Accentual Verse

[milo]

"Accentual verse is strictly driven by beats per line." So by the way is metered poetry, it just requires a partner or partners of unstressed syllables.

When we are talking cadence or rhythm we are talking accentual verse, just not tied to a line count, the stressed syllables and non-stressed syllables is what gives the rise and fall of the voice.. Sure accentual verse is more difficult (when not confined by a line count), but it is also more subservient to driving the content, than vice versa. Free iambic verse came about as trying to loosen the straight jacket that had been put on content since 1066. The problem arises when people try and use them without having trained their ear on the more standard verse forms, and you get as we so often see, bland, run-on sentences.

Dale

metric verse isn't driven by beats per line but by /feet/. you can easily have metric verse with lines of varying feet.

In addition, accentual verse by its nature is easier than metric verse as /fixed/ metric verse is accentual by definition. (actually accentual/syllabic)

Anything written can be converted to "accentual verse" merely by changing the line breaks - how hard could that possibly be?

*everything ever written in the English language is actually accentual verse of varying lengths (lengths being beats per line)