What's the trick to metering a poem?

Question

(Educated answers only, please.)

Answer 1

"In all sustained spoken English we sense a rhythm; that is, a recognizable though varying pattern in the beat of the stresses, or accents (the more forcefully uttered, hence louder syllables), in the stream of speech-sounds. In meter, this rhythm is structured in a recurrence of regular -- that is, approximately equivalent -- units of stress-pattern.

The meter is determined by the pattern of stronger and weaker stresses on the syllables composing the words in the verse-line; the stronger is called the "stressed" syllable and all the weaker ones the "unstressed" syllables. Three major factors determine where the stresses will fall in a line of verse:

(1) Most important is the "word accent" in words of more than one syllable; in the noun accent itself, for example, the stress falls on the first syllable.
(2) There are also many monosyllabic words in the language, and on which of these -- in a sentence or a phrase -- the stress will fall depends on the grammatical function of the word. (we normally put stronger stress on nouns, verbs, and adjectives, for example, than on articles or prepositions), and depends also on the "rhetorical accent", or the emphasis we give a word because we want to enhance its importance in a particular utterance.
(3) Another determinant of perceived stress is the prevailing "metric accent", which is the beat that we have come to expect in the metrical composition."

Answer 2

The meter is the beat. If you say a nursery rhyme (like Humpty Dumpty) and clap the stresses, then you have the meter.

Below is a very simple piece of verse where the meter is wrong. Under that is the right version.

My cat is black
And I call him by the name of Mac
He's not a computer
But he sometimes is a looter
He steals my fish
Right off my yellow dish.

That's all over the place. Now look at the right version.

My cat is black
His name is Mac
No computer
Just a looter
Stealing fish
Right off my dish

Now look again. The CAPS denote the stressed syllables. Note that the stress must fall on the natural (normally stressed) part of the word. If you used the word "province" you would have to stress it as PROV-ince, not pro-VINCE.

My CAT is BLACK
His NAME is MAC
NO comPUTer
JUST a LOOTer
STEALing FISH
Right OFF my DISH.

Answer 3

You have to establish a beat and stick with it through the rest of the poem, unless breaking the meter is necessary to make a hidden sort of statement. A lot of times when I'm working with iambic petameter, I count the beat out, da-da da-da da-da da-da

The stress of your syllables will make a huge impact on the way the poem is read.

Answer 4

Read excellent poetry and find out. And by excellent, I don't mean the garbage all the kids post here on this idiotic site. I mean REAL, serious, excellent poetry. Try Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandberg, etc.

Answer 5

There is no trick. You just have to come up with some rules.

Answer 6

use a poemeter. I can't believe you had to ask that.