read write prompt #4: change up your line length
Published by Tom December 5th, 2007 in Read Write Prompt, Tom.
Poetry has a strange dual-identity. Historically, and certainly currently, much of poetry existed to be spoken or performed. It had a rhythm and timing in the delivery, the speech or chanting of the poet being the form of the poem.
Rendered on the page, poems still have a rhythm (even if it is not patterned) and a sense of timing. One way to convey these is by using punctuation (always a good thing). The way the words are arranged on the page is another. While there have been many ways of using the page to convey timing (hello mr. cummings) I want to talk specifically about line length and how that affects the way poems are read.
I can only speak from my experience and I don’t often reflect on how long lines should be while I am writing. Most of the time I’ll have a good sense of when enjambment should be used or I’ll just go with the feeling of when pacing needs to be changed. I think most of us get a feel for our styles and internalize it as we grow as writers so that most of these thoughts don’t need to be conscious. In a Zen way, we had to learn it so we could forget it.
Short lines to me have a strange feeling of “hurry up and wait.” I read the line so quickly then there’s this long pause going to the next line. It has a bit of a choppy feel. Longer lines seem to be in one of two modes. They either barrel along, building momentum through subordinate clauses and introductory phrases and conjunctions so you want to speed up the reading just to finish a breath, or they get very slow. Ponderously dragging you toward the margin. Which is a function of the language and style of the poem.
In what may well be the most used poem in any classroom, imagine how different it would be if the poem read:
so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
The choppy nature of the short lines (“a red wheel / barrow”) emphasizes the images of the poem, rendering each element almost discrete, worthy of contemplation on its own. Tossed all together … eh. On the other hand, Whitman’s page-spanning lines give a very different feel:
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak,
Reading those (from Leaves of Grass), yes, there is a pause between lines, but it has a much more natural feel to it. It doesn’t get broken, because we expect to read across a page before we go to the next line. Williams forces us to stop much sooner than we would expect. It’s as if the white space after the line has a presence in “The Red Wheelbarrow” that it doesn’t have in Leaves of Grass. Taking the second and reading it as prose loses very little.
The prompt for this week is to take a look at your own poetry, say, your last five poems, and see how you structure your lines. Are they long or short? Do you use consistent line lengths, or do they vary wildly? Look for the patterns in your writing, and write a poem that breaks them. If you favor short lines, write all the way to the margin. If you use consistent line lengths, go crazy with them. Pick an arbitrary form and use it as a guide. Let the form be the most important part. If, as I often do, you need a kicker to get the idea rolling, use the writing prompt over to the right, the one that’s there right now and use it in the first line and see where the verse takes you.
For those of you who favor collaboration, I suggest exchanging your five most recent poems with someone else, and have them decipher your patterns and give you a form to work through.
Happy Poem-ing!
~Tom
P.S. When we all Get Our Poem On next week, be sure to let us know, perhaps in the comments or in your posts, how you shook things up.
P.P.S. While I expect most people here write free verse, I am in no way suggesting this week is a good week to jump into formal poetry. That way lies madness.
20 Responses to “read write prompt #4: change up your line length”
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Haha! This is really funny, because for my Major Work (for Year 12 English) this year I wrote a chronological series of poems about a guy and a girl told from the perspective of different musical instruments. I actually used line length (in association with rhythm and assonance) to characterise the different instruments: My Oboe was running thirteen or fourteen syllable lines (grand, smooth, flowing sense), whereas the piano teacher stuck rigidly to 4-syllables-per-line and came across as a grumpy old thing.
Thanks guys, I’ve really appreciated your prompts!
Tom, this is such a great prompt. I looked at the Random Prompt Generator, and my word is “bone.” I’m going to have fun with that one this week. Now I have to look at my line lengths and think about how to change them up.
Ceri, my word is always bone. It’s my favorite word in the English language.
Tom, I like this idea. I’m a mixer-upper already, though. I have lots of short-lined poems, a few long-lined ones, lots of in-between ones.
So I guess I’m going for long.
I like imagining all the things that depend on the red wheelbarrow. One of my least favorite poems but favorite imaginings.
