Why the linebreak?

[Yejun]

I'm curious what others have to say.

Just to be clear, this is not a quiz. There are many reasons to break up a sentence or sentence fragments into lines. Besides the formal stuff (meter, syllabics, concrete and any combination or stretching of those), you have the semantic tension between line and sentence (or line and poem), you have added punctuation to play with (Louise Gluck registers the line-break as roughly half a comma), and, of course, you have good, old-fashioned feel (what some might call phrasing).

Why do you do it?

[judih]

this is a good question.
linebreaks for me indicate phrasing
or deliberate play with usual pattern,
or cues for breathing

i like to play with lines, much moreso lately.

sometimes i look at prose style work, chopped up into lines and i wonder why.

[mtmynd]

Some line breaks seem unnecessary to the content of the given piece, while others seem quite appropriate.

I use line breaks like one would use perhaps the comma or semi-colon... a means for a pause and then some... a pause plus if you will. But when used should not interfere with the overall flow of the writing, i.e. to toss in a line break, say only once but continue writing with no others, depending on the length of the writing, could interrupt the flow for me, both writer and reader.

Line breaks also may suggest an emphasis, standing alone naked with no other words around to camouflage the emphatic words, to singly point out their importance to what is being said.

[Barry]

cadence

[Doreen Peri]

Line breaks are one of the most important aspects of the craft, in my opinion. Where I break them is never arbitrary. I can't exactly describe why I break them where I do but it has to do with several factors .... the way it reads aloud, yes.... the phrasing.... the line breaks indicating stresses or pauses or echoes of sounds ..... the way it looks (yes, poetry is partially typesetting.. ha!)... and a purposeful way of enhancing meaning. Sounds crazy but hey, I'm a crazy type of gal, what can I say?

Just as important as line breaks are stanza breaks. For similar reasons.

[Doreen Peri]

i'm pretty sure a part of that post was a lie... sometimes it's arbitrary

lol

[Artguy]

"Take a line for a walk..." Paul Klee

[Yejun]

sometimes i look at prose style work, chopped up into lines and i wonder why.

I prefer that to half-formed thoughts put on a page with no real syntactical arrangement at all. I could be wrong, but I think the attempt here is to create a tension between the sentence and the line.

That's what I usually try to do with my less formal stuff.

Still, if it doesn't work, it's just a bad poem.

[e_dog]

line
breaks a
l
low
you to pretend
to write
poet
ry.

[Nazz]

Why is it necessary to ask why?

[Yejun]

Well, it wasn't necessary.

I was just curious.

[still.trucking]

I am glad you asked.

A question I have asked myself many times.