What is a meter in the poem?

The general structure of poetry

• You can typically recognize a poem by its rhyme. These are similar-sounding words that appear at the end of the line. A line in the poem is called a verse. Several verses can be combined into one stanza. This is made clear to you formally by a paragraph and in terms of content by a new thought.
• The syllables in a verse are decisive for recognizing the meter in a poem. You need to find out the syllable boundaries in a word.
• Meter means something like meter. It gives you the rhythm and mood of the poem again. Furthermore, as the reader, you will recognize how you should perform the lyric work in order to reproduce the content with the correct intonations.

How to recognize a meter

On a syllable of a word in the poem there may be a verse foot, that is, you need to stress that syllable. Such verse feet are evenly distributed over the entire line of a stanza. So you need to first find out which syllable of a word is stressed.

1. To do this, first clap the syllables of a word and then pronounce the word loud and clear, but not exaggerated. Try changing the accent by stressing the first syllable once and another later. You can hear wrong accents.


Erlkönig - determine the meter

The "Erlkönig" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is also characterized by its rhythmic ...

2. Once you have determined the stress of a word, check whether there is a stress on every second or third following syllable. To do this, proceed as described above with each individual word.
3. Put a small check mark next to each syllable that you heard the stress on. This will give you a better overview at the end and will allow you to quickly name the meter in the poem.

Four types of meters in the poem

• The iambus is the most common verse foot. It begins with an unstressed syllable and continues with an alternation of one stressed and one unstressed.
• If the first syllable is accented and then unstressed and accented ones alternate, it is a trochee.
• If the poem begins with a stressed syllable and is followed by two unstressed syllables, followed by another stressed and two unstressed syllables, you have a dactyl in front of you.
• If you speak two unstressed syllables right at the beginning and then only one stressed syllable, you will know that it is an anapaest.
• Since the iambus and anapast have an increasing emphasis, a cheerful mood is conveyed in such poems. With Trochäus and Dactylus this tends to be sad or thoughtful, which is the reason for the descending emphasis.

According to these definitions, each poem has its own rhythm. Often times the meter stays the same throughout the poem. But there is also Poetryin which the meter changes from verse to verse or, rarely, from line to line.