Julie,
Here's an oddball thought: maybe the difference between blank verse and prose is the presence or absence of the old Anglo Saxon firmato. As long as the poetic line (Frost, Milton) has one or two beats above or below the four beats of Anglo Saxon, you still hear something like it. Blank verse or rhymed verse. With prose the doors open and the groups the stresses fall into become more amorphous. The formal undergirding is gone. On the bad side less discernible form; on the good side, more freedom with the language.
George Saintsbury has a nice line regarding our impulse to categorize: that which is ‘most delightful of all to the true lover of poetry’, ‘the delight of finding out how much it is impossible to account for’:
JuLie, You put your finger on the problem I have with blank verse: I can't shut up. Nonetheless I enjoy it immensely. Judah Benjamin is largely blank verse (90 pp.)--which I break up into stanzas to at least give the ILLUSION that I have some control my logorrhea.
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