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06-29-2018, 07:12 PM
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Interesting and exhausting analysis! I'd add to the references Steele's All The Fun's How You Say a Thing .
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Ralph
Last edited by RCL; 06-29-2018 at 07:14 PM.
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06-29-2018, 07:32 PM
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Bill, I didn't mean to suggest that I don't understand meter, or the variety of exceptions that can be made. It was just this one point that I always wondered about.
When I spoke of the stresses being evenly spaced out, I meant evenly enough so that five feet can be found in the line. That's why I posted the line that I did -- there is no way to find five feet in that line unless you accept the first two unstressed (and unstressable) syllables as a foot. However, situations like this are completely acceptable:
da DUM / da DUM / DUM da / da DUM / DUM da (iamb/iamb/trochee/iamb/trochee)
In that line there is a clustering of the beats, but they are still spread out enough that you can define five feet. I was actually asking about a very specific circumstance, and I agree with Aaron's answer.
I don't care for Timothy's book. His view of meter is more rigid than mine, and his four-tiered meter system is, in my opinion, unnecessarily complicated.
Last edited by Perry James; 06-29-2018 at 07:34 PM.
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06-29-2018, 07:40 PM
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Pentameter is defined by how many feet it has, not stresses. Your line has five feet and since the primary foot is the iamb I would call it iambic pentameter. A pyrrhic is a legitmate foot—why wouldn't it be? And anyway by itself that line has an ever so soft stress on "and."
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06-29-2018, 09:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Perry James
I don't care for Timothy's book. His view of meter is more rigid than mine, and his four-tiered meter system is, in my opinion, unnecessarily complicated.
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Hey - we agree on something!
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06-29-2018, 11:09 PM
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Michael, have there been other things we disagreed on? I haven't been keeping track.
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06-29-2018, 11:12 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Orwn Acra
Pentameter is defined by how many feet it has, not stresses. Your line has five feet and since the primary foot is the iamb I would call it iambic pentameter. A pyrrhic is a legitmate foot—why wouldn't it be? And anyway by itself that line has an ever so soft stress on "and."
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The idea I am getting at is this: Pyrrhics are fine as long as the pyrrhic includes a syllable which CAN be stressed. But if a line has only four syllables which can be stressed, it has to be considered a line of tetrameter. Aaron seems to be the only person who gets this distinction.
Last edited by Perry James; 06-30-2018 at 03:08 AM.
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06-30-2018, 12:45 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Perry James
Michael, have there been other things we disagreed on? I haven't been keeping track.
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You haven't been keeping track? How in hell do you expect me to pick a fight with you if you're not even keeping track? (Don't take it seriously, but I was referring to the fact that you appear to be taking the letter of the law of scansion far more seriously than I do - than almost anybody here does - and far more reluctant to let your ear be the judge. So your comments about Tim Steele were refreshing. He's a thoroughly charming human being as long as you keep him away from a blackboard and a line of poetry.)
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06-30-2018, 12:58 AM
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Sorry, Perry, I wasn't underestimating you or implying you don't understand meter. Just expatiating on a favorite subject. As you can gather, metrical poets generally compose by ear, not by counting syllables. Metrical science provides after-the-fact diagnostic tools to help figure out why something works, or doesn't.
Pyrrhic substitutions work fine in a couple of contexts. In conjunction with a spondee substitution, they create a dip without shorting the number of stresses. It is also common for a line to end with two unstressed syllables where the final word ends in two unstressed syllables. There is a kind of promotion by syllable count that nonetheless does not result in a stress, e.g., "Not waiting for my death or bankruptcy..."
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06-30-2018, 02:28 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Cantor
You haven't been keeping track? How in hell do you expect me to pick a fight with you if you're not even keeping track? (Don't take it seriously, but I was referring to the fact that you appear to be taking the letter of the law of scansion far more seriously than I do - than almost anybody here does - and far more reluctant to let your ear be the judge. So your comments about Tim Steele were refreshing. He's a thoroughly charming human being as long as you keep him away from a blackboard and a line of poetry.)
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Actually, what you describe is what I've always done. To keep my lines to a uniform length, I usually count syllables and I let the stresses fall where they may -- but I got the impression that that wouldn't pass muster on this forum. I have noticed that when I try to be more metrical, my poems flow more smoothly.
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06-30-2018, 02:32 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Carpenter
Sorry, Perry, I wasn't underestimating you or implying you don't understand meter. Just expatiating on a favorite subject. As you can gather, metrical poets generally compose by ear, not by counting syllables. Metrical science provides after-the-fact diagnostic tools to help figure out why something works, or doesn't.
Pyrrhic substitutions work fine in a couple of contexts. In conjunction with a spondee substitution, they create a dip without shorting the number of stresses. It is also common for a line to end with two unstressed syllables where the final word ends in two unstressed syllables. There is a kind of promotion by syllable count that nonetheless does not result in a stress, e.g., "Not waiting for my death or bankruptcy..."
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I don't actually believe that poets who write in meter don't scan their own poems. I'm sure that there is a lot of counting going on -- counting of syllables, stresses and feet.
I don't understand what you are saying in the sentence in which you use the word "promotion".
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