Poems tend to intimidate. I wanted you to read the chapters on Self-Doubt and Writers Block because I often find that students, especially beginning students, are apprehensive about poetry. They think they don’t understand it, and sometimes don’t think poets even exist anymore. By the end of the poetry unit, I hope you will come to understand that poetry is not inaccessible to you, and not limited to canonical historical figures like Shakespeare, Donne, and Keats. I also hope you come to understand that poems are not puzzles to solve, but a unique way to experience language. That is, a poem is not a Rubik’s cube. If your first instinct is to say “I don’t get it’ intellectually, consider other ways you might “enter’ the poem (emotionally, for example).
The line is typically held up as the aspect of poetry that makes it poetry, rather than, say, linguistically rich fiction. This is why we are starting our poetry unit with a consideration of The Line and how it functions in poems. One way to envision the line is through metaphors of the body: it can be the heartbeat of the poem, or the breathing of the poem. Another way to envision is through metaphors of movement: the gait of the poem, or the roadways of the poem. Yet another way is architecturally or spatially: the bricks of the poem, the leaves of the poem. There is no right or wrong answer here; each person has a unique relationship to poetry and different ideas about how poems work. As Laux and Addonizio point out in The Poet’s Companion, how you conceive the line is up to you and your intuition:
There are no real rules for line breaks. Give the same paragraph of prose to five poets, and each might break it into interesting lines; but their versions probably won’t be identical. There’s often no single correct way to do it. Instead, think of line breaks as effects; learn the different effects you can achieve, and then decide which you want. At first you’ll feel very much at sea, but gradually, by experimenting and listening, and by noticing how line works for other writers, you’ll begin to gain a sense of control.
They then go on to discuss the line as a unit of music, which is perhaps the most useful way for beginners to understand it. A poem is not a song, a song is a song, but it can function very much like song lyrics (in fact, there is an entire lineage of poetry called “lyric poetry’ with its origins in the Greek lyre, a musical instrument). Be sure to read the poems in the chapter, and their evaluation of their line breaks, as they will help you evaluate how lines are working in your own poems and the poems of your peers. Be sure to also consult their definitions of “end-stopped’ and “enjambed’ before reading the poem packet for this week.
One component of the line that Laux and Addonizio don’t mention, but which will prove helpful as we move forward, is the caesura. A caesura is an interruption or break in the middle of the line, such as a period, comma, or visual space. “Centaur’ by Donika Kelly–a poem in your packet for this week–is an example of a poem that uses caesura for effect. The breaks in the lines help create a sense of movement that mimics the speaker’s pounding of the earth, a kind of galloping motion, with each caesura acting as the moment in the gallop when all the centaur’s hooves are in the air above the ground. The caesura also helps quicken the pulse of the poem, so its heart feels as if it is “pounding,’ as the speaker’s heart pounds for their lover.
For your reading response, consider how the other poems in your packet use line breaks (end-stops or enjambments) and/or caesura for effect. What purpose is the poetic line serving? What makes a poem move fast, versus slow? What gives a poem momentum?
P.S. Here are some more observations about the poetic line you may find helpful to your understanding:
The meaning of a poem is in the cadences and the shape of the lines and the pulse of the thought which is given by those lines. (George Oppen)
The best poems deliver what I call the inevitable surprise. We know the line will break, and we might even have an idea of where and how the physical boundary might present itself on the page, and that is part of the beauty, but for that beauty to work to its full potential there must also be much that comes as a surprise. (Camille Dungy)
For starters, line is an architectural device that suggests what is profoundly interior, bringing up pause, hesitation, the heard and the visual sense–oh, I get it–of something coming into being, right now. That interiority works directly against the bright light, rational feel of the sentence–the very public sentence threaded down the page to make those lines. (Marianne Boruch)
A line is a moment, and a moment is intrinsically non-narrative. That is, a moment does not move forward, not readily, not right away. A moment stops, and stopping is the friendly nemesis of narrative. A line is a moment that has value right then, and which deserves some of our time. To go past a moment is to lose something. In our lives, finally, it is the moments we savor and it is the moments we savor in our reading as well. (Alberto Rios)
The line’s function is sonic, a way of organizing the sound of language, and only by listening to the effect of a particular line in the context of a particular poem can we come to understand how lines work. (James Longenbach)
Sarah corbett
‘What The Living Do’ was my favorite example of visual space in the poem. I loved the way the lines were broken up into choppy two line stanzas. And I especially liked that the sentences would cut off in the middle in some instances. I’m not sure why, but it almost reminded me of crying. When I really really cry, I can’t get a full sentence out in a breath. I find myself almost choked when I cry, and so talking becomes very difficult. So when I read through that, it reminded me of how I might be saying those words while struggling to breath. Which I think might’ve been the authors goal, as it seems to be about the grief of a deceased loved one.
