I am a beginner poet, and feel I have gotten rid of my awful tin ear only recently. That is: I feel capable of writing regular, metric poetry.
But regular can become relentless, even when the regularity is Steele-style, like a line that would scan 2-4-1-2-3-4-2-4-1-3, which some poets would scan as x/ xx // x/ x/ - as a line with pyrrhic and spondaic substitution.
So I wonder when other substitutions may be permissible, or when substitution with pyrrhics and spondees whose stress curves are 2-1 or 4-3 are permissible in iambic verse.
Trochaic substitution, for instance: I see it used for emphasis sometimes. But do you need to emphasize to make a trochaic substitution? And will trochaic substitution always work well when you want to emphasise something?
I hope to develop "ear" for substitution in time, but think rules-of-thumb will be a good help not only while I work on developing that ear, but also as a means of developing that same ear.
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Svein Olav
.. another life
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