I'm very fond of Frost's hendecasyllabics in "For Once, Then, Something." It's remarkable to me how unstiff, unforced they seem, while maintaining the meter in virtually every line: trochee, dactyl, trochee, trochee, trichee: Others taunt me with having knelt at well curbs.....
I notice Steele opens with a strong versionof the meter, then allows the voice to alternate quite a bit, which seems a sensible English solution. One isn't doing quantitative meter, but using the template of a quantitative meter for an accentual-syllabic poem. Guesses about Homer's lines suggest that the flexibility was all in the qualtity, not in the meter itself, so the meter could be rigid but sound flexible. In English we've got to make the flexibility by other means, though sentence syntax, enjambment, etc.
Anyway, if this thread is still going when I get home later this month I'll type in some of John Nims's experiments with classical meters.......
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