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Odd syllable counts !? Well, yes - it was an idea I was playing with (following on from the 'Optional Illusions' effort). First, a disclaimer - 'countless' would normally be considered an exceptional/prepended trochee, but for this exercise, I'm counting it as less, and pyrrhic in nature...then, reading from start to finish, and allowing a caesura (one unstressed syllable) to replace each of the stanza breaks, it should read as a string of dactyls throughout, until the final trucated foot. Of course scanning doesn't do that kind of stuff - it's all about syllables/feet/stresses per line - and my 'reading' of it is probably way off anyway. So, thank you for tidying it up 
countless lovers are lost in that nebulous place *
'countless lovers' - hmm - yeh, I guess it has to go. It was a kind of shorthand convenience, but I'll look for something else...
'nebulous' - is something, though indistinct, ill-defined, unclassified even...which is what I wanted to say, and it was actually the last piece to be fitted, influenced by 'space'. What do you think I need? Something less nebulous obviously - I could just say 'indistinct' or 'ill-defined', though that involves more stress problems and the latter sounds somewhat 'clinical', an impression I wanted to leave until the end - so, the whole line needs to be excised and replaced.
What she needs is a clinical slap in the face.†
† It's not so awful as is, but it's a bit longish -- what about "she could do with a clinical slap in the face"?
Longish? 'What she needs is a...' and 'She could do with a...' appear to be the same, syllable-wise, with similar stresses. So I'm assuming it's 'longish' in some other way - help me out here...
I seem to have poetic/prosodic 'blindspots' that need to be seriously addressed :>
countless lovers are lost in that nebulous place *
- -- this line is just eew really, "countless lovers" has to be rushed rather unforgivably and nebulous is just... nebulously nowt. Really, this is the one in the whole piece that needs a serious rethink.
'countless lovers' - hmm - yeh, I guess it has to go. It was a kind of shorthand convenience, but I'll look for something else...
'nebulous' - is something, though indistinct, ill-defined, unclassified even...which is what I wanted to say, and it was actually the last piece to be fitted, influenced by 'space'. What do you think I need? Something less nebulous obviously - I could just say 'indistinct' or 'ill-defined', though that involves more stress problems and the latter sounds somewhat 'clinical', an impression I wanted to leave until the end - so, the whole line needs to be excised and replaced.
What she needs is a clinical slap in the face.†
† It's not so awful as is, but it's a bit longish -- what about "she could do with a clinical slap in the face"?
Longish? 'What she needs is a...' and 'She could do with a...' appear to be the same, syllable-wise, with similar stresses. So I'm assuming it's 'longish' in some other way - help me out here...
I seem to have poetic/prosodic 'blindspots' that need to be seriously addressed :>
by Aphasic on Apr. 17 2008