Meter and types of rhyme in poetry

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry, measured in units called feet. The most common foot in English is the iamb, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (da-DUM, as in "a-WAKE"); others include the trochee (DUM-da), the anapest (da-da-DUM), and the dactyl (DUM-da-da). The number of feet in a line gives its length: tetrameter has four, pentameter five. Iambic pentameter, five iambs per line, is the meter of Shakespeare's sonnets and plays, and unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse. Poets also use several types of rhyme. End rhyme falls at the ends of lines; internal rhyme falls within a line, as in Poe's "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary"; slant rhyme uses similar but not identical sounds, like "soul" and "all"; and eye rhyme uses words that look alike but sound different, like "love" and "move." A rhyme scheme labels end rhymes with letters; a Shakespearean sonnet rhymes ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. These choices create effects: a steady meter can feel calm or march forward while a broken rhythm draws attention to a word, rhyme links ideas and creates a sense of unity or closure, as in the final couplet of a sonnet, and slant rhyme can suggest tension or something unresolved.

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