Of course I'm aware of this. But you seem not to be aware that to read a
line or phrase as a variant on a regular meter in an environment in which
there is no overall regular meter is a matter of choice--need I say prejudice.
It would have been smarter to use a poem by someone not on the list. In
future if you wish to analyze my poems at me--a cheap form of
co-optation--do so backchannel. Otherwise, I might have to analyze one of
yours in public.
As to your code, which of your fellow travellers opined that iambic is the
natural meter because it mimics the heartbeat? Your formulation is of a
kind, though it escapes obvious silliness by positing an osmotic learning
process rather than an inborn predisposition.
Mark
At 12:37 PM 8/27/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Mark, huff huff, I will confine myself to your remarks on scansion.
>Though you have learned to write ip by osmosis, your conscious knowledge
>of how scanning works is such that you might want to think twice before
>making sweeping pronouncements about what does and doesn't scan. You seem
>to think that an iambic pentameter has to consist of 5 iambs. It
>doesn't. Most people familiar with scansion would hear all of these lines
>scanning easily as iambic pentameters, if they appeared in an i.p. poem.
>
>"Horrible stories from the homeland, and" is what is known as a "headless"
>or "acephalous" i.p.. (skipping the first unstressed syllable) line, with
>an anapest in the second foot. A standard variation on the meter.
>"Civilization and its discontents" is another headless line with an
>anapest in the second foot.
>"one would have thought it painful, but the stance" I think you didn't
>mention, because it is five iambs so even you recognized it.
>"Places named for the words first heard there. So" is another headless
>iambic pentameter, with the anapest in the third foot this time, maybe a
>spondee in the last foot, otherwise completely regular iambs.
>"She spoke the gestures/of her native land" is regular, of course.
>
>For a discussion of headless iambic lines, you might want to look at Paul
>Fussell's book, or, online, there's a thorough discussion under the header
>"Standard Substitutions in Strict Iambic Pentametter" on the Poetry
>X Forum discussion site.
>
>This was not at all supposed to be a complete reading of your poem or all
>the themes in it, simply an admittedly hasty illustration of the idea of
>the metrical code & how it might work to point out the connotations of
>metrical lines in a free verse poem and the development of those
>connotations. Such readings are meant to work along with other kinds of
>readings, imagistic, thematic, historical, etc..
>
>Huff, huff.
>
>Annie, huffily
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