James Galvan
English 306
Steve Pett

Poet’s Companion “Writing and Knowing” [RR]

1. There are no real rules for line breaks.

2. Denise Levertov says that the pause at the end of a line is equal to a
half-comma.

3. Say the word “lily.” You should hear it as a stressed syllable,
followed by an unstressed one.

4. “Do you break your poems into lines, or compose be the line?”

5. At some point, if you want to make memorable poems, you’ll need to get
a feel for the line, for what it does when it is very short, very long, and
every place inbetween