear read poetry friends,

Sometimes, the hardest part of writing poetry isn’t finding the perfect words for a feeling, but instead the true bones of the poem. It can be daunting when starting to try and wade through all of the different terms and rules for different types of poetry. Though never beholden to following them exactly, familiarizing yourself with the fundamentals can be crucial in strengthening your poetry practice.

One of the most essential building blocks of a poem is its meter. Meter (or metre) is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms as “the pattern of measured sound-units recurring more or less regularly in lines of verse.” It’s what you recognize when feeling the rhythm of the syllables in a poem, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a verse.

The descriptive words we use for meter have been inherited from Greek and Latin quantitative systems, and therefore are very different from how we think of measurement in the metric or imperial systems. For example, a foot is the unit of measurement used to measure accentual-syllabic meter. Typically containing one stressed and at least one unstressed syllable, the feet are how the types of meter are defined.

A poem is typically written in one of four principal metrical systems:

Quantitative meter
In this meter, the rhythm is based on the length of time it takes to pronounce syllables, rather than how the syllables are stressed. Syllables are long or short, instead of varying in pitch or stress. The distinction of “long and short” is harder to identify in English, but in Classical Greek and Italian poetry, such as the opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid, are easier to determine from the rhythm. The rules are complicated for determining the length of a syllable, but as it doesn’t translate well to many languages — so it should likely not come up in your poetry composing!

Syllabic meter
The meter is determined by the number of syllables per line, as opposed to the number of stresses. This meter is very natural to languages like French or Japanese, which place more emphasis on sound weight than on stressed beats in speech. The haiku and tanka are common forms of this meter.

Dylan Thomas’s “ Poem in October” is an example of syllabic verse in English. In the beginning lines “It was my thirtieth year to heaven/Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood” the syllabic meter gives the lines a rich musicality.

Accentual meter
Determined by the number of stressed syllables in each line — but not determined by the total number of syllables. This form is most common in Old English and later English, with works like Beowulf and many traditional nursery rhymes.

Accentual-syllabic meter
Accentual-syllabic meter is likely what you think of first when you think of meter in poetry. It is the meter most commonly found in English verse since Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The number of stresses determines what type of accentual-syllabic meter you’re working in (a dimeter is two stresses, a trimeter is three, a tetrameter is four, and so on). Within the accentual-syllabic, there are a few forms of meter that are the most common and accessible to learn.

• Iambic meter

Typically associated with William Shakespeare, who wrote all his plays and poems in the meter. It is one of the most commonly used meters of the accentual-syllabic. It’s a rhythmic pattern consisting of “iambs,” or metrical feet made of two syllables, the first being unstressed and the second being stressed.

• Trochaic meter

Each line in trochaic meter consists of “trochees,” or two-syllable feet with a stressed syllable and then an unstressed syllable, creating a rhythm that sounds like falling. This meter was favored by poets William Blake and W.B. Yeats and in such works as “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe.

Meter is complex to understand (as are many of the rhythmic structures of poetry), but by learning some of these basics, you’re ready to dive into structuring your next poem.

Poem of the Week
Each week, I feature a poem under our monthly theme at the end of the Substack article, with the opportunity for a subscriber to submit a poem along that theme and to be featured on our page. Send us a direct message on Substack to be considered! This June, we’ll be highlighting a theme of community.

“ About Standing (in Kinship)” by Kimberly Blaeser
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

We all have the same little bones in our foot  
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.  
Together they build something strong—  
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.  
The bones don’t get casts when they break.  
We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.  
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—  
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)  
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.  
Maybe we should give more honor to feet  
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—  
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.  

💌 P.S. What’s your favorite meter to write in?
Not my favorite, but a friend recently wrote a poem in dactylic tetrameter (dactylic meter is a form of accentual-syllabic where a foot is made of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed), and that was quite fun to read! I think personally I am a sucker for trochaic meter.