CREATIVE LINE BREAKS

A line break does more than separate lines and start new ideas. It can emphasize meanings, change a reader's first interpretation, alter a poem's tone, and form a visual picture.

Emily Dickinson's poem "Parting" uses line breaks and rhythm to emphasize the word "parting" and it's reference to death. All other lines begin with an iamb: "My life," "it yet," "a third," "so huge," "as these," "and all." The first syllable is unstressed while the second is stressed. Then comes the "parting" line and throws off the rhythm because "parting" is stressed-unstressed. This discomforting change, a "parting" from the set pattern, drives home Dickinson's theme of death.

Line breaks can also change a reader's interpretation. In his poem "Intimations of Codependence," the poet Matt DeVore describes Demeter's tears but splits crucial words between the third and fourth lines: "As she wipes the sweet/Red juice from her fingers." We assume the tears are saltwater at first but realize they are blood when "sweet" is followed by "red," which offers a startling change of interpretation.

Normal line breaks occur at the end of a complete phrase or idea, which gives the reader a feeling of comfort and harmony. If they interrupt a phrase or disrupt the flow of a poem, it can emphasize discord or chaos. Matt DeVore also wrote a poem about panic attacks and sickness in which he uses disruptive line breaks:

"like chai tea and whiskey at 2:
00 am and the sheetsticking
humidity of fever dreams at 4:
00 like pneumonia churning
in pitch with the tea
kettle like dementia...
view like a vein tinged tunnel
vision spiderlegs...
gasping through the psycho
somatic tension..."

DeVore splits hours, adjectives that describe words on the next line, compound words like "tea kettle," and even whole words like "psychosomatic." The line break that severs that last word is fascinating because it ends the line on "psycho" and emphasizes the meaning of that separate word. This use of line breaks creates a sense of discord.

(In his own words: "I was trying to break the lines in such a way that the reader's eyes would have to slant back to the left more drastically than usual. Hence breaking up times, words, prepositional phrases, etc. I wanted to make it sort of jagged...")

Line breaks can create a picture, a form of poetry called either picture, concrete, or graphic poetry. The poet arranges line breaks to form a picture, usually relating to the poem's theme or meaning. Here is a picture of George Herbert's poem "Easter wings" which Herbert printed sideways to reveal 1) the shape of a pair of wings, and 2) the rhythm of beating wings: http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/EasterWings.jpg

I like experimenting with line breaks. Hopefully other poets will read this post and experiment too, using line breaks to emphasize meanings, change initial interpretations or tones, or paint a picture.

--Jessica Murphy