Miranda Reynolds
I thought it was interesting how both “What the Living Do” by Howe and “A Small Needful Fact” by Gay used the caesura to create two entirely different feelings and styles.
Howe separated her lines into much longer, more even lengths between caesura effects, which gave the poem a calming, pondering feeling. This fit very well with the theme that Howe was exploring, trying to understand her grief at the passing of a loved one and not quite sure how she should be processing it. I think that her additional choice to use many kinds of punctuation—commas, dashes, colons, periods—to create each caesura effect served to give interesting momentum to the theme. In the lines where she mostly used commas, the piece moved faster, almost as if she was closer to the understanding that she craved. Then, she added in a colon or period, which seemed to stop the progress of her thoughts and made the lines more certain. I thought the last stanza was a great example of this; the first line ended with a colon end-stop and then a caesura and end-stop, both with periods. It suggested that she had finally reached a level of certainty in her poem; she realized that remembering him was enough.
In contrast, Gay used the caesura effect for a more bursting, surprising style. His shorter lines and close-knit stanza paralleled with the continuously inserted commas explored a different kind of thinking. Each word led right into the next thought, like a cause-and-effect relationship. This fit very well with his theme revolving around the growth of a plant. Each caesura seemed to create a new possibility or direction that the language could go in, which made the poem much more open at the end.
Jewel Blanchard
Line breaks are something that would confuse me until I realized that they are so important. They can really make an emphasis on what you are trying to make powerful and what I mean by that is, they affect the meaning of your words. In the poem, A Small Needful Act, Ross Gay discusses a guy planting plants and his line breaks make this simple story into such a meaningful message by having effective line breaks and telling the story in the form of a poem. Also in that poem are a lot of commas which make the reader pause a second. This made me think about what I was reading a bit more. If there weren’t commas there, I would have skimmed through the poem a bit faster. But with Ross Gay’s effective line breaks and his punctuation, it gave his story more meaning and more powerful. His last seven lines are what I find to be the most powerful in his poem, each line and line break becoming more meaningful than the last. The structure of his poem and the way he leads his story is really impactful. Ross Gay uses caesura very well to make his poem more important or more meaningful.
Nadia Finley
Well here we go! Into the poetry section. I have only ever just barely peeked into the world of poetry, and my experience writing poetry has been limited to my own small perception of what poetry is. The only line break strategy I knew was to place the breaks where I could best start another rhyme. I realize now, that there is a lot more to the structure of a poem (like stanzas, line breaks, caesurae/enjambments/end-stops) than I thought. I’m definitely going to have to do some playing around with these elements.
Out of the four poems in the first poetry packet, I thought “A Small Needful Fact,” by Ross Gay and “What The Living Do,” by Marie Howe felt especially ‘dynamically controlled’ by structural factors such as end-stops and enjambment.
At first, I was kind of frustrated at “A Needful Fact,” and I really couldn’t tell why. Coming back to it sometime later, I noticed that I got frustrated because it felt like I was hiccupping all the way through the stanza. All the way to (and through) the last two lines, which read “[…], like making it easier/ for us to breath.” Yeah, It would be nice if it was easier to breath! Ross Gay made his point, and he articulated it through using caesurae and commas at the end of many of the lines, creating the hiccupping pace of the piece.
