In other words, lines. Why do poets use them? What are they for? How does a poet decide where a line break goes? Does it make a difference?<\/p>\n
When I began to write I didn\u2019t know the answers. Poems need lines because poems are songs, but that\u2019s no help – all songs have different tunes. Rhyme helps because the rhymes tell you when to stop and start a new line. Counting syllables can spoil the meaning and the music. Counting the beat can work, but not all poems should thump like bass guitars. Some poems need the rhythm of natural conversation, and that goes for most of mine.<\/p>\n
When I wrote \u2018Baby-Sitting\u2019, and later \u2018Catrin\u2019, I still hadn\u2019t worked it out. In \u2018October\u2019 I\u2019m getting better, By the time I wrote the other 5 poems in the AQA anthology – here listed in the order in which they were written: \u2018Cold Knap Lake\u2019, \u2018The Field Mouse\u2019, \u2018Mali\u2019, \u2018A Difficult Birth\u2019, and \u2018On the Train\u2019 – I think I\u2019d learned, by reading and listening, how to do it.<\/p>\n
The end of the line makes your eye flick left to the beginning of the next one, creating a split second pause. It\u2019s shorter, even, than a comma, too short to breathe. The voice continues, reading across the gap. We take in and hold the line\u2019s last word before reading the first on the next line.<\/p>\n
The pause is a potent moment. It lays stress on the words and the lines it parts from each other. The pattern on the page is the tune. I\u2019d call a line-break timing. As in acting, comedy, or music, you\u2019ll only find it by listening.<\/p>\n
The night the poet R.S.Thomas died I wrote a poem in my notebook. Over the next 24 hours I murmured these lines to myself in trains, in station buffets, trying them for size, for sound. Just as important, I listened for lines and for stanza breaks. Even when a sentence seems to be in charge of the poem, the syntax can leap the breaks. Leaping a stanza break offers a double pause, and therefore more silence, casting more light on a word, more echo, more resonance, more of a chance for the reader to pick up the tune and the meaning from the pattern. Here is the first version of \u2018RS – for R.S. Thomas\u2019, and then the final one.<\/p>\n
His death on the midnight news.
\nSuddenly colder. Gold September\u2019s
\ndriven off by something afoot
\nin the south-west approaches.
\nGod\u2019s breathing in space out there
\nmisting the heave of the seas
\ndark and empty tonight except for the one frail coracle\/boat
\nborne\/carried out ot sea burning.<\/p>\n
His death
\non the midnight news.
\nSuddenly colder.<\/p>\n
Gold September\u2019s driven off
\nby something afoot
\nin the south-west approaches.
\nGod\u2019s breathing in space out there
\nmisting the heave of the seas
\ndark and empty tonight,<\/p>\n
except for the one frail coracle
\nborne out to sea,
\nburning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In other words, lines. Why do poets use them? What are they for? How does a poet decide where a line break goes? Does it make a difference? When I began to write I didn\u2019t know the answers. Poems need lines because poems are songs, but that\u2019s no help – all songs have different tunes.… Continue reading Lineation<\/span>