Breaking Down Poetry One Line at a Time.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Now lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

     Something.... definetly isn't right here. This is obviously "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," by William Shakespeare, but the structure is all wrong. It's originally written in a series of short lines, not one big mumbled paragraph. But, why can't it just be on e big jumbled paragraph? Why does it HAVE to be broken down into that series of lines?
     Well line breaks are very important to every piece of poetry and can be used as a tool for many different things. In this case the scheme that Shakespeare is using for this poem cannot be read or as easily seen when in a large jumble of lines like this. When broken down back into it's original form it is easy to see the scheme that he is using and it is a lot easier to read to it's fullest.
     Not all poems use line breaks to play out schemes, but many do use line breaks to help the reader present it a particular way. Line breaks cause directed speech. Such as with H.D.'s "Oread."

Whirl up, sea-
whirl your pointed pines.
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us, 
cover us with your pools of fir. 

When read aloud you are forced to emphasize the last word of each line. Such a break will give significance to those stressed words not only to the reader but to who whomever is also listening to the piece. The use of punctuation at line breaks is also very significant to the poet due to it's effect on the presenter of the piece. When one finishes the line "on our rock," they tend to put a lot of emphasis on the word rock, but also take a longer pause than they would after the line "splash your great pines".
     There is however one other popular use of line breaks - changing image or thought. Such as in this poem titled, "Messages."

Electric clockwork turning round and round
tick tock tick tock
Life drudges on step by step
dragging its heart on a string behind them
scratch scratch, rub rub
burning is the sensation of a raw heart dragged on dry dirt.
thunder rolls in, lighting strikes the ground
no rain, just dry dry emptiness.
Step by step life walks to death
dragging its heart on a string behind them.
Why can’t death meet me half way and stop the

suffering

Each line break in this piece is a change. In the first break it's changing from the thing to the noise, bringing the audience into the scene through the sense of sound. The second break goes from the sound to another thing. The third break is the action of the thing in question. The use of punctuation is also very important here. The only use of periods are after an entire thing or image is completed, the first image being 'life' dragging it's own heart on dry dirt. The second image being the environment in which 'life' is traveling through. It is very important as you work through a poetic piece to analyze what each and every structural move means. In this case line breaks can be used for a whole series of things.
     Now snap snap! Get to work!
          Show me where it is you
                                                  break.