Another Weird Iambic Pentameter Exercise

I’ve been reading Steven Fry’s The Ode Less Traveled. I’m in the middle of the chapter on meter, and yesterday I finally got around to sitting and doing an exercise from the book where I sat and just jotted down the first 20 lines I could think of in iambic pentameter.

I thought I’d share.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. I can’t believe that it’s the whole machine
2. He went and screwed it all away on drugs
3. Today I will attempt to change the world
4. The spider floated down from overhead*
5. This song is incomplete without more bass
6. I drive and drive but cannot find more gas
7. This exercise goes faster as it goes
8. These verses are monotonously paced
9. I don’t know why I never thought I could
10. The trick to writing more is showing up
11. The words will come if only you relax
12. For breakfast, I had coffee and some meat
13. The tightness in my legs goes to my feet
14. Soon someone must give food to cats and dogs
15. Sometimes I wake up, and my brain is fogged
16. I’m almost finished with this exercise
17. I almost can’t believe my fucking eyes
18. It’s easier to write in meter now
19. I see why this is popular somehow
20. I never knew pentameter was fun

*This was a response to a spider dropping into my peripheral vision and startling me during this exercise.

Weird stuff. It has me thinking a lot more about meter in writing, though.