[Perry Miller]

Thank you for your feedback. The point is that I listen to my own internal rhythms, and that internal music is NOT free verse, so I don't want to be pushed into that category. Where the beats fall DOES matter to me, so I call my poetry metered or "loosely metered". Personally, I can't imagine NOT listening to my innate sense of rhythm. To me, most free verse sounds like prose, and my poetry doesn't sound like prose.

If "accentual syllabic" is the strictest form, then it is essentially the same as strict meter. I took that phrase to mean that the poet was considering both syllables and beats, but not necessarily strictly.

Now, I can't post a poem yet, but I will post the three opening lines from a poem I wrote about a woman whose dream it was to open a food store. It will show you what I am talking about:

It was her dream to own a deli,
to sell her favorite foods to the world
and be the earth mother that she was.

IT was / her DREAM / to OWN / a DEL / i
to SELL /her FAV / rite FOODS / to the WORLD
and BE / the EARTH MOTH / er THAT / she WAS
alternative scansion:
and BE / the EARTH / MOTH er / THAT she / WAS

You can see that the third line is the problem. There are five stressed syllables, and it can be scanned two ways. I prefer the first way because I consider a bacchius to be an acceptable substitute for an iamb, in the same way an anapest is. But you can see the problems we may run into.

Just so you all know, I'm turning 74 this summer and I've been writing poetry since my early twenties, and I have written articles on meter and scansion. I'm new to this forum but not new to writing.

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Ah, I now realize that I could have written that third line like this, and it sounds about as good:

and be the earth mother she was.

and BE / the EARTH / MOTH er / she WAS

... but there are other lines in that poem with similar difficulties, and I can't rewrite them all. The point is, the poem is rhythmic, so I would naturally post it in the Metrical forum.