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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