Forms (#6)

The only other poem I’ve written—aside from the odd (likely very odd) long-forgotten haiku or limerick—is free verse. I fiddled a lot with the lineation, a term I just learned today, after looking at this site. If you don’t want to read it (the essay on that site) in its entirety, the examples below are meant to show how “lineation shapes readers’ involvement in and understanding of a poem.” 

The four AM cries

of my son worm

through the double

foam of earplugs

and diazepam.

(Cries at four a.m., or is four a.m. itself crying?

(Ah, a baby or kid. Weird to end on worm. Is the son wormlike?)

(Double what?)

(Ah, earplugs! There must be two of them. OK, I’m feeling good here—wait, there’s a big break.)

(Oh. Huh. This is an anti-anxiety drug. That raises the stakes a bit. And the diazepam is part of the double foam, isn't it? One more barrier the cries have to break through. The speaker is both physically and mentally guarded.)

Brock’s use of enjambment allows him to dole out information bit by bit, heightening readers’ curiosity and the drama hidden inside an otherwise common domestic scene. 

The four AM cries of my son

worm through the double foam

of earplugs and diazepam.

Far fewer questions propel me through the poem. The brief mysteries are clarified, and gone are some of the odder valences the enjambment produced, such as the interesting association between worm and son, which lumps the child in with other things to guard against, such as poisonous spiders. 

The four AM cries of my son worm through the double foam of earplugs and diazepam.

Well, now I’m just uninterested. Without the odd tones and questions the original enjambed lines produced, this scene seems ordinary and dull.

This is a long-winded (likely very long-winded) build-up to what I really wanted to say: in that one free verse poem I wrote, the perfect lineation eluded me. Or make that,

the perfect

lineation eluded

me.