You might want to consider the point Tim, that if kids doing homework read through tons and tons of Shakespeare and Whitman to develop their own sense of how the lines were handled, and consequently were indirectly encouraged to reflect on how they would work with line lengths and line breaks; and that through all this bits and shards of that poetry stuck in the odd corners of their brain cells - that in time this is what turns some of us into poets instead of bean counters.
As a determined poet in this life (I was definitely a bean counter of sorts in my previous life, and am sick of it), I feel that studies of this nature are essentially of interest and importance to those who make studies of this nature, but not to those whose main interest is writing poetry; and that too much ingestion of theory and line-length statistics at an early age can be injurious to one's ability to ever produce poetry that soars and explores, that listens to itself, that uses language as a weapon. Excessive navel-gazing seems to lead to internalization, over-intellectualization, and often incomprehension; but I don't see where it produces better poetry.
Michael
[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited March 07, 2007).]
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