> My English teacher is driving me nuts with the way she reads poetry. She says that at the end of a line without punctuation, you should just barge on ahead to the next line without a pause unless there's a natural pause there.

ARGH!!! I absolutely HATE THIS. I mean, poetry is POETRY for goodness sake. Without line breaks it might as well be PROSE, which is is NOT. Line breaks are there for a REASON, and the poet might well have thought VERY HARD about where to put them and would NOT WANT anyone to freaking IGNORE them.

*deep breath* Okay, sorry about the rant. I will be more calm now.

Really, I don't like reading poetry as prose. I don't like hearing it read that way. Taking line breaks into account when reading out loud does not have to mean an outright stop or even a hugely noticable pause. (Grishny mentioned a "singsong" or "childlike" quality.) The people I most enjoy listening to as they read a poem are those who read the poem for what it is - line breaks and all - without making it feel forced.


This is kind of an important issue to me. I believe that the work of an artist deserves respect - and enjoyment on its own terms, not ours.


Ga"And I do know what it feels like to agonize for what seems like forever about a choice between a comma or a semi-colon, or, yes, where to put a line break."halia