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Unread 06-30-2018, 02:32 AM
Perry James Perry James is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Rhode Island
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Carpenter View Post
Sorry, Perry, I wasn't underestimating you or implying you don't understand meter. Just expatiating on a favorite subject. As you can gather, metrical poets generally compose by ear, not by counting syllables. Metrical science provides after-the-fact diagnostic tools to help figure out why something works, or doesn't.

Pyrrhic substitutions work fine in a couple of contexts. In conjunction with a spondee substitution, they create a dip without shorting the number of stresses. It is also common for a line to end with two unstressed syllables where the final word ends in two unstressed syllables. There is a kind of promotion by syllable count that nonetheless does not result in a stress, e.g., "Not waiting for my death or bankruptcy..."
I don't actually believe that poets who write in meter don't scan their own poems. I'm sure that there is a lot of counting going on -- counting of syllables, stresses and feet.

I don't understand what you are saying in the sentence in which you use the word "promotion".
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