I found the following by browsing on the net:
Alberto Rios, Department of English, Arizona State University
http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/capitalizing/
American poets often stopped capitalizing their lines beginning loosely with
the second half of the 20th Century, a period generally associated with free
verse.
Why poets even did this has essentially been lost to us, beyond the
historicity of being able to say that poets just always did this.
The idea of a breath being taken, or a dramatic point being made, may also
be a useful consideration in trying to understand line breaks.
by Darksied on everything2:
http://everything2.com/title/Capitalization%2520in%2520poetry
capitalization stems from the necessity to
emphasize<http://everything2.com/title/emphasize>particular words or
phrases on paper that were accented by the speaker that
the stories were taken from.
This way of looking at an author's works was brought about by E. E.
Cummings<http://everything2.com/title/E.%2520E.%2520Cummings>at a time
when there was a formatting standard being developed. It was he
that aided in stopping that trend <http://everything2.com/title/trend>.
Undoubtedly the most complete answer is by Baron Wormser and Daivd Cappella
in Teaching the Art of Poetry
http://books.google.com/books?id=oBj4n3Fb0dMC&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=poetry+capitalization+why&source=bl&ots=5ChRHSShYW&sig=ddI93g8rKc8TukRQDEJVFMQjI-E&hl=en&ei=Lng3St_hOo6c_AbotOjdDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#PPP1,M1
In fact, the convention of capitalizing the first word of a line was not
firmly established until the late fifteenth century when William Caxton
became the first printer of books in England. The capitalizing of the first
word in a line hearkens to the roots of the word "verse" (from the Latin
"versus") which refers to the furrow a plow or hoe makes in a field. One row
in a field turns back to another row ("versus" literally means "turning")
and the lines of a poem were likened to such rows. The beginning of a "row"
in a poem was noted by a capital letter. Indeed a poem typically returns to
the left margin so that the lines are uniform the way the rows of a field
are uniform. This may seem far-fetched but it is a convention to which the
majority of poets have subscribed over centuries. They like how the capital
letter declares a new line; how it increases the sense of the ine as a
distinct, rhythmic unit; and how it promotes a uniformity that igves the
poem a decidedly polished look. No vagaries need apply.
Many poets to not adhere to this convention. [...]
This attitude toward capital letters in poetry, has become common and was
pioneered by e.e.cummings in the 1920s.
--
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche
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