Dogfaceboy, bone has a special meaning for me now that I have been told I have osteopenia. I started writing a lot about bones before I knew that, though.
There is quite a debate about line lengths particularly among spoken word and slam poets who often use line breaks solely as cues for performance. Some but not all of these poets have little interest in formal poetry or page poetry as they call it. Anyway, as one who prefers the page to stage, I really appreciate the article.
Great, if tricky, prompt……mine are all over the place. The generator gave me rust…….we’ll see.
Susan…I’m a big fan of slam poetry, or stage poetry, and know exactly what you’re talking about. Sometimes, it feels like they aren’t so much writing poetry as they are writing narrative prose with a certain jaunt to it.
That said, as I aspire to take my work to a stage one day, I’m still trying to perfect a style that would look good in print. It’s the word combination people hear.
That said, I tend to keep my lines pretty short. Just short of pentameter, for the most part. A good deal of my poetry had a ‘limericky” feel. I’m trying to get away from that.
i play with line breaks perhaps more than any other part of writing poetry. my line lengths vary dramatically … and each time i revise, inevitably, the line breaks change and then change back and on and on. it’s a difficult thing to sort out.
in FACT! jill and i got together on tuesday and we actually had coffee and talked poetry. it was paradise. one of the things we discussed is line breaks and the varying “recommendations” about what’s the right thing to do … break according to rhythm? break according to strong words that need to be at the end of a line or the beginning of a line? break with words that lead the reader to the next line?
certainly, each of those uses for line breaks has a role and i guess it comes down to pacing and emphasis? i am always wishy-washy about my line breaks and i hate being wishy washy about anything …
Short lines
for me.
So for this prompt it’s gallop to the edge the page & beyond, emulating Walt Whitman & C.K. Williams…
I keep changing my line lengths depending on what I want to convey.
I’ve always been attracted to short lines; they just seem more accessible. It’ll kill me to write across the whole line but I’ll do it. This will be sort of like the American Sentences and I survived that!
Again, thanks for this great site. Oh, and I’m glad it’s not a blog site because blogs are blocked at my school. (Along with a million other sites, but, that’s another story!)
Interesting conversation going on here. Tom, you bring up such an important aspect of poetry - how to convey meaning through sound or word images on a page. My verses are mostly short when I write in free verse. I usually isolate a word that seems particularly important in meaning, or if it sounds better by itself.
I love changing things up, so this is great!
Hi Derek,
I like Slam when it’s clear the poet is literate. Call me a snob, but when a poet tells me he can’t be bothered reading other poets, I can’t the speaker seriously. I think if more aspiring stage poets read more and seriously worked on their writing, they would only enhance their stage performance.
I’ve read at open mic several years ago, but I’m no slam poet. Still I admire those who do it well. As a matter of fact, Detroit Poetry Collective is gearing up for a major Slam competition. I sit on DPC’s board because I couldn’t tell the founder no. She’s an incredibly talented young woman, a fellow Cave Canem alumni in fact. Anywhoo, let’s talk more, and tell me where I can read your work.
I’m with you, Susan *and anyone else can chime in on this*
Illiteracy in writing is probably the biggest conundrum we have as poets. I will admit that i’m not big on reading the greats. I can’t wrap my head around them, but I do try. I aslo listen to a lot of my contemporaries, which, according to an English professor I had, is far more important that knowing all the classics. That said, there is something of merit is knowing a reference or homage to another poet when one sees/hears it.
This is a combo prompt-taking 3 and adding it to 4.
I am so used to writing short quick poems I miss the luxury of long sentences. It was nice to give it a try again. The one poetry class I took ages ago was all about getting rid of extra words-and I took that to mean cutting and slashing.
oops I don’t think I was supposed to post yet…sorry-its due to my crazy work sched.
Very interesting!
For me line length is all to do with the width of the paper I’m writing on.
So, if I’m preparing something for performance and writing it on the back of a bus ticket on the way to the venue, it’s not going to be very long.
I used to do a lot of performance poetry and most of it never got as far as the writing stage. I would compose something in my head, perform it that night and throw it away.
These days I write everything down then memorise it because I find it much too difficult to read from the page. How do you maintain eye contact with the audience if you’re stuttering over a scrap of paper?
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