I once got into a public fracas, in Edge City Review, I think, with Richard Moore, who insisted that all we need do is follow Auden's dictum that there never be consecutive substitutions in IP. I wrench IP into greater strains than my contemporaries, and I think I have reason to do so.
Svein, I have no problem hearing your line as IP, but it entirely depends on its context, on the expectations set up by its surround.
DeVOURing TIME, BLUNT THOU the LIon's PAWS,
and BURN the LONG-LIVED PHOEnix in her BLOOD.
PLUCK the KEEN TEETH from the FIERCE TIGer's JAWS,
and MAKE the EARTH deVOUR her OWN SWEET BROOD.
Lines one and three are very irregular here, lines two and four resolve them. I don't pretend that this is how they should be scanned, but this how it appears on an oscilloscope of Murphy reciting Shakespeare. There the peaks and valleys of stress, and the duration of syllables can be scientifically graphed. Has ANYONE else around here actually studied such a printout? I did so only by accident, when my sister Molly recorded me with all that apparatus, and the machines confirmed what my ear already knew.
Dana Gioia in a course on meter told his students to attempt no more than the first foot trochee. I scoffed, and he said "That's advice to my students, not to you."
That said, I think most of the internal or God help us the consecutive substitutions we hear at DE are mere mangling. It takes weight of argument or image to carry substitution, and most of what we hear in that vein is inexpressive, verging on sloppiness.
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