Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter consisting of four feet with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Emily Dickinson often used this meter, alternating with iambic trimeter. Each word can be divided into syllables with stressed and unstressed beats.
Iambic tetrameter is a form of meter used in poetry consisting of four feet that feature an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. This pattern of unstressed and stressed can be expressed as beats assigned to each word and given the name of iambic. Tetrameter refers to the number of times this pattern occurs in a line of poetry. Emily Dickinson’s poems often use this type of meter.
Every word used in a poem can be divided into syllables. A syllable is the beat assigned to a particular word or portion of a word. The word “cup,” for example, has only one syllable or beat, while the word “babble” has two.
Humans tend to pronounce words naturally with stressed and unstressed syllables. To emphasize one part of a word means to give it more prominence or more pronunciation than another part. This is part of the natural cadence of speech. The word “away” has two syllables where the first is unstressed and the next is stressed. The “via” part of the word is typically pronounced longer than the initial “a”.
Poetry is often written as lines presented in a series of lines. The poet can choose to rhyme the lines or not. He can write in free verse or require that each line conform to a set pattern. The use of a specific pattern in a poem is usually referred to as meter writing.
A foot is a unit of measurement made up of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables. Iambic is one of the names given to a particular pattern of stressed and unstressed feet. A foot of iambic tetrameter will contain words divided by an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Using rhythm alone, an iambic foot sounds as per DUM.
The meter of a line is determined by how many feet there are. An iambic tetrameter line contains four feet. The iambic foot can be used in other metres, with less than or more than four. Similarly, tetrametric lines may contain other foot types, where the stressed syllable is written first or with two unstressed syllables.
Emily Dickinson is a famous poet who often used iambic tetrameter in her writings. She often spaced lines of tetrameter with alternating lines of iambic trimeter, which contain only three feet instead of four. Her poem Why I Couldn’t Stop for Death uses this outline.
Why couldn’t I stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but only ourselves
And immortality.
The first line, if written to express the parts of the verse that should be underlined, looks like this: “because I could not STOP for DEATH.”
Lines 1 and 3 are both written in iambic tetrameter. Each word, or group of words, can be divided into an unstressed beat followed by an accented beat. Lines 2 and 4 use this same iambic foot, but each contains only three of these feet instead of four.
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