At this point in the conversation, I don't have much to add to what's been said above, but I very much liked what Maryann said about the metrical line versus the conversational -- it makes me remember an exercise Tom Kirby-Smith had us do scanning Frost according to how the metrical line sounded, then rescanning the same poem according to how Frost read it in a recording -- the two were surprisingly different.
And like one of the other commentators (Sam?) I will purposefully clunk up the line with substitutions to convey feeling or awkwardness, etc. My polestar in this is Shakespeare's "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame".
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