Meek’s use of enjambment astounds me. Not only does she break lines and leave “weak” words as the last words of lines, but she often uses comma one to three words before the line break. This double pause forces the reader to move slower through a poem than usual. The poem “Courantijn River” includes instances like this multiple times within just the first stanza. A few examples are line 3 (she uses a colon, "transparency," and then a line break) and line 11 (she uses a period, comma three words later, “such,” and then a line break. These pauses don’t create a stuttering effect, but rather ample opportunity for pauses and breathing. The pauses also highlight the syntax of the piece. The commas at the end of lines are just as important as the commas at the center of the piece. This specific poem, especially in the first sentence, spirals downward somewhat like a roller coaster. The lines take you one way and then break off to go another direction, all to end with the pleasant phrase “tongued open” (9).
Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...
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