[Janet Kenny]

I think that what we do is limited only by our talent. One poet may succeed where another will fail.

Music students used to be taught that consecutive fifths were naughty. Painters were taught---wait for it--that blue and geen should never be in the same painting. That pretty well ruled out landscape for a start.

Pushing the boundaries is something most of us like to do. Some may do it with meter and others may do it with content and some with both.
One of the great tests is to write something riveting within the rules. That takes real talent. To make the familiar unfamiliar.
Janet

[Richard Wakefield]

As others have mentioned, it's context, context, context. Departures from the pattern -- or substitutions, if you prefer -- are expressive only insofar as there is a pattern to depart from. Sometimes the "departure" happens right at the beginning, as in "Let me not to the marriage of true minds." The context can be pretty big, a whole collection of sonnets or even the whole tradition of sonnet writing; still, the poem itself had better settle down to a more or less regular meter or there's nothing gained. How much "less" can a poet get away with? Try it and listen. I appreciate a poet who, like a musician, likes to show off a little bit, who shows that she or he can hit the right accents and then be a bit extravagant when the sense is better served by it.
RPW

[Mark Allinson]

It takes weight of argument or image to carry substitution, and most of what we hear in that vein is inexpressive, verging on sloppiness.

Tim, how true this is!

Where there is something substantial to say, the weight of that substance can push through to the saying. There is an inertia which rolls the thing forward and the subs take care of themselves.




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Mark Allinson

[oliver murray]

Mark,

The idea of inertia rolling things forward is a new one on me, but don't forget most lines of most poems don't have anything substantial to say and even where they do they need a bit of help from word choice, order etc.

[Tim Murphy]

Inertia is not just resistance to motion, but the tendencies of moving bodies to retain momentum, which is surely Mark's intent.

It's instructive to me to look at contemporary practice. If you scan Steele or Gwynn, they are strict writers of IP. By contrast, if you read Stallings, Thiel, or Light, they are very free. I think Diane and Kate rob their verse of power with the liberties they take and often fall flat on their faces. With Aliki, the reverse is true. She just has such a good ear and weaves so compelling an argument into her verse that she gets away with metrical murder.

[Mark Allinson]

Tim, that's right. I meant "inertia" as defined by physics: "the tendency of a body to preserve its state of rest or uniform motion ..."

Oliver, I would say that it is not simply a matter of every line being sufficiently weighty with meaning, but that every line is playing its part in bearing and carrying forward the load of a substantial argument.

Having something of "substance" to say gives the saying a certain "mass", "gravity", "inertia", or "weight" (as Tim says) - which pushes its way through the substitutions in a strong, natural way.

Not having a sufficiently "weighty argument" (which could in fact be quite "light" in its nature) allows second thoughts to make self-conscious choices of substitution. In other words, when there is no necessity of saying to pull the argument through the substitutions, other factors begin to make the choices, which are never as effective as the "inertia" of argument or image.

A nautical analogy might be: if your ship (the argument) has enough displacement and engine power (rhetorical inertia) you can cut a fairly smooth, direct passage through a choppy sea. An underpowered, light craft (weak or inchoate argument) means you will be going up and down all over the place.



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Mark Allinson

[oliver murray]

Originally posted by Mark Allinson:


Tim, that's right. I meant "inertia" as defined by physics: "the tendency of a body to preserve its state of rest or uniform motion ..."

Mark, I take your point, although "continues to roll" would, perhaps, have been more accurate than "roll the thing forward." I don't find the consistency of a steamroller, though it grinds "exceedingly small" is always appropriate, though, and many of the finest lines in English verse have an intriguing metrical ambiguity, whatever the substance or gravity of their content.