The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Iamb

Iamb: A metrical foot in poetry that consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (˘ˊ). The iamb is the most common metrical foot in English poetry; unrhymed iambic pentameter, also called blank verse, is perhaps the most common form of metrical verse in English.

EXAMPLES: ăflóat, rĕspéct, in̆ lóve. In “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” (1800), one of his “Lucy” poems, William Wordsworth alternated iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter:

Ă slúm│bĕr dі́d│my̆ spі́r│ı̇̆t séal;

Ĭ hád│nŏ hú│măn feárs:

Shĕ seémed ă thі́ng thăt coúld nŏt féel

Thĕ toúch ŏf eaŕthly̆ yeárs.

Nó mótiŏn hás shĕ nów, nŏ fórce;

Shĕ néithĕr heárs nŏr sées;

Rŏlled roúnd in̆ eaŕth’s dı̇̆uŕnăl coúrse,

Wı̇̆th rócks, an̆d stónes, an̆d trées.

Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel” (1925), a sonnet written in rhymed iambic pentameter, ends with the lines “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”