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End-Stopped' Line:: Some Additional Key Details About End-Stopped Lines

The document defines and provides details about three poetic terms: 1. End-stopped lines are lines of poetry where a phrase or sentence is completed at the end of the line, often indicated by punctuation. This emphasizes the rhythm of the poem. 2. Enjambment is when a phrase or sentence continues from one line to the next without punctuation. This encourages the reader to move to the next line. 3. A caesura is a pause within a line, marked by punctuation, that divides the line but does not need to be in the exact middle. It adds emphasis.

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91 views2 pages

End-Stopped' Line:: Some Additional Key Details About End-Stopped Lines

The document defines and provides details about three poetic terms: 1. End-stopped lines are lines of poetry where a phrase or sentence is completed at the end of the line, often indicated by punctuation. This emphasizes the rhythm of the poem. 2. Enjambment is when a phrase or sentence continues from one line to the next without punctuation. This encourages the reader to move to the next line. 3. A caesura is a pause within a line, marked by punctuation, that divides the line but does not need to be in the exact middle. It adds emphasis.

Uploaded by

Dieu Truong Quang
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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1.

‘End-Stopped’ Line:
An end-stopped line is a line of poetry in which a sentence or phrase comes to a conclusion
at the end of the line. For example, the poet C.P. Cavafy uses end-stopped lines in his
poem "Ithaka" when he writes "Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. / Without her you
wouldn't have set out. / She has nothing left to give you now." If a line of poetry contains a
complete phrase whose meaning doesn't change in light of what follows, it is considered to
be end-stopped. However, an end-stopped line is often the end of a longer sentence that
stretches across several lines.

Some additional key details about end-stopped lines:

 The easiest way to tell if a line is end-stopped is to look for punctuation at the end.
That might include a comma, colon, semi-colon, dash, period, question mark,
exclamation point, or ellipsis. If the punctuation signifies the end of a grammatical
unit, whether that unit is a clause of a sentence or a complete sentence, then the
line tends to be end-stopped.
 Consistently end-stopping the lines of a poem tends to have the effect of
accentuating the rhythmic quality of the poem, since it makes the pauses occur more
regularly.

2. Enjambment:
(Pronunciation: en-jam-ment)

Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break.


For example, the poet John Donne uses enjambment in his poem "The Good-Morrow"
when he continues the opening sentence across the line-break between the first and
second lines:
"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?"
Some additional key details about enjambment:

 The opposite of an enjambed line of poetry is an end-stopped line: a sentence or


clause whose end does fall at the end of a line of poetry.
 Enjambment has the effect of encouraging the reader to continue reading from one
line to the next, since most of the time a line of poetry that's enjambed won't make
complete sense until the reader finishes the clause or sentence on the following line
or lines.
 Poets often use enjambment to introduce ambiguity or contradiction into an
otherwise straightforward sentence: the incomplete clause might suggest something
that the following line(s) reject. This is often true in poetry written since the end of
the 18th century.

3. Caesura:
(Pronunciation: sez-yoo-ra)

A caesura is a pause that occurs within a line of poetry, usually marked by some form of
punctuation such as a period, comma, ellipsis, or dash. A caesura doesn't have to be
placed in the exact middle of a line of poetry. It can be placed anywhere after the first word
and before the last word of a line. In the following line from the prologue of Romeo and
Juliet, the comma after "Verona" marks a caesura:
"In fair Verona, where we lay our scene."

Some additional key details about caesuras:

 Either "caesurae" or "caesuras" can be used as the plural form of caesura.


 A line of poetry can contain multiple caesurae.

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