Victoria,
I'm not sure about the context, but I agree with what Clive says.
Well, for instance, ANY one syllable word in English CAN take a beat, or ictus. Or it cannot. I think metricists call these "common" syllables, or anceps. And there are many "natural" ways to read a line with "natural" voice stress.
A sentence made up of monosyllables is metrically totally up in the air without some sort of metrical or narrative context. A monosyllabic line of IP can be a very beautiful and subtle instrument, but it usually comes in at the end of a sonnet, when the ip is fully established, for instance, rather than at the ambiguous get-go.
As for natural voice stress of a line--how often does one such way really exist? Without italics, would there be only one way to read this?
I told her what to do. (I could read as iambic trimeter)
I told her what to do. [It's my fault]
I told her what to do [already]
I told her what to do [not him]
I told her what to do [but not how to do it...]
I told her what to do [but not what to say...]
That is just natural emphatic stress, say. As for metrical beats/ictus, it is a common misconception that a word receives one because it is an important word. To scan by meaning. Rather, it is the scansion, likely as not, that will tell us which words are "meaningful." You cannot simply rely on the "importance" of a word--particularly if it is a MONOSYLLABIC word--to draw the beat like a lightening bolt. Many of the most subtle effects of meter are realized by having semantically important words stuffed into metrically "unstressed" positions--thus adding much weight and gravity to a line.
Especially if you are working in a looser sort of meter (a lot of times we say accentual for what might better be described as fast-and-loose accentual syllabics)--you need to have pretty firm metrical footing--which means judiciously placed disyllabic words, for instance. And setting expectations to take the looseness of extra syllables in stride.
It might be helpful if you posted some of the lines in question...
Some of what you are getting at, though, I think might be covered in the loose iambic thread. A lot of things go into how one reads a line. One is visual. If I see a long line in a loose pentameter poem, crowded with syllables, I am probably not going to promote stresses on little words (especially in little groupings like "of the") or eke secondary stresses out of long ones. Perhaps this is what you mean by natural speech.
One loose pentameter (I don't know that I would term it accentual--perhaps triple rhythmed with duple rhythm substituions or some such) that sort of works this way to me is Wilbur's "Shame". It also, however, has occasional perfect ip lines--and those emphatically so--as line 7.
just the beginning: "SHame"
It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy,
Save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language
Has never been fathomed, owing to the national habit
Of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion.
Those who have visited Scusi, the capital city,
Report that the railway-route from Schuldig passes
Through country best described as unrelieaved.
...
Maybe none of that is exactly what you are asking about... Please feel free to post a specific example.
And am sure others will have another view of this, and probably be able to be more articulate about it!
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