THOUGHTS

Iamb Metrical Foot

March 5, 2019


Today I am going to look at another unit of measure in poetry; the iamb.

According to the Poetry Foundation (on line), the iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. Words such as attain, portray, and describe are examples of such iambic patterns. My research tells me that in writing rhyming metrical you usually count feet instead of syllables. That foot consists of a group of syllables. In this case, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. Your poetry lines can be long or short. I understand that Robert Frost's, "The Road Not Taken" is a good example of a iambic poem. Here is the first stanza of that poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Credit: at Literary Devices


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