[Bill Carpenter]

By promotion I meant that the final syllable fills the space of a stress without being stressed. Usually the term refers to adding stress because of the meaning, as in, You want to what? I didn't think I heard. I look forward to the poem!

[Julie Steiner]

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

There's a lot of double vs. triple metrical variation going on throughout the whole poem, but most native speakers of English don't have think twice to navigate any of it, except for the last line, which requires the promotion of an unstressed syllable.

(Okay, I admit that reading the first line of that stanza as "I shall be TEL-ling this WITH a SIGH" probably happens more often than Frost's preferred "I shall be TEL-ling THIS with a SIGH" happens, but as far as I'm concerned that's not a big deal.)

As you can hear by the way Frost himself read that stanza, promotion doesn't mean that the reader is obliged to punch the final unstressed syllable in an unnatural way, i.e. "DIF-fer-ENCE." Frost says "DIF-fer-ence." But one is obliged to resist the contraction that most of us would use when pronouncing that word in conversation: "DIF-rence". It has to be enunciated as three syllables, in order for that final syllable to bear the weight of rhyming with "HENCE."

[Perry James]

It is a testament to Frost's skill that he forces the reader to enunciate "difference" as three syllables. I have seen other poets try to do that, and they always fail.

Here is the opening line from "The Last Duchess", with scansion:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
THAT'S my / LAST DUCH / ess PAINT / ed on / the WALL

The fourth-foot pyrrhic has a promotable syllable in it -- "on" -- which makes it a proper pyrrhic, in my view. The very fine point that I have been trying to raise in this thread is, "Can a pyrrhic which has no promotable syllable be considered a proper foot in iambic pentameter?" My opinion is "no", but I wanted to see what other people would say.

As for my own line of poetry, the line above it ends with a stressed syllable, so neither of the first two unstressed syllables can be promoted, meaning that those two syllables can't be seen as a proper pyrrhic foot.

This is the kind of thing that Tim Murphy would have had an answer for.

[E. Shaun Russell]

Originally Posted by Perry James

Here is the opening line from "The Last Duchess", with scansion:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
THAT'S my / LAST DUCH / ess PAINT / ed on / the WALL

I've always parsed this line completely differently:

That's MY / LAST DUCH / ess PAINT / ed ON / the WALL

Is my pronunciation wrong? Nope. Is yours? Nope. What matters is how it works for the reading. Simply put, as myself and others have been saying repeatedly throughout this thread, you can't just look at line level to determine meter -- you have to look at context.

The very fine point that I have been trying to raise in this thread is, "Can a pyrrhic which has no promotable syllable be considered a proper foot in iambic pentameter?" My opinion is "no", but I wanted to see what other people would say.

My opinion is a resounding "of course!" Not always, and perhaps not very often, but can it be? Certainly. Why couldn't it?

[Woody Long]

Originally Posted by Perry James

The very fine point that I have been trying to raise in this thread is, "Can a pyrrhic which has no promotable syllable be considered a proper foot in iambic pentameter?

Perry —

A pyrrhic followed by a spondee can be counted as a "double iamb". The discussion of double iambs here (down a ways, number 3.) seems to me to be pretty standard.

Sometimes the spondee is so strong that it's a stretch to read anything in the pyrrhic as promotable. I'm a fan of double iambs myself, for use where the meaning demands forceful emphasis.

— Woody

[RCL]

I don't have time (or the will) to argue right now, but the Browning is fairly regular IP.

[Michael Cantor]

Originally Posted by Perry James

The fourth-foot pyrrhic has a promotable syllable in it -- "on" -- which makes it a proper pyrrhic, in my view. The very fine point that I have been trying to raise in this thread is, "Can a pyrrhic which has no promotable syllable be considered a proper foot in iambic pentameter?" My opinion is "no", but I wanted to see what other people would say.

Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a shit. Stop arguing in the abstract. Post a poem, and we can crit within the context of the poem.

[Richard Meyer]

Michael Cantor cuts to the heart of the matter.

Concerning sculpture, Michelangelo said: “It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.”

And so with the poet. Let the ear judge.

Richard

[Perry James]

Shaun and RCL, I can't speak that line of Browning's the way you say you speak it. I'd be very curious to hear you do it.

Woody, what you call a "double iamb" I have been calling an "ionic", although I don't remember where I got that term. There isn't a double-iamb in the line I've been analyzing in this thread.

Michael and Richard, your comments aren't helpful. Scansion has rules, and I started this thread to analyze one aspect of it, and perhaps thereby to improve my writing. If you don't want to participate, then don't.

[Clive Watkins]

I agree with RCL that Browning's line is a standard variant of traditional IP, opening with a trochee not an iamb. To my ear, the metrical beats fall as follows: “Thát’s my last Dúchess páinted ón the wáll.” Rhetorically, “last” will attract a slight emphasis in any reading aloud, but that is not the same as awarding it a metrical beat. This slight dissonance between metre and rhetorical weight is one of the expressive delights of accentual syllabic metres.

As other have said, post your poem!

Clive Watkins