What makes a line?

Published: Sept. 19, 2022, 2:57 p.m.

What is the most important criterion for a text's having a claim to being a poem?\xa0 What if it's not a text? what if it's oral poetry, like Homer? What authorizes us to say that there are five feet in a pentameter\xa0line, or six in a hexameter, when Milton and Homer recite their verses orally, or Shakespearean actors utter blank verse soliloquies on stage?\xa0 Are lines (unrhymed lines, anyhow) just artifacts of printing?\xa0 Hint: no.\xa0 Are they ever artifacts of printing? Hint: yes.