American Literature / Unit 1 AML 0007 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Enjambment and the End-Stopped Line
Captions available
The idea
An end-stopped line closes with its sentence, at a comma or a period. An enjambed line runs past its end into the next, so the sense spills over the break. Hammer's lectures use enjambment to show how a poem can say one thing at the line end and another a word later.
In practice
Stopped, or spilling over.
Where people slip
Enjambment creates two readings at once.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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