Henry, I should have been more specific - asymmetric accentual het-met is what I should have said - a mixed accentual poem, rather than mixed acc-syll, like those you mention.
While it is possible to find four words in some lines that seem to have claim on a stress - that is, those perceived spondaic endings (and why would a writer want to do an ugly thing like that?) - the net result is still a sensation of the three strong beats per line. That is what accentual tri-meter means to me, three BIG BEATS per line. Anyone worried about relative stresses or implied stresses or secondary stresses in accentual verse has missed the point entirely. THREE BIG BEATS, three main pulses, is all you need. Those perceived spondaic endings, such "DARK STAIR", and "GREY EYES", seem too heavy-handed in a context of a dozen natural feminine endings. In whatever configuration, I hear them as a single beat - "greyeyes", "darkstair" - not "grey ... eyes" and " dark ... stair". A light touch, in the reading as much as in the writing, is the secret to accentual verse. Stress sensitivity, picked up over decades of IP training, might actually prove a disability when reading accentuals - finding words which might be significant stresses in an IP context, but have no bearing in an accentual poem.
Henry, it's true, I do often contradict myself in my explanations of how I hear what I hear. Mainly because I am experimenting with explanations, since I have no idea how I hear what I do. I am trying to work backwards, from practice to theory. But since actual practice, in reading and in writing, is the important thing, I don't mind if my theory is still somewhat inchoate.
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Mark Allinson
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