The Line

[milo]

The ballad meter is the same one you mentioned to me once milo. Is 4-3-4-3 mostly for light verse? If so, is there something for heavier topics? Just curious.

Today, most writers use free verse for heavy topics. There was a time when heroic couplets were /the/ choice for heavier topics but modernists have relegated them to farcicism or satire. Personally, I find rhyming couplets tedious, even odious, if there are too many chained.

For modern poetry, most likely abab ip is the first choice for serious rhymed metric verse. I have been experimenting recently with alternating meter (iambic of changing lengths) and alternating rhyme schemes in metric rhymed verse and I am really liking the effects but there isn't any large scale adoption and it can be tricky as you don't want it to be random but rather pleasantly surprising but calculated.

Leanne should pop in soon with some enlightnment. (Just not alexandrines - please, for the love of god, not fucking alexandrines)she is, after all, our resident guru.