Janice, I'm looking at "Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam" and counting seven, eight if the compound counts as two. But I do thank you for the explanation of counted verse.
Alicia, I've got to reply (and I apologize if I sound petulant) about line-end prepositions. In the typical of/love rhyme, we use a structure that moves the object in front of the preposition--
Where is love?
Does it fall from skies above?
Is is underneath a willow tree
that I've been dreaming of?--
so that there's no enjambment. What I object to is enjambing across a prepositional phrase. In IP it puts an ordinarily unstressed word in a stressed position, and such a word is hard to promote. It also focuses line-end pause and focus on a word that doesn't earn them.
When I asked about it above, I wanted to know if writers of syllabic verse argue that the form makes this sort of break an okay thing to do. I don't see it in most of the examples--though maybe there was one in the Plath? (I can't get back to look without losing this post.)
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