p. p. s., also off-topic: There was a thread-list that somebody was making of books by Eratosphere members. I should have saved a copy... Is there still a link to it? (I'm thinking it might have been Tony Barnstone.)

Sorry, Perry, I'm back...

Marly: Here it is: https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showt...=books+members

I found it by searching "books by members" in the search box in the upper right...

Thank you, Simon! Much appreciated.

Michael, I've gone back and looked at all of your posts in this thread, and not one of them is about the subject I set for the thread. Yes, we agree about Tim Steele's scansion method, but in most of your posts you have been pretty negative. So between you and me, who is the problem? Instead of me leaving the forum, perhaps the problem is that you've been posting on a thread the very subject of which seems to annoy you.

Perry misinterpreted the dismissive posts, failing to realize that they did answer his question about how poets felt about the aspect of scansion he was asking about (some poets didn't give a damn about it), but it's hardly odd that he would feel attacked, and react as though attacked.

Perry hasn't done anything that should make him unwelcome here.

Marly, it is the same thing with me. About 80% of the time my lines come out to ten syllables, even without counting. But I do, ultimately, count both the syllables and feet in most of my poems just to see what I have written.

People seem to be getting the wrong impression about my writing. I am not a pedant who writes in exact meter. It is the opposite. I count syllables more than feet. Most of my lines will come out with five beats, but some will come out with four. My concern, frankly, is that on a forum like this, that may not be good enough for my poetry to qualify as metrical, and I don't want my poems bounced over to the Free Verse board. Also, I have found that poems with good meter often flow better than poems with a more chaotic meter, so I have been making a conscious effort to write in better meter. One other thing: Even though I don't write in perfect meter, I'm nonetheless interested in the rules of scansion. I have analyzed several different scansion philosophies and written about them.

Mary, as long as we have gotten on the topic of scansion, let me make a point. If the scansion of a poem reveals only the underlying (base) meter, then the scansion isn't telling you much. In my mind, scansion should reveal how a poem is spoken. Having done that, the scansion allows a person to compare the way the poem is spoken with the base meter to see what the poet is doing.

Here is the second stanza of "Advice to Colonel Valentine":

Love remains decent for low long? The nation
LOVE re / MAINS DE / cent for / HOW LONG? / the NA / tion

Allows each female thirty years, tacks on
al LOWS / EACH FE / male THIR / ty YEARS / TACKS on

Ten more for males intent on procreation.
TEN MORE / for MALES / in TENT / on PRO / cre A / tion

Obviously, this poem is written in iambic pentameter, yet it has lots of variant feet. What do you learn from the poem if you scan it like this?

love RE / mains DE / cent FOR / how LONG / the NA / tion
al LOWS / each FE / male THIR / ty YEARS / tacks ON
ten MORE / for MALES / in TENT / on PRO / cre A / tion

A scansion like that, which reveals only the base meter, tells you nothing about the poem.

Hi Perry,

to address your concerns, I don't think your poems will get bounced over to the non-met board. The Sphere's definition of metre is fairly forgiving. Certainly if you posted the line about the German soldier which prompted this discussion in a poem which was otherwise strict IP, nobody would raise any alarm bells. Some people may question it, want to debate it, but not enough to get it 'bounced' anywhere.

I think you'll find once you start posting poems, and I hope you can soon, that people will react much more to what you have to say and how you express yourself poetically. That is, the quality of your writing, rather than your metrical prowess or otherwise.

As for the line, if it really bothers you then look again at what Julie said back in post #10. There are dozens of ways to express the same idea.

I would advise patience, enjoying critiquing some of the poets here, and letting this particular discussion lie.

Cheers.

Thank you for the helpful comments, Mark. Hopefully I'll be able to post this poem soon, if for no other reason than to satisfy people's curiosity.

The poem itself is 15 lines, of which four or five are not strictly metrical.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall…

“Once we realize what an egomaniac he is, MY seems the legitimate emphasis.” – Ralph (RCL) – Post 42

Sorry, Ralph, but I disagree. In a performance of Browning’s poem, to place a rhetorical emphasis on “my” in the first line is to misrepresent the dramatic situation. Placing the rhetorical emphasis there implies that the Duke’s interlocutor has just shown him his own last duchess, to which the Duke is responding, as if the two men were comparing last duchesses. But, as the rest of the poem makes clear, the Duke is showing his guest around his gallery and pointing to and commenting on the art-works it contains. It is worth noting that the Duke gives every impression of dominating the conversation. The poem concludes with his drawing attention to the sculpture of Neptune “Taming a sea-horse”, a work by “Claus of Innsbruck” – ominous of course in its symbolism for the rest of the poem. This is why it is right, in my view, to read the first line as beginning with a trochee, which here has an appropriate demonstrative or deictic force.

Clive