[Petra Norr]

Can I liken the two, or is it too provocative? Posters are expected to spell check their poems before posting them in a workshop for critique. We all find it frustrating from time to time when someone fails to do that. But what about scanning a metrical poem? My guess is many people write by ear and get it wrong from time to time, but if they scanned their poem before posting they might snap up some of the mistakes. So it is such a bad thing to do?

Of course, some "flaws" are intentional and therefore not flaws at all; they're irregularities; someone might actually want, say, a four-beat line in a five-beat poem. However, I truly think that there are others who are striving for the same number of beats or same meter throughout a poem and that they really would catch some mistakes if they bothered to give the poem a last-minute scan.