Line Breaks

On the topic of linebreaks, I chose Amy Lowell's "The Weather-Cock Points South" and William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say." These poems especially found favor with me because I immediately had ideas for their linebreaks, and they also represent my ideas for the other poems for this week.

Compared to the poems we have been reading so far, these poems further break free from traditional structure and form that characterized so much of the former poems. The reasons why they would split up normal sentences/phrases is to match our natural speaking language, heighten the impact of the meanings they are trying to express, build up suspense, increase or decrease our speed of reading the lines, lead us to find importance within each part of the sentences, and maybe even having fun with the freedom of free verse poems. For example, in order to match our natural speaking tones, Lowell breaks her lines at points that would make sense to the reader, because they are complete phrases. Not all of her lines follow this, but the majority of the lines in her poem could almost stand by itself. Some examples are:

'I put your leaves aside,
One by one:

I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.'

Using this method of breaking lines where she did, she wished to make a powerful statement so that the reader can feel the delicacy, the carefulness of what was happening in the poem. If she had chosen to combine the first two lines, it would not seem as important to the reader and we would read it quickly and not pay attention to it.

'I put your leaves aside one by one:'

With the separation of the phrase "One by one," Lowell forces the reader to pause and note the gradual and slow process of this event. This is a very smart move on her part, because she does get her point across to the reader, even more so when she repeated these lines.

Williams displays interesting linebreaks throughout his poem, "This is Just to Say." While reading the poem, I felt as if it would go well with someone who was actually saying this in real life. It sounds as if this person could be nervous, or even forceful and trying to justify his actions desperately but confidently.

'Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold'

These lines also can stand alone when being spoken. In the first stanza, the building of suspense [and impatience on the part of the reader!] can be seen when we have to pause to read every sentence by itself. If we read it separately and not continue to the next line, it would definitely cause the reader to respond to them [in blue font]. For example,

'I have eaten' [eaten what??]

the plums [and so?]

that were in [in what??]

the icebox'

The linebreaks in this poem points out the importance of every segment of the sentence, which made up a whole stanza in his poem. One almost questions, will he be punished? But he cannot, because the plums were so good! I also think that this was a creative twist on free verse styles of writing. In a way, he was trying to evoke responses from the reader, and for me, it was very effective.

~Kim [I hope I made some kind of sense to you!]

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Status: Graded on October 16, 2007 3:21 PM (Attempt #1)
Grade: 10 out of 10

Most Recent Comment:
"The reasons why they would split up normal sentences/phrases is to match our natural speaking language, heighten the impact of the meanings they are trying to express, build up suspense, increase or decrease our speed of reading the lines, lead us to find importance within each part of the sentences, and maybe even having fun with the freedom of free verse poems."
--you've managed to to show us most of the main reasons why poets break lines - one other would be as a barrier to flow or meaning - sometimes poets want us to work a little harder for the bone they throw us.

Way to go!