Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break. Its technical use dates back to the 12th century, but examples of enjambment can be seen throughout time, in biblical verses and Homer’s writing. It is commonly used in poetry and dramatic verse to create various poetic effects, such as disorientation, suspense, surprise, ambiguity or wordplay.

What is Enjambment?

Poetry English Literature Literature Literary Criticism

Dr. Polly Hember

PhD, Media Arts and English Literature (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Date Published: 10.06.2024,

Last Updated: 10.06.2024

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Table of contents

Defining enjambment

Enjambment is a poetic technique where sentences or phrases from one line run over into the next, so meaning flows across and over line breaks. For example, our question at hand – “What is / enjambment?” – does not make sense without reading both of the lines, where the syntax stretches over the break to form a full, cohesive phrase. Enjambment is the term used for when these sorts of line breaks occur in poetry and verse.

Ronald Greene and Stephen Cushman define enjambment as the “continuation of a syntactic unit from one line to the next without a major juncture or pause; the opposite of an end-stopped line” (The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms, 2016). As a typical sentence often ends with a punctuation mark, when the line comes to an end, the playful and sometimes disorientating nature of enjambment disrupts the reader’s experience. As Geoffrey Russom states, enjambment can be thought of as a “mismatch between the syntax of a poetic line and our expectation that the line will be realized as a sentence” (The Evolution of Verse Structure in Old and Middle English poetry, 2017). This mismatch can produce a number of different and sometimes ambiguous poetic effects.

An often-cited example of enjambment can be found in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667):

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste ([2019])

Paradise Lost

John Milton

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste ([2019])

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Here, the enjambed lines produce dual readings, where the meaning of the verse hinges between them. Read without the second line, Richard Bradford suggests that “the fruit” could allude to the figurative fruits of one’s labor and the result of man’s disobedience (Poetry, 2010). However, upon reading the second line, the fruit becomes literal. Bradford notes that the pause at the end of the first line that the enjambment demands also implies a sense of indecision, as if the poem itself is deliberating whether or not to taste the forbidden fruit:

The tension between the actuality of the fruit and the uncertain consequences of eating it is a fundamental theme of the poem, and Milton encodes this tension within the form of the poem even before its narrative begins. (2010)

Poetry

Richard Bradford

The tension between the actuality of the fruit and the uncertain consequences of eating it is a fundamental theme of the poem, and Milton encodes this tension within the form of the poem even before its narrative begins. (2010)

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Enjambment thus has many uses, where meaning and definition often dance on the hinge of a line break. It can be used to produce instances of wordplay, pause, disorientation, tension, and can be used to control a poem’s pace. This guide offers an overview of the technique’s etymology, its trajectory throughout time, and some of its different uses in a selection of poems and dramatic verse.

Etymology

The word “enjambment” is derived from the French word "enjamb," which means “to stride over,” “step over,” “straddle,” or “encroach” (Greene and Cushman, 2016). Thus, when poets employ enjambment, the meaning or sense straddles multiple lines, where the reader has to step over a line break to fully comprehend the sense of the phrase. Andrew Hodgson reminds us that the term “verse,” used to refer to a single metrical line in a poem’s composition,

derives from the Latin word to describe the turning of a plough as it reaches the end of a field and goes back on itself, and the notion of the lines of a poem as so many furrows through which the words travel before wheeling back remains a helpful image. (The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry, 2021)

The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry

Andrew Hodgson

derives from the Latin word to describe the turning of a plough as it reaches the end of a field and goes back on itself, and the notion of the lines of a poem as so many furrows through which the words travel before wheeling back remains a helpful image. (The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry, 2021)

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Enjambment thus subverts these furrows, in asking the reader to linger, look back, or traverse multiple lines at once.

History of enjambment

The first formal use of the term in literary criticism was recorded in 1839, where Henry Hallam used it to discuss Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas’s work: “Du Bartas almost affects the enjambement, or continuation of the sense beyond the couplet” (Introduction to Literature of Europe, 1839, [2013]). From this mention around the mid-nineteenth century, it then worked its way into the critical lexicon. However, as a poetic device, it can be traced back to verses from the Bible, and the writing of Homer and Virgil. Greene and Cushman note that, as a method, examples of enjambment are widespread, but it is often unclear, especially in early works, what the motivation was; the perception of enjambment “depends on such factors as the reader’s experience and literary-historical context” (The Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms, 2016). Indeed, the effect of enjambment in oral poetry and song may have been different from its use in written poetic verse. The following section will explore the popularization of enjambment in France, Japan, and England.

