The Joy of Metre or, a complaint about my schooling

I am enjoying Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled so much, I really can't recommend it highly enough if you would like to learn about the technical side of poetry. It is written in an intelligent, unpatronising way (he refers to other works on prosody throughout and even dares to disagree with Nabokov at one point) but thankfully he does not assume any previous knowledge; every term is clearly explained. Fry no more expects you to automatically know what metre is than what an acephelous anapaest is [it is a foot of three syllables, two unstressed then one stressed, with the first unstressed or weak syllable docked. This is effectively an iamb (a foot of two syllables- unstressed, stressed) but because it begins a line in a verse written in anapaestic metre it can be thought of as an acephalous (or headless) anapaest rather than a substituted iamb - see how much I'm learning?]
There is more to this than learning a few new terms though, I am realising how much meaning this unlocks in poetry. As the terms are introduced and explained, Stephen Fry quotes from numerous poets from Chaucer onwards, and discusses how many of these poets used these techniques deliberately. He mentions how Keats was obsessed with studying scansion, as was Wilfred Owen. These poets were 'kissed by the muse' as Stephen Fry puts it, certainly, as they created but they also worked at it.
This leads me to my complaint, which I touched on the other day. I have always felt my schooling in English was lacking; primarily this was because, as a school child in the 1970s and '80s, I was not taught any formal English grammar. It just was not done. I'm sure there was some pedagogical reason for it but I have to say, whatever the reason was, it was wrong.
Now, I am not saying that as a child I would have welcomed studying grammar, indeed I'm sure I would have hated it, but the foundation it would have given me for the future would have been invaluable. I have had to work out the rules of grammar for myself as an adult to ensure that I can write competently, a very necessary activity in my work. But the area that I really feel the lack of this part of my education is that area that the English are famed for being bad at, learning other languages. I largely blame my lack of knowledge of grammar for my lack of skill with other languages.
I do try; wherever we go I attempt to learn a bit of the language, I think it is only polite, but I find it incredibly difficult. And the more I try to learn other languages the more I realise that they rely on strict grammatical rules and if I can grasp those the job is half done; it is then just a case of a bit of vocabulary. But I have no strong grasp of the grammatical rules of my own language with which to compare those of the new language. I remember the despair of my GCSE Latin teacher who would talk to us in grammatical terms to be faced with a set of uncomprehending faces.
'Weren't you ever taught this?' she cried once. 'No, never,' we all replied.
The same goes for poetry. It may not have had as large an effect on my life as the lack of formal training in grammar, but the principle is the same. There seemed to be an aversion to teaching us the technicalities of language, the difficult stuff that we might struggle with a bit, but without it we were deprived of so much.
I now realise that while studying Wilfred Owen for my A-Level, although I enjoyed his work and loved to read it, if I had understood what he was doing with the metre, the techniques he was using to ensure that the emphasis went just where he wanted it, I would have understood so much more about the poem and the themes and images he was exploring. And my essays would have been so much easier to write! For instance, if I had understood and been able to articulate how he forces the emphasis onto the words 'blood' and 'froth' in Dulce et Decorum est, well, the essay would have written itself.
My husband plays the guitar and he has often said to me that when you understand the technicalities of music you listen to it in a new way. You can appreciate a good tune as before, but you also see deeper layers; you understand where the musician or composer has been very clever and is using a technique to ensure an emotion is created in the listener. It is the same with poetry; I am seeing so much more in the poems now and appreciating the work that went into them.
I am becoming obsessed with metre, as Keats was, but am resisting the temptation to pull out all my books of poetry and begin looking at the scansion. I am resisting it beause I know there is still so much more to learn and I want to fully understand as many techniques as possible first.