Few novelists, intent on developing characters and forwarding plot, inculcate poetic qualities to their prose. remain critical, in fact with the absence of end-rhyme and regularized metre, even greater weight falls on these 'devices' to keep a piece poetic. The internal 'devices' of poetry-assonance, alliteration, rhythm, tonal integrity, etc. Free verse essentially means that the poet has to reinvent the SHAPE of their work with every poem they write, a heady responsibility. Grabbing a number from the air, I'd guess that 90% of poetry written in the modern era is free verse, and I'd suggest the "era" maybe starts with HD, just before WW I, when she was editor of The Egotist. You wrote a succinct, inclusive summary of this complex issue. For an example of each take a look at the opening lines of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.”ĪMSAWTELL - Don't know why you apologized for the "quality" of your opener to this thread. It is also possible to use all of these in one poem. These usually accompany enjambment but can also be found with end-stopped lines. ![]() It’s a break in the movement or a pause in the middle of a line. It gives a sense of movement and of entangling ideas.įinally there are caesuras which are when a syntactical unit ends in the middle of a line. It “pulls” a reader further into the poem instead of letting them rest at the end of a line. This tends to increase the feeling of informality and conversation. Enjambment is when the line terminates at a point other than at the end of a phrase. The opposite of an end-stopped line is enjambment. Lines ending in a comma, semi-colon, dash, or ending punctuation are all considered end-stopped. ![]() It gives the reader a pause for breath before being pulled forward. End-stopped lines bring a sense of ritual to the line. Lewis Turco calls it “cloture,” however, other references and definitions of cloture means to bring a debate to an end. It informs the reader of the weight that word should carry.Ī line that terminates with the phrase or sentence is called end-stopped. Miller Williams states in Patterns of Poetry: an Encyclopedia of Forms, “No matter how purely accentual a line may be until the end, it is the nature of the language that the last syllables in the line are going to be recognizable and the reader is going to hear them as accented or not (185).” That accent on the last few words of a line imparts import and meaning to the last words of a line. ![]() In free form there are a few considerations the poet might take in to determine where and when to break his or her line. This choice should be deliberate and inform meaning in the poem. However, if the poet is writing in free verse that determination is entirely on the poet. If a poet is using a specific form or meter, that form or meter will tell the poet where to break the line. There are a few basic ways that a poet can determine where to break a line. The line in poetry differs from the line in prose in that where the line breaks on the page is determined by the poet and not by an arbitrary margin. Writing Poetry: End Stop, Enjambment, and Caesura I'm posting this though I'm not happy with the quality.
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