It’s time for that most mysterious aspect of poetry: line breaks. This chapter is titled “Lay a Path: Path Attention to Line.” Fittingly, the line from Billy Collins’ “introduction to poetry” Runyan uses here is this:
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out
(Sidenote: In Runyan’s book “How to Read a Poem,” I especially enjoyed chapter 3, which was also about the topic of line breaks.)
This chapter includes two fantastic poems. One I knew, “Course,” by LW Lindquist, and one I didn’t, “Tree,” by Andrew Hudgins. Runyan encourages readers to notice the line breaks in these poems and experiment with doing it differently.
I didn’t want to mess with perfection, so I played around with a poem titled “Courage” by Amelia Earhart—pilot and poet. First, here is her original poem with the proper line breaks.
Courage
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grand us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.
Amelia Earhart
Here’s what I did:
Courage is the price that life
exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
from little things. Knows not
the livid loneliness of fear nor mountain heights
where bitter joy can hear
the sound of wings. How can life
grand us boon of living, compensate
for dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
unless we dare the soul’s dominion?
Each time we make a choice,we pay
with courage
to behold resistless day and count it fair.
What do you think? Would you do it differently?
Back to my poem, revising with an emphasis on line breaks. Something is happening at the end—something not based on the day we planted the cross, other than the fact that it is always windy in the Panhandle. It’s something that snuck in because I found the word “zephyr,” which will eventually change the poem.
Roadside Oddity (#3)
There’s nothing odd
about a wee white cross
beside a Texas highway.
Just a cross.
Entwined grapevines rising
from prairie grass
The earth curves away from the crash
tire tracks lead nowhere. yellow tape
insists DO NOT CROSS.
We cross pasture bleached by drought
stare at ivory sky. The wind, a mere
zephyr, lifts our skirts.
