>She discusses why anapests exist in poetry at all. This seems to be a
heated debate in linguistic circles: from what I gather from the talk,
there is nothing in the linguistic structure of the English language to
merit their existence in poetry<
That's very interesting, Jaime, but also, on the face of it, puzzling. One of the basics I learnt was that Modern English has a kind of iambic-anapaestic drift, and even a casual scan shows up the language is full of preposition plus article constructions like 'by a', 'of the' , or connective paddings like 'and so forth' which, unless a meter plonks a promotion on a syllable, naturally fall into a kind of sleepy, huddling, certainly not rollicking, excuse me for yawning of an anapaestic doze. I hasten to add that might not be my way of speech, but I use an urban dialect that still hits accents over the head with a Saxon shovel, if not in a falling rhythm, alas, more of a failing one, which last is where most of our language donkeys about.
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