Line Breaks
 

Hey Everyone,

What is (are) the best thought(s) you've ever had or heard or read about line breaks? Titles and/or links appreciated.

David R.

I'm curious what people suggest here. I have two books I read long ago I remember liking that address this (two books which I should re-read).

Charles O. Hartman's Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody
Robert B. Shaw's Blank Verse

The first obviously looked at line breaks from a non-metrical side, and that's valuable for not just writing free verse but enlivening metrical verse.

The second really shows the brilliance of poets like Milton and some later poets. Really did enhance my deep love for Paradise Lost.

Interesting question.

Somehow, along the way, I decided the most powerful word of a sentence or line should be the last, the most memorable moment of the sentence or line, maybe partially because of the pause. In final polishes, I like to read down the last lines of a poem and find it remarkable, at times, just how effective the end words seem as a unit.

Denise Levertov's essay, "On the function of the line" is online in pdf form here.

James Longenbach's (fairly short) book Art of the Poetic Line. It works its way through the various ways to use a line-break over the course of about 120 pages. I'm not sure I learnt that much new, but then I'd already read other things.

Levertov's poetics of the line are probably some of the best, I think. Though I disagree with her when she says that phrases shouldn't be broken over the end.

One of the best line breaks I've seen (though it's not criticism) is Hopkin's "king/dom", the way he is able to create two separate meanings is remarkable.
Regards,
Cameron

Thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated.

David R.

Generally speaking, end a line in a way that makes sense.

If there is no natural pause there in other forms of using the language, don't put a pause there in verse.

This is more relevant to metrical than to free verse, but I have always remembered Dick Davis's comment that the words at the ends of the lines should encapsulate the poem, so that by reading just the last words of each line, you have an idea of what the poem is saying. Because the reader lingers longer on those words (and especially if they rhyme), they should be key words that are worth lingering on.

Susan

Yes, I’ve heard Dick Davis offer this thought, too, and there are some kinds of verse (both metrical and non-metrical) for which it is relevant and instructive, but a good deal where it is not. Certainly, it reflects Dick’s own highly skilful practice.

Clive

Line breaks are a pretty intimate part of the process, for me. I generally agree with Susan-- not only the words that end lines, though, but also what the break is doing, trying to do. It's close to a strand of the poem's DNA, when it, probably, comes to how I usually write. I don't have any resources to suggest (I think the last thing I read about poetry was probably Poetry and Ambition, and that was a while ago).