This is a powerpoint presentation discussing James Longenbach's The Art of the Poetic Line. It also includes a performance by Tom O'Bedlam of a portion of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells." O'Bedlam's full reading is available on YouTube.

1. CONSIDERING
JAMES LONGENBACH’S
THE ART OF THE
POETIC LINE
Understanding Poetic Line
Choices as We Cultivate Our
Craft

2. Line Endings
•Does not use the term line breaks
•Discusses three primary types of line
endings
•A line stop, as in a period
•Two types of enjambment
•Annotating lines
•Parsing lines
Tammy Reese
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3. Poe’s “The Bells”
Hear the sledges with the bellsSilver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that over-sprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bellsFrom the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Tammy Reese
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4. Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bellsTo the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Tammy Reese
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5. Parsing lines
Annotating lines
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it dwells
On the Future! How it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,…
Tammy Reese
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6. The relationship between formal choice and
ideological position is constantly shifting…(95)
Tammy Reese
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7. “The Fascination of
What’s Difficult”
By William
Butler Yeats
The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There is something ails our
colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud
Shiver at the lash, and strain and sweat and
jolt
As though it dragged road metal
My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.
(115 & 118)
Tammy Reese
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8. “…[A]ll poems
live or die on their
capacity to lure us
from their
beginnings to
their ends by a
pattern of
sounds,” (120)
In conclusion
Let’s try some playing
around with sounds.
Take a look at the next
three blogs for some fun
word practice.
Tammy Reese
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