Day 127: Enjambment

1. Homework review. We took questions about homework and then turned it in.

2. Poetry vs. Prose? Two minute discussion: how do you know the difference between the two? Usually, it’s the lines.

3. Notes on Enjambment. Students took the following notes:

On L28:

• Line: the basic unit of a poem
• Stanza: a group of lines (usually related in some way)
• Enjambment: line breaks, especially in the middle of a sentence

On L31 (a sheet of notebook paper we made today)

Enjambment

definition: line breaks, especially in the middle of a sentence

Uses:

– DIVIDE the poem into rhythm or rhyme scheme

– put the same # of syllables in certain lines

– rhyme at the end of each line

– EMPHASIZE a single word or phrase by putting it on its own line

– DOUBLE MEANING

– Meaning #1: a line on its own, without the rest of the sentence

– Meaning #2: the line and the rest of the sentence

– Example:

In health class,

we had sex

education

The reader sees two meanings:

– #1: In health class, we had sex. Oh no!

– #2: In health class, we had sex education. Oh, that makes sense.

– POINT OUT SIMILARITIES by making the line structure similar (same number of syllables, words, or similar phrasing)

– Example:

I hate

babysitting kids

getting up mornings

vacuuming the floor

[insert the rest of poem here, blah, blah, blah]

Later, I will be

calling my boyfriend

– Four lines are formatted the same, using initial -ing words and five syllables each. The result? Even though I don’t say I think calling my boyfriend is unpleasant, or a chore, I am implying that it is similar through my enjambment.

– UNIT OF MEANING: each line has its own meaning, is its own idea. Group ideas in lines, start a new line with a new idea.

If you were absent, download and print out all these notes here: Enjambment Absent

4. Enjambment practice. Using the laptops, students copied and pasted one of the paragraphs below into a MS Word document. They then had to add line breaks to create a certain meaning from the prose. Some examples are posted below.

HW: Find a paragraph in a book, magazine, newspaper, or website (or somewhere else). You can use anything you didn’t write and that’s not already a poem or a song. Then, type it up or rewrite it, adding line breaks in meaningful places to turn it into a poem. You should not add, switch, or remove any words, but you can add, switch, or remove punctuation and capitalization. Due Monday.

John Steinbeck

And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering. George shivered and looked at the gun, and then he threw it from him, back up on the bank, near the pile of old ashes.
And George raised the gun

and steadied it,
and he brought the muzzle,
of it close,
to the back of Lennie’s head.

The hand shook violently,

But his face set.
And his hand steadied, he
pulled
the trigger.

The crash of the shot rolled

up the hills and rolled
down again.

Lennie

jarred, and then settled slowly
forward to the sand,
and he lay without quivering.

George shivered

and looked at the gun,
and then he threw it from him,
back up on the bank,
near

the pile of old ashes.

by Rosie and Alicia

Harper Lee

Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad brown doors. . . . He sighed a long sigh and turned away from me. “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run off to . . . .”