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Elizabeth Bishop structured “Exchanging Hats” in iambic tetrameter. Iambic refers to an iamb, a common metrical unit in English-language poetry. The iamb consists of two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. A stressed syllable is where the word gets emphasized in speech. An iambic tetrameter has four iambs in a single line. For example, the first three lines go:
Unfun|ny un|cles who | insist
in try|ing on | a la|dy’s hat,
—oh, ev|en if | the joke | falls flat (Lines 1-3),
Bishop amplifies the strong beat of the iambic tetrameter by using an enclosed rhyme scheme (ABBA) for each stanza. As seen in the excerpt below, each stanza possesses a unique enclosed rhyme scheme:
in spite of our embarrassment. [A]
Costume and custom are complex. [B]
The headgear of the other sex [B]
inspires us to experiment. [A]
Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach [C]
with paper plates upon your laps, [D]
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps [D]
with exhibitionistic screech [C] (Lines 5-12).
Scholar Rachel Trousdale said rhymed iambic tetrameters are frequently used in light and humorous verse (Trousdale, Rachel. “'I Take off My Hat': Elizabeth Bishop's Comedy of Self-Revelation.” Reading Elizabeth Bishop, edited by Jonathan Ellis, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2019.
By Elizabeth Bishop