[Pedro Poitevin]

I've noticed that many Sphereans say that they don't like hexameter in English, so I suspect that heptameter is out of the question. Is it not? I ask because not long ago I wrote an heptameter "sonnet" (if there is such a thing) in English. Why? Well, because I needed it to be heptameter. You see, it had to be a square. Fourteen lines, fourteen syllables in each line. In that way, I could encrypt a line along the syllabic diagonal, saying something meaningful in the context of the poem.

The poem concerns Georg Cantor, a mathematician whose diagonalization method proves there are more real numbers than natural numbers. A generalization of his method actually shows that there is an infinite hierarchy of infinities. The "sonnet" has lots of slant rhymes, gestures at Cantor's descent into madness, has nice enjambments playing with the concept of descent, and conceptualizes this hierarchy of infinities as an abyss. It obliquely refers to a number that is the key to Cantor's method, but it does not seem to tell the reader how to find said number-- until the reader reads the diagonal (Obviously, this would not work with a nonsquare poem.)

My question is whether the heptameter kills the poem before it arrives. Should I make it a Décima in pentameter?