Stab Wounds: Meditation on the Line

“No, Please Don’t Kill Me, Mr. Ghostface, I Wanna Be In The Sequel!”

Lately, I've been thinking about the line: how it breathes, holds itself together, and drags us gasping and screaming off the page. At the same time, it's both vibrant and silent, and yet what's so fascinating about it is the fact that its importance is so often overlooked because we, as writers and readers, usually turn a blind eye to the way it frames the poem, how its skeleton allows us to move and dance and disappear on and off the page. Don't get me wrong—when I started as both a reader and writer of poetry, I was guilty of this, too. Still, after years of studying and writing, I've learned that the line is so much more than a hard enter we push because we want to make the stanzas line up nice and sleek; instead, it's a moment where we control the voice and tone of the piece, where we can punctuate imagery, give pause to a blood drop, pray for a ghost.

In fact, in a lot of ways, the line is like a stab wound.

A beautiful, festering, leaking blood gash.

Swoon.