Metrical anomalies

[Caleb Murdock]

sorry but you're not even stretching your arms. (I don't know what you're referring to.)

lines of iambic pentameter need only have three iambic feet. most people in the know...your formalist idiots actually know this to be so. (Judson Jerome estimated that 40% of most IP poetry consists of variant feet, but I still don't get your point.)

the soliloquy from hamlet, written but shakespeare that iambic meter guy....count the feet the first line count the iambs
count the iambs on the first 5 line. then have a peep at the sixth.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

in general i'd tell somebody the meter was off unless i knew they understood the iambic rule, i only know this because i was shown it by a few members on the site. (What is the iambic rule?) i'm not very good with meter but bad meter is bad meter. (What is the bad meter that you are referring to?) if someone who really knows what good meter is tells you you have bad meter, believe them. (How do I know who knows what good meter is?) you either know it or don't know it. (Seriously?) to assume you know it doesn't cut the mustard. (What exactly am I assuming?)

I'd love to respond to this, but I didn't understand much of it. The first six lines are good iambic pentameter with normal variants -- so what's the point?

SUCH FAITH they HAD ONCE to CRANE their FAC es in

(The "in" at the end takes a theoretical stress.)

Those are the stresses. There is more than one way to scan it, but it sounds nice to me as it is.

SUCH FAITH / they HAD ONCE / to CRANE / their FAC / es in

That's as good a scansion as any. Actually, when I read the poem aloud, I read it more like this:

such FAITH / they had ONCE / to CRANE / their FACE / es in

As I said, the "in" takes a theoretical stress, and the second foot (in this case) is an anapest.

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I can often gauge my meter when I try to sing what I write to the tune of Gilligan's island. But that's because it is often in ballad meter. However, I think when you vary the meter without intended effect then you are damaging the underlying rhythm.

But that's my point. The fourth and fifth lines, when read aloud, have good meter. It's only when they are scanned that they look off.

One of Shakespeare's sonnets starts with a line that has only one iamb in it despite the overall meter being iambic pentameter, yet the line is famous and everyone seems to like it:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
LET ME / NOT to / the MAR / riage of / TRUE MINDS

One of the techniques of good poets is to insert rhythmic explosions into their poems. It is the amateurs who write in perfectly regular meter. (Not always, of course. Pope's metrics were very regular, but then, some people think his poetry sounds monotonous.)