Line Breaks

              For me personally, line breaks I would just make intuitively. They’re mostly related to my fragmented thought process. I write my poems as a big block on the page first. Then I cycle through the thoughts and decide their order, and when a thought ends and another begins, or an idea transforms or leads into another idea. Personally, prior to my first poetry class, I had, and still have very little sense of punctuation in poetry. In some poems, it seems there is no punctuation, while in others, there’s plenty of indicative punctuation. Thus I have gone between being led by my thought process, or whatever punctuation I put in the poem.
            In “The Line” Edward Hirsh explains that line breaks should stem from a combination of meaning, rhythm, breathing, typography and, sound. The article recognizes that the question is multi-faceted and varies from poem to poem, as do most poetry “rules”. He also explains the most common and natural way seems to base itself around grammar and breath as well as lineation. Needless to say there’s always the topic of shape poetry, and poems where the actual appearance is important to the meaning.

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