There was certainly a lot in that description that sounded experimental, but Ford wasn't convinced the meter of the words on the page ought to make the list. It wasn't doing anything new or exciting, from his perspective — it was just missing a syllable here and adding another there in a way that felt hapless.

"Have you tried reading this out loud?" he asked, skimming over the page again. "You'd see what I mean. Like this line: I sit and wait and dream of you, and your cocoa hair and eyes of dew." It was a syllable too long, and that was before even touching the content. What did it mean to have eyes of dew?

"Compare that to something like: It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea, that a maiden there lived whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee." He'd had Poe on the brain since his conversation with Lestrange about it, and he'd re-read some of his poetry earlier that week, which might have been why it came to mind. At any rate, Annabel Lee was an excellent example to illustrate his point; the cadence and the rhyme worked so well together that quoting it always seemed almost musical.