[Jonathan James Henderson]

Fascinating discussion here. Meter (and elements like substitutions) has been my primary interest in poetry since I started and I've read/thought quite a bit on it. The more I've thought, the more I've realized a need for a multi-metrical system. What I mean by that is that there is quite often a tension in poetry between the meter and how one would naturally read a line without it. The "classic" approach to this was that you read by the meter and syllables got promoted/demoted. But there are sometimes, especially in the works of Shakespeare and Donne, where this just doesn't work (you'd end up with some extremely awkward line readings). The only answer is that I think even the classicists thought in terms of substitutions and wasn't afraid to use them when they knew that a certain word couldn't be stressed in a context.

One thing that makes Shakespeare such a brilliant master of theatrical meter is the fact that he writes lines that allow themselves to be read numerous ways, depending on if you're reading naturally or by the meter. The classic "To be or not to be, that is the question" is a perfect example of a line that can be scanned/read numerous ways. I've always found it odd that modern actors/readers are so intent to always read it: "To be or not to be, that is" rather than "that is." I think it works equally well both ways, and both are tonally quite different. One thing I think people miss about putting the stress on is is that it highlights the pattern of "be" in the line, as "is" is, of course, a form (3rd person singular) of "to be". You can actually remove the unstressed words and understand the train of thought fragmentarily: "be, not be, is, quest(ion)".

As for metrical substitutions, I'm in favor of all of them given the right context. I think Alexander Pope got it quite right in his Essay on Criticism about using spondees/pyrrhics to "echo the sense". I recently experimented with seeing how different combinations of syllables/stresses in a line altered the rhythm and sense, one juxtaposition being this quatrain:

Arthritic rocking chairs creak, the seats
Depressed, slowed down, muted—too old to be
Like the running and the screaming legs as they flee
In the yard and crunch draught-dried leaves under their feet.

The syllable/stresses are: 9/5, 9/7, 12/4, 12/7 which is quite a ways away from classic accentual-syllabics of iambic pentameter. But I like the extreme juxtaposition in line 2 and 3 of the density ratio between syllables/stress. Just like Pope says, spondees and caesuras add weight/gravity and "slow down" the line, while pyrrhics lighten/enliven and "speed up" the line. I think the case with pyrrhics are fascinating because you'd think that since you're adding more syllables the line would seem longer, but because English is a stress-timed language (stresses should come equally in time) I think we have a tendency to "rush over" two-or-more unstressed syllables in a row so that they "last" almost equal to one stressed syllable. So the idea is that you're getting more words for less.

I think the big question is always "do they just get promoted/demoted instead of the reader hearing a spondee/pyrrhic?" Well, I think that depends. One reason I stopped reading poetry strictly in meter is that I realized I was missing out on obvious metrical substitutions. These days I use a general rule about balancing meter and natural stress, mostly that monosyllabic nouns, verbs, and adjectives are usually stressed, while monosyllabic articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are unstressed. Multisyllabic versions of these usually contain one stress. So with a line like: "A boy crossed dark roads tonight at nine" I read the dark road as a spondee. While if the line was "A boy on a sidewalk crossed the street" I read the "(bo)y on" as a pyrrhic.

Trochees should be used more sparingly, I think. I typically stick to the rule of using them at the beginning of a line, beginning of a new clause, or the beginning of a sub-clause (usually after a caesura). But I almost always use them for a kind of surprise/emphasis. I think they especially pair well with participle phrases where a strong "verbal" participle begins the phrase as it gives it a more verbal/active sense rather than just being an adjective.

As for anapests/dactyls, I use them somewhat sparingly too, but I do think they often provide a nice "hiccup" for a line. I could see, for instance, using them in a line where one is describing stumbling or running or something like that. I also like how they "lengthen out" the line a bit. Recently I used them in a poem to try and replicate the sense of floating away, as if the meter is "floating away" the same way the speaker is describing. I rather liked the effect.

Catalexis isn't something I've experimented much with yet. I think the thing that strikes me most about its possibilities is that it could also be used for a metrical "surprise," ending a piece on a semi-spondee, eg. The only instance I can think where I intentionally used one for an effect is where I transplanted the opening unstressed word from the beginning of a line to the end of a previous line. I did that because, one, the extra half-foot on the previous line echoed, I felt, the sense I was describing about "breaking free," and, two, I liked beginning the next line with a stress that simulated a trochee.

When it comes to the issue of stress I pretty much agree with the classic binary system. I realize that actual speech stress is not binary, but I think the important thing is that it relatively is. As I'm fond of saying in photography, we see the world in color (multiple-stresses), but we experience it in black and white (binary stress). The binary stress system is about relativity anyway, one stress being relatively strong/weak to another. That's why the IP was designed to where you'd always have a juxtaposition of weaker/stronger, even if the weaker and stronger weren't always exactly the same, they were still always weaker or stronger than the adjacent syllable.

What I DON'T like about classic metrics is how lines are scanned. I've started thinking more in terms of using a meter like IP as a "ghost meter," in which the real meter/stress is overlaid on top. Kinda like the relationship between the ictus in music and the ACTUAL rhythm. I especially think this is apparent when you utilize a kind of rhythmic parallelism. A recent alexandrine couplet I wrote for a sonnet is a good example:

"This symphony of summer quiets, decrescends;
Fires fade, darkening as gold the crescent sands."

Scanned classically this would be something like:
-/---/-/- || /-/
/-/ || /---/-/-/

I do think there's still the "ghost" of IP working here. If you read the L1F2 as a pyrrhic then it works fine as an iambic alexandrine. Much the same can be said for L2F3. But I don't think that's how the rhythmic "sense" goes. The idea is that the rhythm of L1F6 is identical to L2F1, and they're even "sectioned off" by caesuras, making the parallel even stronger. There's also a parallel in the rhythm of "symphony of" and "darkening as," which I think should register, at least unconsciously. So I read the REAL rhythm of the line as something like:

Catalectic unstressed syllable (This), First paeon (SYM-phon-y of), trochee (SUM-mer), trochee (QUI-ets), amphimacer (DE-cre=SCENDS) / amphimacer (FI-res FADE), First paeon (DARK-en-ing as), Catalectic stressed syllable (GOLD), iamb/iamb (the CRESC-ent SANDS).

As for worrying about adding/subtracting a stress from the line, I don't worry about that. It's part of my new approach to thinking about accentual-syllabic verse in that I'm willing to alter either the accents or syllables as long as the other remains consistent. So I don't mind having 4 or 6 stresses as long as there's 10 syllables, nor do I mind having 7-13 syllables as long as there's 5 stresses. To me, the main thing is to maintain a strong, dominant meter and then use variations to expressively punctuate it. It seems to me a waste of poetic resources to "throw out" either hyper/hypometrical syllables or metrical variations. You might as well be throwing out paint colors as a painter.