Clive, I have devoured this piece and the previous one with great interest. Your examples of the varied effects created by breaking lines in different places is one I think most free-verse writers can profit from. There is a world of difference between effective free verse and non-effective free verse, and whether the "rules" and structure of free verse are as easily identified as they are in metrical verse, they do have predictable and controllable impact.
In talking about the ghost of meter you quoted Eleanor Wilner's poem, Being As I Was, How Could I Help, which I think is an example of a conscious attempt to bury the meter, but perhaps at the expense of logic. I think it also illustrates the inanity of certain line break choices in free verse. Relineated as you did it, it became an entirely better poem to me. In fact, as I read the author's version I was mentally relineating it myself and feeling frustrated by what I felt were artificial barriers which hindered meaning. So I'm hoping to be educated here. Why did she break the fourth line on "they"? Or the seventh on "howling"? Is it supposed to resemble wolf-speak?
Two small hairless cubs were in it, pink
as summer oleander, waving
the little worm-like things they had
instead of paws. Naked like that, they
made my blood go slow, my dugs
began to drip. I tipped the pod, they slid
into the ferns, I nuzzled the howling
pair, they found my side, they suckled
there and drank their fill. That night
the red star in the sky was bright,
a vulture’s eye that waits
with a patience that I hardly understand.
I'm afraid I see many line-break choices in free verse almost as a condescention on the part of the writer, like underlining every important word in case the reader is too obtuse to get its significance from the context alone or from the writer's choice of that particular word instead of a different word.
Clive, if you had more time, I would like to see examples of what you feel are truly inept line breaks; in other words, those chosen for less than valid reasons. Is there an inherent validity in stopping a line simply to "wake the reader up" or throw a monkey wrench into the his brain and keep him from following the narrative too easily? To make him stop in mid-sentence and go to the dictionary to see whether there is perhaps some significance he may be missing? I'm not kidding. I've heard "short-circuiting the reader's brain" expressed as a defense of odd line breaks often enough, although mostly, I think, by would-be poets who take their work more seriously than it would seem to warrant.
Thank you for a most interesting Lariatship, Clive. I've enjoyed it and learned much from your analyses and examples of the mechanics of effective writing, things we either don't know or don't take into conscious consideration when we write a poem. While I doubt we have to know the "rules" themselves to write effectively, I think we do need to know that different choices present different results.
Carol
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