Break It Up!

One of the major differences between poems and prose is that poems are written in lines, and prose is written in sentences and paragraphs.

Figuring out where to break your lines is big decision for a poet, and there's no one right answer. But here are the things I like to consider when I'm playing around with line breaks in a non-rhyming poem.

Pause: A reader often takes a small pause, and a breath, at the end of a line. I don't always do this, myself, because when I'm wrapped up in a poem, I often race to the next line to see what happens next, what words are next. But when I hear people read their poems out loud, or when I hear polished performers read other people's poetry out loud, there is often a small breath at the end of each line. So as I read my own works out loud, I practice this and see where the pauses sound the best and have the most impact.

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