So that is one type of gracelessness, the extreme or asyntactical line break: These are generally breaks between subjects and verbs, between articles or possessive pronouns and their nouns, between prepositions and their objects, modifiers and what they modify. When you see what an awkward line break can add to the meaning and tone of a poem, it makes it all the more important not to just do this willy-nilly. In other words, the graceless line break can be powerful only in a poem where line breaks are generally made carefully. In all too many free-verse poems, lines are broken at the unexpected junctures for no discernible visual, semantic, or auditory purpose — save the sense that the poet is trying to keep line lengths relatively equal (even when the actual metrics of the lines beg to differ). Pick up a journal or anthology, and it won’t take you very long to find examples of this particular type of gracelessness that is probably just plain awkward. For reasons that deserve an essay in themselves,^[3] American poetry of the 1980s is loaded with examples. Better still, look in your own work for examples; I know that I can find plenty of instances in mine, and that, when I do, it’s time to think about why I’m breaking the line there, and what formal and revisionary possibilities that awkwardness might open up. James Longenbach, in The Art of the Poetic Line,^[4] explores this crucial but often-overlooked feature of poetic craft in great detail; with equally great flexibility, he considers the different ways in which line-endings (he doesn’t like the term “line break”) function in poem. Referring to the famous Robert Frost comment about free verse being like “playing tennis with the net down,” Longenbach goes further to state that “writing any kind of poem is more like playing tennis on a court in which the net is in motion at the same time that the ball is in motion” (p. 39). I’ve seen some amazing moves in tennis that didn’t look pretty but won the player the match. Or at least another point for gracelessness.

…the graceless line break can be powerful only in a poem where line breaks are generally made carefully.

Another type of productive gracelessness happens at the level of diction: the seemingly unfortunate word choice — “unfortunate” either because it calls too much attention to itself or because, on the other hand, it is flat. Ezra Pound described poetry as “the right words in the right order,” but sometimes, isn’t it possible for the “right word” to be the wrong word? Let me explain here. Diction, or word choice, is crucial to whether or not a poem works. But the right diction is not always arrived at through conscious control; sometimes, it’s reached through an openness, for better or for worse. This openness involves more than just letting the inner-censor or guard down to let the words come in as you write or revise a poem. In addition, the intellect needs to be asked to step away from the lectern and sit down in the circle with the others — affect, senses, stray scraps of language picked up from God-knows-where — so that the word-choosing process is not as narrow or directed as it is when you’re writing a report, or even an essay like this. All kinds of words show up when you summon this kind of openness; some of them fit, while some of them don’t. Some of them may make you look good as a poet or person; they may your poem palatable. Some of them may be odious, creating unnecessary connotations and noise.

And here’s the thing — sometimes you want those connotations and noise because the presence of such words contributes to some fundamental discomfort or imbalance that you want to create, be it in relation to the thematics of the poem or in relation to the feelings you wish to have your reader experience. Thus, semantic gracelessness appears in many poems ostensibly dealing with the body. While it’s certainly true that poetry about the body can consist of diction that accentuates peak, flow, health, even transcendence — all graceful conditions of the body unburdened by its own materiality —, there are plenty of writing situations in which certain word choices might well intrude on that sort of ideal grace to remind readers of the ultimate clumsiness and fallibility of the body: its stuff, its embarrassing emissions and excrescences, its humbling frailties, and the ways in which we are frequently forced to see that our very own body and its parts are woefully standard-issue and expendable.