Stephen Dobyns: Linebreaks (July 2008)

In this lecture, Stephen Dobyns considers the function of linebreaks in metered and non-metered poetry, focusing on how they can be used to convey nuance.  Drawing on poems by Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Matthew Arnold, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, James Wright and Louise Glück, Dobyns explores a variety of types of line breaks and examines how they work, in the context of each particular poem, to create rhythm and meaning.