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

Monometer

Monometer: A line of verse consisting of one metrical foot.

EXAMPLES: Robert Herrick’s “Upon His Departure Hence” (1648), written in iambic monometer, which begins “Thus I / Pass By / And die”; the anonymous trochaic monometer poem “Fleas,” reading simply “Adam / Had’em.” William Carlos Williams’s “Poem” (1934) contains several monometer lines:

As the cat

climbed over

the top of

the jamcloset

first the right

forefoot

carefully

then the hind

stepped down

into the pit of

the empty

flowerpot