My Favorite (and Perhaps the Most Common) Poetic Form

What I most enjoy writing—what most comes easily to me—are poems with in iambic tetrameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme.

But this didn’t always come easily to me. Although I’ve been writing poetry for nearly a decade, I wasn’t formally introduced to syllabic meter until 2020, when I worked through a textbook titled The Grammar of Poetry.

And I’ll be honest here—figuring out syllabic meter was rough. I couldn’t hear the rhythm at all. I had difficulty ascertaining the stressed syllables of words. When I wrote my first iambic poems, I had to consult a dictionary to be certain which syllables of words were stressed.

Is it decide or decide? I would wonder, saying the word over and over to myself, unsure which syllable I was emphasizing more. Out would come the dictionary, and I would flip through its pages to find my answer. (It’s decide, in case you’re wondering.)

I didn’t want to look up every word in a dictionary, however.  As it was, I was taking far too long to write a short poem! And there were times I felt confident I knew where the stressed was placed. Often I was correct, occasionally I was wrong. I cringe reading through my earliest attempts at iambic meter.

Now, however, I have written more iambic poems than I can count, and I could think in iambic meter if I so desired. I’m tempted to rewrite this entire post in iambic meter, but that would take a while, and it would probably sound awkward. What sounds good in poetry can sound stilted in prose (trust me, I’ve tried).

Not only have I written more iambic poems than I can count, I’ve read more iambic poems than I can count. I can say with confidence, if not with certainty, that the majority of English poems are written in iambic meter, for the simple fact that that is the meter that English most readily lends itself to. Although we do not speak in iambic meter, our intonations are closer to iambic meter than to any other poetic meter, and every multisyllabic English word has a stress on every other syllable. In the word “syllable,” for example, syl is the primary stress, but le has the secondary stress.

Iambic tetrameter—that is, iambic poems with eight syllables in each line—is one of the most common forms of iambic meter. Why, I am not sure, but I see it often, and I find it the easiest to write. If I start to write a poem without thinking about the meter, it’s probably going to end up iambic tetrameter.

Lastly, the ABAB rhyme scheme I most commonly use is probably the most common rhyme scheme in the English language. It’s simple, it’s not too repetitive, and it sounds good, and ultimately sounding good is one of the most important attributes a poem can have.

Iambic tetrameter and the ABAB rhyme scheme have survived centuries and continue to be common in classical-style poetry because they sound good. Some might say that form should be worn out by now, but its beauty hasn’t been lost.

I intend to keep writing in it.

(Photo credit to Aaron Burden on Unsplash)