[Tony Barnstone]

Hey Folks,

My life has been so busy for so long that all I can do is lurk around the edges of this forum now and again, but tonight I've been thinking a bit about a little technical question that's been nagging at me and I thought I'd throw it into the arena for the lions to chew at a bit.

I've been thinking about how to make iambics more condensed, more pithy, and so of course have been using lots of headless feet to start off my lines, but sometimes I do strange things, such as doing a double iamb the first unaccented syllable of which is dropped, something like this, to make up an example on the fly:

(x) the / bland sky / that bel/lies down/ at dusk

And sometimes, I go headless after a caesura or full stop, like this:

The mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

And sometimes I do a headless double iamb after a mid-line full stop, like this:

The li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

And then I'm tempted to trim further, maybe even have a double-headless foot for a double-iamb (i.e., a pyrrhic-less spondee):

(x) (x) / bland sky/ that bel/lies down /at dusk

(x) mu/-shu pork? / (x) Chick / en on / the stove?

(x) li /quid night/ seeps in. / (x) The / glass dreams.

I think that this stuff is stuff I can get away with, but, truly, I'm making the rules up as I go.

Whatcha think?

Best, Tony