Short note on the iambic meter
[Confession: I totally suck at ‘feeling’/hearing poetic rhythm :)
The iambic feet refers to a very light beat (unstressed) followed by a heavier one (stressed). This poem after being ‘scanned’ can be seen to have four (tetra) feet per line, hence an iambic tetrameter.
She was / a Phan / tom of / delight
When first / she gleamed / upon / my sight;
Most lyrical English verse is written with iambic meter, hence giving it a kind of musical sing-song quality.
posted by dreameridiot at 10:02 AM
2 Comments:
So many people beat themselves up over poetic metre -- including myself until a former tutor pointed out that it's not a precise art, with some stresses being open to interpretation.
Walker, thanks so much for your comment. Yah, I have heard too that scansion can still be quite open to individual readings, but there isn't much variation on the possibilities, or at least, there are some ways of determining roughly how it goes.
Looking forward to learn more from you. :)
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