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Unread 06-29-2001, 09:32 AM
Alan Sullivan Alan Sullivan is offline
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Hello, Solan. I would urge you to take Tim Murphy's suggestion on an adjacent thread and visit Dr. Steele's personal site so you have some idea what you're getting into before you question him.

In your example I think Carol may have missed reading the word "fiddling" as three syllables, which I believe is your intent when you ask a reader to stress "with." But I agree with her that you cannot demote the end-stress in either line. After all, you are rhyming here, and rhyme always accentuates stress. This is one of the reasons why it is inadvisable to rhyme syllables that are normally unstressed with those that normally bear stress (e.g. "crying" with "sing").

Metrical analysis gives us tools to describe and understand rhythm in language. English is a language that relies primarily on stress for its rhythm. But unless there is some reasonably constant rhythm, analytical tools will not give us meaningful results. Your example is arhythmic. No one type of metrical foot predominates to establish a rhythm. Perhaps with a few more lines, a discernable pattern would emerge. Perhaps not.

One line cannot impose a metrical pattern on the next, if that pattern clashes with the ordinary pronunciation of words in the second line. You could precede your "database" line with six metrically identical lines, but you still could not strip "lock" of its stress.

Alternating meters for different characters speaking in sequence might be a workable strategy. I would advise you to try writing whole poems consistently in various meters before you attempt such fancy tricks.

Alan Sullivan
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