Thanks, Susan. I’ve set out on several occasions to do loose anapestic, but only pulled it off once. I always surrender eventually to the regular undertow and find it easier to go with the flow. It would do me good to work more on resisting that pull, so your advice is well taken, but in this case I did want to rock and lull the reader, to chant the clacks. I personally get off on poems with a mesmerizing beat (“The Destruction of Sennacherib,” for one), but I certainly didn’t want to bore anyone, so I may have gone too far …
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