In our continuing poetry series, with this post we'll breakdown the structure of a poem. There are about as many parts to a poem as the imagination can hold, but we’ll go over just a few.

To start, look at the poem’s shape on the page. At times, you’ll see an image that echoes something about what the poem centers around. A poem about a river might undulate down the page. A poem about two different point of views could be divided into two vertical columns down the page. Other times, perhaps you’ll just notice that the words spread in non-figurative ways.

The paragraph-like sections of a poem are called stanzas. Stanzas are made up of one or more lines. When reading a poem, you’ll want to think about why the poet has ended each line where they have. What does the pause at the line break do for the experience of reading the poem? Does it coincide with the end of the sentence so that the line is end-stopped or is it enjambed (when a line or stanza ends halfway through a sentence or clause), so the sentence spreads across lines? Does it leave you hanging in momentary suspense? Does it offer a surprise at the beginning of the next line?

Kaveh Akbar’s poem “My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare” offers several instances of enjambment:

It’s common to live properly, to pretend

you don’t feel heat or grief: wave nightly

 

at Miss Fugue and Mister Goggles before diving

into your nightcap, before reading yourself

 

a bedtime story or watching your beloved sink

to the bottom of a lake and noting his absence

 

in your log. The next day you drop his clothes off

at Goodwill like a sack of mail from a warplane

 

then hobble back to your hovel like a knight moving

only in Ls. It is comfortable to be alive this way,

 

especially now, but it makes you so vulnerable to shock — 

you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove

 

in your yard, whole hand still inside. Or you arrive home

after a long day to discover your children have grown

 

suddenly hideous and unlovable. What I’m trying

to say is I think it’s okay to accelerate around

 

corners, to grunt back at the mailman and swallow all

your laundry quarters. So much of everything is dumb

 

baffle: water puts out fire, my diseases can become

your diseases, and two hounds will fight over a feather

 

because feathers are strange. All I want is to finally

take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled

 

horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug

on them but secretly I will want that very much.

Reading this poem, you will find many unexpected turns offered by Akbar’s enjambment. Perhaps after the third line, you asked, "Before diving into what?" and were surprised to find that the answer is a nightcap.

You might also notice in the second-to-last stanza that breaking the line after "my diseases can become" emphasizes "your diseases," the transition between the line representing the transition between two divided things, my and your diseases, that become one.

You might also search for a rhyme scheme. Sometimes, the rhymes may create a subtle comparison between two words. Other times, a rhyme might highlight differences. And rhymes can hold a mnemonic function, helping you to remember the word to come if you're memorizing a poem.

At its most basic level, a poem is a collection of words, so you may choose to break down the poem in terms of different grammatical units. What are the nouns? The verbs? The qualifiers? The adverbs? Do these word types give you any clues into what the poem is about or who the speaker is?
 

Other topics in the Inside Poetry series:

• What Is Poetry, Anyway? 
• Where Do I Find Poems?
• What are the Different Types of Poetry? 
• How Should I Read Poems Out Loud?