What is poetic meter, and why is it useful when analysing poetry?

When we use spoken langauge, we naturally place a verbal stress on certain syllables. Poetic meter is esentially when a poet uses an identifiable pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in their poetry to create a rhythmic structure. There are several types of poetic meter to learn, which I will now go through. Let us intially take this famous poetic line from Wordsworth as an example: "I wandered lonely as a cloud" This line consists of a pattern of unstressed (x) and stressed (/) syllables, as I will show in bold: "I wandered lonely as a cloud" Here, there is a clear pattern of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. This type pattern is known as an iamb. Each time this pattern occurs in the line is called a 'foot'. As this happens four times in the example line, this line has four feet. Lines with four feet are refered to as 'tetrameter'. Because the line uses four iambic feet, we would say that the meter of this line is 'imabic tetrameter'. Different feet number, and different stress patterns all have different terms, and this is what is known as poetic meter. The reason it is useful to learn the terms for these patterns, as it can help us describe the effect a poet is seeking to create when analysing poetry. Different meters create different effects on poetry, such as placing stress on certain words to emphasise them, or changing the speed or rhythm of the poem. To be able to have the words to describe this meter helps us to consider what effect the poet is attempting to achieve. Meter is also important, as it can be disrupted (when the rhythmic pattern is broken) to create certain impacts on the reader. For example, when meter is disurpted, the poem can achieve a haunting effect, and this can be imporatnt to refer to when analysing poetry.