Line Breaks

[HotKittySpank]

Fire

Sometimes there would be a fire
and I would walk into it
and come out unharmed
and continue on my way,

and for me
it was just another thing to have done.

As for putting out the fire,
I left that to others who would rush
into the billowing smoke
with brooms and blankets to smother
the flames. When they were through

they would huddle together
to talk of what they had seen

—how lucky they were

to have witnessed the lusters of heat,
the hushing effects of ashes,

but even more to have known
the fragrance of burning paper,
the sounds of words
breathing their last.

 

[HotKittySpank]

darn, sorry all, i just saw that i was too late with my take on that poem. this was a wonderful exercise. i chopped it several different ways before i was satisfied. too fun.

can we do it again? will someone pick another poem?

please? : )

 

[Senna Jawa]

I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for the honeybee
and live alone in the bee-loud glade.​

Look what happens if you end the lines with the parts of speech mentioned above:

I will arise and go now and
go to Innisfree and a small cabin build there, of
clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for
the honeybee and live alone in the
bee-loud glade.​

As you can clearly see, the poem has gained significantly. Thanks to the different line breaks, the second version is better.

 

[Senna Jawa]

It was suggested to me to play around with my line breaks, my question would be are there any rules per say to follow that will help as a guide in this area? Thanks for the imput everyone ~Coi

There is but one rule, and it is a difficult one:

line breaks, like everything else in the poem, have to serve nothing but poetry​

It's a difficult rule because first you have to know what poetry is. The more you know aboout poetry, the more you know about line breaks.

Several aspects and effects are related and connected to line breaks. Thus the problem is complex and there can be tension of contrary pressures.

Classically, the linie breaks were tightly related to grammar and rythm. The end line was expected to correspond to the end of a grammatical unit (even of a logical unit). Also, the end lines were suppossed to corespond to the metric intervals. Thus, classically, the metric and the gramatical (and the logical) structures had to be synchronized.

With the time passing, the line breaks were more nd more used as a varied artistic mean, just like similes etc. They can enrich the imagery and the meaning of the poem. They control the mood of the text. Etc.

On the other hand, the line breaks should not be used for cheap effects. They should serve nothing but poetry.

 

[champagne1982]

Originally Posted by Angeline

I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for the honeybee
and live alone in the bee-loud glade.​

Look what happens if you end the lines with the parts of speech mentioned above:

I will arise and go now and
go to Innisfree and a small cabin build there, of
clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for
the honeybee and live alone in the
bee-loud glade.​

As you can clearly see, the poem has gained significantly. Thanks to the different line breaks, the second version is better.

I disagree. If as you say:

line breaks, like everything else in the poem, have to serve nothing but poetry

respect for the formula should be maintained. With every line ending off meter and with a preposition, this poem is not neccessarily improved in the second version.

 

[MyNecroticSnail]

If the many ways of breaking lines of poetry are new, trying to swallow too much information can choke a writer. My suggestion, which I assume prompted you to start this thread, was given because I felt you were still feeling your way in that area, and experimentation would likely give you new ideas.

In poetry, the basic unit is the line, not the sentence (as it is in prose). Line breaks in poetry emphasize individual words, particularly the last word of each line, and also the first.

Until a writer gets a feel for their own style, I think it is a good idea to end lines with only important words (nouns and verbs) -- rather than minor ones (prepositions and conjunctions), or modifiers. To me, doing that allows each line of good poetry to blend seamlessly into the next, yet each holds on to its own identity.

Meaning flows from line to line, and the reader's eye is pulled forward by good line breaking.

If you want to do more research, line breaks can be loosely classified into 3 catagories: enjambments, caesuras, and end-stopped lines.

for SJ

 

[MyNecroticSnail]

This is something I think about a lot when I write poetry. There are a few things you can do with line breaks to make your poems more interesting and/or effective.

First, always think carefully about what word ends a line. Your poem can have more impact if your line breaks are interesting or, alternatively, be weakened if you don't think or make poor choices when you do this. Most of the time it is not a good idea to break with an article, conjunction or preposition. Just as you wouldn't want to end a sentence with "the," "and" or "of," you don't want to end a line in a poem this way. Think of these lines from William Butler Yeats The Lake Isle of Innisfree:

I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for the honeybee
and live alone in the bee-loud glade.​

Look what happens if you end the lines with the parts of speech mentioned above:

I will arise and go now and
go to Innisfree and a small cabin build there, of
clay and wattles made.
Nine bean rows will I plant there, a hive for
the honeybee and live alone in the
bee-loud glade.​

It doesn't read as smoothly, does it? In fact, it not only sounds "off" now, the "and," "of." and "for" stick out like sore thumbs. It pays off to edit your lines and make sure you don't have any of these sorts of words left hanging like orphans.