In “What the Living Do,” I began reading very slowly, intending to analyze the piece. Without noticing, I was swept into rhythm, and soon my eyes were soaring across stanzas five and six across, down, across, down, across… and then, end-stop. Wham! “we want more and more of it.
But there are moments…”
Punctuation and placement play the words. Periods chalk the tires of longer pauses but also hold up a quick stop sign for fragmented segments meant to be read now and built up further on. Longer phrases hang together, creating a slower reading experience, whereas shorter phrases, chopped up phrases that are cohesive only together, are read in quick bursts to gain that cohesiveness. We need all those small sections to come together, so we rush through to make them one.
There so much structure-wise I see in these poems alone, and I am so, so excited to try out those techniques in my own writing!
Andrew Sheets
I think the reasoning for a line break is unique to the poem, and can range from extremely meaningful to arbitrary. What I was taught in high school is that the reader tends to catch onto the last few words before a break, which can be exploited by the writer in order to leave the reader with a certain feeling or connotation before moving onto the next stanzas. “A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay is a good example of this: Intentionally or not, we’re left with a positive or negative connotation based on where the lines end. Despite the grim nature of the poem, most lines end with a positive connotation, such as “continue”, “sunlight”, “making it easier”, which create a hopeful, optimistic motif in contrast with the very dark and grim subject matter. So at least on a subconscious level, I think our brains sort a poem’s information and calculate the overall mood using the line spacing as a factor.
Adeline Knavel
For this week’s reading response I enjoyed that it was moved on to poetry. I think poems can be beautiful and written in a way that they tell a story. When I was younger and would read poetry I would always get confused when there were line breaks. I didn’t understand them or know what they were used for. Now that I am older and enjoy reading poetry I think the reason people use line breaks in their writing is not only to make their poem more unique but also be used to make their poem more important. With line breaks, it can make a difference in their writing and what they are trying to tell, it can give it an emphasis on the message they are giving to us readers. Line breaks can make the words that the writer chose to write have a meaning and an effect on the reader as they are reading. I think the Line breaks and all the commas in the poem written by Ross Gay poem gave his story meaning. My favorite poem was “What The Living Do” by Marie Howie, the line breaks in her poem made the reading slow down a bit, you could pause, take a breath, and then really understand the meaning in her poem.
Johnny Bishop
I really like what the living do because the writer makes it drawn out in section but it also seems like a single moment in time and was really drawn to that factor. It encouraged me to feel like it was happening in my own life right at that moment. The way the sentences break off made it more intense to read through. It gives it a certain feeling to me that’s hard to write out like I was maybe entranced in the poem but definitely my favorite out of the packet.
Ainsley Smith
The poem “Song” and “Love” portrayed strong examples of enjambments throughout the poems. They were effective in keeping me engaged and wanting to read the next line of the poem. It felt as though it gave a purposeful and determined feeling.
The poem, “A Small Needful Fact” held great end-stop format that played extremely well in the flow and pace of each poem. It was placed perfectly to give slight pauses, to catch our breath, and also to reflect on the previously mentioned phrase. If there wasn’t any punctuation present, I would have sped my way through the poem, not taking in the purpose of the poem. I got to actually understand the poem. I received a feeling of prosperity from the poem because of the use of enjambment.
I particularly enjoyed the use of caesura in “What the Little Things Do” through the colons and dashes because it was clear on when to pause, and to pay attention to the upcoming information that would be listed. It gave the poem a wise, concentrating, spiritual feeling.
The poetic line is used in order to showcase a truer meaning behind the poem. The line break could probably appear anywhere within a poem, but it’s sole purpose is to help break up/give pauses to the story in order to portray a message. I think that long sentences/phrases naturally causes the reader to take their time when reading; but shorter, broken up phrases, usually with enjambment of caesura, have to work together to make the story plausible. Momentum is built off of the appropriate use of line breaks and punctuation in poetry. They need to be place properly in order for a poem to create the “correct” traction that the poet intended. Using enjambments and end-stops are great tools to use when trying to embrace momentum, along with the previously mentioned line breaks.
