Placing line breaks

[juniper]

I was looking for info re: my question in this forum, and found this thread here.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217418

Which helped some and was interesting, but is also beyond my simple question.

I haven't written poetry since college, 20+ years ago. But I've been thinking about it lately, inspired by the poets in my writing group and elsewhere.

This week while traveling, a small, personal despair/triumph event occurred that made me think, "I want to write a poem about this."

I've just started on it, capturing the images and emotions I went through. Started putting it into form, a little, and am wondering about line breaks.

This is a non-rhyming poem.

Some places are forming into natural line breaks - by natural, I mean, when I am thinking the words into place, or murmuring them, the breaks seem clear - to emphasize a word, a phrase, or to lead into the next part.

But - if there's not a clear place, then where? How to decide? I'm writing it by hand in a small notebook right now, so I don't know how it will look printed yet, how long the lines will be.

I like the structure look of some poems, how the lines are physically laid out - I don't know how this will be yet for this one -

Is there a method to the madness of placing line breaks? How do *you* know where to place yours? Varies from poem to poem? Depending on what?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Debbie V]

I post mine for critique and get some ideas. Sometimes I just try it different ways out loud and see how the breaks sound. But I'm still working on this. To me, splitting phrases seems weird still. I was taught the old fashioned way.

[Blarg]

Thought courses from one thing to the next naturally. Getting from one to another in poetry can be awkward.

Sometimes this gets done with lines that are dead. Serving only as transitions between two interesting ideas, they themselves are not interesting. Poets do not have enough space to not be interesting.

Reread your poetry to search for lines that provide little value in themselves, and see if you can find a way to integrate the transitions between your images and ideas into the flow of the poem. Your images and ideas don't stride the stage alone as the actors of your poem. The transitions between them, which provide an active, lively context that sets the stage for them, are as great a part of the art.

Other posts can provide more specific ideas on the art of "enjambment," or breaking your lines. In this post I am merely suggesting an overarching principle to keep in the back of your mind while breaking your lines into pieces: Make sure every line that results provides its own value. Don't feed readers dead lines.

[kborsden]

There are basically 3 schools of thought in terms of line breaks - but the function of a line break should come first. They serve to break down your thoughts rhythmically and orderly (sometimes) to a readable and paced method -- they rarely serve a purely aesthetic purpose.

As I said - 3 basic line break ideals:

end-stop -- where the thought chain is broken after the period/full-stop; an entire sentence from start to finish:

e.g.
The city looms above the face in the crowd.

Caesura -- this is where the reader takes a natural pause for breath; rhyming poetry sometimes takes advantage of in-line caesura to embellish or strengthen meter; the line can be broken at a caesura to even out the fluidity:

e.g.
The city looms
above the face in the crowd.

e.g.
The city looms
above the face
in the crowd.

Then there is the less orderly method of enjambment - where discord is presented through rhythm, or sub-textual intelligence or additional phrase is presented inside another - or to force an otherwise unnatural rhythm to fit a framework; this is done at places not denoted by regular or easily established caesura (but not after a conjunction* or article); sometimes a false caesura can be forced after a polysyllabic conjunction, in this case the break also reflects enjambment:

e.g.
the city
looms above
the face
in the crowd

e.g.
the city
looms
above the face
in the crowd

e.g.
above the face
in the crowd the city looms

If you aren't sure which ideal you want to meet, whether even or uneven, intermittent, presented sub text or internal dialogue etc etc then always re-read your poem and see if you can pick out jarring or stuttering, then try to revise where you broke your lines. A good example of this is this poem and thread (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220535) - but ultimately it boils down to what you personally want to achieve. *Example on enjambment: enjambment can be placed awkwardly after conjunctions to offer a sensation of disarray or intentional discord:

e.g.
above the face in
the crowd the city looms

e.g.
the city looms above
the face in
the crowd

There are also other less common methods more regular and specific to certain stylizations:

Isolative breaks -- where an individual sonic or part of a word is broken to emphasize its import or resonance; or as an in-word enjambment to offer a sub-textual bonus:

e.g.
the city looms a-
-part in truth

Affectation breaks -- where an individual word is plucked from a phrase and set apart to illustrate and/or emphasize its importance to the poem or independent emotional weight:

e.g.
the city
looms
above the face in the crowd

In terms of stanza breaks - the best way to see the purpose of a stanza is as the poetic equivalent of a paragraph - unless writing in couplets that require an overflow into separation due to differing rhyme schemes or metric constructs, or changed direction of thought. Stanzas are often broken to reflect the stanza construct as individual thoughts or concise, complete elements of narrative, aside from the exceptions already noted. There are times that stylistically stanzas are also broken for affectation and/or isolative, even emotive or visual effect -- again, respectively a matter of what the poet wants to achieve either conceptually or emotively, but usually redundant without such predetermined purpose, and rarely purely due to aesthetics alone.

