How does the poet decide where the line endings should be? Is there a rhyme or syllable count I'm missing here? And the last line, is that a specific spacing over to the right?
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Poetry
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A community to celebrate published and OC works of poetry.
Welcome to !poetry
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In addition to the general rules of lemmy.world:
Published Poetry
1a: Poetry posts should include the title and the author, when the author is known.
O.C. Poetry
2a: Sharing original poetry is encouraged, but it must be preceded by the tag "[OC]."
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[OC] [FB] Nothing Gold Can Stay
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Formatting Help
Work in progress
To create a line break, use two spaces at the end of a line.
To create empty space, type .
Use four of these at the beginning of a line to create a standard indent.
UPDATE:
Some methods of access do not format markdown correctly. I am currently testing various apps and web interfaces to see what does and does not retain formatting.
In the interim, it is encouraged to post text poetry as you normally would, but to include a link at the beginning or end of the post with access to a website or image that retains the formatting as intended.
Other Poetry Communities
Poetry lovers unite! In the style of the fediverse, multiple poetry communities have arisen, and will continue to rise. I will try to keep a list here of communities across instances that are worth checking out!
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I don't think there is any rule or pattern in modern poetry. Line breaks create interruptions as you're reading which can be used to manipulate the flow of a poem, it can also be used to emphasize certain words or sentences or group them, or decouple them. Of course, a bad poet can always just arbitrarily introduce line breaks to make a piece more "poem-like". You see that happen a lot, and the skill of the poet I suppose will determine whether it comes across as the former or latter.
The extended spacing of the last line here works for me, I will say that. It really introduces a sense of pause, which goes really well with the theme of the poem and that last line.
Older I get the more im ready to go.