A poet friend of mine wants to publish a poem, written by a colleague of his, who has passed away, recently, as a tribute to him.
they followed the leader into the mountains
sat at his feet in a Swiss canton
as they decayed
like rotting fish
and he looked at them
and said:
turn off the ventriloquist's voice
flush out the snakeoil in the blood
your bible
your gita
your gems
your guns
your flags
your death
and at night they went to the nite clubs gobbling and soaking
up the suds
while that thing
between the legs
became
more urgent
they dished up the cold turkey
of what he had said
and nobody felt too good
nobody felt
so they took the train the limousine the rucksack
and went back home
next year
they followed him to India
and again he looked at them
and said:
follow no leader
guru
nobody is living
everybody is dead
and again he told them
told them
and again that thing
between the legs
and between the ears
got in the way
“Follow No Leader” – Harold Norse (his poem on Krishnamurti)
The problem is that it requires a complex staggered indentation, where the lines are all indented differently, depending upon the context, in the poem.
One cannot use normal spaces in HTML, because it renders any number of adjacent spaces, as if they were a single space. Therefore, I have advised using the non-breaking space option.
This is how it’s done:
There is an HTML element called ‘non-breaking space’. It’s written like this:
What this does is to insert a space that is not counted as a normal space, but is always treated as a real space.
As I explained, a normal space, when repeated, is just treated as a single space. However, a non-breaking space is treated literally. Therefore, a succession of non-breaking spaces (e.g. ) is treated as multiple spaces.
‘This is a cat’ is rendered in HTML as ‘This is a cat’. However, ‘This is a cat’ is rendered as ‘This is a cat’.
With regard to the actual spaces in this: you will notice that between ‘a’ and the first ‘ ’ there is an actual space. Also between each of the ‘ ’s there is a space. There is also one at the end. Therefore there are 6 actual spaces and 5 ‘ ’s.
Since the actual spaces are rendered in HTML as a single space, the above bit is rendered with 6 spaces, even though there are only 5 ‘ ’s.
Also, the whole thing, including image and caption, should be enclosed in a < blockquote > < /blockquote > tag.
To understand how the< blockquote > < /blockquote > tag works, see: http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_blockquote.asp
N.B. Like any tag, the blockquote can also be styled to create any special effect, if you want (e.g. a different font, font color, background image or color etc.). This requires some knowledge of CSS styling, which can be learned at http://w3schools.com.
This is the entire poem, excluding the image and its caption, in HTML:
N.B. The < br / > tag is used to start a new line and the < p > < /p > tag separates verses.
Spaces have been added to these tags, so that they render here as text rather than HTML. If you want to use this code, you must remove these spaces.
< p >they followed the leader into the mountains< br / > sat at his feet in a Swiss canton< br / > as they decayed< br / > like rotting fish< /p >
< p >and he looked at them< br / > and said:< br / > turn off the ventriloquist's voice flush out the snakeoil in the blood< br / > your bible< br / > your gita< br / > your gems< br / > your guns< br / > your flags< br / > your death< /p > and at night they went to the nite clubs gobbling and soaking< br / > up the suds< br / > while that thing< br / > between the legs< br / > became< br / > more urgent< br / > they dished up the cold turkey< br / > of what he had said< br / > and nobody felt too good< br / > nobody felt< /p >< p >so they took the train the limousine the rucksack< br / >and went back home< /p >< p > next year< br / > they followed him to India< br / > and again he looked at them< br / > and said:< br / > follow no leader< br / > guru< br / > nobody is living< br / > everybody is dead< br / > and again he told them < br / > told them< /p >< p >and again that thing< br / > between the legs< br / > and between the ears< br / >< br / > got in the way< /p >
To understand character entities in HTML, i.e. special characters that start with ‘&’ and end with ‘;’, such as ‘ ’, see: W3C Schools
To quote from that page:
The most common character entity in HTML is the non-breaking space.
Normally HTML will truncate spaces in your text. If you write 10 spaces in your text HTML will remove 9 of them. To add lots of spaces to your text, use the character entity.
It is just a highly customized version of Atahualpa 3.4.4 from BytesForAll. It kind of shows what customizing an existing theme can achieve.
I really like the theme you are using, I have a WordPress blog as well, and I would really like to use this theme. Anyway you can tell me what its called?