I don't think Richard said anything, or quoted anything, that everyone here doesn't already know. Very familiar stuff. But the crack about letting our meter be "petrafied" was, I think, rather unfair, since Petra also knows all the truisms about meter that Richard accurately recited. Richard's source is quoted as saying:
"Within certain limits we may say that a certain scansion is right or wrong"
Surely Petra's point had to do with mistakes existing within those acknowledged limits. I certainly did not hear her call for perfect regularity of meter, or claim that outside those certain limits there may not be frequent and intelligent disagreement and opinionating that cannot be neatly and unanimously declared either right or wrong.
Some folks have taken this simple and perhaps unnecessary observation as an occasion to proclaim their own sophistication in matters metrical and to assure the rest of us that they are beyond mechanical rules of sing-song verse and no prisoners to scansion like rank beginners. Well, bully for you all. I pretty much take that for granted about just about everyone here, if you must know, including Petra, and there's really no need to strut about possessing a quality we all have in common.
But notwithstanding our nuanced sophistication, let's face it. There's such a thing as a metrical gaffe, the kind of mistake even its perpetrator would not defend once it's pointed out. I don't see many of them here, but I agree it would behoove us all to try to spot those before we post, particularly if we are posting the Deep End.
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