CHAPTER TWO

The Architecture of a Poem

“It’s much easier to write a good poem than a good line.” - Robert Lowell

As a kid, I loved spending time at my friend’s Kerry’s house because she had LEGOs galore. She was always sketching or building something. Kerry is now an architect and specializes in door lintels, which tracks, because even as a child, she studied how things were built. As an architect looks at a building and thinks: angles, square feet, building materials, so should a writer look at a novel, a poem, and even sentences, and think: syntax, pacing, word choice. A poet studies other poems to see how they are built, and then builds their own. Conduct surgery on your favorite poems. Cut them open and see how they are made. Count the words, note the diction. How do the lines move?  

In the classification of prose versus poetry, a broad designation is that poetry is written with line breaks–often employing meter or rhythm–and prose is pretty much everything else. The Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, offered this somewhat snarky definition of poetry in 1827: “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.”

Of course, the differences become more nuanced with further discussion. Prose tends to convey its ideas in sentences that follow grammatical rules and the sentences run from margin to margin. Whereas poetry can experiment with rules of grammar, omit grammar altogether, and use line breaks. The work of American poet, E. E. Cummings is a traditional example of how poetry can expand notions of language and meaning by disregarding or playing with spacing and grammar.  

Anatomy of a poem

Most broadly speaking, a poem is both white space (the page) and the black space (the text). The space between the lines, stanzas, and words, are also part of the poem. Usually, contemporary poets left-justify their work on the page, whereas a center-justified line is mostly obsolete, an unexamined assumption about poetry by a beginning writer. If you’re going to center justify your poems on the page, have a good reason for doing so. Some poets, even in a portrait-aligned book, will have a section of work with landscape orientation or with pages that fold out, extending the available page space because they are thinking about how the page and poem influence each other’s shape. The page is mutable, and defined by the poet, just as the space between letters in words is.

At the North American Review, we work practicum students to produce the magazine, and I know they silently curse me when I accept a poem that doesn’t use the automatic space between the words, but rather expands and collapses the white space between words, because in layout of the magazine, we’re often adjusting pica. Pica is a finite measurement in printing magazines and newspapers that mark columns. A pica is just under ⅙ of an inch and there are 12 points in a pica, 72 points in one inch. Minutia, perhaps, but poets think of the spaces between words as part of the poem, too. Below is a poem we published in 2019 by Katie Prince. The image of her poem “poem in a cold war hellscape” is from our proofing pages and shows such spaces between words. Look at how these longer spaces between words and sentences function. In the third line, there is a heavy pause after “nuclear annihilation,” which indicates a type of eradication. In the fourth line, there is a long space after “reeling in,” creating anticipation for what is at the end of the fishing rod. In the last line there are spaces on both sides of “unexploded,” just as we’d give a wide berth to an undetonated bomb.

To get better acquainted with how to discuss poems and write them, knowing what the parts of a poem are is necessary. Let’s dissect the poem below, by Katie Farris, which first appeared in the pages of the NAR. Use the annotations feature to read about each part of the poem.

In Memory of Polish Poet Zbigniew

Herbert’s Visit Los, Angeles, 1971 by Katie Farris

You cannot save this city; you must burn it

—Z. Herbert

When he came back to our free union,

which is to say America, which is to say

home,

he was already gone.

He dusted the crown

moldings looking for fingerprints,

or more vivid evidences, perhaps an

insurgent, perhaps an

arsenal.

Since he returned to our free

union he kept his mouth inside

his pants’ pocket,

and his keys sometimes

chipped his teeth, and this grin

embarrassed us.

He lost reality; he sat oftentimes abruptly

down, and splintered chair

after chair

shouting from his pants’

pocket to Be careful!

Get down!

We looked at him

when he shouted like that.

We would have taken him back,

but he was already gone—

gumming benchbacks in public

parks, knocking on windows

with his forehead, a balding

bumblebee.

Stanzas

In prose writing, the convention is each paragraph works through its own idea. When a new idea is introduced, it gets a new paragraph. Stanzas in poetry move in a similar way, and it’s worth glossing that “la stanza” in Italian means “room.” Rooms in houses have different purposes: you cook in the kitchen, sleep in the bedroom, socialize in the living room, etc. Similarly, stanzas in poetry have different purposes: to disclose a speaker’s feelings, a speaker’s change of perspective, to provide imagery, etc. Many college students, who start seriously reading poetry, can become frustrated, particularly if they find a poem obtuse, or difficult to understand, and give up too early on poetry. A way to correct an obtuse reading experience is to step back from the poem and read it stanza by stanza. This way, the reader can trace the argument and tension of the poem, as well as the speaker’s attitude as it changes.

Take Ezra Pound’s poem, inspired by Li Po, “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.” Using the reading questions from the previous chapter: What is the occasion? Who is the speaker? To whom are they speaking? How does this poem make you feel? What can you establish? read the poem stanza by stanza. After each stanza, pause and ask these questions. Use the paradigm of each stanza as room. What does each stanza reveal about the speaker’s situation? Her feelings about her husband? His presence? His absence?

