Well, I'm surprised by the answers. I am not a pedant; I am simply trying to improve my own meter. That is a line from a poem I am working on. On the Metrical board, there is constant criticism of people's meter, and I was hoping to improve my meter to avoid that.
My theory is that a line of iambic pentameter has to have at least five evenly spaced syllables that can take a stress when spoken normally, and the line I posted cannot (given that the line before ends with a stressed syllable). I wanted to find out if most formalist poets would agree with that.
I used the wrong term. "DUM da DUM" is an amphimacer. If Amphimacers and amphibrachs (da DUM da) can be used in iambic pentameter, then that allows ANY line up to about 15 syllables to be scanned as iambic pentameter. In my mind, that it simply chaos. My use of the word "illegal" was appropriate here, and it disappoints me that it merely triggered a bunch of scolds. Yes, there have to be rules when writing in meter, or when scanning other people's poetry.
A dactyl is "DUM da da", and I agree that they can be used in iambic pentameter as occasional substitutions. The most common substitute is the trochee, and Frost showed us that anapests make good substitutes too.
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