The Art of the Poetic Line Quotes

“Some poets have argued that the rejection of line carries a kind of political charge, just as poets once felt that the rejection of rhyming verse for blank verse or blank verse for free verse carried a political charge. This may be true in a particular time at a particular place. But it cannot be true categorically. For example, even if the heroic couplet was once associated with hierarchical thinking in the eighteenth century, it does not follow that the heroic couplet will always inevitably be doomed to reproduce the same hierarchies in our thought. The relationship between formal choice and ideological position is constantly shifting, and it isn’t possible to predict the repercussions of formal decisions except inasmuch as we might see them played out in the work of individual poets.”
― James Longenbach, The Art of the Poetic Line