The importance of line breaks and how to make them work extra hard for you
Did you realize that where you break your lines affects how the reader’s eye reads it. “What?” you ask. Or maybe you don’t, maybe you say “No crap.” But assuming you were slightly curious see the Sharon Olds poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” for an example:
for a drink or two, but they could not meet
each other’s eyes.
Their lives took
a turn–one had nightmares, strange
pains …
By breaking on “meet” the line initially sounds like they couldn’t meet, as in get together, without the context of the next line, which changes the direction of the previous line. Instead of not being able to meet they can’t meet each others eyes. As the poem is about a pivotal, and traumatic event, the double (potential) meaning of “meet” works because in the world of the poem it might’ve made sense if that night they didn’t meet up for drinks afterwards… and then just after that “strange” breaks so that it sounds like the “strange” is qualifying the nightmares, but with the next line it’s amended to pains… This little trick comes courtesy of your reader, actually. Because the way (at least most people) read poetry includes at least a momentary pause at line’s end as their eyes jump back to the beginning of the next line, and their brain begins to process the information it had just read, hence momentarily reading of the line as it’s own little entity.
Why would you want to mislead someone? Because one of the biggest and most important aspects of a poem is the ability to surprise the reader. It’s what keeps people reading. What will happen next? Why do you think popular fiction is so popular? It is almost always plot driven, it keeps the readers wondering what will happen next. By utilizing the tiny twists of a good line break you can propel the reader through the poem much more energetically.