Poetry Forum

I just wrote a poem in iambic pentameter!! (with the ABAB CDCD etc. rhyme scheme), It was the hardest thing to write!! It was insane, it took me forever!!

Please share your experiences in iambic pentameter!

Well done! Have you posted it?
I'm just trying to teach myself about meter n stuff, but to be honest it drives me nuts, all these feet galloping off in all directions
Sharra
x

Not yet! It'll be my first proper post in the "Experienced" when I do!

It's called:
"Beauty and the Bus"

Lol.

I normally go by what sounds good when you say it aloud, but writing in proper meter is really difficult! Sometimes you just can't find the right word!

I've done two other poems to a meter, the first was "Walk"

8
8
4

which wasn't so bad
the next one was "Mother"

9
5
7
3

which was a bit harder.

However I think they both came out well (strangely both about my parents! )

However neither were as hard as Iambic pentameter! Maybe it was that coupled with the rhyme scheme that did me in?

I wonder if- non rhyming iambic pentameter is easy?

Either way it makes you feel all Shakespearian, lol!

Blank verse is harder in my opinion because it always feels dull and rigid when you write it.

Wabznasm wrote:Blank verse is harder in my opinion because it always feels dull and rigid when you write it.

Too right and then you realise why everyone says Shakespeare is a genius.

"...and kick your ass in iambic pentameter!"
Name that quote.

"I normally go by what sounds good when you say it aloud" - that's a very good rule of thumb and when you think about it the cadences of speech are predominately composed of iambi (though often with two, sometimes three, unstressed syllables per foot) unless you use sprung rhythm as in expressing yourself emotively - shouting, cheering. It's the stressed sylable which creates the rhythm of course. A typical IP courtesy of Pope:

Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast
when husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last

notice the two unstressed sylables in 'pitying' - unstressed but very short.

Poor old Chaucer... all that work for naught!
regional dialect is always problematic in IP!