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Unread 06-29-2018, 02:02 PM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Plum Island, MA; Santa Fe, NM
Posts: 11,175
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What Nemo said. If you want to be a lawyer, be a lawyer. If you want to be a poet then develop enough confidence in your internal sense of rhythm and meter, and what works in what content, to write without wringing your fingers over it. Alternately, take a few courses in tort law.

And keep this in mind. It all depends on context. What comes before - and sometimes what comes after - has a huge effect in determining whether meter or a substitution works. Is it a humorous poem? A tragedy about a young man who worries too much about meter? Sometimes a metric excursion makes more sense when viewed within the broader body of a poet's work. It's context, and what you're doing with the poem that matters - not some rule.
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