[oliver murray]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:
Is there (or should there be) such a thing as metered prose?[/b]

I notice Tim mentions meter, and I see I overlooked this question of Alan's. Prose, by definition, cannot be metered, in the full sense, even if it is written in Iambics or other feet, because the line-endings are determined by the typesetter or his modern equivalent. Therefore, though it can have regular metric feet, and some might call it metric in this sense, they are not in measures determined by the writer. Poems in Iambics or any other meter, which are unrhymed and have lines of irregular length, are usually designated free verse, along with mixed meters, rhythmic free verse, lineated prose and the whole caboodle outside the strict metric stuff.