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I feel your pain! I think a big part of the problem is that most of the iambic pentameter examples taught in school are actually not iambic pentameter (at least

I feel your pain! I think a big part of the problem is that most of the iambic pentameter examples taught in school are actually not iambic pentameter (at least not with modern-day speech patterns). I expanded on this more in another comment, but I find it much easier to think about meter when not trying to fit Shakespeare into it. The best (short) explanation I can think of is: if you were to read the line like you were saying it in normal, fairly fast speech, which syllables would have ever so slightly more oomph ? For example, the sentence "I want to go to the museum." to me sounds most natural as: i WANT to GO to the muSEum then for iambic you just see if that follows a pattern of unstressed/stressed (it doesn't here). An example that is iambic would be: "You'd rather eat than see the show?" you'd RAther EAT than SEE the SHOW Hope that's more helpful than hurtful! :)

kijin 7y ago
I'm pretty sure you were just trying to showcase the stresses, but your last example is in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Which is another frequent source of confusion. For some reason, the fact that "penta" stands for "five" (like the Pentagon!) seems to get lost in a lot of these discussions. They must be teaching poetry these days without explaining the Greek/Latin origin of the terms they use. Word roots are fascinating. Epics were written in dactylic hexameter. Dactyls mean fingers. You know, as in pterodactyls. They're called pterodactyls because their wings (ptero-) were supported by their long fingers. A dactyl has three syllables, DA-da-da, just like the sections of your fingers.
- jacobevelyn 7y ago
  Yes, sorry! I was trying to just discuss the "iambic" part and ignore the "pentameter," which I'd assumed (maybe incorrectly) was not the source of confusion. Thanks for the clarification.

kijin 7y ago

I'm pretty sure you were just trying to showcase the stresses, but your last example is in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Which is another frequent source of confusion. For some reason, the fact that "penta" stands for "five" (like the Pentagon!) seems to get lost in a lot of these discussions. They must be teaching poetry these days without explaining the Greek/Latin origin of the terms they use. Word roots are fascinating. Epics were written in dactylic hexameter. Dactyls mean fingers. You know, as in pterodactyls. They're called pterodactyls because their wings (ptero-) were supported by their long fingers. A dactyl has three syllables, DA-da-da, just like the sections of your fingers.

jacobevelyn 7y ago
Yes, sorry! I was trying to just discuss the "iambic" part and ignore the "pentameter," which I'd assumed (maybe incorrectly) was not the source of confusion. Thanks for the clarification.