1. Amphibrachs do not mix well with dactyls or Anapests…

2. The other feet are: trochees, Anapests, dactyls, and spondees

3. A "dactylic" line may feature dactyls, Anapests, or spondees, because these are all equal (L + s + s)

4. What does Alcaic-verse mean? A Greek meter, supposedly invented by Alcaeus; consisting of combinations of spondee, iambs and dactyls

5. But a line with iambs and trochees cannot feature dactyls or Anapests, and vice versa, because they are not equal in length

6. It appears similar to other members of the portunid family, but has reduced swimming dactyls and long walking legs.

7. Anapests are rare in spoken English, and in English-language poetry Anapests are far less common than dactyls, iambs, and trochees.

8. ‘Thus in the last stanza quoted, after the surge of Anapaests in the first two lines, spondees, dactyls, and iambs begin to appear.’

9. See Anapaest ‘But the repetition of ‘call to me’ in its dactylic form makes a continuous Anapaestic reading impossible, and the stress dactyls in the following lines makes it clearly inappropriate.’

10. Mixing Iambs and Anapests (and also Trochees and Dactyls) works really well in a story because, as in the lines above, a reader never really notices (unless they are specifically looking) if there are one or two UNstressed syllables in between the STRESSED ones.

11. ‘Thus in the last stanza quoted, after the surge of Anapaests in the first two lines, spondees, dactyls, and iambs begin to appear.’ More example sentences ‘They seemed startled by the realization they could actually craft iamb, anapest, anapest, and have it come out a poem.’

12. Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or Anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on--trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and o ctameter (8)