Problem
The way the line breaks fall in a poem play a significant role in the reader's literal and emotional understanding of the poem. For instance, what if I broke up that very line in a different way. Like this:
The way the line
breaks fall in a poem play
a significant role in the readers literal and emotional
understanding of the poem.
Does this new arrangement of words change the meaning in some way or at least drive you to notice certain words, certain ideas? Do new ideas resonate? As we discussed in the module, line breaks are not simply there because the poet ran out of space on the page and had to go to the next line, nor are they just arbitrary for no good reason at all. No, on the contrary, the poet takes time to decide where exactly to end one line and begin another, often times in the middle of sentences, perhaps to draw the reader's attention to a particular word or idea.
In this exercise, what I'd like you to do is take the following poem-in which I've removed all the spaces and line breaks-and write it out again, this time inserting line breaks wherever you see fit. In other words, I've given you the Lego pieces here, now you can build the thing any way you want. Yes, you could say that there is a "correct" way to do it, if by correct you mean how the author did it in the published version of the poem, but don't worry about that as you're working. You're welcome to arrange the lines however you like, in ways that sound good to you. There is no right or wrong way to d o this exercise. Well, there is if you count not doing it at all, or maybe not putting some careful thought and experimentation into your choices. So, yeah, take your time with it and try some different variations as you work towards the one that feels right to you.
Now here's the poem:
In the courtyard where the cooing of pigeons was all too easily predictable, I heard a singing, which, freeing itself from the whining sleet around us, gave the impression of spring. We looked up. The bird held its beak. Like us he, caged and lonely having mixed up the seasons, did not believe in the irreversibility of time, though his singing had delayed our parting for a while.