Do sonnets have to be written in iambic pentameter?
Iambic pentameter is the standard meter for sonnets in English. Poets have written a few sonnets in iambic tetrameter (four iambic beats to a line instead of five) and in iambic hexameter (six beats to a line), although in the latter case I may be thinking of sonnets translated from French rather than original poems in English. But for the most part iambic pentameter is one of the defining characteristics of the sonnet form.
