LINE BREAKS

Line Break

What should you know about line breaks?

• Line breaks divide poems into lines, and the length of lines determines the appearance of the poem on the page: long and skinny, short and wide, or a shape entirely its own.
• The location of a line break is often dictated by the number of syllables in the line, but just as often it is freely chosen by the poet.
• Line breaks serve an important function in setting the rhythm of a poem, since they insert a pause between the final word of one line and the first word of the next line. For this reason, line breaks conventionally occur where natural pauses in language also occur—such as after punctuation, at the end of a thought, or between distinct images.

Although line breaks themselves tend to have the effect of creating a pause in the rhythm of a poem—and it is common for poets to use punctuation at the end of lines—line breaks don't necessarily have to coincide with the use of punctuation.

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Lines that do end with some form of punctuation are called end-stopped lines, while lines that don't end with punctuation are called enjambed lines.

For example, in these lines from Romeo and Juliet, the first, second, and fifth lines are end-stopped, while the third and fourth are enjambed:�

• When he shall die,�Take him and cut him out in little stars,�And he will make the face of heaven so fine�That all the world will be in love with night�And pay no worship to the garish sun.

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Generally speaking, poets place line breaks within their poetry so that they don't meaningfully disrupt the syntax of the sentence, but instead create pauses that mimic the natural pauses of speech. However, this not always the case; some poets use line breaks to intentionally create an unusual cadence or phrasing in their poems.

Think of how your brain operates at the end of a line. Here’s an example of a sentence that may look a bit strange upon first glance.

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My dog was dead

tired after his run.

Using line breaks in these two different ways produces a very different effect. For example, take the following two examples, which use the same words but employ line breaks in different places:

The first example above uses line breaks in a way that follows the syntax of the sentence much more naturally than the second example, which is quite jarring. But some poets want to achieve that jarring effect, and use line breaks to purposefully alter the way in which someone would naturally read a given sentence.

You should also be aware that poets also use line breaks to accentuate, reflect, or mimic an effect or intention. Look at two examples of a line break and think about how each of them contribute to the creation of an “effect.”

Now here’s an excerpt from “Golden Retrievals,” a poem about the scatterbrained dog talking to its owner. ��Now look at the line break between the stanzas. Somebody raise your hand and discuss its effect or significance and how it contributes to what’s going on in the poem.

Here’s an excerpt from “The Juggler.” The Juggler in the poem serves to break the speaker from a sense of monotony and “normalcy.” ��Now look at the line break between the stanzas. Somebody raise your hand and discuss its effect or significance.

Writers use line breaks because it's part of what makes a poem a poem. By inserting more white space into the text, poets are able to exercise a greater degree of control over the speed and rhythm at which their poetry is read, thereby distinguishing it from both everyday language and prose literature. So in many ways, the question of "why writers use line breaks" is no different from the question of why people write poetry at all.�

But that leaves the question of how poets use line breaks to achieve different effects, and the answer to that question can sometimes seem to have as many answers as there are poets writing today. Most commonly, though, writers use line breaks to determine a poem's speed and rhythm. For example, a poet may choose to use shorter lines and more line breaks in order to slow readers down and ask them to pay extra careful attention to each individual word that is being used. On the other hand, a poet may use long lines if the style of the poem is more conversational or if the sentences contain complex ideas with many clauses, since longer lines are easier and faster to comprehend. Ultimately, line breaks can be used in any way the poet desires to alter how the text of a poem is delivered to the reader.

Let’s take a look at a poem and see how line breaks contribute to the meaning of the poem. ��In the poem “Crossing the Swamp,” the poet, Mary Oliver, depicts the dynamic relationship between the “belching bogs” and the journeying speaker. The poet characterizes the relationship between the two as one of negativity, pessimism, and even morbidity AND one of acceptance and even awe.

Pay particular attention to the structure of the poem’s line breaks and how they echo or reinforce the message the author is trying to convey about her relationship with the swamp.

Perhaps the structure of the poem should be credited for establishing a setting or rhythm in itself, complimenting to the progression of tone. Though there is no grammatically coherent stanza structure, certain patterns of rhythm and diction do exist. The initial tone of pessimism, disgust, and struggle is emphasized by a very cumbersome flow of rhythm. Enjambment plays a major role in creating chaos and a laboring rhythm which struggles in its continuity from brief line to brief line, almost steps in themselves. As lines grow longer in meter, but then pull back to single words, a sense of acceleration and the suddenly falling, stumbling, is established. Towards the poem’s end, however, single-word lines disappear, giving way to more coherent grammatical entities (such as the clause or phrase: “a poor dry stick given one more chance” versus short sputters of line: “bogs. Here.” The longer lines yet experience enjambment, but this doesn’t affect their continuity nearly as much as it does the broken imagery at the beginning.

What are your thoughts?