At 02:14 PM 8/27/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>On Aug 27, 2005, at 1:42 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>This objection has been made before, of course. It's addressed in the
>preface to the second printing of the book, and throughout. It's a matter
>of seeing patterns in poems written over hundreds of years, so that a
>particular line is the just a tip of a glacier.. Isn't reading any kind
>of pattern into a poem is to some extent a matter of prejudice?
There's a difference between discovering and reading into. You go the next
step and assign a fixed value to some of what you read in.
>>As to your code, which of your fellow travellers opined that iambic is
>>the natural meter because it mimics the heartbeat?
>
>None of mine. In fact, I am known, pigeonholed in fact, for many
>arguments to the contrary (most notably in the essay "Metrical
>Diversity")--against the idea that iambic is natural or privileged over
>any other meter in any way. However, since you posted about how steeped
>you had been in iambic pentameter and how deeply you had read Dryden, no
>imagination was needed to posit that perhaps the number of scannable
>pentameters in your free verse has some relation to that background.
>
>Or perhaps not. But they are still scannable.
>
>The metrical code applies to all meters. Dactyls figure prominently in
>the Ghost of Meter.
>
>Annie
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