There are other parts of speech, like adverbs (e.g., likely, very) and gerunds (e.g., falling, sleeping) that you may not want to put at the end of a line either, but these are better decided on an individual basis, depending on the context of the line and what you want to emphasize. Sometimes they can work spectacularly well, but almost always because you made the choice to break your line that way.

Second, you should think carefully about what words you do choose to end a line with not just in terms of grammar (obviously), but also in terms of the meaning and theme of your poem. If you're writing about death, for example, you might want to use words like "end" or "rest" or such at the end of a line--words that signify death for you (well and your readers lol) to emphasize your theme. Sometimes the context of successive lines allow you to make word plays with multiple meanings of words or phrases with end words. You can do this very subtly or in a more pronounced way depending on how you want to make tone and structure work for you. That is part of the art of crafting a poem. You don't just end up with a certain tone or theme: you plan it by making specific word choices and using specific end words (of lines or strophes).

Finally, there is the concept of enjambment--running a sentence over more than one line. If a poem consisted of a single sentence on each line, it would sound choppy. Think of that same verse from Yeats. If he had written it this way, the poem would read very differently:

I will arise and go now.
I'll go to Innisfree
I'll build a small cabin there.
I'll use clay and wattles.
There'll be nine bean rows.
Honeybees will build there hive there.​

Well, that's a particularly bad example, lol, not even a poem anymore really, but my point is that it's choppy. If you flow sentences across lines, you not only get a smooth, poetic sound, you also get much more opportunity to break your lines in interesting ways. You get to choose specific words for emphasis and to create the "voice" you consider most appropriate for your poem.

The more you consciously choose the best words possible when you break lines and stropes--as well as deciding when and where you want to put extra space or lines between words--the easier it gets. I don't think it's ever akin to a picnic in the park, but you'll get to the point where you begin making good line break choices without stopping to think about it.

I'm verbose, I know, but I wanted to be clear and cover what I think are the key issues. I hope you find this helpful. If you have questions about specific choices for ending lines, post them here on the forum or pm me if you like--but there are always people here willing to help.

for sj

 

[MyNecroticSnail]

There is but one rule, and it is a difficult one:

line breaks, like everything else in the poem, have to serve nothing but poetry​

It's a difficult rule because first you have to know what poetry is. The more you know aboout poetry, the more you know about line breaks.

Several aspects and effects are related and connected to line breaks. Thus the problem is complex and there can be tension of contrary pressures.

Classically, the linie breaks were tightly related to grammar and rythm. The end line was expected to correspond to the end of a grammatical unit (even of a logical unit). Also, the end lines were suppossed to corespond to the metric intervals. Thus, classically, the metric and the gramatical (and the logical) structures had to be synchronized.

With the time passing, the line breaks were more nd more used as a varied artistic mean, just like similes etc. They can enrich the imagery and the meaning of the poem. They control the mood of the text. Etc.

On the other hand, the line breaks should not be used for cheap effects. They should serve nothing but poetry.

for SJ
three of the best, there is not much more I can say, except I like cheap effects

 

[Tzara]

I wanted to dig up this thread, which is one of my favorites, and look at a poem I pasted onto eagleyez' birthday thread the other day. Here 'tis:

How Poetry Comes to Me
Gary Snyder

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light​

One of the things I really like about this poem (other than it being short, which makes it much easier for me to think about, me being bear of very little brain) is the odd line breaks. Like some of the others that have been discussed in this thread, the line breaks here are weird, even disconcerting, but they are what actually make the poem effective.

I mean, look. Snyder ends three lines in a six line poem with the word "the". I would suggest you not try that in your poem for that Introduction to Poetry Writing course, unless you are sandbagging your way to a grade. It's almost equally interesting that the other three lines end more conventionally, on "stays", "campfire", and "light", as if Snyder is balancing emphasis and awkwardness (in this poem, poetry is "blundering over the / Boulders at night", after all). The end effect for me is to give the poem a herky jerky rhythm, almost as if it were written with a Beowulf kind of caesura in the middle:

It comes blundering over the......boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the......range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the......edge of the light​

But that doesn't take into account Snyder's effect of forcing your eyes to jerk back to the start of the next line, which gives the poem a visual or physical analogue of the metaphor and the hesitancy of the author's perception in locating his subject, hovering just at the periphery of his perception. Very cool, I think. It reminds me of the WCW poem I mentioned above.

I love stuff like this, except for how it makes me feel completely incompetent as a writer.

 

[FifthFlower]

I hear Synder's poem as if it were written in three heavily end-stopped loose anapestic lines that could be coded as follows with bold syllables showing where the accents are.

It comes blunder-ing o-ver the boul-ders at night.
It stays frigh-tened out-side the range of my camp-fire.
I go to meet it at the edge of the light.

