The Line Breakup

Exercise Your InkTank

Forms of literature are often defined in opposition to one another: Poetry isn’t prose because it’s lineated, and prose isn’t poetry because it runs to the margins. Of course, some poems aren’t lineated, which causes a rift in this trusty little system. But not only are line breaks a defining element in poetry, they’re also a powerful tool. We use line breaks to create rhythm and rhyming beats, to suggest meaning, and to create shape on the page. Knowing the power of the line break doesn’t make it any less difficult to harness, of course. Unless you’re working with a standardized form (like a sonnet or a sestina) the prospect of turning a block of “prose” into a block of “poetry” can seem like a pretty daunting task. What time is the right time to break a line?

Here are a few good reasons to break lines:
1. When there is a natural pause in the poem.
2. When punctuation marks a pause.
3. When the break causes a moment of interest or ambiguity in the next line.

See if you can use this basic system to break the lines in this poem by Matthea Harvey. Use a backslash ( / ) to denote a linebreak.

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square of cheese is like any other element of the imagination--cough in the tugboat, muff summering somewhere in mothballs. Have a humbug. The world is slow to dissolve & leave us. Is it your hermeneut's helmet not letting me filter through? The submarine sinks with a purpose: Scientist Inside Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile I am not well. Don't know how to go on Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary about bees--yet another box in a box. The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

Now let’s look at how the poet actually broke her lines. Does she seem to be following this logic? Any logic? Let’s look at some specific moments in the poem. One thing about poetry: sometimes the moments that pull away from expectations are the brilliant sparks that pull us in as readers. Good poems use elements of form (like line breaks) to synergize language and meaning and that isn’t always about following the rules.

Break Dancing

Write a short paragraph of prose (use Harvey as a model, if you like) without thinking about line breaks. Then, re-write your piece with lineation, making any adjustments to language that prove necessary. What happens to tone? Meaning?



Poems by Matthea Harvey

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination--cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees--yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).


FIRST PERSON FABULOUS

First Person fumed & fizzed under Third Person’s tongue while Third Person slumped at the diner counter, talking, as usual, to no one.Third Person thought First Person was the toilet paper trailing from Third Person’s shoe, the tiara Third Person once wore in a dream to a funeral. First Person thought Third Person was a layer of tar on a gorgeous pink nautilus, a foot on a fountain, a tin hiding the macaroons and First Person was that nautilus, that fountain, that pile of macaroons. Sometimes First Person broke free on first dates (with a Second Person) & then there was the delicious rush of “I this” and “I that” but then no phone call & for weeks Third Person wouldn’t let First Person near anyone. Poor First Person. Currently she was exiled to the world of postcards (having a lovely time)—& even then that beast of a Third Person used the implied “I” just to drive First Person crazy. She felt like a television staring at the remote, begging to be turned on. She had so many things she wanted to say. If only she could survive on her own, she’d make Third Person choke on herself & when the detectives arrived & all eyes were on her, she’d cry out, “I did it! I did it! Yes, dahlings, it was me!

Originally appeared in Delmar.

Measure of Success

Exercise Your InkTank

Many of the writers I know measure their own worth by the quality and quantity of the writing they’re doing. No matter what else they may accomplish in the week, if they don’t get good pages, they don’t feel good about themselves. (Somehow, it usually doesn’t work the other way around, perhaps because, when the writing is going well, all of the other fucked up things about life seem to come into plain view.)

If you think of yourself as a writer, your sense of self will inevitably be influenced by the success of your work, whatever that may mean for you, but judging your life by your performance in one small area is an almost certain recipe for depression and anxiety, which can wear on you until it becomes what Coleridge called “an indefinite indescribable Terror.” Coleridge considered himself a paralytic writer once he reached his thirties and he wasted much of the rest of his life on opium addiction. That’s probably a fate most of us would like to avoid, but how do we maintain a commitment to our craft if we don’t invest and invest fully? Where do we draw the line between ambition and masochism? Gertrude Stein said, “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result.” In my darkest moments, I think that’s easier said than done, but I’ve also got a few tricks up my sleeve:

1. I try to have a few different kinds of projects in the works at all times. When the novel overwhelms me, I turn to one of the three or four short stories I’ve got in the works. And if those don’t appeal to me, I work on an essay or some prose poems. Or, I just focus on reading. I consider the time I spend with books, time I’m spending on my own work.

2. I let people make fun of me for my self-important writerly drama. No amount of earnest pleading with me will convince me to lighten up about the amount of work I’ve been getting done lately, but call me an asshole and I’ll probably drop it.

3. If I can’t get over that ten page hump (the obstacle that stalls most of my stories, even those that I finish quickly) I look for fragments of stories that might juxtapose nicely with the work I’ve already done.

Give It A Shot
Here are a few items that I’ve been keeping in reserve. Select one and begin writing on it, with a piece of your own work in mind. Don’t worry about the connective tissue between the two. Let the language itself lead you from word to word.

1. While having lunch at a neighbor’s house, a woman hears her own husband’s description on the news. When she sees his photo on the television, she has no doubt that it’s him.

2. Since the early 1990s, trillions of discarded plastic items have converged, held together by swirling currents, to form the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that now covers an area twice the size of the United States and weighs about 100 million tons.

3. A 25-year-old woman was arrested for assault after fighting with her boyfriend in the shower over whether the his dog could join them. The boyfriend said that he hoped his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more.