![]() ![]() A line is the literal linear streak of text flowing across a page. Remember, there’s a difference between a “line” and a “sentence.” A sentence is that grade-school tool that expresses a complete thought. Quite simply:Ī poetic line break is the deliberately placed threshold where a line of poetry ends and the next one begins. What do you see?įirst off, let’s define a poetic line break. POETIC LINE BREAKS DEFINITION I see a metaphor for poetic line breaks. In fact, you’re not writing poetry at all. If you’re not taking advantage of the connotative dynamism and aesthetic value of ink abutting blankness afforded by poetic line breaks, you’re not writing the best poetry. Prose flows, but it doesn’t care where it goes.Īlthough line breaks build poems, many “writers” have no damn clue how to use them effectively. Hence why “prose poems,” which don’t utilize line breaks, are qualified by the word “prose.” Every prose line runs blindly towards the brink, and once it bumps its head against the uniform white space of the margin (in LTR and RTL scripts), it starts again on the next line, replicating this headlong trajectory over and over until you have pages filled with blocks of text offset by only smidgen indents. In contrast, where a line ends in a prose piece is arbitrarily dictated by a page’s margins. Poems are dialogues between the presence that is the text and the absence that is the white space revealed. Of course, many other literary elements fuse to make poems croon, but poetry is visibly distinct from prose because its lines are sundered before the page’s natural end, at clearly calculated points. What makes a poem, a poem? Long story short, poetic line breaks. STEP UP YOUR POETRY GAME WITH BETTER LINE BREAKS AND ENJAMBMENT
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