The Line

[milo]

My next poem will open and close with the lines:

The car
made noise
It was awesome

It would still be a slight improvement.
Baby steps.

[Todd]

My next poem will open and close with the lines:

The car
made noise
It was awesome

It's nice when you see people apply information to make their poems better.

That awesome part will really make the line pop.

---

Someone told me once that you should have every line break point to the central metaphor. I kind of dismissed it at the time as impossible but I think now that ideally this is true.

That would be cool. I'll have to try for that milo. I think it would be hard to do, but worth it the closer you could get to pulling it off. That view would almost always fix it so you did your breaks on important words. There aren't many central metaphors that use "and" as a pointer.

If you read along the end words of what I write, that is pretty much what I shoot for with my breaks.

Milo this will not only then help me enjoy your poems more, but I can't wait to get started reviewing my poems to see what this perspective will open up for me.

It's ideas like these that make a workshop so helpful.

[abu nuwas]

I would only add, though Leanne touched upon it, that the line-break, without any comma, still has an inevitable pause associated with it, a kind of mini-pause.

[tigrflye]

And if it isn't free verse? With meter and rhyme: then, are there different line break rules? Can I break in the middle of an iamb/trochee etc? Or.. should I stick with a precise pattern?

[milo]

And if it isn't free verse? With meter and rhyme: then, are there different line break rules? Can I break in the middle of an iamb/trochee etc? Or.. should I stick with a precise pattern?

There are different rules for line breaks with rhyme and meter but the concepts are the same. Rhyme and meter actually increase the emphasis on the last word in a line making the line break even more important. There are other rules regarding catalexis and feminine endings, post some example lines and we can walk through them.

[tigrflye]

And if it isn't free verse? With meter and rhyme: then, are there different line break rules? Can I break in the middle of an iamb/trochee etc? Or.. should I stick with a precise pattern?

There are different rules for line breaks with rhyme and meter but the concepts are the same. Rhyme and meter actually increase the emphasis on the last word in a line making the line break even more important. There are other rules regarding catalexis and feminine endings, post some example lines and we can walk through them.

Thanks Milo! I might as well be specific.. the poem I am working on now.. I'd like to do this with it.. but not sure if it is okay to do so.. you are welcome to use any part of it as an example..

Her short black skirt was inches from revealing 
more than thigh,
while bent to find the coins she dropped. 
His mouth betrayed a sigh,
enough hot breath to fog a glass. 
It made a sickness stem
inside my chest to spy his eyes 
attack the flimsy hem. 

A nasty smirk appeared, she turned 
and accidentally pressed 
her overflowing bosom 
up against my husband's chest.
My jaw unhinged. I thought my bulging 
eyes could take no more.
That's when he had audacity to touch 
that filthy whore. 

Their giggling burst a vessel 
somewhere deep inside my brain. 
I twirled to face a gentleman,
leaning on his cane,
"My husband likes to flirt 
with every harlot he can find. 
I'm wondering if, for revenge,
you'd like to fuck me blind?"

[milo]

And if it isn't free verse? With meter and rhyme: then, are there different line break rules? Can I break in the middle of an iamb/trochee etc? Or.. should I stick with a precise pattern?

There are different rules for line breaks with rhyme and meter but the concepts are the same. Rhyme and meter actually increase the emphasis on the last word in a line making the line break even more important. There are other rules regarding catalexis and feminine endings, post some example lines and we can walk through them.

Thanks Milo! I might as well be specific.. the poem I am working on now.. I'd like to do this with it.. but not sure if it is okay to do so.. you are welcome to use any part of it as an example..

Her short black skirt was inches from revealing 
more than thigh,
while bent to find the coins she dropped. 
His mouth betrayed a sigh,
enough hot breath to fog a glass. 
It made a sickness stem
inside my chest to spy his eyes 
attack the flimsy hem. 

A nasty smirk appeared, she turned 
and accidentally pressed 
her overflowing bosom 
up against my husband's chest.
My jaw unhinged. I thought my bulging 
eyes could take no more.
That's when he had audacity to touch 
that filthy whore. 

Their giggling burst a vessel 
somewhere deep inside my brain. 
I twirled to face a gentleman,
leaning on his cane,
"My husband likes to flirt 
with every harlot he can find. 
I'm wondering if, for revenge,
you'd like to fuck me blind?"

In metric verse, because the position of the line break is preset, the trick is to use word choice to have your line breaks work for you. In rhymed, metric verse, the word that ends the line is even more important as the beat and sonic echo drive even heavier emphasis onto the line. If you wanted to break these massive heptametric couplets (and I would if I were you) the natural selection is abcb ballad meter like so:

Her short black skirt was inches from
revealing more than thigh,
while bent to find the coins she dropped.
His mouth betrayed a sigh,

enough hot breath to fog a glass.
It made a sickness stem
inside my chest to spy his eyes
attack the flimsy hem.

A nasty smirk appeared, she turned
and accidentally pressed
her overflowing bosom up
against my husband's chest.

