Quote:
Originally Posted by John Riley
I've been around here so long and tried to take in what I could that now I write best in meter when I'm not trying. I can look at some, not all but a good number, of my poems that don't maintain a meter long enough to be on the metrical board, I suppose, and find passages, some longer than others but some quite long, of consistent meter. It's natural to fall into iambic and sort of float there. I've noticed that often at the end of a poem, partly because I have this not-so-good habit of not letting a poem simply end, I'll have a few lines that sound iambic to me. You can pick out quite long passages from Whitman and find passages in a meter that go on a good while. That's my best approach because focusing on it chokes me down and even if the poem passes through the meter gate it isn't good. I like following the words instead of placing the words.
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This sounds similar to my approach. For the most part I just enjoy writing and let the poems happen.
Metrical sounds like it'd be fun to spend some time with, but maybe a little more constraining when you just want to mess around in Notepad for an hour.