French poetry

In Old French poetry, Chrétien de Troyes appears to have been the first poet in European vernaculars to “break his verses systematically” in the 12th century; by the 15th century, enjambment was a common practice (Greene and Cushman, 2016). It became more popular in France in the 16th century, with the poets of the Pléiade. In the 17th century, Green and Cushman write, enjambment was “impugned” by the neoclassical authorities François de Malherbe and, later, Nicolas Boileau. It was mainly used, therefore, in decasyllabic poetry and “the less ‘noble’ genres such as comedy and fable” around this time (Greene and Cushman, 2016). This association shifted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, Victor Hugo intentionally and playfully utilizes enjambment in Hernani, in answer to a knock on the door:

C’est bien à l’escalier
Débrobé. (1830 [2006])

This famous example translates loosely to “It must be by the secret staircase.” By severing the adjective from the noun, which it usually follows in French, it intensifies the idea of a secret stairway: its true nature concealed in a different line, which also mimics the downward footfall of a staircase, moving from one line—or step—to the next.

The Japanese haiku

In Japanese poetry, the haiku emerged around the 17th century, where often lines are enjambed to create its powerful three-line structure. The haiku’s popularity rose with Matsuo Bashō’s innovation in the late 1600s, becoming more widespread in the 18th century with Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa. In the 19th century, it became associated with Masaoka Shiki, with Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō in the 20th century (For more on this development, see James Shea and Grant Caldwell’s The Routledge Global Haiku Reader, 2023).

English poetry

In English poetry, enjambment was widely used in Elizabethan writing, mainly for dramatic and narrative verse. Again, its popularity dipped with neoclassicism and its predilection for rhyming heroic couplets and iambic pentameter. Greene and Cushman highlight Milton’s influence in the revival of enjambment for the Romantics, “who saw it as the metrical emblem for the liberation from neoclassical rules” (2016). It was used frequently, too, in the work of William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The latter introduced a “sprung rhythm” technique in his Victorian poetry, which arranges rhythm through stresses rather than syllables, and thus enjambs rhythm as well syntax, to sound much more like a natural speaking rhythm. For example, “Inversnaid” (1881) by Hopkins employs enjambment to depict a brook in the Scottish wilderness:

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
(Selected Poems, [2013])

Selected Poems

Gerard Manley Hopkins

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
(Selected Poems, [2013])

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The enjambment here assists the sprung rhythm and also syntactically mirrors the wild and unpredictable turns of the Scottish Highlands, or the flow of a “roaring” brook (2013).

Enjambment became more popular still with the 19th century, with the European vers libéré movement. Jeffrey Wainwright explains that the free verse that exploded around this movement was orientated more “towards a democratic informality that has a more flexible rhythm and a wider, more colloquial, range of words” (Poetry, 2015). Enjambment is also a fascinating feature of much modernist poetry of the early twentieth century, and its associated imagist, futurist, surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements. Rita Felski sees modernist literature as characterized by “an aesthetic self-consciousness, stylistic fragmentation, and a questioning of representation” (The Gender of Modernity, 1995).

A famous example of enjambment can be seen in the eight-line modernist poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
(Spring and All, 1923, [2019])

Spring and All

William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

(Spring and All, 1923, [2019])

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Williams uses enjambment to separate lines and words that are usually compounded (“rain / water” and “wheel / barrow”) to focus the reader’s attention on the form and function of the language, in this sparse and simple poem, which uses no punctuation or capitalization to structure the syntax in favor of enjambment.

Different uses of enjambment

Poets may use enjambment for a range of reasons, which the reader may react to in a number of different ways. For example, some readers may flit across the line breaks as enjambment may speed up their rhythm of reading, whereas for others, the fragmentation of phrases or the time it takes to comprehend the full meaning may slow the poem down, altering the speed. What follows are some examples of the different impacts or interpretations enjambment can bring to reading poetry, ranging from anticipation, rhythmic play, emphasis, ambiguity, and wordplay.

Anticipation

Enjambment may elicit a sense of anticipation and tension between the corresponding lines as their meaning unfolds and unfurls. Alice Oswald’s sonnet “Wedding” (1996) is an excellent example of this, where suspense and surprise swoops in as the lines drive the poem forward:

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions…
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it’s like a tow
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck beings, it’s like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.
(The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile, 2007)

Meaning dances at the end of each line, before it flies down like a “swallowtail” to the next line, twisting and turning out of reach, which creates a sense of disorientation and anticipation for the comprehension of the sonnet to emerge.