In the first stanza the girl is an innocent, playful child. She is married to her “Lord” at fourteen and becomes shy and reclusive. In the next stanza, when she is fifteen, she is swept up in teenage passion: “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours.” In the third stanza, he leaves for work, and she mourns his absence. She begins the last stanza, noting her loneliness, “[b]y the gate now, the moss is grown,” meaning he’s not returned and she is growing older while alone at home, just waiting. A stanza can also be a stance–a kind of rhetorical reasoning–especially in a narrative poem, and by the end of this poem, the wife has grown ambivalent toward her absent husband, only willing to meet him so far if he returns from his journey.  

Try the stanza by stanza reading with Shannon Ballam’s poem, “The baby pig,” which was a finalist in the North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize. You’ll notice that the title leads into the first line. How does this set up or subvert your expectations as you begin the poem?

The baby pig by Shannon Ballam

        for Dave Lee

floated in a jar

of formaldehyde

in the fifth grade

science classroom.

Her face was so lonely,

eyes like elegant

brushstrokes on china,

mouth a fine gray line

curved into a sorrowful smile,

wrinkled snout no bigger

than a dime.

Her umbilical cord twisted

like a honeysuckle vine,

belly  stippled with two rows

of nipples, and through

her nearly transparent skin

Stibbs saw her heart,

a ripe cherry,

pulse and shine.

He stuffed the jar inside

his coat. It stuck out

like a pregnant belly.

He crafted a nest

of quilts and sticks,

blue heating pad in the center,

and hunkered over the jar

as if is were an egg,

folding his arms along

his sides like wings,

scowling into the sunset,

concentrating hard

to sprout feathers

and a beak.

He would fly

them both away

and they’d be free.

When she was born,

he would name her Beauty.

The first stanza is an image of a pig in a jar, taken from a typical science unit on dissection. The second stanza zooms in and makes this death artifact a thing of beauty and introduces the empathetic, if somewhat simple, Stubbs. Quickly, in the third, Stubbs steals the pig and symbolically becomes its pregnant mother. The fourth stanza mimics the language of hope, nature, and life, used in the second, and the last stanza is a couplet, a kind of volta that turns the poem, and we hope–the same way Stubbs does–that the pig will be born through this act of love and hope. At first, we might pity Stubb’s ignorance, but as the poem goes on, we root for Stubb’s hope; it’s contagious. We want it to be true. Stubbs is no longer a simpleton, but a seer for hope.

What about poems that don’t use stanzas? Does this mean that the ideas don’t break or change? No! You’ll recall Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” from the previous chapter, which was written in one long stanza, as the braggadocious and jealous speaker’s ego went on and on about his precious art and “too soon made glad” late wife. He is changing the subject all over the place, but the fact that it's written in one long stanza with no breaks indicates the pompousness of the speaker as he goes on and on.

Forms can also indicate where a stanza is broken or not; for example, a sestina will usually have six lines in each stanza, whereas a sonnet is written in one block. As you become more familiar with a variety of forms, note where the stanza break and why. Often, a stanza break in form is mark the end and subsequent beginning of a rhyming pattern.

Line and Line Breaks

In formal verse, it is syllable count (haiku), rhyme (ballads), or meter (Petrarchan sonnet) that determines the line length, but in free verse, what determines the line length is more variable. Poets have different thoughts and aesthetics when it comes to line length. Some poets, like Charles Wright, have a long sense of the line, while others like Robert Creely (1926–2005) have a shorter sense of the line. Outside of meter, I believe biology can be a major influence on the sense of line. A heart beat, likely the first thing we feel or hear while inside our mothers, is iambic, the ba-boom, is an iambic pattern (unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable) and is very similar to the lub-dub of a human heart. Patterns of biological sounds are all around us. Some poets determine their line length based on what can be said in one breath. Others consider a line a unit of thought. A common way of thinking of a line of poetry is as a “unit of attention.”

Lines can also be decided with systems of order, such as grammar: phrases, clauses, or sentences. Spatial order is another organizational system, with lines roughly the same length. One of my longtime writing teachers, Richard Jackson, claimed he could look at a poem and based on its line length, determine its success, meaning if the line breaks are wildly varied without rhyme or reason, the poet was not successful in picking a governing aesthetic to determine line length within a poem, and therefore didn’t write a good poem.

Outside of meter, determining where to put a line is a major choice a poet faces. Will the line breaks follow conventional grammatical rules? Will the poet use breath, grammar, or structure to organize? Will the poet disrupt a reader’s expectation about where a line gets broken? For a quick primer on how an unexpected line break can make a poem, read “A Blessing” by James Wright (1927-1980) with special attention to how the last two lines of the poem are organized.

Like in many art forms, poetry also gains ground by subverting an audience's expectations. Gerald Manly Hopkins’ (1844–1889) notion of sprung rhythm or Emily Dickinson’s (1830–1886) poems blooming with em dashes come to mind. More contemporary methods of word processing and printing have opened up this disruption even more with concrete poetry, strikethroughs, forward slashes, landscape page orientation, and even emojis.

