Line Breaks and More...

I’m sort of going to hit on what Jessica was talking about with line breaks and my interpretation of poetry formats. I am a big fan of line breaks for two main reasons. One, I’m not very good at following the strict rules of punctuation, and two, I think creative spacing and lines breaks make the piece of work more appealing.

First I’ll talk about how I’m not very good at punctuation. I’m no english major so I am still trying to figure out when to use commas and apostrophes. Like most people I put them in wrong places and end up saying what I don’t mean. Creative line breaks and spacing takes care of this problem. When I want the reader to take a break from the subject without completing the sentence I can just put in a nice size line break or even throw in a space to make them a page apart. This way it takes the reader some time and a brief break in thought to get to the point. I could throw in a comma or a . . . to do the same but is it really the same. If it were up to me I would use this kind of creative page spacing for every written work I do, but my teaches and some environmentalists probably wouldn’t be very happy.

The second reason I like creative line breaks and spacing is for its artistic appeal. Lets be honest, when you are scanning through 20 poems and you come across one that has a nice border around it or has a unique look due to spacing you are more apt to like it. Like when eating food, half the taste is in its visual appeal. I don’t know about you but I get bored reading the same line after line format. Creative spacing is like jazz music; Jazz music takes your mind to places its never been before, it’s a stimulating journey through someone else’s mind. After all that is what poetry is, isn’t it? Well we could argue all day but the fact is
spacing is good.

Love,

Jay
Jaywoodward.com