Do you know what scansion is?

Susan Tichy wrote that

Poems are more fun and more meaningful when you know how they work.

The way to find out how they work is to get your hands on them: take poems apart and put poems together.

The tool used to take poems apart is scansion. Scansion involves analyzing verse to determine its metrical patterns. (An example is iambic tetrameter.) Scansion is one of the more difficult aspects of poetry to grasp; Fortunately, there's a Web page titled The Basics of Scansion that delves into its mysteries. Effort's required to understand the page's contents, but it's worth it if you'd like to like more about a critical underlying mechanism of poetry.

For those preferring a less comprehensive introduction to scansion, take a look at Rhythm, Meter, and Scansion Made Easy. It's easier to intellectally digest.