Enjambment+--+Jenn+Park

Jennifer Park 1/11/2010 AP Lit B

The erosion that takes place in Linda Paston's poem "Erosion", is not the “physical process of eroding or being eroded by wind, water or other natural agents", but a figurative and gradual destruction of something else: human life. Paston manipulates the line breaks and punctuation in order for the reader to receive her intended effects as these enjambments influence the tone, rhythm, and theme of the passage. When a physical process goes through erosion, the soil weathers and changes. Similarly, humans also go through such changes as each day, week, and year passes by. But what makes these two processes similar? The fact that they are both long processes. Erosion, whether in the physical or figurative manifestation, is a slow and relentless process. Paston manipulates the breaks in order to set the pace of the poem according to this idea. The way the first stanza is broken up depicts the idea of a "slow and relentless process." Instead of putting all the words on a single line, they are broken up into fragments: “We are slowly undermined. Grain By grain.... Inch by inch.... Slippage.” (Paston) We are prone to hesitate at the end of a line, therefore the reader naturally pauses at “slowly”, “grain”, “inch”, and most importantly, “slippage.” By separating the words “slowly” and “undermined” even though they are part of the same sentence, the author succeeds in putting emphasis on the word “slowly” in order to stress that the process of erosion is slow. Although these breaks seem insignificant, they change the way the poem is read. If there were no breaks within the first stanza then the same words would not be emphasized and the intended effect would not be received. “We are slowly undermined. Grain by Grain. Inch by inch. Slippage (Paston).” When read in prose style, the given tone and rhythm do not emphasize the intended message of the stanza the way it did when it was broken up. The same poetic techniques are used in the third stanza: “We wake to water. Implacably lovely Is this view Though it will swallow Us whole, soon There will be Nothing left But view.” (Paston) Once again the reader naturally pauses at the words “lovely”, “view”, “swallow”, “soon”, and “left”, giving each word emphasis. The word “view” is said in a positive tone the first time as it is described as being “lovely”, but the second time it is utilized it has a darker tone to it. The first time the word is applied, I got the image of a happy and peaceful girl living in a beach house who wakes up to the sounds of the waves rolling. The second time it is used however, I imagined a girl, who has lost everything, crying on the beach, not enjoying it, but resenting it. This message is once again emphasized as a result of the line breaks throughout the stanza. By splitting up the second and third line. Both “lovely” and “view” are emphasized. This allows for the natural association of the two words which evoked the images I pictured. Similarly, the splitting of the seventh and eighth line, the words “left” and “view are emphasized, stimulating the second part of the image I pictured. The gradual “erosion” of the words is also symbolic to the bigger message of the poem as a whole. Contrastingly, Paston also employs this technique in order to speed up the tone of the poem: “It happens as we sleep, The way the clock’s hands Move continuously Just out of sight, But more like an houseglass Than a clock, For here sand Is running out.” (Paston) The first line is said without disruption, allowing the reader to read at a faster pace compared to the first and third stanzas. Also, the use of commas in the fourth and sixth line allows the reader to move into the next line with only a slight pause. The comma has the same effect as breaking the line into fragments, yet even if this sentence were to be written in prose style, the commas would still be present. Therefore, the use of punctuation in this verse gives the sense of urgency. Th stanzas are also broken up into fragments in order to create a sense of flow within the poem. This also allows us to identify key passages such as the passage where the turning point occurs. Being able to understand the flow of the passage is essential in analyzing it’s intended message. The breaking of the stanzas creates six clear sections, or six clear messages, that all merge into the bigger picture. Every stanza is different. Some are slow, others are fast. Some depict the idea of erosion, others depict the sense of urgency. Some are long, others are extremely short. The alternating tone and rhythm that each stanza has to offer represent the differing times of our lives--or the differing stages of erosion.

"erosion - definition of erosion by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.." Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Jan. 2010. .

Comment: I like how you talked about the line breaks' impact on the speed of the poem. I also talked about that, but I said that the number of syllables in each line either slowed or sped up the pace. Your reasoning also seems to be right.