The poet, verses, the page

Nearly anyone, just by looking, can distinguish between prose and poetry. Reading usually isn't even necessary. In class I can stand at the front of the room, hold up a page, and ask, “Is this a poem?” and students will answer correctly every time. It's not that they all have 20-10 vision but that the fundamental difference between poetry and prose is obvious: in prose every line, with the possible exception of the last line of paragraphs, ends on the right margin; the page, therefore, determines where lines end. In poetry, however, lines can be -- at least in theory and given a wide enough sheet of paper -- any length and can end anywhere because the poet decides where lines end. This difference may seem simple, but it represents one of the greatest challenges and most difficult questions for writers of poetry: Where and why do I turn lines?

Most readers think that decisions about line turns aren't really decisions at all. They're just one of those things that happen or a stylistic preference that even the poet can't explain or a convention, like punctuation, that simply allows readers to catch their breath. Unfortunately, in bad, uninformed poetry any or all of those answers may be correct. However, in literate, carefully considered, revised poetry, the length of lines and the location of the turns suit the subject or purpose of the poem just as shoes fit a person's purpose or profession. The wrong line length can be as detrimental and dangerous as sandals on welders, stilettos on tennis players, or steel-toed boots on registered nurses.

As you try to decide where to turn your lines, consider first what length is appropriate for the subject of the poem. Sometimes short lines, which have a slower, choppier pace than medium or longer lines, are best because they suggest smallness, brevity, compactness, isolation, and halting or faltering action or thought. For example, Charles Bukowski's “And the Moon and the Stars and the World” is made up of twelve short lines, none of which contains more than three words:

and the moon and the stars and the world

long walks at

night --

that's what's good

for the

soul:

peeking into windows

watching tired

housewives

trying to fight

off

their beer-maddened

husbands.

The first two lines of the poem -- “long walks at / night” -- seem to suggest that if the form is to reflect meaning, long lines would be more appropriate than short lines. However, as the poem reveals, the walk is not so “long” and certainly not continuous since the speaker regularly pauses to “peek . . . into windows.” Notice that it's not just one window or one housewife or one husband that he observes but more than one of each. This, of course, suggests -- sadly enough -- that he breaks up his walk -- a few steps and then a look into a window, a few more steps and a look into another window -- much like each line of the poem takes just a few steps and pauses to turn and takes a couple more steps and again pauses to turn. But this isn't the only way we can think about Bukowski's choice of line length. The short lines also chop his poem into little isolated pieces just as the people observed by the speaker in the poem are isolated, disconnected, their relationships chopped up by differences, boredom, desperation, and beer.

In other poems, long lines are clearly the better choice because of their sprawl, fluidity, continuity, expanse, breathlessness, distance, and faster pace. Notice the length of the lines in Wallace Stevens's poem “Description without Place”:

from “Description without Place”

The swans

Moved on the buried water where they lay.

Lenin took bread from his pocket, scattered it --

The swans fled outward to remoter reaches,

As if they knew of distant beaches; and were

Dissolved. The distances of space and time

Were on and swans far off were swans to come.

Stevens's lines, which consist of from seven to ten words each, are considerably longer than Bukowski's. But there's good reason for the poet's choice. In the poem, Lenin “scattered” the “bread from his pocket,” and the lines, too, are “scattered” or stretched across the page. Similarly, the swans' wingspan sprawls over the water as they “fled outward to remoter reaches”; the lines, too, sprawl across the page and create a sense of expanse -- the persona's thoughts about “swans to come” flying across “space and time,” across the page and dissolving “far off” in the distance. With shorter lines, “Description without Place” would feel schizophrenic, the expression on its face communicating one thing but its words saying something entirely different.

Another way to gauge where to turn lines is to consider how the turn affects the speed with which the reader reads the poem. The grammatical and syntactical completeness of the line and the presence or absence of punctuation affect the amount of pause or momentum generated by the line. End-stopped lines -- those that are grammatically and logically complete and which often end with punctuation -- provide the greatest pause while enjambed lines -- those that are grammatically and logically incomplete and usually run on to the next line without punctuation -- create the most momentum. In general there are seven categories of line turns, each of which provides a slightly different amount of momentum or pause: the higher the number associated with each category, the longer and more complete the pause; the lower the number, the more momentum drawing the reader to the next line.

7 - The greatest pause results from ending a line where a sentence ends and following it with sentence-ending punctuation, such as a period, question mark, or exclamation point. This creates a full stop. Notice how Sylvia Plath does this at the end of each of the last four lines of “Daddy”:

“There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.”

6 - The second greatest pause results when a line ends at the conclusion of what could be a sentence but is followed by internal punctuation -- such as a semicolon, colon, or dash -- that shows that this isn't the end of the sentence. In this example from Emily Dickinson, the first line's thought is complete, but the semicolon indicates the sentence is not, and so we are pulled to the next line:

“I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air”

5 - A slightly shorter pause occurs when the line again contains a complete sentence but is followed instead by a comma, which slows the reader less than the semicolon, dash, or colon. This is how Dylan Thomas turned the first line of his most famous poem:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;”

4 - A lesser pause results when the line turns at the end of an independent clause followed by no punctuation. We feel the pause that results from reaching the end of what is a complete logical thought. However, the absence of any punctuation makes it clear that more of the sentence is still awaiting the reader, and, therefore, we go on. This is how Robert Frost turns the first line of his narrative poem “‘Out, Out --'”:

“The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,”

3 - More momentum is generated when a line ends with a comma or dash after a dependent clause or phrase within a sentence. For example, a line might end with a comma after an introductory subordinate clause or participial phrase, a nonrestrictive relative clause, an appositive, an absolute, etc. Despite the punctuation, the reader knows that the sentence goes on and is pulled to the next line to find the rest of the thought. In the following excerpt from Walt Whitman, notice how each line consists of a prepositional phrase followed by a comma, the reader pulled along in search of the rest of the thought:

“Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,”

2 - More speed results when a dependent clause or phrase within a sentence is not followed by punctuation. This occurs in lines ending after a restrictive relative clause or a prepositional phrase but without punctuation, as in the first two lines from Adrienne Rich's “August”:

“Two horses in yellow light

eating windfall apples under a tree”

1 - The most momentum is generated when the line end breaks a grammatical unit and, as a result, pulls readers to the next line for what they know is missing. This happens when the line turn occurs within a prepositional phrase, a relative clause, an appositive, an absolute, etc., or separates an adjective from its noun or a linking verb from its complement or, as in each of the following three lines from Eliot's “The Waste Land,” a verb from its direct object:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring”

These varying degrees of pause and momentum affect how we read poems, and understanding them helps writers, such as William Stafford in “It's Like Wyoming” and James Wright in “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” decide where to turn lines. At the end of each line of these two poems is a number from 1 to 7 which corresponds to the numbers on the above scale: 1 for most momentum, 7 for greatest pause. Notice how the pace of these poems is affected by where and how the writer turned his lines. Here, first, is Stafford's poem:

It's Like Wyoming

At sunset you have piled the empties and 1

come to the edge, where the wind kicks up 4

outside of town. A scatter of rain 2

rakes the desert. All this year's weather 2

whistles at once through the fence. 7

This land so wide, so gray, so still that 1

it carries you free -- no one here need bother 4

except for their own breathing. You touch 1

a fencepost and the world steadies onward: 6

barbed wire, field, you, night. 7

In the first stanza, the speaker describes the weather in this place that resembles Wyoming. He says, “[T]he wind kicks up,” “rain / rakes the desert,” and “weather / whistles. . . through the fence,” the swift movement from enjambed line to enjambed line reflecting the motion of the elements across the expanse of landscape. Because things are moving, the reader, too, is moved quickly through the stanza; as a result, only one line in the first five ends with punctuation. In addition, the first three lines of the second stanza continue the pattern, but instead of reflecting the motion of the elements, the fast line turns suggest the expanse and openness of the land, a “land so wide . . . that / it carries you free.” The same could be said about the lines of the poem, that the lack of punctuation and the momentum resulting from the breaks in syntax also “carries you free” from line to line. Things only change when we arrive at the last two lines, where the focus shifts from the “wide” landscape to “you,” who pauses to “touch / a fencepost” and to notice one by one the things of this world: “barbed wire, field, you, night.” The poem and the persona both slow down as the speaker pays attention to the world and considers his place within it.

Unlike Stafford's “It's Like Wyoming,” Wright's “Lying in a Hammock” has a much slower pace and more stops at the ends of lines:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, 5

Asleep on the black trunk, 5

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. 7

Down the ravine behind the empty house, 3

The cowbells follow one another 4

Into the distances of the afternoon. 7

To my right, 3

In a field of sunlight between two pines, 3

The droppings of last year's horses 2

Blaze up into golden stones. 7

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. 7

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. 7

I have wasted my life. 7

The frequent stops in the poem are indicative of how the speaker is simply still, sprawled out on a hammock (a good reason, too, for relatively long, sprawling lines), and noticing the things around him. He's stopped, motionless, just as the ends of six out of the 13 lines in this poem are end-stopped with periods. But notice, too, that lines that end with more momentum, such as lines 4 and 5 -- “Down the ravine behind the empty house, / The cowbells follow one another” -- do so for good reason; like “The cowbells,” the line turn generates motion so that they “follow one another” as the reader moves across them. Clearly, both poets recognized the logic in where and how to end lines and how that choice creates a pace appropriate for the poem.

In “reverse,” “conversation,” and “diversify,” the root “verse,” from the Latin versus, means exactly what it does when we use the word to refer to poetry; it means “to turn,” a simple act that requires careful consideration and which results in not prose but poetry.

Works Cited

Bukowski, Charles. “And the Moon and the Stars and the World.” Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow, 1972. 42.

Dickinson, Emily. “CXXVIII.” The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993. 245.

Eliot, T.S. “The Waste Land.” The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Harcourt, 1962. 29.

Frost, Robert. “‘Out, Out --.'” Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays. New York: The Library of America, 1995. 131.

Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” Contemporary American Poetry. 4th ed. Ed. A. Poulin, Jr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. 418-20.

Rich, Adrienne. “August.” Contemporary American Poetry. 4th ed. Ed. A. Poulin, Jr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. 436-37.

Stafford, William. “It's Like Wyoming.” Smoke's Way: Poems from Limited Editions 1968-1981. Port Townsend, WA: Graywolf, 1983. 80.

Stevens, Wallace. “Description without Place.” The Palm at the End of the Mind. New York: Vintage, 1972. 270-77.

Thomas, Dylan. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” The Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions, 1971. 207.

Wright, James. “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” The Branch Will Not Break. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1964. 16.

(Randy Koch teaches English at Texas A&M International University and is director of the Writing Center at TAMIU.)