No apologies necessary, Petra! John also singled out the enjambments and caesuras in the same part--specifically, "in circles I'd dreamed/ of moving in"--as feeling awkward and out-of-kilter; and plenty of other folks mentioned that they repeatedly felt off-footed. So your objections are legitimate, and I clearly have some more tinkering to do.
The Bake-off would lose much of its value if it became nothing but a praise party, with negative reviews viewed as inappropriate. We're all here to learn what works and what doesn't!
[Edited back to say]--Limericks have an invisible pause at the end of lines 1, 2, and 5--the equivalent of an extra anapest--and I guess I was expecting people to recognize the limerick pattern and take this extra foot of silence into account regardless of enjambment across those spots--just as people do for more traditional limericks. (Granted, my stanzas aren't truly limericks, since I've doubled the line count and changed the rhyme scheme...but I never guessed that enjambments across those invisible feet might cause some folks to omit those pauses entirely. Clearly, I was wrong!)
Last edited by Julie Steiner; 09-10-2009 at 10:48 PM.
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