Metrical anomalies

[billy]

Nonetheless, I want to discuss the issue of metrical anomalies. I'm curious to know what people consider acceptable and unacceptable.

Here's the second stanza of a poem about a friend dying in a hospital. The form is four lines of IP and one line of iambic trimeter.

Such faith they had once to crane their faces in
The breeze, and reach green arms to birds and sun; this line i think should have started with a stressed syl and have 4 and half feet. (i think)
The motherly sun, which warms my nervous thighs, something motherly warming nervous thighs sounds rather bizarre don't you think?
Which nurtured once their petals’ sheen, will presently this line has 12 syls, i thought you did 9 to 11 syls? because you say you see the 12 syls as running thus, does not make them run thus...they don't run thus. also the way you see it with a stressed start and a stressed end fucks up any flow you had. use 4 and a half feet and end with a stress. the previous line should start with an unstressed and end with an unstressed using 5 and a half feet, again, my meter's pretty sketchy so hopefully one of the formalists will help me out a little.
Turn their petals dry ...

The fourth and fifth lines are the problem:

i'd say the whole piece has a problem, the caps, the repetition, the bad meter. the quality of those lines aren't as good as you seem to think they are. of course that's just my POV