[winter]

Perhaps this subject is too intangible or slippery to get a grip of, but I’ve been trying.

In the case of blank verse, it has become commonly accepted practice for poets to vary quite widely from the strict iambic pentameter norm. Loose blank verse is more common today than the strict form.

Tim Murphy has given advice that poets should master iambic pentameter first before moving on to other meters. That’s good advice.

But I was wondering – people here who have mastered IP (in as much as one can “master” anything) and who have then begun to experiment with loose iambics – how difficult did you find that transition?

And would you consider the art of writing loose blank verse simply a matter of ear, whether the five-beat line sounds right, or is there more to it than that?

Any modern / contemporary poets you'd recommend for the study of loose blank verse?