I don't think it matters how one formats a poem on the page. Such visual performance is there to guide the speaker, much like sheet music is there to guide the musician. If you want to make the sheet music hard to read, that's your choice, but the visual display is not the poem. If a mark on the page cannot be converted to aural information, it is no more important to the poem than changing the font.

The line is an aural not a visual reality. If you can't hear it, it does not exist.

 

[TheRainMan]

I wanted to dig up this thread, which is one of my favorites, and look at a poem I pasted onto eagleyez' birthday thread the other day. Here 'tis:

How Poetry Comes to Me
Gary Snyder

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light​

One of the things I really like about this poem (other than it being short, which makes it much easier for me to think about, me being bear of very little brain) is the odd line breaks. Like some of the others that have been discussed in this thread, the line breaks here are weird, even disconcerting, but they are what actually make the poem effective.

I mean, look. Snyder ends three lines in a six line poem with the word "the". I would suggest you not try that in your poem for that Introduction to Poetry Writing course, unless you are sandbagging your way to a grade. It's almost equally interesting that the other three lines end more conventionally, on "stays", "campfire", and "light", as if Snyder is balancing emphasis and awkwardness (in this poem, poetry is "blundering over the / Boulders at night", after all). The end effect for me is to give the poem a herky jerky rhythm, almost as if it were written with a Beowulf kind of caesura in the middle:

It comes blundering over the......boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the......range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the......edge of the light​

But that doesn't take into account Snyder's effect of forcing your eyes to jerk back to the start of the next line, which gives the poem a visual or physical analogue of the metaphor and the hesitancy of the author's perception in locating his subject, hovering just at the periphery of his perception. Very cool, I think. It reminds me of the WCW poem I mentioned above.

I love stuff like this, except for how it makes me feel completely incompetent as a writer.

nice analysis. . . . you are sharp.

personally, i don't think the linebreaks are totally effective in Snyder's poem (and i enjoy most of his poetry very much).

i find them too obvious and "in your face," and the alternation makes me feel that they are not totally natural, a bit forced, not effortless (whereas, i think the linebreaks in WCW's cat poem are totally unincumbered, and off-the-charts brilliant).

your posts are always interesting, Tzara, always food for thought.

 

[TheRainMan]

. . . I don't think it matters how one formats a poem on the page . . .

really, now.

. . . Such visual performance is there to guide the speaker, much like sheet music is there to guide the musician. . .

that's a very faulty analogy.

written language is a communication predominently made for the eyes, music for the ears.

if one finds an aural flavor to poetry, so much the better -- but to equate the essence of a word to that of a musical note misses their point.

. . . The line is an aural not a visual reality

only if one is blind.

 

[champagne1982]

Yes, I agree, TRM. One cannot read poetry without seeing it first.
I find I also must, mentally, see my poem before I write it.
Then, there's always concrete poetry. That's especially visual.

 

[TMV]

Odd discussion, I mean for me.

I have been to some conventions and to some groups, but it seems to me that the line break seems more than anything else, to make the rhythm of the poem. Of course I've heard poets break, even at the line breaks into a rhythm that isn't a part of the cascade of rhythm. Meaning they don't read it according to the broken stem. I have noticed one thing that is really telling! When a poet gets some small notoriety, they tend to get arhythmic and put emphasis the wrong words of the poem. Causing it to become a dull, repetitive reading.

I dearly hope that I might at least seek to keep from being sundered by the same mis-guided elegance of elitism. I have even had poetry readers read my poem's on CD's, and been sorely disppointed by their faulty rhythm of their interpretitive read.

What is the poet true..., is he sings to his own rhythm. You have to find that rhythm and build your poetry around that! And the clue to that rhythm is in the line break, The words are the beat of your pulse and the stanza is the flight of your heart. But the line break is the vibration, that thrums through your voice and fingers! My own rhythm muse is buried deep in my thoughts and he/she/it likes to move to the flex and mass of the words that create my work.

Rules are good start for the existential man/woman, musing on their feral passions and frozen sinews. But there will always be those that can't shelter their existence, in limits and lilies, stoic in their fodder. And the song is what makes hearts surge and leap! So I say, find your rhythm, your song, your flight. And then make your own rules to supercede the tried and staid.

I have seen poems built by line breaks that are to represent a picture of what they speak of. I have seen poem's of pillars, flowers, cars and rivers. But the best poem's I have ever heard, are made of the voices that carry them. Listen to what you write and see if it muddles your juices, re-arranges your intergers..., screams for your individualism to go to Alpha Centauri!

I know you sing to songs that play upon your energy to release. You have musicians and bands that impel your ID to dance and crow! You have a rhythm in your soul and it sings that imagination, with the literacy of the angel inside! The line breaks when you need a breath for the next 15 notes!

