In the end, I think I would follow the W3C and use: <pre class="poem">
The pre suggestion is so bad that I think that those who read it at DP assumed you have not seriously studied the issue of how to code poetry in HTML. In general the "poetry" problem is how to reliably wrap lines of text on small machines according to common poetry standards, and to do so in a manner that actual runs correctly on the great majority of reader devices. And to do so in a manner that doesn't require an excess of gimcrackery while coding the HTML. This problem is an unsolved, and presumably unsolvable problem. One approach is the DP gimcrackery which is a pain to code and maintain, and assumes that reader devices actually correctly code negative indents. Some reader devices from major manufacturers actually crash on negative indents in some situations. Another approach that comes close is "white-space: pre-wrap" -- except that it is not widely supported. And while it correctly wraps, it does not correctly "poetry" indent on wrap. One partial suggestion is to minimize indents and margins when doing poetry in order to minimize the wrap problem. And recognize when the poetry in the original book was wrapped to begin with. Liz Castro had an intelligent discussion on the problem about a year ago: http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2012/01/media-queries-for-formatting-poetr y-on.html Of course some poetry "breaks all the rules" and then none of these "solutions" apply. IE poetry as visual art. My general suggestion is that when you see poetry run the other way -- there be dragons.