[Solan]

Caleb, Carol,

those convoys have a steady iambic rhythm:

for hours / the con / voys had / rolled by
is perhaps best analysed in stress levels:

1 4 / 1 3 / 1 2 / 2 3

The third foot is a light iamb. If it had been 2 1 you would have needed to excuse it as trochaic substitution.

As for the inverted iamb, even this foreigner could hear it in two of Bob's examples.

Caleb, you analyse in terms of stress. So when you write, you truly write in stressual-syllabic meter. But the English (and German) standard is accentual-syllabic meter, and it is within that standard that inverted iambs and comparable beasts exist. Stress and accent follow each other quite close, but sometimes they part. Then you must make a choice.
It's perfectly legitimate to write in something other than the standard - like stressual-syllabic meter - as long as you remember that it is not identical to the accentual-syllabic standard.

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Svein Olav

.. another life