Setting The Stage
Line breaks influence the appearance, emphasis, and meaning of a poem. Of great importance, line breaks also influence the rhythm of a poem. Where the lines are broken in relation to the ideas in the poem also affects the feeling of reading the poetry.
Enjambment, when the line break comes in the middle of a sentence, is one way of creating audible and aesthetic interest. Meaning flows as the lines progress, and the reader’s eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like “flow-of-thought” with a sensation of urgency or disorder. In contrast, enjambment may be used to delay the intention of the line until the following line and thus play on the expectation of the reader and surprise them.
Response Stance
Invite students to read aloud William Carlos William's poem’s repeated independent clause, “They taste good to her,” to see the power that enjambment can exert over sentence sound and meaning.
Invite students to employ Williams’ use of simple language and visual details to praise the simplest pleasures or the common, but remarkable, people. Ask students to employ enjambment as a means to sense the poem's sound and meaning.
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Hi Its Hailey.....
ReplyDeleteThis is just to say, is a good poem because when he says he ate the plums in the icebox and how sweet and cold they were, they sounded good. When he mentions the icebox you see that he wrote this when they were in the pioneer times.