Growing up in New England, I spent many a summer boogie boarding and body surfing in the waters of the Atlantic. Sometimes, in the midst of these exploits, a wave I was riding would overtake the one in front of it so that just as my initial momentum died, I slipped into the pocket of a new swell and received a burst of speed. This is how I feel reading poems like Victoria Chang’s “Passage,” of New York subway series fame:
Every leaf that falls never stops falling. I once thought that leaves were leaves. Now I think they are feeling, in search of a place— someone's hair, a park bench, a finger. Isn't that like us, going from place to place, looking to be alive?
The formal term for the technique on display here is enjambment: the splitting of one thought between two or more lines. You can see it most clearly in the breaks “a park bench a / finger” and “from place to / place.” These breaks create a moment of disorientation, a micro-cliffhanger that carries us naturally forward, one line breaking into the next—a new idea forming, then breaking in turn—until, finally, we land safely on the shore: A period at the end of a line.1
Enjambment takes advantage of two complementary forces in reading: the force of structure, and the force of meaning. In poetry, the basic unit of structure is the line (or stanza), and the basic unit of meaning is the sentence (or sometimes fragment). When reading, we don’t like to be interrupted in the middle of either of these units; we tend to read to the ends of lines, and we tend to read to the ends of sentences. In fact, by refusing to ever finish a line at the end of a sentence, a poet can theoretically enjamb a reader forward indefinitely. Consider Gwendolyn Brooks’s classic “We Real Cool”:
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
Of course, a reader could stop whenever they want, but the flow of the poem offers no natural escape until the final “Die soon.” (Really makes you think, huh…)
My contention in this post: Enjambment is not unique to poetry.
In fact, as we’ll see in a moment, it’s not even unique to the written word.
Enjambment in Other Mediums
Above, I defined enjambment as “the splitting of one thought between two or more lines.” I’d now like to offer a more versatile definition based on core principles: the splitting of one semantic unit between two or more structural units. (Again: the all-purpose structural unit of poetry is the line and the all-purpose semantic unit is the sentence—but all art forms have their own conventions.) This revised definition allows us to consider enjambment (enjamb-ish-ment?) in a wider array of contexts.
To spot enjambment, then, we really just need to answer two questions:
What is the basic structural unit of the medium?
How might meaning carry across these units?
Let’s look at how this works in film and music.
Cinematic Enjambment
In film, the basic structural unit is the scene. It’s tempting to say that the basic semantic unit is also the scene—and most of the time, this is right! But there’s an important distinction: structure is dictated by the start and end of scenes, whereas meaning is dictated by some combination of characters, sound, visuals, and story—the qualitative stuff of scenes. We can see this distinction in “match cuts” like the ones below:
The bone (the first, primitive tool in the film) is a perfect visual match for the satellite (the culmination of millenia of technological progress).
[***START FROM 3:57***] The man and his balloon retain their specific emotion and significance even as they are carried into a new context.
Both of these clips enjamb some of the “stuff” of scenes across a structural boundary. In each case, the key visual object keeps its earlier meaning—even though the viewer immediately understands there’s been a jump in time and place.
Musical Enjambment
What about music? Here, I’d argue the basic structural unit is the beat or measure, and the basic semantic unit is the notes themselves. When the notes don’t line up with the natural pulses of a piece of music, the rhythm of a song feels more energetic or unresolved.2 This is known as syncopation:
Here’s a couple examples that I think demonstrate musical enjambment particularly well:
The rhythm of this refrain drives forward until it syncs up with the end of the fourth bar—then the whole sequence is repeated.
Phil Collins — “Strangers Like Me”
In this pre-chorus, the last two measures lapse into syncopation before landing squarely on two downbeats.
As with the film clips and the two poems before them, these rhythms show a kind of enjambment; it makes no more sense to pause in the middle of the syncopated measures than to pause in the middle of “place to / place” in a poem.
With this basic method in mind, let’s now try on a new lens on writing.
Through Prose-Colored Glasses
Non-poetic writing—which is to say prose—may not have line breaks, but it does have native structures: paragraphs, and sentences.
Let’s tackle these structural units one at a time.
Enjambed Paragraphs
Paragraphs are perhaps the structure which most distinguishes prose from other forms of writing,3 and because they serve such an obvious organizational purpose, enjambment here tends to be quite conspicuous. How exactly is this accomplished? Three answers come to mind.
First, a writer can pose a question—implicit or explicit—and not answer it until the following paragraph; this is the effect of the above transition (“How exactly is this accomplished?”) Second, a writer can use a recurring motif or extended metaphor; like the waves invoked at the beginning of this post, this offers a familiar current for the reader to slip back into—a small thrill of recognition.
Third, the writer can create an expectation of some kind and then delay its fulfillment. (See what I did there?)
Similarly, the writer can offer an unexpected continuation of the previous paragraph. (This should perhaps be characterized as “partial enjambment” or “one-way enjambment,” i.e., because the second half depends on the first but not vice versa.)4
All of these methods can make for writing that is more suspenseful and rewarding to read—but beware of overuse: Too many cliffhangers in a row can start to feel like a crutch. Consider, for example, how gimmicky the enjambment below would feel in a more serious piece. (Obviously it’s used here for comedic purposes):
Enjambed Sentences
Paragraph breaks in prose offer a direct analogy to line breaks in poetry—but let’s now zoom in a little closer. What happens if we look at the sentence as a basic structural unit?