Rhythm

Unlikely syllables can be highlighted and emphasized through enjambment, creating different rhythms for reading. Gwendolyn Brooks creates a syncopated jazz rhythm in her 1958 poem “We Real Cool”:

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.
(Selected Poems, 1963)

Through the enjambed lines, there is a silent beat that follows the mention of “We” throughout the poem, which creates a pause at the start of each new line, syncopating the rhythm and subverting traditional form.

Emphasization

By ending a line before the phrase is completed, attention can often be drawn to the last word before the break. For example, the enjambment in Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death–(479)” (1890) highlights the poem’s fixation with mortality:

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And immortality.
(Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them, [2016])

Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them

Edited by Cristanne Miller

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And immortality.

(Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them, [2016])

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Here, punctuation is used to further confound the meaning, rhythm, and expectation of finality or the closure of a given line. By enjambing the lines and using the dash, the word stretches out for its counterpart in the line beneath it, emphasizing ideas of death and linking them intrinsically to the speaker.

Form and structure

Enjambment is useful for constructing certain forms. For example, Steven Carter notes that enjambment is a “mainstay” of haikai, which adheres to a three-line structure with five syllables in the first, seven in the second, and five in the third (How to Read a Japanese Poem, 2019). For example, enjambment can be seen in Kobayashi Issa’s “[mosquito at my ear]”:

Mosquito at my ear—
does he think
I’m deaf?
(Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku, 1994)

Thematic play

As this guide has touched on throughout, enjambment is often utilized so tha the form of the writing mirrors the content. Whether it is the indecision in Milton’s Paradise Lost or the winding nature of Hopkins’s “Inversnaid,” enjambment contributes to this formal play with thematic meaning. This is true for dramatic verse, too. Take William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606-07) and its famous “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy, for example:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
([2012])

Macbeth

William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

([2012])

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Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton explore how enjambment is used to formally create the sense of “the repetition and monotony of life” that the soliloquy depicts (Prose Poetry, 2020). The enjambment, repetition and meter all attempt to slow the passage, and emphasize Macbeth’s exhaustion, stretching out the poem much like the endless “tomorrows” stretch out ahead of Macbeth.

Irony

Enjambment can also create the space for puns, irony, wordplay, and ambiguity to form on the page. A word or phrase might have a dual meaning that is altered by the enjambed lines, that can create both confusion and levity. For example, E. E. Cummings’s poem “pity this busy monster, manunkind” ends with:

We doctors know
a hopeless case if — - listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door let’s go
(Complete Poems 1904-1962, 1944)

Critiquing humanity’s treatment of the world, the poem crafts an ambiguous irony in the final enjambed lines, teetering on theistic and moral dread of hell; it then offers a hopeful escape through wordplay, but then cuts itself off with nowhere to go after the final line, contradicting and questioning the existence of another universe. Through enjambment, Cummings crafts an ambiguous wordplay that conjures multiple interpretations.

Concluding thoughts

Greene and Cushman remind us that “[n]o comprehensive taxonomy of types or effects of enjambment exists” (2016). With this in mind, enjambment can be seen as a loose term that steps in (or over) to describe a number of different instances where the syntax crosses the space between two lines of verse or poetry. There are varying degrees of enjambment: a particularly striking or harsh break is sometimes called “hard enjambment,” and more subtle ones where the different lines can exist coherently by themselves might be referred to as a “soft enjambment.”

As Roger Fowler writes, enjambment might be better thought of as a matter of degree, where there are “degrees of tension between the metre, wanting to make a break, and the grammar, wanting to be continuous” (Essays on Style and Language, 2017). The degree to which the enjambment is felt depends on these syntactic aspects, but also sits with the reader, and is subject to change depending on the literary historical contexts. Enjambment flirts with form, meaning and content in various ways, to produce a continuous play with tension and revelation across lines, within quiet pauses, and between breaks.

External resources

Beyers, C. (2001) A History of Free Verse. The University of Arkansas Press.

Cushman, S. (1985) William Carlos Williams and the Meanings of Measure. Yale University Press.

Duffell, M. J. (2008) A New History of the English Metre. Taylor & Francis.

Frank, R. and Sayre, H. (1899) The Line in Postmodern Poetry. University of Illinois Press.