Nearly every line ends on the word “We.” What does that placement do to the way the poem sounds and to what it means?
The last line, “Die soon.,” is the only one without a “We” at its end. Why might Brooks let it stand alone?
William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just to Say”
Read the poem aloud as a single sentence of prose. What changes when it is broken into short lines?
Which line break makes you wait longest, and what are you waiting for?
A line break is a small pause, and a poet decides where it falls. Brooks ends her lines on a word that would usually begin the next one; Williams turns a note on the refrigerator into something we read slowly. The example below, a short poem about an old man on a dock, uses its breaks to slow a single gesture.
The classic readings come first, and they are the heart of the lesson. A poem by James Mulhern follows as a working example, for a practical reason: he can tell a class what he was trying to do in it, and where he is still unsure he managed it.
The first stanza breaks after “capillaries like tributaries,” and for a moment the reader may picture rivers before the next line sets them “on dry land.” The last stanza gives each movement its own short line: he bends, he cups his hands, he looks toward the lake, he reaches. The hope was that the reader would feel the reach before the disappointment, which waits for the final line: “that will not rise.”
A suggestion. If a poem in your draft has long lines, you might try breaking one stanza into short lines, each holding one movement or image, and read both versions aloud.
Questions on James Mulhern’s Example
“Water”
What does the reader picture after “capillaries like tributaries,” before the next line arrives?
Why might the last stanza use five short lines rather than one or two long ones?
What would change if “reaching for water that will not rise” were printed as a single line?
Activities
These draw on the classic readings and on the example on this page.
Prose into lines. Take a short paragraph from a note, a letter or a recipe and break it into lines three different ways. Read each aloud and choose the one that makes the reader wait in the right places.
The last word. Revise a draft so that each line ends on a word that matters. Compare the two versions aloud.