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Thursday, November 14, 2024

Unlocking the secret of enjambment

 It is a mystery, because it is quite possible to have a whole tradition in which enjambment never occurs. For example, in many poems of Baudelaire.  Not every line ends with a punctuation mark, but usually there is a pause, and the next line begins with a prepositional phrase, or the predicate of a sentence. If you wrote it out as prose the metrical divisions would still be obvious. Despite the fact that French lacks accent.  

At the other extreme are traditions in which enjambment is the norm, like English blank verse.  The question is to what extent the line of verse coincides with the grammatical unit.  Also, the particular rhetorical effects of enjambment. Is it a poetic device? Is the end stopped line a poetic device, or just a norm? 

It's possible to say that the end-stopped line is limiting, and transcending it is a good thing, without thinking there is anything wrong with Racine or Pope. 

I'm sorry my thinking on this is very murky, but I promise I will come to some clarity at some point. 

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