English 10 / Unit 5: Poetry: Form, Sound and Meaning
5.2 Lines, Caesura and Enjambment
Notes
How a poem breaks its lines shapes pace and meaning.
- An end-stopped line ends with punctuation and a pause.
- Enjambment carries a sentence over the line break, creating momentum or surprise at the start of the next line.
- A caesura is a strong pause within a line, often marked by a comma, period or dash: "To err is human; to forgive, divine." (Pope)
- Dickinson uses dashes as caesuras to create hesitation: "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—"
- The last word of a line gets extra weight, so poets place key words there.
Practice
In "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—," the dash after "buzz" creates a:
A pause in the middle of the line is a caesura.
"The door swung open on / a room no one had entered in years." Breaking the line after "on" mainly:
Enjambment makes the reader wait to see the room.
Why might a poet end a line with the word "alone"?
Readers pause slightly at line ends, stressing the last word.
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