Letting the tool write the poem

[Truerenigma]

Sure, there will always be tools involved in any endeavor, but I'm talking about devices.

My guess is that whoever sets the default to capitalizing the first word of each line writes a lot of to-do lists and one line texts. One tap turns it off, and I would think that anyone who thinks about words enough to write a poem and post it would want to control which words are capitalized.

Though, f your keyboard s m ss ng the I or a staple s crammed underneath t, that can be forg ven.

Rant over.

some people actually think it is a rule in poetry because they haven't read any further than whatever guilt-embossed volume they first encountered. (I remember thinking at one point as a little kid that every line had to end with punctuation. )

The reason it was done before, when printing technologies were less advanced, was to be sure everyone knew where the new line starts even if the previous ran over the margin.

Many good poets still use it today though very few do it indiscriminately and there is almost always a reason.

I think it was Marianne Moore (someone correct me if I'm remembering wrong) who was the first to turn away from it. It was a big revolutionary deal back then, and shewas lauded for it by likes of Pound and company, etc and many publisher, printers, and editors went ahead and just printed her her poems with the capped line starts anyway, as if it were an error.

Capped lines may last longer.