Break it to me gently

Perhaps you, like me, have always been somewhat mystified about the whys and wherefores of a poem's line breaks. In formally structured poetry, this is not an issue; the meter or a certain number of syllables will dictate the break. But in the case of free verse, a lot of times, I have suspected poets were just winging it.

But maybe I have just been projecting.

In my poem in my first post, "A Poem's Bio," I was definitely winging it. I have since read in Jerome Judson's book, The Poet's Handbook, that line breaks like the ones I used in that poem are deemed "rhetorical" because they "coincide with natural pauses or units of meaning." Judson also mentioned that "rhetorical line breaks generally make for rather dull poetry," and I realize now he's pretty much right about that.

Another way to break lines is to use a device called "enjambment." This is when right in the middle of the thought or sentence, the line stops and the thought or sentence continues in the next line. "They keep jerking you around the corner to complete the phrases rather than letting you rest at the ends of phrases," wrote Judson.

But where does one stop and start again when using enjambment? In Ted Kooser's book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, he suggests ending the line with a strong verb:

John ran to the end of the line and leapt

into space

Because there is a slight pause at the end of every line, something called a "half comma" by the poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997), the word "leapt" hangs out there for just a nanosecond, and it is as if John is suspended ever so briefly mid-air. The thing to realize here is that any word at the end of a line is naturally emphasized. Kooser, the 13th U.S. Poet Laureate who I was once lucky enough to meet in person, also shows what it would be like if the poem were structured like this:

John ran to the end of the line and

leapt into space

"In this latter instance," Kooser said, "the conjunction, followed by the white space, provides a little suspense: What is John going to do?"



Walt Whitman (1819-1892)



Finally, in the case of free verse, there is the "closed" line in which the thought or sentence is completed. Take, for example, this passage from Walt Whitman's (1819-1892) "Song of Myself":

Stop this day and night with me and you shall

     possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there
     are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, 
     nor look through the eyes of the dead,
     nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
     things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from
     your self.




(Note that when a line goes beyond the right-hand margin of the page, or computer screen as the case may be, it is conventional to indent the rest of the line as it is continued so the reader knows it is part of the previous line.)

When to choose enjambment over closed, long lines over short? In this way, poetry is not any different from prose. Shorter lines in poetry, like short sentences in prose, heighten tension. Longer lines are used for larger, sweeping visions. Closed lines generate closure.

So here I leave you with a poem I wrote that deliberately enjambed two-word lines. As you can probably imagine, two-word lines all the way through a poem can make it pretty intense. I won't tell you what it's about (unless you ask), but will just clarify that it doesn't mean I'm all Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) or Anne Sexton (1928-1974) suicidal-like. I wrote this as an analogy for a specific action, but then I realized it could be illustrative of many more things than just what I initially had in mind. You will probably read it and compare it to something completely different and it will be, hopefully, relevant to you in your own way. Anyway, here you go:

This Sweat

Startled you
ordinary Sue
not Spiderman
inch two
size 10s
toes over
skinny ledge
look down
several stories
know fear
gust or
wrong move
can bring
what some
call folly
tumbling to
ugly death
yet you
like Petit’s
high-wire act
you invited
this sweat
you clench
your teeth
back flat
clammy palms
fingers splayed
against stark
white granite
remind yourself
to breathe
to act
as if
life’s normal
then you
notice that
delivery man
greeting that
grocer unloads
fresh veggies
gulls squawk
wait to
swoop upon
black wilted
lettuce leaf
this view
holds catches
calms you
now it
could be
ages or
a while
anyway until
you decide
you’re done
then crawl
back inside
one lone
open window
where there
your friends
sit lounge
laugh butts
to couch
watching holiday
college football
bowl games

Kathie Meyer, the Infant Poet

Titles II

I've been visiting the poetry section of our town's used book store a lot more since I've started crafting poems, and the other day I picked up The Poet's Handbook by Judson Jerome (1927-1991) there. Jerome, who was the poetry columnist for Writer's Digest magazine from 1949 to 1979, had this brief, but useful, passage about poem titles:

"Avoid titles that are mere abstractions, such as "Courage" or "Love," or "Infidelity." Those sound like the titles of essays (and not essays that many would want to read!). A good title of a poem is part of the experience of the poem, not a label for it. It may not at first make sense to a reader, but at some critical point in the poem the significance of the title should become clear. A fairly common practice is to use some image or phrase or variation of one of these for the title, so the title will echo in the reader's mind when he encounters it in the poem."

Now, as I always do with anyone I discuss in this blog, I did some Internet research on Judson who also created and edited the invaluable Poet's Market and wrote several books in his lifetime. In addition to those credits, Jerome is noted as being a part of a controversial editing change that addressed a so-called confusing passage of unattributed dialogue in Ernest Hemingway's (1899-1961) story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" initially published in Scribner's Magazine in 1933. Jerome's part in the story is that, while teaching at Antioch College, he wrote to Hemingway about the "problem" in 1956. Hemingway responded saying, "I read the story again and it still makes perfect sense to me."

Nevertheless, for some reason, Scribner's published the story again in 1965, after Hemingway's suicide it should be noted, with changes to address the perceived "problem."

Hemingway scholars have been playing a chess game of "yes, it is; no, it's not" for years (to which I have to wonder why...?). If you really want to delve into the nitty-gritty particulars, you can see an article on the subject here.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Being a writer almost demands that one have opinions, and I naturally have one about this situation. In our poetry group, we are told we should not rewrite one another's words when giving our impressions of each other's work. That's hard to do sometimes, but really, by the time Jerome wrote to Hemingway, Hemingway had already received the Pulitzer Prize as well as the Nobel Prize. It's not like, to state the obvious, he was a beginning writer. It may surprise you, like it did me, to discover that Hemingway also wrote poetry.

On the other hand, editors do have the authority to make changes (I should know because I am one). But I really think, in this case, because the story had been printed the first time the way that Hemingway wrote it, his words should have stood as written.

This is not to say that Jerome's work should be dismissed though, as I think The Poet's Handbook has much to recommend itself to beginning poets. Especially since it's the only one yet I've come across that offers help with titles.

Here's a link to an article about song titles, but it can also be applied to poem titles, too:
What song titles teach us about making headlines stand out

Kathie Meyer, the Infant Poet