Poems have stanzas and lines. Line breaks help you convey your poem’s message. To help you decide where and when to end each line in your poem, use the following tips.

 Breath—consider where a person would logically stop to breathe.

 Meaning–break your line so that someone else would know how to read it the way you want.

 End-stopped lines—this occurs when there is a natural pause to a line such as a period or a comma.  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying:

 Strong words—make sure that you don’t let your lines end in weak words like articles: the, an. Pick out a nice strong word, often a noun, adjective, verb, or adverb.

 Enjambment—(pronounced en-jam’ment or as it sounds, en-jamb-ment is where the meaning carries over onto the next line. But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former.  Here, Herrick interrupts the phrase "worst times" with a line break between "worst" and "times," focusing extra attention on the word "worst."

A Bouquet Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you know And throw them at the sun Before they melt Like snow Langston Hughes B Bouquet Gather quickly Out of darkness All the songs you Know and throw them at the sun before they melt Like snow Langston Hughes

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