Hi David,

My good friend, excellent poet and writing tutor, Alison Chisholm, gave me this great piece of advice at one of her workshops:

Never end a line with a "weak'' word... there are lots of them, but things like it, and, the don't move the poem on, and as Ralph and Susan said, the end words of each line play a very important part; don't waste that with a nondescript word.

I don't write free verse ... often there's just one word on a line, which I find pretentious (and pointless), so the first thing I tend to do is skim down the last words on each line of a poem I'm about to read, to get the gist of it; Dick Davis's comment, that Susan quoted, sums it up well, that ''the words at the ends of the lines should encapsulate the poem''.

Jayne

Thanks for the additional comments. I think I have figured out what I was trying to figure out.

A few people have mentioned this thing about ending lines with significant words -- or not ending them with "weak" words. It is on the face of it a sensible idea, but I don't think it resonates with me much.

Thanks again everyone.

David R.

As it happens, I’ve just read Denise Levertov’s 1979 essay “On the Function of the Line,” where she discusses the effects of linebreaks on both the rhythm and the “melody” of the poem when read aloud.

I like her comparison of a poem to a (musical) score. But I find her arguments against formal or metrical verse very weak, considering that they are based on the following claim:

“...I do feel that there are few poets today whose sensibility naturally expresses itself in the traditional forms (except for satire or pronounced irony), and that those who do so are somewhat anachronistic.”

Then again, what I found the most revealing — and amusing — was her repeated emphasis that free-verse poets would NOT lose their individuality by observing the convention she described (of pausing for a “half comma” at a linebreak). Was there such a terror of conformity at that time that poets might bend over backwards to oppose any convention—even one used in free verse??

Claudia

What about curginas? Formal poems with free verse line breaks. Best of both worlds?

An example, one of the best:

September came like Winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.

As close as coppers, yellow beans still
line Mapocho's banks. It
leads them to the sea;
entwined on rocks and sapplings, each
new vine recalls that
dawn in 1973 when
every choking, bastard weed grew wild.
Beans by D.P.K

Gag! What Beans' weird line-breaks do
is mangle
meaning, just to give us an acrostic.
My own reaction to it
is so
caustic that D.P.
K. and I should never tangle.

Are things so dire that we need to dress formal poetry in free verse's clothing in order to get away with doing it? I doubt it.

(Except perhaps here in General Talk, where posting our own poems is strictly forbidden.)

Julie,
I disagree with you about Beans and the line breaks. I do not think Kristalo broke it up just so it could be an acrostic. There's something about the gnarled tension in it.

I don't think you have to break formal verse. But it's an interesting new approach. Worth exploring at any rate.

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I would love to see more examples of line breaks that tow the line in terms of doing their job of instilling and solidifying and stranding together (and sometimes expanding) the meaning of the "whole" contained in the poem.

In formal poetry Ralph and Susan are right. The line typically breaks on the word that carries the most meaning in the line and almost always is rhymed with another end word.
Free verse is more complicated, I think. Other factors can potentially come into play, like indents and punctuation. At least mores than formal verse, at least I think so... Tell me if I'm wrong, please.

But names of poets who have perfected the art of line breaks — with poems that display their expertise — would be nice. I think e.e. cummings is one such example.
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