In summary, here are a few of the key points relating to the AS matrix and the ASR generally, and some practical consequences AS has for the poem.

a) Odd-stress lines, such as i.p and the common metre 4+3 couplet, end on rises; because the pattern is curtailed, the falling position occurs in the hiatus. This means that those lines tend to accommodate NS comfortably.

b) The effect is scaled up: stanzas which curtail the pattern by omitting whole lines may end on lines of an overall higher or lower key, depending on their position.

c) Even-stressed lines will often demonstrate a natural, emphatic rising accent on the final s position in the second unit of any distich to counter the coincidence of falling matrical value and rising NS.

d) The zenith and nadir of each successive hierarchical unit will become cumulatively more salient, and at the higher, larger unit levels these nodes may have sufficient salience to exert some compositional influence as potentiated, expressive positions. Metrical variation is most likely to take place at the zenith and the higher nodes, probably on an unconscious ‘the stronger the position, the more disruption it can take’ principle, and the fact that there is more energy to be distributed at those points. And although I have no more than anecdotal evidence for this, the nadir and the other lowest nodes may tend to coincide with content words which are de-accented for argumentative, thematic or syntactic reasons. (Poets could certainly take more manipulative advantage of these ‘secret’ stations in the matrical frame.)

e) As is well known, enjambment between odd-stress lines is a far more radical gesture than even-stress lines, because it elides the ghost metron. However, as can be seen from the matrix, it also means three successive s stress rises: in i.p., 12 6 10 4 8 [2] / 11 5 9 3 7 [1] becomes 12 6 10 4 8 / 11 5 9 3 7 [1]; this may encourage stress-miscount under certain syntactic conditions, but also suggest a potentially expressive technique. (The rising effect is also present in enjambed trimeter: 8 4 6 / 7 3 5. It would be apparent, too, if we enjambed the second and third lines of common metre.)

f) The effect of AS at the metronic and dimetronic level is radically weakened by metrical variation at the level of syllable. Additionally, the looser the metre, the slighter its effects. However, at units of the syllabic, metronic and dimetronic, AS is primarily felt through stress-alternation. (The difference between a syllable which is strong only at syllable level, and one which is strong at syllable, metronic and dimetronic levels – i.e. in the stichic matrix of 4-strong, the last and first syllables respectively – is certainly pronounced enough to be exploited for expressive purposes.) At units of the stichic and above, AS is primarily experienced as intonational effect, of key-rise and key-fall. They may enjoy a fair degree of independence from one another; while loose, light and free metres may limit or elide the effects of AS within the line, lines syntactically experienced as binary groups may still vaguely be felt to alternate:

1 Edna St Vincent Millay, Collected Poems, ed. Norma Millay (New York: HarperPerennial, 2011).