Kyleigh McArthur
I have not gotten into poetry, quite frankly, I’ve never really understood it. I’m realizing that I’ve been reading it wrong. I’ve been trying to read it as sentences rather than as lines with enjambments and pauses within it. Depending on where the pause is, the story can be interpreted in a different tone, speed, and a different emotion can be evoked from the reader. Reading the poem sentence to sentence changes the feel of the altogether, and placing breaks allows for a certain dramatic effect. It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of some of the poems, but after I did, it made sense. I went from thinking I could never understand poetry, to finding a story in each poem. Finding a unique style and pace based on where the breaks were inserted and how long of a line the stanza included. Faster paced poems have shorter lines with less breaks whereas a shorter poem will have longer lines and sometimes more breaks. The breaks within the sentences creates the rhythm of the poem. More breaks in a sentence will create a choppier stop-go kind of rhythm while less breaks allows for more of a flow or smoothness to be found. The style that a poem is written in has a great affect on how a poem is read and how it will resonate with a reader.
Ta'Mariah Jenkins
In the poem, ” A Small Needful Fact” by Ross Gay, I found myself questioning each line of the poem and what was being said. The way he intriguingly uses words such as like and perhaps, advises the notion of how he believes what this man named Eric Garner would be and how is he portrayed. I really like the adjectives he uses to describe this man who seems to have a passion for gardening. The poem doesn’t rhyme, nor are there any periods that stop the poem and move into something else. The poem is actually one really long sentence. Though the poem may seem calm and gentle, it gives a different feeling as if this man has passed away and this is a remembrance of what he could or would have been doing. I feel like the purpose of the poetic line is a memorial or remembrance of this man. Though this poem may b short, I feel like it initially has a slow pace. Like when you see a comma in a sentence, you pause and then continue. There are many pauses in that poem. But the poem portrays momentum because the line hasn’t finished yet without the period. It is meant for you to keep reading until done. So I feel like the momentum and pace are due to the grammar and punctuation of the poem.
Casey Fetterhoff
“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe uses caesura to connect thoughts, feelings, and actions. As breaks are commonly used in writing, so are they used here, and the author uses caesura both in punctuation and line breaks to make the poetry easier to read, and easier to understand. While you could fit the same content in with fewer breaks, it might read smoother but would be harder to understand, and though the words would flow off the tongue easier when spoken aloud without pause or break, the mind itself would be far from satisfied with it. I think something which speaks a lot of the talent of a writer is their use of breaks, both in line breaks and punctuation, to achieve the specific tone that they are looking for in their work. Consider the common jokes you hear about punctuation-“Let’s eat, Grandma!” and “Let’s eat Grandma!” have completely different meanings based on the break or lack thereof. It’s a simply and silly example, but you get the point I am making-A lot of the talent of an author seems to come not only from the words, but from the often overlooked and unappreciated placement and use of “negative” word space, the breaks that they put in their writing. This poem seems to be a good example of this talent.
Gabriel Miller
Out of the poems in the packet, I liked “Song” the most because of both the imagery as well as the use of rhythm. The poem’s use of caesura helps to establish a pretty consistent pattern of small groupings of words so that each group carries more weight through emphasis. For example, the line “Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit” makes the context causative, as in the fact that it had dark eyes made it seem like fruit, rather than saying the dark eyes looked like fruit if it was in an unbroken sentence. This subtle shift in context helps to make other certain lines more purposeful in the exact images or ideas that are trying to be evoked.
The uses of enjambments and end stops doesn’t seem to be that relevant to the overall poem passed keeping line integrity. These are used to break lines into portions like the caesuras do, and also keep line length the same. I think that “A Small Needful Fact” is an example of enjambments and end stops being important because these are used to form all of the lines. Besides this, there are shorter and longer lines depending on impact, such as the final line being one of the smallest because of it relating to the “small fact” of plants.
