[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Folks,

Like many who are writing in metrical forms these days, I am an autodidact. I taught myself from books, by trying and failing and trying again, by imitating Frost and Yeats and Shakespeare, and of course I was lucky enough to have my father to go to for advice along the way. Still, I do feel that there are gaps in my education, gap so wide "even two can pass abreast" as it might be.

The issue that concerns me these days is that of substitutions in iambic meters.

My own esthetics have pushed me to believe that not all substitutions are created equal.

I find it clumsy and unnerving when a troche is subbed in, except at the start of a line, start of a clause, or start of a sentence. "SOMEthing /there IS /that DOES /n't LOVE /a WALL" is fine, but "aCROSS /the LINE /of STRAIGHT /TREES in / the SNOW" feels off. It feels as the poet wasn't acrobatic enough to write the poem the right way, and so popped in a substitution that didn't have a rhythmic imperative (i.e., to start off the new phrase or sentence or line with a bang). Thoughts on this?

I find pyrrhics and spondees pretty useless except as joined together into a double iamb. If I were going to use one of them, I would prefer the spondee over the pyrrhic, but even then I'm guessing that in almost all cases 1/2 of the spondee would get demoted in context, making the point moot. The exception is first position, where the spondee doesn't follow the stressed syllable of an iamb, and so without 3 stressed syllables in a row one could argue that demotion doesn't happen. Even then, it feels clumsy to me, as it puts an extra stress into the line. Again, I'm happy to be schooled on this stuff.

Anapests, well, I just don't like 'em. If I have an anapest, I will almost always make it dissipate into an elision, or I'll convert it into a double iamb, or I'll split the foot and add a stress at the start and make it a troche-iamb sequence, assuming that it's positioned after a rhythmic break. They're fine for ballads, limericks and light verse, and in fact are necessary for them, but when popped into iambic meter they carry a whiff of clumsiness and goofiness that I generally dislike. I don't even let myself use them in blank verse. Very, very rarely I'll allow myself to get away with one, but VERY rarely. Am I too rigid? Thoughts?

Okay, next issue: catalexis. I get that catalexis is typically used in trochaic tetrameter and is usually positioned in the final foot (TYger / TYger/ BURNing/BRIGHT), but with a shift in vision couldn't such meter also be read as iambic tetrameter with the catalectic foot in the first position (TY/ger TY/ ger BURN/ing BRIGHT)? It seems less obvious in this line because of the way the words fall, but it works well for other lines of the poem (IN / the FOR/ests OF/the NIGHT). Question is, why would one want to do so? For me, it's just a question of how to use catalexis in Iambic meter. It seems to me if you do so, then the calalectic foot necessarily shifts from the last to the first position. Otherwise, the line ends with two stressed syllables in a row and starts weakly. Compare:

Oh TY / ger TY / ger BURN / ing BRIGHT / RED

to

TY / ger TY / ger BURN / in BRIGHT / ly RED

Anyhoo, that is MY practice, or at least the practice I've been using for the past several years. Thoughts on this would be welcome, also!

Yours,

Tony

p.s. I am going through the busiest period in my life, to date, so have been pretty absent from these forums, except as a "lurker." Sorry not to be more present.