The idea of prosody at Key West

 Take some line from "The Idea of Order at Key West."

Caused constant cry, caused constantly a cry 

or

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.  

They don't really go "da dum da dum da dum da dum da dum."  

The first one puts two stronger syllables in "weak" positions of line, and reinforces that with alliteration.  The second only has three stresses, putting weak syllables in strong positions. It also ends with an extrametrical 11th syllable.  In context, these lines sound like this:  

... and yet its mimic motion 

Caused constant cry, caused constantly a cry 

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. 

The sea was not a mask, no more was she...  

Here we see that Stevens allows himself to write in the "da dum da dum" mode in individual lines. He will even produce a sing-song sound with several lines like this in a row. The unit of analysis, then, is not the line, but the verse paragraph. Enjambment, the use of polysyllabic words, the variation of accents (usually between 3 and 5), the used of rhyme and alliteration, combine to create metrical effects across various lines. 

This is English 101 stuff, I know. What I'm after is a way of reintroducing it into my own field at an eloquent level. Prosody is badly taught in my field, where most profs think it is a matter of counting syllables and nothing more.