First a little business. I meant to include Derek Attridge among the possibly useful prosodists and I plain forgot. Poetic Rhythm : An Introduction is available, Rhythms of English Poetry is a special order, and Well-Weighed Syllables appears to be out of print.
Kasey has left the field, but with a few parting shots. He calls Timothy Steele's All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing "fatuous" and "odiously-titled." I don't know why anyone should care what he thinks of the title, but there is no better discussion in English of iambic pentameter. Steele makes no attempt in this book at a survey, historical or stylistic, of English prosody. His stated purpose is to introduce readers to the way iambic meters, and particularly iambic pentameter, function in English verse. Since our discussion had mostly concerned iambic pentameter, Steele's book is certainly apposite, and probably more useful than the others. Of course it will not impress Kasey that "dead-enders" like Anthony Hecht and Richard Wilbur also find it good and useful. I wonder if he has read the book. (For the record, I have not read the 2 hard to find books by Attridge, nor David Keppel-Jones's Strict Metrical Tradition.
For the second time, Kasey pointed me to the work of Jennifer Moxley as a poet doing interesting things with traditional metrics, though qualified this time as intentionally "conspicuously dotty." Googling revealed nothing indicating any interest on her part in metrical matters, but that means diddly. I did find this essay, which buries a few interesting ideas in leaden prose and an incoherent argument. In her first paragraph, we learn that poets prefer to classify poems by formal strategies rather than content because "the range of formal devices possible in poetry is finite, and thus easier to break down into categories and preferences, while the range of content or, shall I say, subject matter, is infinite, and there is no argument for limiting it that a good poem cannot defy." So far, so good. But in the second paragraph she contradicts herself by arguing that the "Modernist revolution took place therefore, because a new language, a new content, demanded it," and concludes with a statement that truly is conspicuously dotty: "...poets who adopt the formal devices of a previous generation, inherit not only a particular way to break a line or make a stanza, but an entire stance--historical, geographical, political--towards their materials."
So when I write a sonnet, I'm inheriting the entire stance of Robert Frost. He wrote sonnets. Or is it Elizabeth Barret Browning? She did, too. Or Keats? Or Donne? Or Shakespeare (what was his stance? Is it the Dark Lady or the Young Man who gives me a hardon?) How about Petrarch? That must be it--when I write a sonnet I'm possessed by a 14th century Italian living in France during the Great Schism and in love with a woman married to someone else! That explains everything!
By the way, Kasey, what verbal culture is it that recognizes as "self-evidently appropriate" these conventions? And aren't you nervous about being possessed by John Cage? Or at least being sued by his estate? Should I be inserting smileys? Naah.
4:57:03 PM 
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