Part of my work experience was as an online magazine graphic designer for a hospital system. My award-winning magazine layouts were all hand-coded in HTML and xHTML. I knew even then, layout on a display has made writing as much a visual artform as photography or collage or painting. And, I agree, huge images are a problem. However, I do not agree that left-justifying and image and wrapping the text to the right of it reduces readability, though I never felt reverse arrangement or centered-image text wrapping work well – neither on screen nor in print.

You're telling me I have to accept – with all the bells and whistles and "advancements" – that design and finess must be diminished?

My understanding on Medium's decisioin to reduce design options is that it was to make everything work for a cellphone displays – They dumbed it down. At the very least, they could have allowed choice for image size displays, like WordPress does.

Poetry is almost an art installation. It benefits greatly in impact and interpretation by the placement of lines. For example, to attain that basic text layout, I had to create an infographic of my poem "Dogma." The layout is integral to the flow and impetus of the words. That layout enhances the poem's readability. Why must Medium be incapable of something so simple as the layout of that infographic? If the poem were longer, I would not be able to adequately utilize an infographic for the very reason you seem to support further dumbing down markdown.