Enjambment+--+Alex

Reflection on the Poem

The poem “Erosion”, written by Linda Pastan, is about how every mortal thing disappears gradually. Throughout the poem, enjambment, a technique used to break phrases into two separate lines, is used extensively. In the poem, enjambment serves to cut each sentence into two “pieces”; for example, in the very first stanza, “we are slowly undermined” is broken down into two separate lines, which forces readers to continue reading towards the next line without a pause. The usage of line breaks is very effective in conveying the tone, rhythm, and ultimately, the theme as a whole in this poem because it creates a feeling of weariness and anxiety as readers read along. This poem is about how time, symbolized by water and waves, is slowly wearing everyone out. Throughout the reading, readers will definitely find that the poet makes numerous allusions to time (clock’s hands, hourglass, moving slowly, and wake). Time, in turn, swallows everything, moves scythes (Death’s tool), and takes “us.” How is this idea further developed and enriched by usage of line breaks? Well, line break surely affects the tone of the poem. Every time the line break is used, reader’s thoughts are messed up because readers usually anticipate each line to be a complete thought (period after the end of each line). Instead, readers are faced with a challenge; lines are not complete on their own. Thus, readers get a sense of anxiety because they now have to read quickly towards part of next line to understand the meaning as a whole. This clearly affects the tone of the poem because when readers read the poem out aloud, they will definitely find themselves feeling strong urge to continue to the next line without a pause since they don’t want the thoughts to be fragments. As a result, the tone of anxiety gets clearly established. Then, from this tone, rhythm can be found easily. Readers will notice that as they are reading with line breaks disturbing their mind, they find a unique rhythm in the poem. As they read out aloud, the pauses in the poem create a rhythm because whenever readers pause and go on to the next sentence, the rhythm (introductory words-pause-few words to end the sentence) takes hold. This is seen throughout the poem when Linda Pastan inserts a pause between unfinished sentences–for example, “The gulls will follow-pause-our wake.” This rhythm strongly encourages the tone of the poem to stand out because the tone of anxiety becomes obvious as readers cannot anticipate what is going to happen after each pause. However, Linda Pastan did not use line breaks to only portray the tone and the rhythm she intended. The theme of the poem, which is about how life collapses before death, is also portrayed through line breaks. Readers can infer that life people are trying to cherish (planting grasses, seawall, and prayer) is being gradually consumed by death because they can’t do anything about it (“wind does its work, and water does sure work”). Line breaks makes this meaning clear because when people can’t do anything about something (in this case, death), they get anxious–and line break that already created such tone of anxiety does its job to keep the readers on their toes, feeling uncertain about what will be coming up. As a result, line breaks surely express the tone, the rhythm, and the theme.


 * Lynn: I really like your point about time wearing everyone out and moving the tool of death. I had thought time as a reinforcement to the idea of death and hadn't thought of connecting it back to the overall theme of erosion. It also makes sense to say that these line breaks indeed provoke anxiety in the readers,because they are forced to run onto the next line.