To me, splitting phrases seems weird still. I was taught the old fashioned way.

I've only ever known and been taught what I posted above. Please explain the old fashioned way, I'm intrigued and always curios/keen to learn new (or old ;)) things.

[juniper]

Thanks for the info, and especially to kborsden for the mini poetry class. I have a lot to learn.

After the initial rush of writing the poem's elements, I'm now at a standstill. Letting it lie for a few days. But I want to write it, and then work on it until I think it's in good shape. And then maybe I'll post it here for critique.

I picked up a book today called "A Poetry Handbook" by Mary Oliver. Looks helpful, in a concise way. A few months ago I got "The Ode Less Traveled" by Stephen Fry at a used book store, but it's fatter and scarier.

[Blarg]

I've got Oliver's book. She writes sometimes in a convoluted way, with a lot of metaphor. Which is richly layered or a bit overdone, depending how you would like to look at it. She does get into a lot of nitty-gritty nicely.

I found The Poetry Home Repair Manual much more clear, helpful and in general better written, but it gets less involved with terminology and the small things and looks at a broader canvas. So different people will probably find one book better suited to them than another. I'm also not all the way through Oliver's book. But I doubt I'll read it twice, unlike TPHRM.

[Norman D Gutter]

juniper:

Also check out this thread (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=115026), Workshop on the Line in Poetry from 2008.

[Blarg]

That's a really enjoyable thread so far, NDG. I appreciate the work you put into it.

Too bad it's so short. Basic topics like these can make for perennially interesting touchstones.

[Norman D Gutter]

Blarg:

I ran out of time in real life, and never got back to it. Plus, with only a couple of exceptions, I felt I was talking to myself. Anyone who wants to can pick it up at this stage.

NDG

[Norman D Gutter]

I post mine for critique and get some ideas. Sometimes I just try it different ways out loud and see how the breaks sound. But I'm still working on this. To me, splitting phrases seems weird still. I was taught the old fashioned way.

By "splitting phrases" I suppose you mean enjambment. I'm not sure why that seems weird—or new fashioned. It's been a standard practice in English poetry since the mid-1700s. In fact, though I have more research to do, I believe it was only a short time period, the days of A. Pope plus some on either side of him, when enjambment was frowned upon.

But enjambments can be smooth and almost unnoticeable or aggressive and jarring. A mixture of end-stopped, smooth enjambment, and aggressive enjambment in a poem, and in a poet's body of work, can help stave off boredom.

NDG

[Blarg]

But enjambments can be smooth and almost unnoticeable or aggressive and jarring. A mixture of end-stopped, smooth enjambment, and aggressive enjambment in a poem, and in a poet's body of work, can help stave off boredom.


I think this is the key thing. Do everything for a reason. So much enjambment seems lazy and discursive.

This is why I tend, especially for less than very well-developed poets, to agree with one of the points in your linked posts:

2. A line should work as a unit of speech. He also says it should contain an idea or image that melds with the idea or image in the next line (and obviously in the previous line). That is not to say you shouldn’t break a line in an unexpected place, but rather that you should read the line as a stand-alone component of the poem, as well as with the lines adjacent to it.

[Debbie V]

I post mine for critique and get some ideas. Sometimes I just try it different ways out loud and see how the breaks sound. But I'm still working on this. To me, splitting phrases seems weird still. I was taught the old fashioned way.

I suppose it's free verse that was left out of my education. We learned some forms in high school: iambic pentameter through Shakespeare, of course, the villanelle, the sestina. Things with set rhythms and rhyme schemes. To me, those forms seem old fashioned, though contemporary poets use them to very good effect.

I have certainly read plenty of poetry with enjambment, some of it even in school, but no one focused on why the author chose the form, the specific line break. Rather, the focus was on discerning meaning of the whole. In fact, I learned the term enjambment here today.

