Wow, thanks so much for your kind words, the resources, and most of all for the variants!
1) Sprung rhythm sounds promising! I'll have to see if I can get it to play nice with the strict(ish) stressed-syllable count requirements of Galdralag I'm using here. If not, it will almost certainly be helpful in more flexible meters like Anglo-Saxon Long Lines.
2) The varied repetition is a good suggestion, and one that these versions made insufficient use of, it seems. In Galdralag, there's a tendency, but not a requirement, for the last two lines to be variations of each other, sometimes with as little as one word changed, and the idea of changing *only* a synonym might be productive.
3) Thank you for the Eastern "versions" - I had encountered brief mention of them, hadn't looked to them as directly for inspiration, though maybe I should.
4) Thank you *very much* for the scansion and the suggestions. To make sure I'm reading your scansion correctly, you're using "/" for a stressed syllable and "_" for an un/less-stressed syllable?
Before this, I hadn't really written any poetry since some terrible blank verse in high school, so it's been a lot of fun to learn more and suggestions about techniques to consider are most welcome.
Re: "Hail Idun" Variants, and Any Questions of Which to Ask More?
1) Sprung rhythm sounds promising! I'll have to see if I can get it to play nice with the strict(ish) stressed-syllable count requirements of Galdralag I'm using here. If not, it will almost certainly be helpful in more flexible meters like Anglo-Saxon Long Lines.
2) The varied repetition is a good suggestion, and one that these versions made insufficient use of, it seems. In Galdralag, there's a tendency, but not a requirement, for the last two lines to be variations of each other, sometimes with as little as one word changed, and the idea of changing *only* a synonym might be productive.
3) Thank you for the Eastern "versions" - I had encountered brief mention of them, hadn't looked to them as directly for inspiration, though maybe I should.
4) Thank you *very much* for the scansion and the suggestions. To make sure I'm reading your scansion correctly, you're using "/" for a stressed syllable and "_" for an un/less-stressed syllable?
Before this, I hadn't really written any poetry since some terrible blank verse in high school, so it's been a lot of fun to learn more and suggestions about techniques to consider are most welcome.
Thanks again,
Jeff