 

[Sara Crewe]

I have been to some conventions and to some groups, but it seems to me that the line break seems more than anything else, to make the rhythm of the poem. Of course I've heard poets break, even at the line breaks into a rhythm that isn't a part of the cascade of rhythm. Meaning they don't read it according to the broken stem. I have noticed one thing that is really telling! When a poet gets some small notoriety, they tend to get arhythmic and put emphasis the wrong words of the poem. Causing it to become a dull, repetitive reading.

I dearly hope that I might at least seek to keep from being sundered by the same mis-guided elegance of elitism. I have even had poetry readers read my poem's on CD's, and been sorely disppointed by their faulty rhythm of their interpretitive read.

What is the poet true..., is he sings to his own rhythm. You have to find that rhythm and build your poetry around that! And the clue to that rhythm is in the line break, The words are the beat of your pulse and the stanza is the flight of your heart. But the line break is the vibration, that thrums through your voice and fingers! My own rhythm muse is buried deep in my thoughts and he/she/it likes to move to the flex and mass of the words that create my work.

Rules are good start for the existential man/woman, musing on their feral passions and frozen sinews. But there will always be those that can't shelter their existence, in limits and lilies, stoic in their fodder. And the song is what makes hearts surge and leap! So I say, find your rhythm, your song, your flight. And then make your own rules to supercede the tried and staid.

I have seen poems built by line breaks that are to represent a picture of what they speak of. I have seen poem's of pillars, flowers, cars and rivers. But the best poem's I have ever heard, are made of the voices that carry them. Listen to what you write and see if it muddles your juices, re-arranges your intergers..., screams for your individualism to go to Alpha Centauri!

I know you sing to songs that play upon your energy to release. You have musicians and bands that impel your ID to dance and crow! You have a rhythm in your soul and it sings that imagination, with the literacy of the angel inside! The line breaks when you need a breath for the next 15 notes!

Holy shit! Do the people at Hallmark know that one of their writers has escaped and is speaking in public? Someone should give them a call...I bet they want their adjectives back.

 

[Tzara]

I hear Synder's poem as if it were written in three heavily end-stopped loose anapestic lines that could be coded as follows with bold syllables showing where the accents are.

It comes blunder-ing o-ver the boul-ders at night.
It stays frigh-tened out-side the range of my camp-fire.
I go to meet it at the edge of the light.

I don't think it matters how one formats a poem on the page. Such visual performance is there to guide the speaker, much like sheet music is there to guide the musician. If you want to make the sheet music hard to read, that's your choice, but the visual display is not the poem. If a mark on the page cannot be converted to aural information, it is no more important to the poem than changing the font.

The line is an aural not a visual reality. If you can't hear it, it does not exist.

I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to you, 5thFlower, that I disagree with your comment. While I can't argue with "I don't think it matters how one formats a poem on the page," for obvious reasons (I am not you), that seems an patently ridiculous statement to me.

But rather than sling (too much) mud at your opinion, let me start here: You apparently think Snyder "want[ed] to make the sheet music hard to read" in the poem I quoted. Either that, or, by your aesthetic, he was incompetent.

The guy's won the Pulitzer Prize, and a lot of other awards. Prizes themselves don't count for much, but you win a few and you get the reputation that you might know what you're doing. I would hope you would agree the man is competent.

So. Is it this poem that is fucked up? And if it is, why is it? Is Snyder being a jerk? Is he being deliberately confusing (or, to use your categorizing aesthetic), is he trying to make the sheet music "hard to read"?

Maybe I'm simplistic, but I would vote that the guy knows what he is doing and is writing the poem how he intends it to be read.

Odd thing about poetry: the stuff's idiosyncratic.

So: example. The given is the poem I quoted earlier. Granted is that it has odd line endings. Here's another (I think much inferior) one by Snyder:

Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away

Who was this girl
In her white night gown
Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.
She looks up at me tender,
Calm, surprised,

What will we remember
Bodies thick with food and lovers
After twenty years.​

There is a fabulous line in this poem: Bodies thick with food and lovers, but however great an individual line that is, it doesn't make the poem. In fact, I am not quite sure this is that great a poem. I like it, but it isn't top rank. More importantly, it isn't in the same rank as the earlier Snyder poem I cited. At least to me.

But what is notable about this poem as compared to the other is that the line breaks are dead on how one (at least how I) would read it.

In my opinion, of course.

So. Can Snyder include "visual performance... to guide the speaker"?

Uh, yeah.

Is that his main authorial concern when writing a poem?

Well, don't look like it to me, leastways not always, but I am not an expert. Nor, I can virtually guarantee, is you, 5thy.

It's just poetry, people. Trust the author. Argue with him or her over their aesthetic, perhaps, but trust 'em. Guy or gal normally knows what they're doing. If they don't, in your opinion, ding 'em.

It ain't rocket science.