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“Phenomenal Woman” doesn’t subscribe to a single, stable meter. Instead, the meter varies greatly throughout. The sometimes sudden fluctuations in the metrical scheme echo the speaker’s expression of her own liberation from society’s limiting expectations. The poem’s opening lines (lines 1–4) offer a useful example for how quickly the underlying rhythm can change:

     Pre-tty | wo-men | won-der | where my | se-cret | lies.
     I’m not | cute or | built to | suit a | fash-ion | mod-el’s | size
     But when | I start | to tell | them,
     They think | I’m tell- | ing lies.

Every line here has a different metrical scheme. Most noticeably, each line consists of a different number of metrical feet. Whereas the first line has six feet, the next three have seven, four, and three feet, respectively. Aside from the shifting number of feet, the lines also feature different types of feet. Whereas the first two lines consist solely of trochees, the second two lines consist solely of iambs. (Recall that trochees have one stressed and one unstressed syllable, as in the word “rock-et.” Iambs are just the opposite, consisting of one unstressed and one stressed syllable, as in the word “to-day.”) Meter continues to be unpredictable throughout the rest of the poem, fluctuating with the speaker’s mood and, in the process, defying the reader’s expectations.

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