exercises

LINE

Please arrange these three sentences in lines (I know the first one is not much of a sentence) :

Hickory, dickory, dock. The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one and down she run; hickory, dickory, dock.

Sometimes the lines doesn't work by beat but is strung out from its first word, e.g., how Walt Whitman uses anaphora (as if the first word were a pole to fly a flag from, it's a preacher's and public speaker's strategy):

When the psalm sings instead of the singer,

When the script preaches instead of the preacher,

When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that

carved the supporting desk,

When the sacred vessel or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and

plast, procreate as effectually as the young silversmiths or

bakers, or the masons in their overalls,

When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and

child convince,

When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's

daughter,

When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my

friendly companions,

I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do

of men and women.

from Leaves of Grass

cited in Ron Padgett, Handbook of Poetic Forms (96-98)

If I gave you this in sentences, would you break it as Whitman did?

You might, but you might think What's with all the Whens?

Christopher Smart (1722-1771), "Jubilate Agno"

How about this:

When the psalm sings instead of the singer, when the script preaches instead of the preacher, when the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved the supporting desk, when the sacred vessel or the bits of the eucharist, or the lath and plast, procreate as effectually as the young silversmiths or bakers, or the masons in their overalls, when a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince, when the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter, when warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly companions, I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women.

Some poets count beats or stresses, some count syllables, some write in form with pre-determined constraints e.g., rhyme, some write free verse, some write in sentences, e.g., prose poems, not using the line at all.

Do you think poems composed primarily to be spoken rather than written use line? Why? Does line relate to organs of the human body other than the eye and ear?