Line length in poetry

[milo]

True,

Though if you actually hear performances of Shakespeare's plays, the actors many times don't stop at the line breaks.


milo,

When people actually breathe and how often is related to line if you're trying to state the line is a breath. If you really want to back it with science, you really would have to have people read and look at the sound wave and when they actually breathe.

If you have scientific research (and not poets philosophizing about the line) that you have read or know about, please send me the information. A while back, this was an area that I was starting to read about.

No one is trying to state a line is.a breath. At the risk of repeating what was already said at the beginning of the thread, I will just repeat it. General consensus is.that shorter lines speed up the reading of a poem and longer lines slow it down. It is an effect that occurs independently of other effects (meter, breathing, phonemes, etc.).

Also, there really aren't any poets here. There are people who for the most part have other professions (teachers, scientists, business leaders) who just happen to also have an interest in poetry.