i emailed an expert on scansion about the last line, and they found it interesting anyway:> Interesting line. It scans as an iambic pentameter, without the initial offbeat and with what I call "rising inversion": / x / x / x x / /. But "now most" doesn't feel to me a very easy pair of beats.Luke> the unnatural syntax prevents the formation of a stressThanks Peter, though I do disagreeLuke
Louis. — the thing about the Prynne poem you quoted, is that there is no poetical stress in it. All words bear the same weight as each other. He carefully arranges it so that it shall be like this. Every stroke of the unnatural syntax prevents the formation of a stress. The stress is where the poet as individual, human, person, applies pressure to the poem in accordance with their experience. It is where emotion is held in the poem, as a question or proposal, an act which is completed in the reader’s recognising response to the stressed moment. Without this the poem can hardly be said to have been written by anyone. It cannot bear a narrative movement because the manipulation of disconnected verbs annuls tense, making every word a noun. I assume the belief is that we cannot say or mean, indeed we should not, for our saying destroys everything. Whether he wants to take a picture of the lapwings or shoot them is a moot point, since he has removed himself and all human agency from the field.
PR