Leanne - I nearly missed this... found it just as I was logging off so I had to leave a comment because it's bloody funny. I'll come back to it, I swear.
Leanne - OK, so I can't make L7 iambic without the stresses going all pear shaped, so as a stress reliever why not try something like "But Pyrrhus would admit to no defeat"? (I tried to think of something with a Pyrrhic foot but they're just so... Pyrrhic.) And... you've just GOT to use arse to rhyme properly... plus, it's clarsier.
The feminine change up in the third stanza is despicably funny. How rude of you to make it self aware. A pain in the smart arse. The third line of that stanza puts a really weird stress on "syllables", so my suggestion is to use the most poetic "silly-bulls" instead.
A volta, in current terms, alternates in a most electrifying manner -- but I will tell you no more lest you be tempted to take your computer into the bath with you.
Aphasic - Ok - L7...the 'original' line was: "But Pyrrhus failed to comtemplate defeat", which if I'm correct, would have scanned reasonably well in ip - this was not not my intention :> However, I'm not sufficiently experienced in the art of sonnetry (?) to transfer my dangerously sparse knowledge of theory (switching feet for effect) into practice, and I'd appreciate your scan of L7, so I know exactly what it is I've got in there :> (It was actually meant to go iamb/iamb/pyrrhus/spondee/iamb). The point of S2 L7 was to demonstrate how ineffectual an inconsistent foot can be when applied gratuitously or inappropriately. To me, L7 just sounds awkward. I also wondered whether L8 comprises iambs with a trochee thrown in ('pain in') 
S3 was also meant to be somewhat self-deprecating (wow, I'm so clever) - ideally, the 'piss it' line would have been the last line in the quatrain, the culmination of a contrived variation on a scheme. 'Silly Bulls' is a slurpy suggestion, and so I'll have to consider something other than 'trailing' to accomodate the allusion.
The couplet - more of the same...traditionally/conventionally, the 'volta' would appear in L9 (?) - either the first line of the Petrarchan sestet, or the third quatrain of the English/Shakespearean (if at all), leaving the couplet in the latter as a kind of wrap up finale, so 'volta' wouldn't have any direct relevance where I placed the reference. I know nothing about the 'modern' dynamics of the volta, so I guess that one turned on me, as many things seem to do when I exercise my mouth/fingers :>
This one exercised me, though not in an over-the-Hillary-barracking-Obama fashion...
'Arse' - yeah, right - I guess I was being terribly British in my projected pronunciation, so 'arse' is more than parsable 
Thank you for being so gentle in your savagery *disorderly slime*
Leanne - "But PYRR / hus WOULD /n't ack / NOWledge / deFEAT"
iamb/ iamb/ pyrrhic/ trochee/ iamb -- or I guess at a stretch that trochee could be called a spondee (I wouldn't but scanning ain't no science). So you're right about the foot either way. It's just weird seeing it in those words when it's usually over and the but not dids. Let the Pyrrhics claim their victory
Aphasic - Right - yes, I don't know my spondee from my trochee, and I've personalised Pyrrhus. Hopefully that will permeate - it's uncomfortable, this foot-in-mouth habit - so, an empiric victory. Thank you Leanne 'The Scan' Hanson :>
Aphasic - Bizarre...I actually typed some notes when writing this [how sad am I?] - they tell me that my design was for a pyrrhic in the 'Pyrrhus' line, and a spondee in the 'Spondee' line. After reading your first comment, I re-read and decided I'd got it entirely wrong [how dumb is that?]. I then farted, giggled, passed out and showered, though possibly not in that order.
At one time I read poetry without giving any attention to form & meter, or even rhyming schemes, although these elements are intuitively appreciated, I imagine, by most people, however unfamiliar the 'technical' considerations might be. I now find it impossible to read anything without scrutinising and dissecting. I'm not convinced that's a good thing, though it's probably just an obsessive phase, like the 'Oh shit! We're all going to die' paranoia, or perhaps the 'Sunsets are unbelievably vivid if you lie on your back after eating a mushroom omelette' syndrome. Scrambled egg cortex is favourite...
Leanne - Sadly, I don't think it's a passing phase... at least, I haven't passed it yet and I've been taking the medicine and eating lots of fibre. When once you might have read something and said "that doesn't sound right" but shrugged, moved on and got a kebab, now you'll read it and go "look how badly she's mucked up that dactylic hexameter, Homer would have kittens." PS Homer couldn't really have kittens because he was blind and someone would have just substituted toads covered in cotton wool. Or maybe that's just what I would do.
Aphasic - I didn't know Homer personally - even so, I can't imagine him copulating with a cat - although if he was blind...
Aphasic - Strangely enough, no - although I was tempted to get into 'prosodomy' territory. Or is that just a variation on a predictable theme?
Anstey - Do you take 'super smart' pills? How do you get so damned brilliant? It makes me feel quite inadequate.
Aphasic - Only for alleviation of the sting from your super-barbed comments Anstey :> Actually, I lift random words from your previously posted poetry, throw them into a 3.785 litre hat and post them via a self-addressed antelope - in an instant, everyone has a permanently pronking horn, or is that a honking prawn...
Anstey - What a man does with his merrily pronking horn in the privacy of his own self-addressed antelope is no one's business but his own.
Leanne - If only he would keep it to himself.
Here's a challenge for you: now you've got the iambic pentameter totally fixed in your head, try writing a sonnet in dactyls. You'll probably have to truncate the last one on each line to make it work. And I think, to make it more interesting, write it about gardening.
I'll do one too if you're up to it.
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