Writing Help 129 | - ☆ Freelance Writer
Apr 06, 2013 | #1
Poetic Terms You Have to Learn
There are certain common characteristics that help us to define a poem as a poem. One of these is obviously rhyme, another is the use of relatively short lines centered on a page. A third is the use of a regular meter, and the fourth is the use of end-stopped lines, complete with capital letters to start each line, and a comma or other punctuation mark to end them. Looking at the short stanza below, you can see all of these at work, and the product's status as a poem would never be questioned:
Beneath the surly bonds of time we groan.
Upon the rack of wasted youth we die.
Within a moment of our mother's moan,
We see the darkness streaming from the sky.
The problem with embodying so many of the typical characteristics of a poem, of course, is that it risks looking like a parody of a poem, or at the very least an uninspired and uninspiring work which has an unimaginative form to contain its unimaginative content. Though it takes some basic skill to create a poem which has an identifiable meter and a consistent rhyme scheme that still makes some sense, poets view this as only the first step to achieving poetic prowess.
Part of the problem here comes from the ease with which one can string together a series of end-stopped lines. Once you begin thinking in a given rhythm, it is not very difficult to make complete thoughts in appropriate lengths, and as is the case for the example above, every line is a completely self-contained syntactic unit. You feel the natural tendency to pause at the end of each line for this reason, not to mention the presence of punctuation which leads you in the same direction. All of this serves to limit the range of possible expression, and it creates a solemn, stolid feeling that is appropriate for the most serious, ceremonial verse, and nothing else.
This is where the idea of enjambment comes in to relieve the monotony, and to open new vistas of poetic possibility. The word comes from French, and means to straddle, which is an excellent metaphor for what the device does in its poetic setting in both French and English. Read the following lines, and note the difference enjambment makes to the flow of the words and your reading of them:
To own a man these days can tax the best
Of minds beyond their normal mortal bounds.
There is a temptation with poetry that uses end-stopped lines almost exclusively to read in a sing-song pattern, accenting the meter, stopping and starting in the appropriate note to begin and end each line. In both examples, I have used iambic pentameter, but note how dominant and obvious it is in the first, while in the second it appears much more subtly. This is a result of the enjambment used in the second, which takes a complete syntactic unit and divides it over more than one line. The sense of the first line in the enjambed example relies on the completion of the second line, and vice versa, so you continue reading without pause to make the lines make sense. However, read each line on its own, stopping at the end, and starting again at the beginning of the next line. Notice that the meter is indeed regular, and is the same as that of the poem above. The enjambment has created the perception of a variation that produces an interesting aural effect, and this is what enjambment is capable of. There is certainly nothing wrong with end-stopped lines, but keep in mind that when used alone, they can result in a simple and monotonous verse.
End-Stopped Line, Enjambment
There are certain common characteristics that help us to define a poem as a poem. One of these is obviously rhyme, another is the use of relatively short lines centered on a page. A third is the use of a regular meter, and the fourth is the use of end-stopped lines, complete with capital letters to start each line, and a comma or other punctuation mark to end them. Looking at the short stanza below, you can see all of these at work, and the product's status as a poem would never be questioned:
Beneath the surly bonds of time we groan.
Upon the rack of wasted youth we die.
Within a moment of our mother's moan,
We see the darkness streaming from the sky.
The problem with embodying so many of the typical characteristics of a poem, of course, is that it risks looking like a parody of a poem, or at the very least an uninspired and uninspiring work which has an unimaginative form to contain its unimaginative content. Though it takes some basic skill to create a poem which has an identifiable meter and a consistent rhyme scheme that still makes some sense, poets view this as only the first step to achieving poetic prowess.Part of the problem here comes from the ease with which one can string together a series of end-stopped lines. Once you begin thinking in a given rhythm, it is not very difficult to make complete thoughts in appropriate lengths, and as is the case for the example above, every line is a completely self-contained syntactic unit. You feel the natural tendency to pause at the end of each line for this reason, not to mention the presence of punctuation which leads you in the same direction. All of this serves to limit the range of possible expression, and it creates a solemn, stolid feeling that is appropriate for the most serious, ceremonial verse, and nothing else.
This is where the idea of enjambment comes in to relieve the monotony, and to open new vistas of poetic possibility. The word comes from French, and means to straddle, which is an excellent metaphor for what the device does in its poetic setting in both French and English. Read the following lines, and note the difference enjambment makes to the flow of the words and your reading of them:
To own a man these days can tax the best
Of minds beyond their normal mortal bounds.
There is a temptation with poetry that uses end-stopped lines almost exclusively to read in a sing-song pattern, accenting the meter, stopping and starting in the appropriate note to begin and end each line. In both examples, I have used iambic pentameter, but note how dominant and obvious it is in the first, while in the second it appears much more subtly. This is a result of the enjambment used in the second, which takes a complete syntactic unit and divides it over more than one line. The sense of the first line in the enjambed example relies on the completion of the second line, and vice versa, so you continue reading without pause to make the lines make sense. However, read each line on its own, stopping at the end, and starting again at the beginning of the next line. Notice that the meter is indeed regular, and is the same as that of the poem above. The enjambment has created the perception of a variation that produces an interesting aural effect, and this is what enjambment is capable of. There is certainly nothing wrong with end-stopped lines, but keep in mind that when used alone, they can result in a simple and monotonous verse.