Further Clarification.

After a conversation I've had tonight, I just want to clear up something that I was taking for granted. The phrase "iambic pentameter" is pretty self-explanatory to me, but I'm starting to realize that not everyone's as much of a poetry nerd as I am. So. To the guy that was trying to convince Ashley and Jami that iambic pentameter stems from Japanese haiku because they have the number five attached to both of them in some odd way:

I fear you may be misinformed. To wit,
I'll pass this definition on to you:
"A line of five metrical feet." That's it.
There's nothing there that ever has to do
with haiku; that map - five, seven, five
was bastardized when Americans
thought it'd be fun to fuck around and dive
into a form beyond their clumsy hands.
It's not syllabic count. It's rhythmic feet.
It's stresses, falls, and how they interact.
It has to do with fundamental beat,
and how they form a line when they are stacked.
Look, if after this, it's still unclear,
Then I can only tell you to click here.

Hope that clears things up a little. Yeah, I stuck a dactyl in there, and more than a few outright one-stress words, but sue me. It's frakkin' six in the morning.