My jaw unhinged. I thought my bulging
eyes could take no more.
That's when he had audacity
to touch that filthy whore.

Their giggling burst a vessel somewhere
deep inside my brain.
I twirled to face a gentleman,
leaning on his cane,

"My husband likes to flirt with every
harlot he can find.
I'm wondering if, for revenge,
you'd like to fuck me blind?"

See how the poem is instantly more readable and lighter without changing a single word? Now the trick is to see if you can examine your end words and try to build double meanings, suggestion, irony, tension and focus. Good luck.

[Todd]

The ballad meter is the same one you mentioned to me once milo. Is 4-3-4-3 mostly for light verse? If so, is there something for heavier topics? Just curious.

[milo]

The ballad meter is the same one you mentioned to me once milo. Is 4-3-4-3 mostly for light verse? If so, is there something for heavier topics? Just curious.

Today, most writers use free verse for heavy topics. There was a time when heroic couplets were /the/ choice for heavier topics but modernists have relegated them to farcicism or satire. Personally, I find rhyming couplets tedious, even odious, if there are too many chained.

For modern poetry, most likely abab ip is the first choice for serious rhymed metric verse. I have been experimenting recently with alternating meter (iambic of changing lengths) and alternating rhyme schemes in metric rhymed verse and I am really liking the effects but there isn't any large scale adoption and it can be tricky as you don't want it to be random but rather pleasantly surprising but calculated.

Leanne should pop in soon with some enlightnment. (Just not alexandrines - please, for the love of god, not fucking alexandrines)she is, after all, our resident guru.

[Todd]

So ABAB I'm guessing pentameter, as the shorter constructions feel more song like to me (that's probably phrasing it poorly).

[billy]

i'm seeing the ballad meter in a new light in the way you did it milo. it really does accentuate the sing song quality of the rhythm more than the loner line would. it's also aids getting the beat of the thing.

[milo]

So ABAB I'm guessing pentameter, as the shorter constructions feel more song like to me (that's probably phrasing it poorly).

The phrasing is dead on. Yah, abab ip is the choice for now. Actually, interleaving rhyme is nice too (abca bcde cedf) though you don't see it much, the effect is fantastic and of course there is always terza rima, you know everyone loves that!

---

i'm seeing the ballad meter in a new light in the way you did it milo. it really does accentuate the sing song quality of the rhythm more than the loner line would. it's also aids getting the beat of the thing.

Tecnically, abab is ballad meter and abcb is "common" meter but I call them both ballad meter because I want to keep the discussion simple.

---

I almost forgot one of my favorite parts about ballad meter. You can now take this poem and sing it to the tune of gilligan's island. Do this now, I will wait

.

.

.

There, tell me that didn't bring a smile to your face.

[Todd]

I sang it to Gilligan's Island. I am transformed.

---

Here's what's also great. If you can't sing a poem to Gilligan's Island and you want this structure then your meter is off.

Too cool.

[tigrflye]

See how the poem is instantly more readable and lighter without changing a single word? Now the trick is to see if you can examine your end words and try to build double meanings, suggestion, irony, tension and focus. Good luck.

Thanks Milo,
So, yes, I should stick with the more precise pattern. And I guess it's ok to break in the middle of a foot.. seems you defaulted the word to the first line instead of the 2nd.

My jaw unhinged. I thought my bulging
eyes could take no more.

I appreciate it. I'll be studying the end words...
And singing Gilligan's Island all night.

---

And my husbands singing back up.. "attack the flimsy hem"..

[milo]

See how the poem is instantly more readable and lighter without changing a single word? Now the trick is to see if you can examine your end words and try to build double meanings, suggestion, irony, tension and focus. Good luck.

Thanks Milo,
So, yes, I should stick with the more precise pattern. And I guess it's ok to break in the middle of a foot.. seems you defaulted the word to the first line instead of the 2nd.

My jaw unhinged. I thought my bulging
eyes could take no more.

I appreciate it. I'll be studying the end words...
And singing Gilligan's Island all night.

Breaking a foot in that way produces a feminine ending/headless iamb combination, which reads smoothly through and demotes the line break. If you want to force a pause to accent the line break, use a feminine ending without the headless iamb.

[tigrflye]

Breaking a foot in that way produces a feminine ending/headless iamb combination, which reads smoothly through and demotes the line break. If you want to force a pause to accent the line break, use a feminine ending without the headless iamb.

Oh, I see! Great tip. Thank you.
Makes sense.

[ellajam]

Rereading this thread, along with this one
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/thread-11672.html

has given me fresh ammo to take another shot at one that has me stumped. Thank you all who posted.

[rayheinrich]

That lightness of being, that profound god of short riddles and en-em-an-other-dashes, Emily Dickinson
harbored a transcendent love of 4-3 4-3...


and as our lovely ms. emile* sez:

"how fucking hard is it to know
long
lines
are
fast
and
short
ones
slow?"

and another of hers:

"how fucking hard is it to know
that even goes and goes and goes
until it gets to odd?"

*a past denizen of zc mailing list