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Rhythm can be described as the beat and pace of a poem. The rhythmic beat is created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line or verse. In modern poetry, line breaks, repetition and even spaces for silence can help to create rhythm.

Rhythm can help to strengthen the meaning of words and ideas in a poem.

When we speak in ordinary conversation, we pronounce different parts of words, or syllables, separately. For example:

• Table has two beats, or two syllables: ta-ble

• Chair has only one syllable: chair

Some syllables seem to have a long or short sound when they are pronounced. Take the word, ‘table’. The first part of the word is emphasised when we say it. Ta-ble. The second part of the word sounds shorter.

We can call this different syllable emphasis stressed or unstressed. In the word ‘banana’, for example, the central syllable is longer, or stressed, when you say it naturally: ba-na-na. Try saying it out loud to hear where the natural emphasis falls.

Poets make use of these natural stresses in language in order to create rhythm in poetry. It can be helpful to think of rhythm in poetry as being like a beat in music.

In poetry, this pattern of the stressed and unstressed parts of words is called the metre, which is the number and type of rhythmic beats in a line of poetry.

In types of poems, such as haikus, the writer counts the number of syllables in each line. In metrical poetry, however, poets don’t count the number of syllables in each line; they count the number of ‘stresses’.

Within poetry the beat is the pattern of stresses within a line of verse. In music, a drummer or bass guitarist might create the beat for the rest of the band to follow, or a conductor might signal the beat to an orchestra or choir, but in poetry the rhythm is usually set by the ‘stresses’ in the words themselves.

All spoken word has a rhythm formed by stressed and unstressed syllables. Poets deliberately create rhythmical patterns to create particular effects. Traditionally, a poet uses metre – a regular pattern of stresses - to create a rhythmic pattern.

In modern poetry, a poet might also use line breaks to create rhythm.

For example, in William Carlos Williams’ To a Poor Old Woman the woman is eating plums:

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

The line breaks play with the rhythm. Here the breaks force the reader to shift their focus onto a different word on each line – even though it is the same sentence. Here it gives the effect of time slowing down as she’s enjoying the taste of the fruit.

Poets might even use a blank space in the line to create silence. For example, John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing begins:

I am here                        and there is nothing to say.

Just like in music, repeating lines or phrases as well as a refrain or chorus can also create rhythm in poetry.

Different rhythmic patterns are created by choosing where the emphasis (stress) falls in the line. These patterns all have names:

• An iamb: unstressed / stressed – da-DUM
• A trochee: stressed / unstressed – DUM-da
• A spondee: stressed / stressed – DUM-DUM
• An anapaest: unstressed / unstressed / stressed – da-da-DUM
• A dactyl: stressed / unstressed / unstressed – DUM-da-da

Poets arrange their words in such a way as to create those rhythmical patterns.

For example, the poet, Lord Byron in The Destruction of Sennacherib used an anapaestic rhythm to create the sound of horses riding into battle. The rolling rhythm makes the Assyrian army sound unstoppable, the bolded stressed syllables shows this:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Which rhythm is which?

The metre in a line of poetry is identified through the stressed and unstressed pattern of words. Poetic rhythms are measured in metrical feet.

A metrical foot usually has one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables. Different poets use the pattern of the metre to create different effects.

The type of meter is determined by the number of feet in a line:

• Dimeter: contains two metrical feet
• Trimeter: contains three metrical feet
• Tetrameter: contains four metrical feet
• Pentameter: contains five metrical feet
• Hexameter: contains six metrical feet

One of the most frequently used patterns of metre is iambic pentameter and it is very common in William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. An iamb is a metrical foot that is made up of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one: da-DUM.

‘Penta’ means five. So a line of iambic pentameter contains five iambs, or five sections of da-DUM. So each line is da-DUM- da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM.

For example, in Sonnet 104, Shakespeare begins:

To me fair friend you never can be old,

There are five sections to the line, and five stresses, following that da-DUM pattern, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

To me fair friend you never can be old,

Iambic pentameter can be roughly summarised as having 10 syllables a line. This is not always true due to the stressed and unstressed syllables but a quick guide is to count the syllables in each line. If each one has 10 or 11 then it is likely to be iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter is thought to be the sound of natural conversation and so poets will often use it to create a conversational or natural feel to the poem.

Although iambs, the da-DUM pattern, are common in poetry, there are other rhythms too. When the stresses fall at the beginning of the metrical foot, making a DUM-da pattern, we call these feet trochees.

The witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth occasionally speak in a pattern of trochaic tetrameter.

Double, double toil, and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

This emphasis sounds unnatural in comparison to the more conversational iambic rhythm of the other characters in the play. Perhaps Shakespeare is emphasising the other-worldliness of the witches by having them speak this way. Other supernatural creatures in Shakespeare's plays, such as the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream also have lines which use a form of trochaic tetrameter.

Different rhythms can have different effects on a reader. A poet will use rhythm to generate a mood or tone, which may copy or echo what the poem is about.

In The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the rhythm sounds like galloping hooves adding to the dramatic re-telling of the famous charge on horseback into the enemy’s guns :

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
 �į Rode the six hundred.

Remember

A poet is often trying to say a lot in just a few words, and so understanding rhythm will help with your understanding of the whole poem.

Just like in the music in a film, the beat or rhythm helps to build an expectation of the content.