Poetic Rhythm

Blogs are supposed to be overly intimate and confessional, right? I have a confession to make. It's an embarrassing though probably not particularly interesting confession. But here it goes. Since starting this whole poetry project I have been struggling to understand precisely what poetic meter refers to. I mean, what exactly is meter? That is my question. Yes, Edward Hirsch went over it in the glossary of his excellent book, and I read that definition (and all the definitions for the related terms like iambic pentameter and, heaven help me, spondee) many, many, many times and I still didn't get it. At all.

Even though he couldn't explain it to me himself, Hirsch did not abandon me there. He recommended some other books on the topic. I thought for a while about whether I wanted to pursue it. One of the promises I made to myself was that I wasn't going to get too academic about all this. But I decided that this is actually something I want to understand and so I got a copy of Derek Attridge's 'Poetic Rhythm' and started reading it last weekend. I made it through the first chapter and it's a lot more inspiring than I expected it to be. Here is a quote I liked from page 2:

"Reading poetry requires time; each word needs to emerge and fulfill itself before we go onto the next. A poem is a real-time event. Our habit of skimming for sense when we read a newspaper or a novel, of barely noticing the little words that take us from one kernel of meaning to the next, is a great asset in modern civilization, but it doesn't stand us in good stead when it comes to poetry, which simply cannot work as poetry if it is read in this way."

I think that explains at least one of the reasons why reading poetry is so hard or at least doesn't come very naturally to someone like me.

So, I'm one chapter in. Do I understand what meter is now? Not really. Not yet. But Attridge assures me that if I can read and understand English, then I can get this. I believe him. On the bright side, I do know what a scansion is now. But I have another question. I do not blame anyone else for my ignorance, but really- shouldn't I, at some point, have seen this in school?