How to Identify Rhythm and Meter in Poetry

hi everyone today we're going to look at how to identify the rhythm and meter of poem this is an important skill to learn for study of poetry and for English so the goal by the end of this video is to be able to look at line of poetry like this and categorize it in terms of its rhythm and meter for example this one is am the tetrameter so first let's understand what rhythm and meter our rhythm is the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables in word or line when we speak we emphasize certain syllables for example if we think of the word belong the bee is unstressed we doughnut precise it and the long is stressed we emphasize it belong all the word fragile we stress the fright and we don't stress the jail fragile let's look then at the two ways we classify rhythm these sequences of stress and unstressed syllables an iambic foot foot simply meaning the sequence is an unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable just like along today destroy delay we stress the second syllable trochaic foot is the opposite stressed syllable first followed by an unstressed syllable second just like fragile ankle fruitful Pantha iron become trochaic described as two of the sequences of syllables there are many others but these are the main two and we'll save the others for another time so how do we identify meter meter is the regularity of the rhythm so how many times in one line are there unstressed stressed or stressed unstressed syllables if there's only one foot for example an unstressed syllable and stressed syllable the meter is mono meter if there are two feet for example unstressed stressed unstressed stressed the meeting is diming time if there are three four five or six we classify the meter is trimeter tetrameter and Amador hexameter so put these things into practice let's look at line of poetry the goal is to finish the sentence this line is written in certain rhythm and certain meter so this is the first line of wandered lonely as cloud by William Wordsworth wandered lonely as cloud so for the rhythm let's identify the sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables you may find it helpful to recite the line out loud and then listen for where the stressed syllables are wandered lonely as cloud so we have this kind of bouncing rhythm the barber barber barber bar wandered lonely as cloud the first syllable is unstressed followed by stressed and so on so we know we have an iambic foot we know then that we have an iambic rhythm now to find the meter how many am big feet do we have how many times do we have an unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable well you may find that useful to count the stressed syllables on your fingers as you listen to yourself read wandered lonely as cloud there are four groups of unstressed unstressed syllables so if we go back and check out meter table we have four syllables is tetrameter which you can say I've marked out on there so therefore this line is written in iambic tetrameter so that's how we identify the rhythm and meter of line here are some more examples that you can practice with by pausing this video if you're unsure of something go back and watch over that part again