I've been required to write a spoem in iambic meter, and don't how to tell if a single word is stressed?

Question

or unstressed. I just read that "time" is a stressed word, but there is no indication in a dictionary. How do I know?

Answer 1

It's really pretty simple if you understand the definition of iambic pentameter in modern poetry. And whether or not a word is 'stressed' or not does not effect poetic meter when writing verse.

Two syllables equal one iambic meter ( or poetic foot, as some call it).

Example:

"Once upon a midnight dreary,
While I pondered weak and weary..."

Both of these famous lines from Poe's 'The Raven' have exactly eight syllables in each line. Eight syllables in a line equals four iambic meters.

Classic poetry had strict formulas for specific styles. Modern poetry has freed up the formulas to where it is acceptable to combine different styles and/or line lengths to get the effect the poet wants to make.

Your lines can have two, four, six or more meters. Most poets repeat the same iambic meters throughout the poem. Others alternate the sequences:

Like this:

6
6
4
6

or

8
8
4
4
8
8

The point is to provide structure. The varying styles in modern poetry are usually up to the poet themselves.

You can even have couplets with half-meters where lines could be 5 1/2 or 7 1/2 meters in pairs or even in alternating sequences.

Try reading poetry and breaking down the lines to measure how many syllables are in each line. You'll soon notice the poem's patterns and style. After awhile you won't even have to worry about the meter because it will come natural to you.

Answer 2

single syllable words in english can be stressed or unstressed depending on the meaning of the sentence they are used in.

in writing iambic pentameter the usual stumbling block is polysyllables (words of more than one syllable). only they tend to have a fixed stress which is likely to interfere with your metre.

rather than ask highly abstract questions which are finally unanswerable it would be better if you wrote your poem and then posted the result here (or on some other board with competent critics) for comment.

'time' is most certainly not an inexorably stressed word: in the most famous line in english poetry which contains it, shakespeare's

Time, my lord, hath a wallet at his back

it technically falls in an unstressed position.

Answer 3

If you talking about words of one syllables like "time", they are stressed if they are nouns, adjectives or verbs. The (usually) unstressed words (of one syllable) are the "grammatical" ones such as articles (in this sentence, for instance, "the", "this") or prepositions ("like"). "or" is unstressed. But it also depends on their place in the sentence.
For words of more than one syllable, of course, you can find out whether they are stressed if you look them up in a dictionary (or by simply saying them out loud yourself to find out).

Answer 4

Two syllables are equal to one iambic meter, is the general rule.