The Imaginary Iceberg

Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Imaginary Iceberg” consists of three stanzas of 11, 12, and 11 lines, respectively. Each stanza opens with one line of iambic pentameter: a line of verse in a poem with five metrical feet, each of which consists of one unstressed and one stressed syllable (in that order). The first line, for instance, is read “We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship” (Line 1). In this case, iambic pentameter follows the natural flow of the words in American vernacular. But Bishop reinforces the iambic rhythm of this first line through the use of internal rhyme on the stressed syllables. The first syllable of “rather” works as a slant rhyme to “have” and “than,” while “ice” has a similar—though not identical—vowel sound to “ship.” With the exception of Line 21, the body of each stanza contains a mixture of pentameter (five feet per line), tetrameter (four feet per line), and trimeter (three feet per line). Most of the poem’s lines, regardless of length, follow roughly iambic stress patterns.

Despite Bishop’s use of meter and relatively consistent stanza lengths, “The Imaginary Iceberg” is a free verse poem, which means the poem does not follow a conventional poetic form and instead uses alternative structural principles. Bishop relies on rhyme—in particular internal and in-line rhymes—to give “The Imaginary Iceberg” a sense of structure and continuity. Each of the stanzas end with a rhyming couplet such as “repose” (Line 10) and “snows” (Line 11), or “dares” (Line 22) and “stares” (Line 23). The poem uses internal and in-line rhymes to supplement the occasional end rhymes. Rhymes like “snow / though” (Lines 6-7) that occur at the end of one line and the beginning of the next give the work a sense of fluidity. Rhymes like “[r]ise” (Line 18) and “provide” (Line 19) establish continuity between lines.