So I have a preference for ending a line and a phrase together though I see benefits to using enjambment for emphasis. This seems to be its real purpose - forcing the reader to focus on a certain place or idea in the poem possibly for emotional effect.

[Blarg]

Unfortunately, something that is done too often loses its specialness. If one wishes to have an emotional impact, the surrounding poem should help set it up -- too many emotional beats, especially wandering in different directions, and you lose the explosive effect of any particular emotion cutting through, for instance.

Sometimes enjambment is used so frequently that the ends of a poem's lines lose distinction. Then they and the lines they are attached to become a sort of mush.

As always, everything in balance -- and balance should not be the "last in, first out" aspect of a poem.

[kborsden]

I suppose it's free verse that was left out of my education. We learned some forms in high school: iambic pentameter through Shakespeare, of course, the villanelle, the sestina. Things with set rhythms and rhyme schemes. To me, those forms seem old fashioned, though contemporary poets use them to very good effect.

I have certainly read plenty of poetry with enjambment, some of it even in school, but no one focused on why the author chose the form, the specific line break. Rather, the focus was on discerning meaning of the whole. In fact, I learned the term enjambment here today.

So I have a preference for ending a line and a phrase together though I see benefits to using enjambment for emphasis. This seems to be its real purpose - forcing the reader to focus on a certain place or idea in the poem possibly for emotional effect.

Enjambment is as old as poetry itself. It literally means 'to straddle' - you could argue that any phrase that covers or takes more than 1 verse to end (whether by word or punctuation) is straddled over those lines -- ergo a type of enjambment, and if you did, you'd be correct. If you can break a line at a caesura, that is to say, if you recognize the natural pause in speech when reading the line then you'll understand how Shakespeare and the entirety of his peers and poets that followed are read - and you should also recognize that there is rarely a poet who doesn't break a line at a caesura at some point - in fact, there aren't many that never employed more drastic enjambment either, The Winter's Tale is extremely heavily enjambed. The idea of enjambment being something 'special' and its overuse causing it to become less so can also be applied to end-stop and caesura breaks - wouldn't you say? In most cases, it depends on what you want to achieve and how you do it - if you use heavy enjambment, let's say on every line, but you do it well and with skill, why would that automatically classify the poem and its contents as mush? That's a ridiculous notion - following that logic is the same as saying that constant caesura renders a poem bland/tired. The truth is, both are equally valid and should be employed as often as the other to achieve maximum desired effect when and where necessary.

Excerpt from The Winter's Tale (http://shakespeare.mit.edu/winters_tale/full.html) by William Shakespeare:

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.

NOTE: almost the entire play is severely enjambed - yet, no mush, no lack of distinction, still solid poetry.

So I have a preference for ending a line and a phrase together though I see benefits to using enjambment for emphasis. This seems to be its real purpose - forcing the reader to focus on a certain place or idea in the poem possibly for emotional effect.

The purpose of enjambment is the same as any method of breaking lines - to break down your thoughts rhythmically and orderly (sometimes) to a preferable readable and paced method -- they rarely serve a purely aesthetic purpose. Enjambment has the rest as an added bonus, but those same results are also achievable less directly with caesura, depending on how you formulate phrase and/or punctuate. Discarding and/or discrediting any poetic tool is incredibly foolish - as I've said before, the capable use of ALL available tools is what sets a good poet apart from an excellent poet.

As in the excerpt above - enjambment serves to distort the rhythm slightly to reflect the emotional state of the speaker.

With regards to named form and ideological meter being old-fashioned, yes - you are correct, but free verse is even more so... some may say ancient in fact:

The Many Births of Free Verse (http://uweb.superlink.net/~neptune/FreeVers.html)

[Debbie V]

With regards to named form and ideological meter being old-fashioned, yes - you are correct, but free verse is even more so... some may say ancient in fact:



Of course it is. My response to it is a reaction to how poetry was taught to me, completely subjective, no relation to reality.

I had written a poem on the topic that may elaborate.

Free Verse

They never taught us free verse.

If they read it, they left out
the definition. Perhaps
they thought it too hard, too
new, or unimportant.

We learned the villanelle,
sestina, haiku and sonnet,
meter rhythmically leading
to rhyme. Words couched
in cages they had to fit;
us counting syllables, phrases,
seeking perfection.

Were they afraid of what we'd say
if they set us free? Would we have
shouted our disharmony?
Do we? Because
we let ourselves free.