Devin Byrd
Excluding forms of poetry that require the writer to adhere to very strict criteria regarding structure, rhyme, rhythm, etc, I believe it to be the most free-form medium of writing. And accordingly, line breaks in poetry can serve a multitude of different purposes. In “A Small Needful Fact”, Gay uses line breaks in a seemingly semi-random manner, sometimes using them to divide clauses in place of a comma, and at other times using them to break clauses without any apparent rhyme or reason. In “What the Living Do”, Howe uses lines breaks much like paragraphs in order to break up the poem’s narrative into chunks whose parts generally closely relate to one another. In “Pulling the Moon”, Castillo uses line breaks to set a rhythm, divvying up the poem into lines so that they might come across as song when recited.
I believe the length of lines and their balance of action versus description sets the speed of a poem. Momentum is decided by a poems “flow”, how well its individual words and lines transition into one another, and whether their tone is lazy or intense.
Curtis Wolfe
I was never one for poetry, so I am looking forward to this portion of the class, but also a little hesitant. I found “What the Living Do” by Howe to be very helpful with this section. I enjoyed the visual space in the poem. It felt like he ended one paragraph and went right into another. It helped make it flow better to me. The other poems were a little harder for me to fully grasp and understand their flow. But I think if I was to go back over them I would be able to grab more of an understanding.
Timberly Kneebone
Poetry! Poetry is such an interesting topic because of much of a variety there is. Growing up in earlier grades I never fully grasped the topic because I never fully understood why you would write poems instead of essays or letters. I thought they were a way to write something with less effort in order to call it art. Now multiple years later I am extremely interested in poetry and actually love when I am able to write one. I love how in poetry you can make your writing more dramatic by adding a simple stop in the middle of a sentence. Each embellishment brings personality to your piece without making it to over the top or hard to read. You can create a tone to your writing in poems that is unlike any other. When reading poems they almost are more personal and human. They feel like you are listening to someone speak naturally instead of someone giving an important speech. I overall love poetry and the literary elements it brings.
Zofia Sheesley
I read “A Small Needful Fact” to start and I love the way they used the line breaks. I myself have always been a huge fan of line breaks and using them in my poetry, I love that one sentence carefully broken into pieces can have multiple meanings and feelings and imagery, and this does exactly that. Especially “perhaps, in all likelihood, (line break) he put gently into the earth (line break) some plants which, most likely,….” where they are talking about his big hands and how they are perfect for the job and he puts them into the earth, as just one idea, but he’s putting them into the earth to plant the plants. But broken up the way it is it has multiple meanings and images and provides a fuller, deeper story. This both gives the poem a fast speed and a slow speed because the lines are shorter therefore it’s quicker and easier to get the story and the meaning but slower because then you take more time discovering new meanings and images that you didn’t see right off the bat. Line breaks allow for SO much audience interpretation which is EVERYTHING in poetry, just like in all art, I believe that it doesn’t matter what the artist’s meaning for the art or personal meaning or intention was behind the art, sure that’s important in its own right, but the only importance it has once you put it out into the world is what it means to the viewer and what meaning they can pull from it. That’s what it’s all about. Line breaks allow for that to happen more frequently and get the reader thinking more deeply about every line and everything in poetry or writing in general to spot what is intentional and what everything might mean. It’s like a lesson for the reader, they get to learn something about reading and literature and poetry AND discover the deeper meanings in the poetry.
Anna Johnson
In “What the Living Do” by Marie Howe was simple yet seemed to have a deep meaning. The stanzas allowed me to read the lines in a way that was so smooth. The first lines caught my attention right away with the clogged sink, Drano not working, and crusty dishes. Those can be common life problems and this opening made it feel relatable.
There were line breaks in this piece that made it feel like I was reading smoothly but then it was abruptly stopped with words like “This is it”. I read through these 1-3 worded sentences fast as it seemed like I should read that way. Something that made me feel uncomfortable was the coffee spilling down the wrist, especially if I have a long sleeve on, it is a very annoying feeling to have liquid running down your arm. I think this was nicely put together and a unique way to get across the feeling of a lost loved one.