The meter of a poem contains a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. A stressed syllable provides more vocal emphasis, whereas unstressed has little emphasis when spoken.
Meters are broken into feet. A foot describes a pair of unstressed and stressed syllables in a line of poetry.
The five types of feet in poetry include the iamb or unstressed then stressed syllables, the trochee; stressed then unstressed syllables, the spondee which includes stressed and stressed syllables, the anapest; unstressed, unstressed, then stressed syllables and the dactyl; made up of stressed syllables followed by two unstressed syllables.
Line lengths are also important. Lines can range from one foot, known as monometer, to eight feet, known as octameter and above.
Poetry meters can include any combination of counts. Shakespeare was famed for writing iambic pentameter, while Robert Frost tended to scatter different meter counts throughout his poetry.