“Furthermore, an (enjambment) will dictate the way your audience will receive the next line, adding a subconscious structure for the audiences interpretation of your images and/or narration.” – dimitrireyespoet.com
For those of you who don’t know what enjambment is, it’s simply the carrying over of one thought/sentence/ or phrase to the next line. For example: i’ll use the phrase “He called himself Armando.”
He
Called
Himself
Armando
This means that every thought/phrase/ or sentence doesn’t have to remain on that same line. Yes, you are actually able to take your sentences and ideas and hook a piece of it onto another line whenever you want! But as with everything in poetry, intentions should be set consciously.
In order to illustrate this, look at two different versions of my poem, “For Armando,” that was published by Yes, Poetry. If you are interested in reading the published version of the sample poem, and my other published work, click here to be redirected to my publishing credits. With “For Armando” you will see how an enjambing technique can leave your poem thin and breezy or make more of a statement with a wider stanza.
(Thin)
He called him
self Armando.
His corduroys
faded into a bath
room mortar
blue. They didn’t
reflect his posture,
nor his strong
grip. His
boisterousness
in saying,
explicame esto.
(Wide)
He called himself Armando. His corduroys
faded into a bathroom mortar blue. They didn’t
reflect his posture, nor his grip. His
boisterousness in saying, explicame esto.
Below, I’ll be sharing 6 Enjambment Techniques that can add a different texture, style, and tone to your next poem.
1) The Noun
If your enjamb ends with a noun, your reader will be self consciously paying attention to the subject as their eyes move from right to left for the next line. The noun also creates focal points for your reader, as they will think of those subjects while they continue to read through the rest of the poem, putting the images together and creating a dialogue.
He called himself Armando.
His corduroys
faded into a bathroom
mortar blue.
They didn’t reflect his
posture, nor
his strong grip.
His boisterousness
in saying,
explicame esto.
2) The Verb
If you end your enjambment with a verb it excites your audiences by inciting movement. In the early 2000s, there was a commercial campaigning for kids to stop watching cartoons and to go outside. Every commercial ended with it’s slogan, “Verb, it’s what you do.” And it has stuck with me from being a student to being a teacher.
In a poem, enjambing right after a verb energizes the poem through movements. It gives motion to a poem where a word like grasp can trigger other sensory feelings for the reader; grasp can feel constricting, or threatening while symbolizing strength or helplessness depending upon the reader’s perception and what else happens in the poem.
He called
himself Armando.
His corduroys faded
into a bathroom mortar
blue. They didn’t reflect
his posture, nor
his strong grip.
His boisterousness
in saying,
explicame
esto.
3) The Adjective
Where ending your line with a verb adds energy to your work, ending your line with a describing word adds a certain kind of texture to your piece. Furthermore, since we read left to right, an ending adjective will dictate the way your audience will receive the next line, adding a subconscious structure for the audiences interpretation of your images and/or narration.
He called himself Armando. His corduroys
faded into a bathroom mortar blue.
They didn’t reflect his posture, nor his strong
grip. His boisterousness
in saying, explicame esto.
4) The Compound Word
These coupled words are fun to manipulate in poems because a sandwich is a sandwich, but the bread and the veggies of the sandwich are snacks if they stand on their own. Contemporarily, lots of poets are using the compound enjamb technique for words like:
some/ one
some/ thing
else/ where
every/thing
be/ cause
(and my personal favorite that I don’t see enough of) moon/light
By breaking a compound word with an enjamb, you are slowing down the poem— even if it’s by milliseconds— and you’re making your reader listen deeply to the breaking up of these words; where someone is some one or everything is every (single) thing.
He called him
self Armando.
His corduroys
faded in
to a bath
room mortar blue.
They didn’t reflect
his posture, nor
his strong
grip. His
boisterousness
in saying,
explicame
esto.
5) The Focal Point
Stressing your focal points mean that the ends of your lines will concentrate on nouns, verbs, or adjectives that you’ll like your reader to pay attention to. Remember: the enjambment will dictate some breath while reading from left to right and readers (consciously or subconsciously) take a pause before moving to the next line (good readers will especially know what poems call for this.) This means that though you cannot force how your reader will feel about a poem, there are still some/things you can do as a writer to elicit certain feelings in your reader.
Using words that have focal points for your enjambments can be very important to the context of your piece. For example, with my sample excerpt, I’m looking for the tonality to be hazy and a bit gray like how memory is sometimes perceived. By having faded, mortar blue, boisterousness, and italicized words on the last line, I am supporting my vision for the poem being grayed in the words faded and mortar blue while giving some textured echoes in the words boisterousness and the italicized words, that give the implications of a phrase that was echoed by Armando.
He called himself Armando.
His corduroys faded
into a bathroom mortar blue.
They didn’t reflect his posture,
nor his strong grip.
His boisterousness
in saying, explicame esto.
6) Your Poetic Style
People also refer to one’s own style as their “voice.” This is obtained by writing often and reading often until you seem to fall into a certain syntax, subject matter, and creative/ aesthetic approach that feels comfortable. Richard Hugo once said in his book of lectures & essays, The Triggering Town (which I highly recommend!) that he never has more than 3 or 4 words on a line. If you want to see what that looks like it’ll look something like this:
He called himself
Armando. His corduroys
faded into a
bathroom mortar blue.
They didn’t reflect
his posture, nor
his strong grip.
His boisterousness in
saying, explicame esto.
By this point, you can see that some of the versions looked better than others, but it’s good to experiment with all of what is in your arsenal. And you only grow your toolbox of techniques by trying new things and reading— a lot!
Know that whatever you write and how you write it will elicit different feelings and all in all, it’s up to the poet to see what their style is and how they like to use the enjambment technique. So with that being said, I’d like you to challenge yourself: take a poem that is already written and try to remix it using this enjambment technique. You may like what you see!
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