typography

 The New York Review of Books quotes poetry in italics. Since the columns are very narrow (four to a page), even many short lines of verse will not fit, and have to be extended to two lines via indentation, so the poetry quoted in any article is nearly illegible.  There is no particular reason to use italics (they quote prose in roman type). The problem of the narrow columns then would be not so bad. 

This mistreatment of verse seems an accidental by-product of a format designed for prose, but it has unintended consequences. When they print a poem as a contribution, they enclose it in a box perfectly suited to its length and width, never breaking a line where is isn't sposed to be broken.