"I know that Frost consciously used occasional six-beat and four-beat lines in his blank verse, but I wonder if he heard that one." Thank you for that remark, Robert!
I for one believe that poets should feel free to take such liberties without running into a ton of criticism and peer pressure. In the poem I posted about the tree, there was a 6-foot line which sounded more right to me than any of the 5-foot variants I came up with -- indeed, when I shortened the line to 5 feet, it sounded too short. I ended up posting the poem with a 5-foot line because the idea of a long line bothered me, and also because I wanted to avoid the inevitable criticism.
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