Hi All,

Here I am in your inbox again, thinking about writing. This time I'm talking poetry because I jump between all genres and the first rule of Clash of the Writings is that there are no rules. Other than be nice to everyone big eyes emoji

Today, I thought we'd consider line breaks. One of my favorite writing subjects to consider.

So why learn about line breaks? I believe they are one of the most valuable tools for the poet's studio. Poetry is, when it's great, a multimodal form: it's read as a written text but it also operates visually on the page and orally when read out loud. Line breaks are important for all three of these.

Line breaks can create a sense of surprise (enjambing lines in unexpected ways can mislead a reader about the direction the sentence is going in) or slow/quicken the pace of the reader. 

In this poem by Ivor Gurney (one of the WWI trench warfare poets): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57246/to-his-love line breaks are used to create a sense of loss that slowly builds throughout the poem. Look at the way that Gurney breaks the first stanza versus the last 

He's gone, and all our plans

   Are useless indeed.

We'll walk no more on Cotswold

   Where the sheep feed

   Quietly and take no heed.

This has a melancholic slowness built into where each action is then broken by an inaction. Plans become useless, walks are stopped and we end with an image of slow peacefulness. In the final stanza, the breaks push us into darkness by making each break turn into an imperative-- a call to action which reverses the earlier uses of the breaks. First an imperative to the reader (the love of the poem) and then an imperative to the narrator--a reminder of what must be forgotten. 

Cover him, cover him soon!

   And with thick-set

Masses of memoried flowers—

   Hide that red wet

   Thing I must somehow forget.

In this poem, the sense of momentum is a key to showing the flip from memory into trauma (the poem can be viewed from the perspective of Gurney's own PTSD from his experiences, as it starts with memories and slowly spirals into a quickening pace and horror). 

There's a lot to be said about rhythmic and short poems---the way they can stick in our heads more than longer poems (where we might remember a section, but the rest becomes muddied, ebbs away from us). And in short poems, line breaks become even more important because there is so much less room to play around with for building momentum and emotion.

In one short poem, "A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay, line breaks create a pace that leaves us intentionally breathless. https://poets.org/poem/small-needful-fact

In just 15 relatively short lines, Gay narrows and expands the world of the poem. This poem is one whose power works on multiple levels. First the images and words themselves which use our knowledge of Eric Garner and his last words for a profound effect. Second, on the level of line breaks the use of repetition and hesitation increases the momentum of the poem in an adverse way--by decreasing it. When one line ends "which means" we expect a direct statement on the next line--a definitive "this is what it means" but instead we get "perhaps" as the next line, an act of hesitation/politeness/knowledge that we will potentially disbelieve the next statement to come. A technique Gay uses in several spots in the poem. This hesitation creates a halting sort of momentum---a halting not so far from breathlessness itself. Finally the poem also uses this to great effect when read aloud. This is a 15 line but two sentence poem The title and first line form one complete sentence. The next 14 lines form only one complete sentence. We are given a direct fact in the first two lines and then we are given a sentence of likelihoods and possibilities. These 14 lines also if read aloud and only stopping when we finish a complete sentence create a breathlessness (seriously read it aloud like this). The likelihood, the possibility of what this life gave is meant to take our breath away. 

A couple of other short poems that I think are worth considering before I get to the prompt are these: "House" by Neil Gaiman ( https://www.tor.com/2017/11/10/poetry-neil-gaiman-house/ )

and "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones)

Now to some prompts!

This first prompt (it was a prompt given to me, in slightly different form [I'm a modifier, forgive me], by a teacher in undergrad--the fabulous Laura Eve Engel-- and it's one I've used many times for poems since). 

Prompt:

This one takes about an hour to be done properly. But you can do other things during it--yay multitasking! 

Try to come up with a poem in your head of any length. DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING DOWN. Just mull over the words. Do something while you do the mulling. Maybe the dishes, knitting, walking the dog. After you've been mulling it over and you think you have something, start repeating it (either out loud or in your head, whichever works best). Do something else while you're doing the repeating. Take time with this. Once you feel you have the poem, record it into something (not writing). Okay now listen to it back and write it down, breaking at the points where you hear natural pauses while speaking. What does this forcing yourself into line breaks do for the poem and the rhythm?

Many of my poems are written this way, I find it one of the more invaluable tools I've ever been taught. I also have found that the poems I write like this are the ones I am most likely to never revise, something about the mulling and repeating creates a kind of revision in itself. This poem of mine was written doing this method and I literally did not change a single break or word for revision: http://www.glass-poetry.com/journal/2017/april/clark-words.html

Second Prompt (I'm a giver!)

Vague: Take a memory you have of a shift in your life (big or small) and try to use breaks in order to build (or slow the momentum) in a way that reflects how the situation's momentum felt to you.

Narrow: Take a specific timestamp from your life (the five minute wait you had for coffee this morning or an hour long wait at the doctor's office, for example) and write a poem about that timestamp in a way that reflects the feeling you had. While waiting for your coffee, grumpy because it was morning, did time seem to stretch out, did you think about the coffee or about all the things you had to do during the day and it became all jumbled up in your head? At the doctor's office, did you open Twitter on your phone and not even realize the hour had passed because you were so enjoying scrolling through other people's lives?

This is one I wrote using this prompt: https://www.theshorepoetry.org/chloe-n-clark-the-time-i-saw-the-earth

Thanks for reading!

-Chloe

P.S. Until May 1st, I'm running a giveaway. If you're among the people who have subscribed up until that point (or the first 100 subscribers--another lofty goal), then you'll be entered to win some signed copies of my books and weird merch I've made for them over the years. Do a friend a solid and tell them to sign up winks garishly