Miss Hasler's English Class: 6

Hello again, class! Did you all enjoy the poem I wrote the other day? I hope so. Can anyone guess what today’s lesson is all about? No, Andrea... it isn’t about chocolate. It’s about poetry! Timmy, don’t make that face.

Poetry is a lot like music. It has rhythm, just like music: when you read poetry out loud you can hear the rhythm. Listen as I read a line out loud from a poem you all know.

Mary had a little lamb.

Can you hear the rhythm? Ma-ry had-a litt-le lamb.

Rhythm in poetry has a special name. It is called meter. There are lots of different meters that describe lots of different poetic rhythm-schemes, and they all have special names so we can tell them apart.

One meter that some of you may have heard of is iambic pentameter. This one is basically well-known because Shakespeare wrote a lot of things that use it.

Watch as I write it on the board. Iambic pentameter... see how it’s spelt? As if someone was saying ‘I am bic’? Good.

But whatever can it mean? They are two very strange words. Let’s work it out by breaking them down.

The first word, ‘iambic’, describes the type of metrical foot used. Yes, a line of poetry is made up of feet... it’s a silly word to use, but there you go. It might help you to think of a line of poetry as a row of feet, like this:

See? A poetic line is made up of ‘feet’. Yes, Joey, I know they look like shoes. I can’t draw feet.

So why is our example called ‘iambic’? Because it describes a type of foot called an iamb. Iamb = iambic, just as hero = heroic.

There are lots of types of poetic feet, and an iamb is one that contains two syllables: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Da-dum.

Everyone say da-dum. Good!

We use stressed and unstressed syllables all the time when we speak: ‘stress’ simply means that we place more emphasis on some parts of words or speech than others. The clever doggie chased the cheeky cat. We say clever rather than clever, don’t we? So that means ‘clever’ is a word with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

Okay, so now we know what the ‘iambic’ part of iambic pentameter means. But what about the ‘pentameter’ part? The meter at the end tells us that it is a type of poetic meter, so that just leaves penta. Do you remember an earlier class when we talked about words we use in English that come from other languages? Well, ‘penta’ comes from the Greek language, and it describes a number. Does anyone know which number it describes?

That’s right, pao – it’s the number five. So, if penta means five, pentameter must be a meter that contains five of something.

Look at the board again and we see what it contains five of. Feet! So ‘iambic pentameter’ simply describes a line of poetry that contains five iambic feet. If we were inventing it today we might call it a ‘five da-dum poetry line’. So you see it isn’t such a scary thing after all.

Let’s write an example line in iambic pentameter. The rhythm (or meter), remember, goes da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum.

The frisky pony galloped here and there.

The-fris ky-po ny-ga lloped-here and-there.

Notice that the line contains some words with one syllable and some with more than one. Single-syllable (monosyllabic) words are flexible and can be stressed or unstressed, but polysyllabic ones – like pony – should be treated with care to make sure they fit properly into our metrical scheme. Remember that words can run between feet: another example line might be Dynamic Dexter planted trees all day.

Now, you try! Write a line in iambic pentameter.