WordPress core has had a Verse (poetry) block since December 2018, when Gutenberg and the block editor first launched with WordPress 5.0. Lineate is a much more recent (free) contribution to the block plugin market from Johnathon Williams at OddJar.

Lineate has a lot more going on and gives you the ability to do more complicated indents and gaps for shaped verse and unusual line / stanza formats. It breaks down poems to that structure of stanza and line.

Lineate — Poetry Blocks

Here’s an example:

In a Station of the Metro — Ezra Pound (Poetry, April 1913)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .

— Ezra Pound, Poetry, April 1913. Public domain. Set with the spacing of the first printing.

Johnathon also created Redact, a block plugin for “blackout” or “erasure” poems, which look like a censor has redacted them.

Redact — Blackout & Erasure Poetry

Blackout poems are a type of cut-up art popularized by the French Dadaists and William S. Burroughs, who also applied the technique to magentic audio tape. More or less randomly damaging or distoring a medium is the essence of it, similar to scratching or the audio art of the Open Reel Ensemble.

I’ve written blackout poems, like the following one, just by using the solid fill “full block” Unicode character U+2588. “Vmail” refers to Victory Mail — letters sent home by American servicemen (and maybe some women) during World War II that were made from photographs of the originals for efficiency in transport, delivery, and censorship. A V-mail letter would be censored, photographed, transported as film, and finally printed back to paper upon arrival at its destination.

Vmail

correspondence threatens more correspondence.
reply and the sky opens — a deluge of direct mail.
a pin sinks into a doll. you have been targeted by
██████████. it’s time to ██████.
the letters you have received would fill your home
if they had not been buried. as below so above —
events threaten to correspond with those already seen
when the mind is empty ████ full of old ruts.
the pattern of behaviour you’ve known to grip people
living on autopilot and falling directly toward ██
a dark mountain. you can taste the madness thickening.
you read the dispatch from the heart correspondent.
it speaks of threats. you feel the sniper’s gaze.
it says crawl, now run, as you thread through ruins
your time.

Blackout poems often involve a process of creation that’s closer to Vmail — you’re supposed to start with a complete text, and like with a “found poem” it should be a real text that probably wasn’t intended as a poem. (Or you could black out an existing poem.)

The Redact block will help you compose a blackout poem from your own source or by grabbing text from many different online sources you can choose from. Then you compose by decomposing!

Here’s an example from today’s Portland weather report:

.SYNOPSIS...Cool and showery conditions continue through Friday
as an upper-level low sits offshore. Clear skies and calm winds
may bring frost development across interior valleys Saturday
morning. Mostly dry conditions return this Halloween weekend.
Slight chances for precipitation return early next week.

.SHORT TERM...Today through Friday night...Radar imagery as
of early Thursday morning show scattered showers across the CWA
as an upper-level low spins off the coast of the Vancouver
Island. Snow levels will fluctuate between 3500-4500 ft through
Friday which will result in light snow showers continuing but
additional snow accumulations are expected to be minimal as QPF
values are minimal. For the remainder of the work week, the
aforementioned upper level trough will leisurely move southward
but remains offshore of the Pacific Northwest. This will
maintain chances for light showers across the area, with the
highest chances along the coast. Some locations along the I-5
corridor, particularly from Salem southward, may remain drier
given that guidance isn't showing this low moving inland. It
should also be noted that cold air aloft, along with clouds
breaks through the day is also resulting in a slight increase in
overall instability for the CWA. Various CAMs are showing CAPE
values around 100 J/kg, which is resulting in a 5-15% chance for
thunderstorms across the CWA through this evening. It should
also be noted that there is a chance for cold core funnels to
develop again today. Chances for 24 hour liquid precipitation,
exceeding 0.10 inch from 5AM Thursday through 5AM Friday are
around 60-80% along the coast, 30-50% for the I-5 corridor and
10-25% across the Cascades. Friday is a similar trend but
slightly drier as the upper low is kept offshore due to upper-
level ridging building over the Great Basin through Saturday
morning. /42

.LONG TERM...Saturday through Wednesday..The conditions mentioned
above will result in clearing skies and calm winds will favor
temperatures dropping into the low to mid 30s across interior
valleys, which may lead to fog or frost development. Chances for
Saturday morning lows dropping below 32 degrees is 55-85%
across the southern Willamette Valley, northern Clark County
(Battle Ground area), and the Upper Hood River Valley.

Read the full source text

.SYNOPSIS...Cool and showery conditions continue through Friday
as an upper-level low sits offshore. Clear skies and calm winds
may bring frost development across interior valleys Saturday
morning. Mostly dry conditions return this Halloween weekend.
Slight chances for precipitation return early next week.

.SHORT TERM...Today through Friday night...Radar imagery as
of early Thursday morning show scattered showers across the CWA
as an upper-level low spins off the coast of the Vancouver
Island. Snow levels will fluctuate between 3500-4500 ft through
Friday which will result in light snow showers continuing but
additional snow accumulations are expected to be minimal as QPF
values are minimal. For the remainder of the work week, the
aforementioned upper level trough will leisurely move southward
but remains offshore of the Pacific Northwest. This will
maintain chances for light showers across the area, with the
highest chances along the coast. Some locations along the I-5
corridor, particularly from Salem southward, may remain drier
given that guidance isn't showing this low moving inland. It
should also be noted that cold air aloft, along with clouds
breaks through the day is also resulting in a slight increase in
overall instability for the CWA. Various CAMs are showing CAPE
values around 100 J/kg, which is resulting in a 5-15% chance for
thunderstorms across the CWA through this evening. It should
also be noted that there is a chance for cold core funnels to
develop again today. Chances for 24 hour liquid precipitation,
exceeding 0.10 inch from 5AM Thursday through 5AM Friday are
around 60-80% along the coast, 30-50% for the I-5 corridor and
10-25% across the Cascades. Friday is a similar trend but
slightly drier as the upper low is kept offshore due to upper-
level ridging building over the Great Basin through Saturday
morning. /42

.LONG TERM...Saturday through Wednesday..The conditions mentioned
above will result in clearing skies and calm winds will favor
temperatures dropping into the low to mid 30s across interior
valleys, which may lead to fog or frost development. Chances for
Saturday morning lows dropping below 32 degrees is 55-85%
across the southern Willamette Valley, northern Clark County
(Battle Ground area), and the Upper Hood River Valley.

There are quite a few different redaction styles included with Redact, including a few like the one I’ve used here that mute or obscure the text less than completely.

Bonus — a very good haiku today on one of the WSordPress.com poetry blogs I follow:

Dos de Tres