A very interesting post by fevvers on Lisa's work just now set me thinking about line breaks in poetry again.

Is there anything
more to
them than inter-
rupting the
flow of an otherwise normal

sentence?

Ludicrous if you ask me. I wrote a sentence on visualising potential uses for a tree, and someone managed to turn it into a poem by putting a line break at every comma.

And then I'm told writing poetry is difficult.

If I wandered
past your door
glancing at the window as I went by
would you know?

Is that a poem, or a sentence?

I favour the latter.

Insane - I think it can be done as badly as your example suggests, but I think in my example, the splitting thing does create quite an awkward sense, which I guess could be used to good effect in a poem.
Similarly, I tried to use gaps in my poem 'The Quiet Secret' to give a sense of silence potrayed in the poem.

I think that's one use I'm getting at, but I still feel there's more to this issue that I haven't understood yet.

The actual quote from me to make a poem was this:

"I can look at a tree and visualise a thousand things. The wooden sculptures that could be made of it, the treehouse that could be built upon it, the life that teems within it, the offices it could fuel with paper, anything. I can visualise, I can imagine, I can look into things and find meaning where there is none to be found."

which became this:

I can look at a tree and
visualize a thousand things,
the wooden sculptures that
could be made from it,
the treehouse that
could be built upon it,
the life that teems within it,
the office it could fuel
with paper,
anything.

I can visualise,
I can imagine,
I can look into things and
find meaning
where there is none to be found.


Personally, I think it both looks and reads better in the context it was originally written in. But as I said at the time, I'm not knocking poets or poetry, it's just clearly not my thing.

On that specific case I tend to agree with you, although it's quite amusing to compare the two.

But I was trying to discuss this issue in a general way. Anyone else have any thoughts on when and how line breaks can be used constructively?

If used carefully line breaks in unexpected places can add to the emotion of a piece, heighten the tension, create an extra pause, or add special emphasise.

It is also good as in most things to experiment with line breaks as it is with everything.

I think this is a very interesting topic and would like to see more examples and views

thank you for raising it

take care

david

I could spend hours on what I think about lineation, especially in free verse. Agnieska has asked me if I'd like to comment and I will but at the moment I don't have the time. I just wanted to say that I've had a look at the posting and will get back to it over the next fews days. A parting shot though, is do people think what is on the end of a line break - and especially verse breaks? Is this just white space on the page? Hold that thought.

Cheers

OK fevvers thanks - looking forward to hearing more from you.

Hi Sorry It's taken me a while. I did say I could say a thousand things about lineation but this is not the space for an eesay so I'll just (barely) touch on a few things.

One of the exciting things about lineation in free verse is that you can do a million and one things with it and that the poem itself will help you do that. If you have a poem that is dealing with a conventional subject in conventional language then you might want to stick to a conventional line break, however you might be wanting to make some other point with the poem and less conventional line breaks will help do that. Similarly you might be dealing with a very abstract idea in the poem, with complicated syntax and language - is it necessary to further complicate things by having complicated lineation?

One thing I will say is lineation is not arbitrary - line endings (among other things) carry an emotional weight (however heavy or light) to the words that precede and succede it. To look at what lineation can do go to Elizabeth Bishop, Jorie Graham or Mimi Khalvati.

Cheers

Looking at both of Insane's examples I'd say that the line breaks completely change the mood of each. They have the effect of creating space around the words so that each line becomes more important, more heavily weighted with meaning.

Both become quieter and more lyrical somehow - rather lovely.