Dear Alicia,
Here are a few stanzas, quoted from "Diminished", recently posted by Wordpress:
My life, of course! What fool would disagree?”
He has to feed his family before all else,
and so he leaves, to seek his fortune elsewhere.
Nothing escapes the market’s invisible hand,
not even the life of art. La vie boheme,
as a poet said, is squalid poverty.
Does poetry, like prayer, demand a vow
of poverty? At last, he sees it does.
But, damn art! Poetry will hold sway
on him, even if he has to earn
his bread through work that only feeds the body,
which has to eat before the spirit’s fed.
Thank you for your further reflections on meter, which I will go and reflect upon.
But I think something that you said more precisely isolates the question I'm trying to ask:
But art, damn art! Poetry will hold sway.
(Where you start with two iambs-- the second almost spondaic in its heaviness)
I think what I'm trying to ask is this:
- if one is clearly in the context of accentual verse, not accentual-syllabic
- if one uses a word or phrase that would be classed as spondaic if one were in accentual syllabic
- may not the two stresses in that spondee "count" as two beats in the line,
- even if the following syllable is unstressed,
- especially if the rhetorical or narrative context reinforces the spondaic stress?
Clive,
Thank you - I think it's definitely time for me to get Attridge's book.
Such an emphasis is not, however, part of the metrical
structure and is not required by the metrical structure.
I agree. In this case, however, my perception is that it is *required* by the *rhetorical* structure. If this is not your perception, perhaps that explains my confusion.
As writers, we hear the words we are working with in a certain way. This can exercise such a mesmeric power over our ear that it is easy to become wedded to that one way of hearing them and fail to notice that another reader, who cannot hear how we choose to read the words, might well detect a different pattern.
Indeed! and haven't I learned that since coming here!
Peter,
"Boom-counting" - I like that.
cheers, all,
Victoria Gaile