That pesty word

John Hollander talked of the narrow strip being a formatting choice for free verse but how much is our line length influenced by our choice of writing medium? The thin note pad, the mobile phone, the text editor that insists on capital letters: are they shaping our poetry more than our own choices.

1. Try taking a piece of paper a really big one, lining paper for the wall is ideal
2. But a wall itself is another solution
3. Try writing and find out where you naturally stop
4. Think Walt Whitman

The thin black line

John Hollander identifies the most popular verse form in America today as:

a kind of free verse

without any special

constraints on it except

those imposed by

the notion-also

generally accepted-that

the strip the lines

make as they run

down the page (the

familiar strip with the

jagged

right-hand edge) not

be too wide

I love Hollander for this definition and for the fact he wrote his book Rhyme's Reason, from which this quote is taken, in 1981. The free verse form is still so familiar today. And maybe with Kindle, netbooks and phones being used to compose will become all the more so.

Hollander of course is too subtle not to concede that great poetry can be produced looking like the above but ask yourself when writing.

However inspired, are your lines that length just to avoid being "too wide"?