To time.” “Oh good,” I said, “and do you know He said – “just resting with his mother though What does a sonnet in “plain English” look like? On the other hand, it’s a bit curious (to me, anyway) that poetry written in perfect or near-perfect iambic pentameter rarely, if ever, sounds like normal speech instead, as in a typical sonnet, there’s always some kind of verbal gymnastics taking place, and even if poets choose to do so for aesthetic reasons, I want to take it to the other extreme. It’s obviously very difficult and impractical to think about regular conversation in terms of meter without banging your head against the metaphorical fourth wall (and yes that was a deliberate literary pun sue me don’t sue me). There’s probably another thing your teacher or book might have told you about iambic pentameter: namely, that “normal speech” or everyday speech follows that duh DUH pattern.
Even if the name doesn’t sound familiar anymore you can probably remember the other words that accompanied it: “Stresses…unstressed syllables…five feet…Shakespeare…sonnets, etc.” Anyone who took an English class in high school or college has probably learned about iambic pentameter – you know, the fancy term for duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH – at least once.
