The Line

[Todd]

White space is the written equivalent of silence. Depending on what it's bracketed by, it can be expectant, soothing, or ominous (or probably any number of other things we associate with silence). Line breaks, stanza breaks and white space in a poem are also forms of punctuation.

Aside from the regular uses of punctuation that we learn from writing prose, punctuation in poetry helps dictate pace. When read aloud, the pauses will be in pretty much this order:

regular line break
line break with comma
line break with semi-colon or em-dash
line break with colon
line break with full stop
stanza break
white space

(take out the "line break" parts and you have the same effects for caesura ie. pauses within a line)

Good information Leanne. I have never given an em-dash or colon any more weight than a comma. I didn't consider them equal to a period but thought that they were all sort of a half pause addition. Do you think, the I'm guessing 3/4 pause, is the standard for this other punctuation?