For The Black Scat Encyclopaedia (see previous post), I contributed several entries on poetics. Here’s one of them:

IAMBIC CENTAMETER: A line of a hundred iambic feet:

Beloved, when I saw you standing there beside that picturesque gazebo by the crumbling garden wall, as bluebirds gaily sang their hearts out high atop the willow tree that spread its branches over the azalea bush, and breezes played around your silken petticoats and ruffled your unruly chestnut hair, I contemplated the expression on your blushing features, shaded by that large but inexpensive hat, adorned with all those garish multicolored feathers dyed with such a startling lack of expertise, and couldn’t help but wonder if you even heard the cheerful warbling of the feathered songsters as they offered their improvisations to the sultry summer morn, or if you stood there lost in some reflection, reverie, or waking trance, and if you even noticed I had fallen down and hurt my leg.