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Originally Posted by A. Baez
About reading styles, I actually do what you do to an extent—I’m not completely artless—but I think that my natural speech sensor is set just a bit higher than yours. (I see this matter as less binary than a range.) For example, I’ve always preferred to pause at least a bit at the end of each line. Another factor to consider is the possibility of “authorial bias”—you, more than anyone else, have known since the beginning what you were aiming for metrically (and otherwise) in this poem, so I think you are more likely than anyone else to see that aim being met. At least that’s how it goes with me and my own work!
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I endorse every word—except the self-deprecating “artless.” Your natural-speech sensor is set correctly for most of what we read on the Sphere and for most contemporary English-language poetry. My yearning for a “ballroom meter,” as Joe aptly put it, trips me up time and again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by A. Baez
Anyway, I did an experiment to see if a different placement of “LCD” in a wannabe anapestic tet line could make me naturally perceive this term as an anapest. It does! … I think that in cases like this, it helps not only to have established the meter firmly in the poem as a whole before the questionable element, but also to have established the meter even in the particular line before the special element is introduced.
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A fascinating experiment and convincing conclusion, but it’s hard to begin every line with two naturally unstressed syllables (“in the,” “at a,” etc.), which is why I like to begin anapestic lines with natural iambs. It doesn’t establish the meter, but it gets the first stress clear, which seems to help the anapests that follow. That’s not how this one came out, though. I mentioned “The TV screens” as a solution, but I think the articles in “the screens” and “the houses” start to sound like filler. “Lit TV” would suit me, I suppose, but it’s not a natural anapest, so are we back where we started?
Quote:
Originally Posted by A. Baez
Yes, I guess that would embrace the ambiguity more and thus make me less uncomfortable with it.
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Done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by A. Baez
It has my imagination running wild.
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It was just that I was sick and alone on Christmas, with several other long-term problems coming to a head at the same time. Later, when I’m feeling more positively charged, I’ll think about adding another couplet or two to the poem to cast that street and house in a more affectionate glow.
Thanks for the wish of light, Alexandra. The same and brighter to you.