The summer high school poets asked how to know where to break a poetic line. They examined and discussed the issues of complete thoughts; controlling rhythm; creating emphasis; the rules of prepositions, conjunction, and articles; and helping the reader to understand meaning. They looked to me and I nodded.
As a kid, when I pestered my father with questions, he answered, “Why is the end of Broadway?” I heard this question as poetry, and I took that question seriously. His question sent me on a search for profound meaning. Where does any road actually end? Why does it end? What does it mean when it ends? Are we left to our own devices as we wander off the pavement and into a wilderness of grass and woods, or open air? I knew there was deep philosophical understanding to be had if I could get near this very adult examination of life and the world. I was grateful my father had included me in this heady conversation. It was not until I was fully an adult that I realized he had not, in fact, asked me a question. He had simply stated: ‘Y is the end of Broadway.’ It was a joke to deflect my unending questions. A joke to help his patience with his talkative daughter.
Poetic line breaks are the end of Broadway. Why, Y, they end where they do is not arbitrary. But it is up to the poet. Where a line breaks adds the elements that the students discussed in each line in every poem. Line breaks are where the road ends or curves or drops down a hill or swiftly swings back into the track or flings us out into space. Line breaks, some could argue, are what makes poems, poems. They are the breaking wave against the shore of the white page. My father was onto something in his gentle humor, and he trusted that I would find my way, directing me to stand forever at the poetic crux of why.
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