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Unread 07-08-2001, 07:14 PM
robert mezey robert mezey is offline
Master of Memory
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Claremont CA USA
Posts: 570
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Moore was right: only lines 3, 4, and 9 have
more than one anapest---most of the other
apparent anapests are elidable. But it's
rather pointless to argue about how many
anapests in a poem which is loose iambic and
so freely permits extra syllables. But it
is iambic, and therefore the word
"scythe" in the second line, although as
strongly stressed as the two syllables on
either side, does not get a metrical
accent. (To that extent, scansion is a
science.)

Has anyone written such a variety of sonnets
as Frost? This loosely iambic one irregularly
rhymed for openers, and one in heroic couplets,
and one in terza rima, English and Italian of
course and many variations on both (even one that
begins in Italian and ends in English), and some
in rhyme schemes of his own devising, and a couple
that look and sound like sonnets but turn out to
have 13 lines or 15 lines (one 15-liner in blank
verse and one in Catullus' hendecasyllable), one in
strict tetrameter and one in loose tetrameter with
two dimeters, and no doubt others I've forgotten.

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