Here, it helps to contrast a few different versions of the same sentence. Let’s start with the example below:
1a. Outside my window, I saw a red kite with a tattered edge snagged on the branches of a tree.
This is a perfectly fine sentence—maybe a tiny bit wordy, but nothing wrong with it grammatically. But let’s look at what happens when we take the same content and enjamb the meaning across multiple sentences:
1b. Outside my window, I saw a kite. Red, with a tattered edge. It had snagged on the branches of a tree.
The second version uses virtually identical words (only “it had” has been added), but the reader is now asked to dwell on one small detail at a time. As a result, we see them more vividly and feel, I think, a bit more inside the head of the narrator. The second one feels a shade closer to poetry.
Of course, it may not always be desirable to dwell on every little detail or sound poetic. Overdo it, and the resulting text can start to feel choppy or artificially slo-mo. But often at a particularly climactic or important moment, it’s advantageous to spread the meaning across two or more sentences—for example:
2a. A squirrel darted in front of her car, and she winced at the crunch it made.
versus
2b. A squirrel darted in front of her car—crunch! She winced at the sound.
As with the first example, 2b puts us more in the head of the narrator than 2a does. We experience the momentary surprise and disorientation after “crunch!”—mental representations closer to an actual driver’s perceptions.5
Or, to give a non-narrative example:
3a. This paper will argue that babies’ chubby wubby cheeks and rolly polly arms endow them with uncanny powers of cuteness and therefore pose a threat to national security.
versus
3b. In short, babies have chubby wubby cheeks and rolly polly arms. This endows them with uncanny powers of cuteness. Babies are so cute, in fact, that they pose a threat to national security.
Here, the (main) purpose of spreading out the meaning across multiple sentences is not to create suspense but to slow the reader down; we dwell not with images but with ideas. This is a central argument, the enjambment suggests. Make sure you follow every piece of it!
Looking at these examples, you might be tempted to think that “enjambment” here is really just a prescription to use shorter sentences; it’s a bit more subtle than that. Yes, all else being equal, shorter sentences are easier to comprehend—but each sentence must first and foremost be considered in relation to the sentences around it. Not every sentence can be short. Not every sentence that can be shortened should be. Despite what you may have been taught, for example, the passive voice is often useful for preserving continuity:
4a. He opened his inbox and saw an unread email. The CEO had sent it. [Active voice.]
versus:
4b. He opened his inbox and saw an unread email. It had been sent by the CEO. [Passive voice.]
In 4b, the second sentence is in passive voice, and therefore slightly longer—yet I’d argue it’s the better choice. Why? First and foremost, 4b preserves a clear link between the last word of the first sentence (“email”) and the subject of the second one (“it”); this makes it easier for the reader to follow the meaning across the period. Additionally, the passive structure has the benefit of delaying the reveal of “CEO” to a slightly more dramatic position in the sentence.
All to say: Even on the level of syntax, it’s worth paying attention to what information gets revealed when. (“Crunch!” is experienced ever so slightly before “she winced”; “unread email” is experienced before “CEO.”) In this subtle game of revelation, enjambment is a powerful tool.
Enjambment for All
Up to now, I’ve been emphasizing craft in writing—but there’s another meaning of prosaic worth considering: not the “non-poetry” sense but “business as usual” one. Enjambment isn’t just a tool for fiction and finely wrought essays, but for regular communications between regular people.6
In school, better organization is often an explicit goal of writing instruction. Out of our raw, stream-of-consciousness rambles, we’re taught to fashion outlines, craft thesis statements, and nest our arguments with textbook exactness. Certainly organization is a virtue of strong writing—but this neat hierarchy of ideas can come at a cost: There’s no flow. No suspense. No burstiness. At the end of a self-contained section, readers may simply…stop.
The alternative is to reinfuse writing with a pinch of organic energy and imagery—to pursue random associations and pull on loose threads. What we sacrifice in a bit of neat packaging, we regain in a product that’s more aesthetic and holds the reader’s attention better. In the end, communication is of course not only a challenge of sequencing and categorization; it is also one of guiding, invoking, and inviting.
Like leaves, we are feeling, in search of a place.
Like waves, we will reach the shore.
Thanks to Rosie, who first shared the poem “Passage” with me.
Or in this case, a question mark. (I’m tempted to say that the lingering question is a kind of enjambment with whatever exists beyond the end of a poem?)
Of course, even if notes are aligned rhythmically, they may not be aligned harmonically. Landing on a downbeat is necessary but not sufficient to provide a sense of sonic resolution.
Strunk and White, those timeless men of letters, exhort writers to “make the paragraph the unit of composition.”
For a comparable effect in poetry, consider the fourth through fifth lines of “Passage”: “Now I think they are feeling, / in search of a place—” If not for the comma after “feeling,” line 4 could be a complete thought; line 5, however, turns it into the first half of a thought by adding onto it.
For more on this point, see Samuel Delaney’s notion of “narrative grammar.”
Of course, you have to be more careful in some contexts than others; you certainly wouldn’t want your formal resignation letter to have too much suspense in it, for example.