Line Breaks (Sept 19 HW)

“Introduction to Poetry”

This poem feels conversational due to the logical line breaks that follow commas and periods. Each stanza contains a unique idea that is separated from the other stanzas/ideas with a punctuation mark. The only exception to this pattern is the break after ‘slide’ that leads directly on to the single line that makes up the second stanza. This line, however, is a stand alone thought, even though it is not separated from the first stanza by a punctuation mark. After listing five examples of what to do with a poem, the author presents the reader with two examples of what not do. The mood changes for the last two stanzas, each one completed with a full stop, therefore slightly breaking the flow of the poem similarly to how students want to “break” and “beat” one. The overall pattern of “one stanza-one idea” is, however, preserved in the last two stanzas. 

A Girl by Ezra Pound

The tree has entered my hands, 

The sap has ascended my arms, 

The tree has grown in my breast- 

Downward, 

The branches grow out of me, like arms. 

Tree you are, 

Moss you are, 

You are violets with wind above them. 

A child - so high - you are, 

And all this is folly to the world.

The free verse form makes this poem effective; the lack of rigid structure allows the reader to picture the poem as a conversation between the two narrators- a girl and an adult. 

The first stanza is told by a girl who is consumed by fantasies. Each line is a step in this process of imagination- it goes from the tree entering her hands to the child’s oneness with the tree. Here, imagination is like a process of coming up with an idea and then following it until one is completely consumed by the idea. 

“Downward”, a one-word line, is meant to catch the reader’s attention to clarify that the tree is growing downwards. By making it a separate line, Ezra Pound made the reader pause and visualize the arm-like branches. This is an important line break because just a few seconds ago those branches were human arms. 

The second stanza portrays an adult’s point of view. He/she has clear, defined thoughts which is shown by the conciseness of the lines. Each line breaks where new idea begins, therefore emphasizing each and every one of those ideas and making them easy for a girl to understand. In each line, Pound says what the girl can be, except for the very last line. The last line is a conclusion; it is the moral of the story. It also makes sense to use a line break here because the author wants to emphasize this universal idea of a child’s imagination. After listing what the girl can be, he says that it’s okay to be all those things despite the world’s standards.