Typesetting poems
\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\textheight.5\textheight
\begingroup
\makeatletter
\catcode13\active%
\gdef\verseinput#1{%
{%
\interlinepenalty\@M%
\def^^M{\@ifnextchar^^M\par{\ifhmode\break\fi}}%
\rightskip\fill%
\parindent\z@%
\parskip\baselineskip%
\raggedbottom%
\catcode13\active\input{#1}%
\par%
}}%
\endgroup%
\begin{document}
\verseinput{v1.txt}
\end{document}
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
line 6
line 7
line 8
line 9
line 10
line 11
line 12
line a9
line a10
line a11
line a12
line b9
line b10
line b11
line b12
line a9
line a10
line a11
line a12
line b9
line b10
line b11
line b12
line a9
line a10
line a11
line a12
line b9
line b10
line b11
line b12
line a9
line a10
line a11
line a12
line b9
line b10
line b11
line b12
line a9
line a10
line a11
line a12
line b9
line b10
line b11
line b12
Add the following to your preamble and you don't need to type any mark-up:
\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\newdimen\allttindent \allttindent=0pt % set this to change the indent
\def\docspecials{\do\ \do\$\do\&%
\do\#\do\^\do\^^K\do\_\do\^^A\do\%\do\~}
\def\alltt{\trivlist \item[]\if@minipage\else\vskip\parskip\fi
\leftskip\@totalleftmargin \advance\leftskip\allttindent \rightskip\z@
\parindent\z@\parfillskip\@flushglue\parskip\z@
\@tempswafalse \def\par{\if@tempswa\hbox{}\fi\@tempswatrue\@@par}
\obeylines \tt \catcode``=13 \@noligs
\let\do\@makeother \docspecials
\frenchspacing\@vobeyspaces}
\let\endalltt=\endtrivlist
\AtBeginDocument{\alltt}
\AtEndDocument{\endalltt}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
There was an old woman of 92
Parlez-vous
There was an old woman of 92
Parlez-vous
There was an old woman of 92
Did a fart and away it flew
Inky pinky parlez-vous
The fart went rolling down the street
Knocked a copper off his feet
The copper got out his rusty pistol
Blew the fart right on to Bristol
The people of Bristol were having a dance
The fart went rolling on to France
The people of France were not at home
The fart went rolling on to Rome
\end{document}
It does not do the multicolumn but it maybe possible to trigger a multicolumn based on a word of the poem. Let me know the word and maybe egreg can come up with a macro for that! The preamble is borrowed from alltt2.
An alternative option is to convert the plain text poems to the verse environment using another program. This method has the advantage that you could use it to automate the processing of poems from different files or from a database.
To prevent page breaks inside verses the following answer may be relevant: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/21985/7092
As an example of the conversion, here's a simple tool using JavaScript with that performs this task. Here I consider a verse as any number of lines separated by a single line breaks. Save the code below as an html file to use it.
<html>
<head>
<title>Verses!</title>
<script>
function convertVerses()
{
var input = document.getElementById('input').value
var lines = input.split(/\r?\n/);
var env = "verse"
var output = "";
for (var i = 0;i < lines.length;i++)
{
if (!lines[i].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/))
{
// alert(lines[i])
// no empty line
if (lines.length==1 ||
(i==0 && lines[i+1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/)) ||
(i==lines.length && lines[i-1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/)) ||
(lines[i-1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/) && lines[i+1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/))) {
// only line of verse
output += '\\begin\{'+env+'\}\n' + lines[i] + '\n\\end\{'+env+'\}\n\n';
} else if (i==0 || lines[i-1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/)) {
// first line of verse
output += '\\begin\{'+env+'\}\n' +lines[i] + '\\\\\n';
} else if (i==lines.length || lines[i+1].match(/^[ \t\n]*$/)) {
// last line of verse
output += lines[i] + '\n\\end\{'+env+'\}\n\n';
} else {
// any other line of the verse
output += lines[i] + '\\\\\n';
}
}
}
document.getElementById('output').value = output;
}
</script>
<style>
textarea {width:700px;height:330px;display:block;margin:10px}
button {width:700px;height:50px;margin:10px}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<textarea id="input">
p0
p1
p2
p3
p5
p6
p9
</textarea>
<button onclick="convertVerses()"> Convert!</button>
<textarea id="output">
</textarea>
</body>
</html>