i am enjoying these discussions. one thing i
have noticed is poets--even intelligent, well-read
poets--who somehow picked up the trick of enjambing
(in order to make their lines appear more sophisticated,
as you suggest) but when they read their poems out
loud, they follow the sense, not the line endings on
the page. there is one particular poet here in this
town, who not only heads a local poetry society, but
has gone so far as to presume to teach poetic technique
to neophytes--& i have tried to talk with him over
a ten year period, without success, to make him either
pause at the end of the lines he wrote, or else write
the poem down the way he reads it... it's hopeless.
this is how one verse technique in Latin got lost--
& it was never rediscovered, till finally a completely
different one arose to take its place. and you know
what? in the meantime (a period of several hundred
years, BTW), people wrote lines that looked about
the same length on the page.
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