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Fractured meter

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Meter that deliberately disrupts expected rhythmic patterns through irregular stresses, pauses, or syncopation.

Detailed Definition
Fractured meter describes a rhythmic pattern deliberately broken or irregular—through missing beats, extra syllables, or conflicting stresses—to convey instability, emotional distress, or thematic dissonance; this technique rejects metrical consistency in favor of expressive authenticity, using rhythmic “cracks” to mirror psychological or social fragmentation.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “No Worst, There Is None,” fractured meter mirrors despair: “Pitched past pitch of grief”; In Emily Dickinson, dashes create fractured meter: “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”; Contemporary poet Claudia Rankine fractures meter in “Citizen” to embody racial dissonance; In Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” meter fractures with bodily trauma: “A sort of walking miracle, my skin / Bright as a Nazi lampshade”; In Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas,” fractured meter negotiates bureaucratic and Indigenous time; In Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” fractured meter echoes immigrant syntax.
Additional Notes
Fractured meter describes a line or poem where the underlying metrical pattern is frequently broken or disrupted by irregular substitutions, extra syllables, or missing stresses; this fragmentation can mimic the speaker's state of mind (agitation, doubt) or the chaos of the subject matter.
Also Known As
Broken meter disrupted cadence fractured measure Unsteady line
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