I like your example. The use of italics really helps with conciseness compared to the prose. The poem has to be read a little slower to understand, it’s really pared down, but the essential bits are there.
Jeremy Noel-Tod had a good column on line breaks last week. His first example also uses italics effectively:
(Unfortunately italics often get lost in posted comments and e-mail and the like, so I suppose I tend not to use them.)
If we keep our eyes and ears peeled, we’ll sometimes “find” things that look or sound like poetry, perhaps accidental poetry, and with a bit of formatting can be transformed. Here’s something technologist Horace Dediu posted years ago that I had bookmarked because I found it funny, some remarks by Microsoft’s previous CEO. The first example is what I remembered, how the lines expand and contract (almost like Whitman, one might say):
I guess I’m kind of old school with line breaks. I think they should be there for a reason, usually to supply a slight pause, or at least a tiny hesitation, or to create a bit of anticipation about what comes next.
Two old-school examples.
If you click the audio button next to the title, you can hear Glück read this short free-verse poem. Note how almost every line has an audible pause after it. She’s honoring her line breaks. This contributes to the hypnotic, slowed-down feel of the recitation. If you read this aloud the way you would a news article, it would take only 30 seconds instead of a full minute.
Song lyrics almost always have a pause at the end of each line. Here are the lyrics to an early PJ Harvey song. You could read this like a free verse poem. Like most songwriters she doesn’t use terminal punctuation. But when she sings it, there’s an end stop after every line, even the very short ones. That helps us hear all the great near rhymes and ups the drama quotient too:
(One thing we don’t get in reading the lyrics of Harvey’s songs, even aloud, is the way she often modulates the pitch and volume of her singing voice. Same with Glück’s slow-down. We really have to experience the full performance to hear those things.)
I like your example. The use of italics really helps with conciseness compared to the prose. The poem has to be read a little slower to understand, it’s really pared down, but the essential bits are there.
Jeremy Noel-Tod had a good column on line breaks last week. His first example also uses italics effectively:
https://someflowerssoon.substack.com/p/on-not-making-ends-neat
(Unfortunately italics often get lost in posted comments and e-mail and the like, so I suppose I tend not to use them.)
If we keep our eyes and ears peeled, we’ll sometimes “find” things that look or sound like poetry, perhaps accidental poetry, and with a bit of formatting can be transformed. Here’s something technologist Horace Dediu posted years ago that I had bookmarked because I found it funny, some remarks by Microsoft’s previous CEO. The first example is what I remembered, how the lines expand and contract (almost like Whitman, one might say):
http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/10/the-poetry-of-steve-ballmer/
I guess I’m kind of old school with line breaks. I think they should be there for a reason, usually to supply a slight pause, or at least a tiny hesitation, or to create a bit of anticipation about what comes next.
Two old-school examples.
If you click the audio button next to the title, you can hear Glück read this short free-verse poem. Note how almost every line has an audible pause after it. She’s honoring her line breaks. This contributes to the hypnotic, slowed-down feel of the recitation. If you read this aloud the way you would a news article, it would take only 30 seconds instead of a full minute.
https://poets.org/poem/red-poppy-0
Song lyrics almost always have a pause at the end of each line. Here are the lyrics to an early PJ Harvey song. You could read this like a free verse poem. Like most songwriters she doesn’t use terminal punctuation. But when she sings it, there’s an end stop after every line, even the very short ones. That helps us hear all the great near rhymes and ups the drama quotient too:
https://www.shazam.com/track/10008595/man-size
(One thing we don’t get in reading the lyrics of Harvey’s songs, even aloud, is the way she often modulates the pitch and volume of her singing voice. Same with Glück’s slow-down. We really have to experience the full performance to hear those things.)