On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Jot Powers wrote: > On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 03:08:24PM -0800, Philip Hart wrote: > > On Sun, 20 Feb 2005, Frank Mayhar wrote: > > > Philip Hart wrote: > > > > Your hair is now less golden underneath the Overcast. > > > "Beneath." > > > I just think it scans better. > > Well, it scans perfectly in iambic septameter (aka fourteeners) > > as far as I can tell, but you can sing it > > Shouldn't these be written in iambic heptakaimeter? > > -Jot "Making a guess at 17" Powers Seventeen feet is way too long to sustain a coherent line, which should approximate a breath according to some and, more importantly, should have a hearable length. My septameters for that matter are really 3+4 feet. Seventeen _syllables_ is a workable length, or should be - I've begun a Dragaeran-themed poem in that meter and have been finding it difficult to distinguish it from prose.