December 13, 2007

Day 13: Enjambment

Try using enjambment as a structural element. Write a poem that is all one sentence, or a poem that gives a feeling of rushing or excitement. Or use enjambment in a first-person poem to give the speaker’s monologue a headlong feeling. An example by e. e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

2 comments:

Deborah said...

The sky rains glass and you
let in the icy rush and let me
breath the bleak mid-winter let me
wrestle the dark angel

What is left in my body
on this silent night, what
is left to give? The orange
clouds block the stars

I don’t know
where I’m traveling anymore

Anonymous said...

Well, this is a start but as far as I can get tonight

Insomnia

I am startled awake
from a troubled dream
to the reality of a darkened room
nowhere near dawn.

I try to relax, let go,
drift back to sleep,
but, like the monotonous
barking of a distant dog,
old records start to play
in my head, magnified
by night like the shadows
cast by moon glow through
the window's unclosed eye.