Jason,
I notice few have responded to your call for examples. Perhaps, like me, they're afraid people will say, "That's clearly metrical" and make them feel stupid. But I'll cover my hiney by calling these "poems that if you posted them in Metrical, at least one person would suggest you were posting in the wrong forum."
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/8952/ http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=6127 http://www.npr.org/programs/death/re...ry/millay.html http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch...html?id=176222
Flattered as I am to have been included in Michael's list (nyuk nyuk), I must confess I have blathered on at great length in many of these discussions. That actually supports Michael's point, though, since I'm not as good as the other people in the list. Nevertheless, once again, a-blathering I shall go.
Some critters are more rigid about meter than others. The meter maids think anyone who substitutes the occasional foot is an incompetent metrist. Swinburne used to say Byron had a bad ear.
Then again, there are anything-goes types who call everything metrical. According to them, no one should ever criticize anyone's meter, because if their meter is lumpy it must be intended to achieve a certain effect.* Problem is, there really is such a thing as a poem that doesn't scan, and there really are poets who don't have a good ear for meter. The only way to fix that is to read a lot of metrical verse. (Hamlet's in IP. You see a lot of metrical substitutions, promotions and demotions because it's not a 14-line sonnet but a long play, and because the English language has changed. But I was forced to read it in school, so that's probably where I formed my ideas about what IP should sound like - ideas some would call rigid and some would call relaxed.
Rose
* Some say that messy meter
must be used for effect when writing about messy subjects. But LIFE is messy, so if the degree of metrical regularity is proportional to the subject's neatness, then we should all be writing exclusively in free verse.
[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited June 15, 2006).]