As you read a poem, see if you can determine what guides each poet’s sense of a line. Do they let the image lead the line? What about breath? Grammatical structures? The page? Do they subvert grammar, units of thoughts? Just as a poet finds their voice through imitation, experimentation, and practice, they also find their own sense of the line.

Traditionally, poems have had about ten syllables, because iambic pentameter was more or less the norm. Notably, a roughly iambic line is what most people are comfortable speaking outloud on one breath. Below is a poem from the NAR, and its short lines, mostly in the range of two to four syllables, move swiftly, but also with the staccato disruption of shorter lines. You’ll also notice that the poem does not use grammar and uses an ampersand “&” instead of the word “and.” Read the poem out loud and note how the experience is different from reading a poem by Robert Frost or Shakespeare.

Emily as Night by Darren C. Demaree

for Etel Adnan

Right now

no one

can see us

in the ravine

behind the lost

paleness

of Ohio

& since we

are unlatched

from the poor

reality of how

we could be

witnessed

the world becomes

a table

that cannot

starve amidst

our display.

Epic, Lyric, Narrative 

Epic poems are long (book-length long) poems often recounting the gallantry of wars and their heroes, and while most epics belong to history (Beowulf, The Iliad, The Odyssey) some contemporary poets do experiment with the form, but the epic is not currently fashionable. Narrative poetry is driven by a speaker who is telling a story. Most contemporary poets work with the lyric, a kind of kind of meditation, even celebration of the present. Lyric poetry as a long association with musicality and meditation. In workshop, I recall one of my teachers, Robert Hass, telling a student, albeit generously, that the student was misusing the impulse of prayer in his poem. Hass closed with a sage and earnest statement, “I’ve thought a lot about prayer.” In Hass’s recent book On Form, he operates from his thesis, “the impulse of prayer seems to be very near the origin of the lyric.” So true, a prayer can be a plea, a deathbed bargain, thankfulness and contentment, a shout of joy. The lyric is all these impulses, too.

Exercise 1: Break the Lines

The NAR published Kwame Dawe’s poem, “How to Dream.” The poem is one long sentence and uses the repeated phrase of “we who.” The poem is reprinted below, but with the line breaks removed. Copy and paste the poem so that you can digitally edit it and start making the line breaks where you think they should occur. Notice what choices you’re making. Why are you breaking the line where you do? What is a guiding principle you’re using to make decisions? Are you breaking the line at each semicolon because it seems like a natural stop? Does each line start with “we who” because it’s like the poet is using anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of lines. Once you’ve made your choices, compare your line breaks with other students. What choices did they make and more importantly how do differing line breaks make the “same” poem different?

Make sure to compare your line breaks to the ones Kwame Dawes intended. His poem, along with all the others used in this text are in the poetry resources section of this book.

How to Dream by Kwame Dawes

We who live with the streets at our ear, the flimsy zinc to guard us from predators; we who gather in kerosene light to hear the sweating politician promise us bread and the dignity of a manifesto made of our blood; we who rest our bodies on the unrolled mats, the yeast smell of dough warming to a swell overnight in the heat, the wood-smoke rising in the mud oven where embers glow waiting for dawn; we who know the lamentation of the wind in trees, or the giddy industry of a bicycle’s wheels ticking through the night; we who bathe in the algae-covered slate of concrete, water flowing in a single line over our bodies; we who cover our bodies in talc, our forehead with Limacol, the backs of our necks with rosewater; we who leave our Sunday garments to wave like flags in the wind; we who sleep to the soft quarreling of Kwaku

the postman, (Jesus I’m drunk, drunk, drunk, my body can’t work, oh no, Ama, Ama, Ama, Ama Ama…); we pray as if there is mercy in the hills, from whence cometh our help; we give thanks for the music in this, for the soft hope in these streets f of standing water, for bodies softly opening to us as a song of the sea, for women with kindness in their eyes, and for our rooms anointed with the green incense of burning mosquito coils.

Exercise 2: One Liners

From an early age of three, four, five, or six, we’re taught how to read, paying full attention to grammar and its traffic-coping–a small pause at a comma and a full breath at a period, possessive versus plural, when to use a semicolon, etc. Grammar and standardized-spelling were relative late comers to written language, but their presence is loud and likely permanent. In poetry, line breaks, neologism, and experimental verse, like that of E.E. Cummings, Jos Charles, and Darren C. Demaree allows for some play and progression. Below are a few poetry prompts that use the idea of grammar (or not) to influence the lines and stanza-making. Try at least two: the one you’re most drawn to and the one you’re most resistant to.

• Write a poem that is one sentence.
• Write a poem that is a question.
• Write a poem that uses no punctuation marks.
• Write a poem in unrhymed couplets.
• Write a prose poem

Exercise 3: Enjambment and End-stopped

For this exercise you can work with a poem you’d like to revise, use one of the list prompts from the previous chapter, or if the muse is visiting you, something you write for this prompt. Either way, write the first version of the poem using mostly enjambment, where there is no punctuation at the end of the lines. Write the other version with mostly end-stopped lines. Of course, you will need to change some words and phrases to coordinate with enjambed lines and end-stopped lines. Read the two poems and consider how the meaning is changed using each convention.