enjambment
When a phrase, a clause, or a sentence in a line of poetry doesn't finish at the line break but spills over into the next line, that's an enjambment.
If you know French, you'll recognize the word jambe "leg" — an enjambment is like a leg striding from one line to the next. You can see that leap from one line into the next in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," where each of the first three lines ends with an enjambment: "April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain."
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the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line of verse into the next line without a pausesynonyms: enjambement
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Vocabulary lists containing enjambment
One of the stumbling blocks when trying to study poetry is that it seems like a different world. Familiar things, like words, are put to unfamiliar use, and there is an entire descriptive vocabulary that is completely foreign and quite often puzzling. This list seeks to explain the words used to describe poetry through examples from famous poems. Nassim Nicholas Taleb said, "If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry," but we are willing to take that risk to make the world of literary analysis a little clearer and further illuminate the mystery of poetry.
From alliteration to zeugma, this list covers the literary devices you need to know in order to understand and analyze poetry. To learn even more about poetry, explore our lists on Genre and Structure and Meter.
You'll understand rhyme's reason when you practice this list of words related the structure of poetry. To learn even more about poetry, explore our lists on Genre and Literary Devices.