A few truths about meter:
• it's made up. it's fake. you can't have firm and fixed opinions about Correct And Proper Scansion without being a crank.
• recognizing the above is crucial to actually using meter well, because it forces you to think about what meter and scansion are for, rather than taking it as some deep truth about a poem
• meter is most useful (I find; ymmv) when it is kept minimal, sharply separated from rhythm. when too much of natural rhythm is stuffed into meter, the flexibility of meter is lost.
• it follows from this that, in reading a poem, one should read its rhythm but not its meter. its meter is a ghost that haunts it.
• corollary #1: any metrical system that recognizes more than two degrees of stress (stressed, unstressed) is baroque and unhelpful.
• corollary #2: relative stress is much more important than absolute stress, because relative stress points to the abstract pattern underlying the line, while absolute stress points to the variation within that pattern.
• corollary #3: with exceedingly rare exceptions, spondees do not exist in English language poetry. relative stress rules nearly always resolve them into either trochees or iambs. one consistent class of exceptions is the {u u / /} pattern, which I prefer to think of as a special two-beat foot, the "double iamb".
• mastery of meter is then the ability to create variation within this consistent abstract pattern. some of this comes from outright substitutions; much of it comes from playing with relative stress. again, precisely this sort of play is lost when the distance between meter and rhythm is shortened.
• friendly reminder: meter is fake. it's made up. it's not real. it's bogus. it's garbage. it's crazytown bananapants. it is metaphysically impossible to talk about it without being a crank. I am a crank for typing this post. I am also 100% Correct.
