There's one other extremely important point I forgot to make. A lot of people assume that to write pentameter or hexameter is easy, but when you look at such lines by many poets you will notice how slack they are, like telephone wires slung between two poles. To write longer lines that maintain their charge and drive is a special skill, and we usually don't begin with it. Tim Murphy's very compelling solution was to train himself to write in what he eventually called iambic timeter--very short lines, often two or three feet per line--because in shorter lines he could maintain, even increase, the level of verbal energy he was after. Tim would be the first to admit that not everything can be done in short lines, even in short poems, which are his metier, in general, but part of what makes him such a distinctive writer is that he realized what the choice of line meant to the verbal energy of his poems, and he chose a method of attack that few other poets have chosen.
Now go out at read a book by Charles Wright or CK Williams, and notice how often they are slack, slack, slack, though of course in free verse. Both capable poets, they publish too much and allow themselves to lapse into pointless wordiness. Your assignment is to avoid that.
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