Line length in poetry

[milo]

Here it is:

Duck, Duck, Goose

Gene speaks of his geese and his ducks with his fists,
with his fingers tucked deep into signs. I can spell
out each letter, not words; I'm too rusty for this.
I don't even know "rusty." "Slow down, I can't tell
what you're saying." He honks his impatience. One hand
does a flip at his waist while his left is a beak,
but the whole is so quick that I can't understand--
like a language of moths beating bulbs till they break.

Slow it down. Slow it down. And he finally does--
turns and points to the door, to the yard where the birds
always squabbled with bites over corn in the dust.
But the ducks are all silent. The grasses are fuzzed
like a pillow exploded. I, too, lose my words
at the sight of their white now stained redder than rust.

Julie Carter

Duck duck goose
Gene speaks of geese, of ducks, with quick sign fists
and I must beg him slow his silent speech
to match my rusty intellect. He flips
his left hand at his waist, a hinged hand beak
made of his right, his fingers wild and mute
in words like moth-heads beating on hot bulbs.
I cannot understand. A door leads out
to backyard pastures where the golden bulk
of corn that made ducks squabble lies in lines
uneaten, framed by feathers. All Gene's birds
lie, too, like shredded pillows on the lawn
in crimson cases, laundry left undone.

-Julie Carter

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Right. Of course. That's why it's more difficult. It's like playing jazz versus blues.

So how would a mostly iambic line measure against an anapest line, so forth. I think if you have the same amount of natural stresses, or "beats", but with more unstressed syllables between them, it would speed up the recital, like playing 16th notes.

anapests quicken the pace. Especially with the same number of /words/.

I believe I posted a couple anapestic sonnets here as well as an anapestic villanelle and an anapestic teza rima and you can definitely feel the quickened pace.

A friend of mine wrote the same (essentially) poet as both anapestic and iambic, I will hunt it down and post it later.

Well then, therein lies my point. A tetrameter line is "longer" and faster with anapests than with iambs. More beats to the same measure.

that is the nature of anapests, not the nature of line length. It is actually the same number of beats, and takes the same time to say but feels faster due to there being more actualy syllables and usually more words as well in the same space of time.