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Monday, February 4, 2019

Why emjambement is the worst

Leslie reminded me of something in a comment on a previous post.

Bad enjambement is the curse of bad poetry because it is the sign of verse itself: division into lines. But it is verse misunderstood: the bad poet writes in prose and then divides it into lines without quite understanding that this is not the way you do it. Or line break are exploited by sentimental value, making a key line very short.

Even non-enjambed lines can be badly lineated, but bad enjambement is the worst. Don't do it.

Or do do it, if you are going after that bad poetry effect.

4 comments:

Leslie B. said...

It's the bane of banes.

My cousin just put up a poem in Russian that I had to Google translate. Google translation is very bad for Russian so who knows what the poem is really like. It does have a worthy enough concept, but what I noticed immediately was that it was NOT enjambed! And that is what makes it OK, probably even a good poem, it is forced to have cadence and everything, of the images at least, without recourse to freakin' enjambement!!!

Leslie B. said...

P.S. Here is one. Not as badly enjambed as others. But it's from a translation job I refused because in part there is no way I can create good English poem from stuff like this.


Je lui ai dit que la poésie était un sport

et on devait être prêt à sauter et à courir--

un sport, avec une attention spéciale


au son et au fluir de mots, une façon

de faire la musique. Et par rapport

au thème, le contenu, quelquefois


... et cetera, I don't want to reproduce it all

Jonathan said...

That's awful. At first there's a good metaphor, but then it drifts to a more conventional one, making music, and then degenerates into talking about "theme" and "subject matter," things that very boring people think are involved in writing poetry. The writer seems to have not notion that beings prosaic involves a certain irony or spark of something.

Leslie B. said...

That is why I freakin' give up. Poet has won two prizes, one in US and one in Mex., and has published all over the pace, NYT, Kenyon Review. My taste and expertise do not agree with what is liked in US at all, at all.