When you go to the eye doctor to check your vision, they sit you down in front of what's called the faux-roptor, and they flip through a series of lenses to determine the best one for your eyes. Is this better? Or is this better? When you get the wrong lens combination, the world blurs, and you have trouble reading letters. When you get the right combination, those letters sharpen and you can read. Reading a poem's meter allowed is a similar way to test your ears. According to this line of poetry, the opening to William Shakespeare's famous summit number 18, which of the following reading sounds better? This one? Shall I compare the two a Psalm Merz' Day? Or this one? Shall I compare the two a Psalm Merz' Day? The first one, right? What about this opening line to Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Raven? This one? Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary. Or this one? Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary? The first one again, right? In both cases, the reason the first example works is because my pronunciation matches the poetic meter of the words in each line. The other readings I've read in the opposite meter, and they sound funny and unnatural. So how do we describe this difference? The most common way to do so in English is to follow the stresses in each phrase of the line. As you probably know, words in the English language are composed of a set of stressed and unstressed syllables. In poetry, these syllables are often arranged to create repeating sonic units, what literary critics call feet, that compose the meter of a given poem. Shakespeare's summit shall I compare the two a Psalm Merz' Day? As the following, Metricle pattern, the dum, the dum, the dum, the dum, the dum, the dum. The repeating unit here is one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable. This type of Metricle foot is called an I am, and there are five of them here. Since Penta is the prefix for five, we call this Metricle form Iambic pentameter, the most common meter in English poetry. In Poe's line, once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary, you'll notice the opposite pattern, dotum, dotum, dotum, dotum, dotum, dotum, dotum, dotum. Repeating unit in this pattern is one stressed and one unstressed syllable. This Metricle foot is called a trokey, and there are eight of them in this line. Since octo or octa are the prefixes for eight, we call Poe's Metricle form Trochaic octameter. I am's and trokeys are two of the most common types of Metricle feet, so you'll definitely want to look for them when reading poetry. But poems can also use Metricle units of three syllables. Consider the following opening lines from climate Clark Moors, a visit from St. Nicholas. It was the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even amounts. Here the meter pattern is unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed, towards the night before Christmas. This unit is called an anapest, and there are four of them in each line here. The prefix for four is tetra, so the meter is anapestic tetrometer. The final common Metricle foot is the opposite of an anapest, a dactyl, which is a three syllable unit that starts with a stress and ends with two unstressed syllables. The Greek poet Homer adopts this form in his great epic poems The Iliad and the Odyssey, and poems in English that adopt the dactylic form often allude to this legacy. For example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow uses dactylic hexameter in his epic poem of Angelie, which begins, This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. Dactyls may seem rare, but rap artists have recently adopted this triplet form to great effect. Consider the following lyrics from Migos' song for Sachi. Drown in incopliments pool in the back air that look like Metropolis. I think I'm selling a million first week man I guess I'm an optimist. Gordon Toronto, but sometimes I feel like Atlanta adopted us. With the subjects are obviously very different, the meter here is identical to Longfellow's and by extension Homer's epic poetry. Because there are six dactyls in each line, the meter of this song is also dactylic hexameter. I am Troki anapest dactyl. If you can recognize these four kinds of metrical feet, it will be well in your way to reading poetry in a clear and more natural sounding way. The next step of course is to determine why that matters, how meter can be used not only to read a poem or song, but also to interpret it. While there are many ways to answer this question, let me give you one simple suggestion that I have found useful in my teaching. Once you've identified the dominant metrical form in a given poem, look for moments where the meter breaks from that form. These moments are often good places to build out an interpretation, because when we spot them we can ask why the meter breaks at that place and what that sonic dissonance might be conveying. Consider the start of John Milton's epic poem with Paradise Lost, which tells the story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. While the poem is written in Iandic Pentameter, see if you can spot the moment where that meter breaks in these opening lines. Of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought Beth into the world and all are woe. If you can spot the metrical pattern, you can now ask why Milton might have chosen to break the meter at that specific moment. If you have any ideas, I hope you'll share them with me in the comments section below. In the meantime, good luck, stay healthy and happy reading.