Denise Levertov, in her 1979 essay “Technique and Tune-up” (New & Selected Essays, New Directions, 1992), says line breaks, among other things, do the following:
Unless a line happens to consist of a whole sentence, the linebreak subtly interrupts a sentence.
Unless a line happens to consist of a complete phrase or clause, it subtly interrupts a phrase or clause. (Though lines may also contain whole sentences, phrases, or clauses.)
These interruptions “notate the tiny nonsyntactic pauses that constantly take place during the thinking/feeling process” and that are not part of the natural syntax or “indicated by ordinary punctuation.”
The mind as it feels its way through a thought or an impression often stops with one foot in the air., its antennae waving, and its nose waffling. Linebreaks (though of course they may also happen to coincide with syntactic punctuation marks — commas or semi-colons or whatever) notate these infinitesimal hesitations.
This “nonsyntactical punctuation” signals that free verse and other non-traditional forms are not a rebellion, per se, but “an awakened interest in the experience of journeying” or “seeing the brushstrokes” in paintings.
It is a question of process, she writes. The “experience of incorporating into the rhythmic structure of the poem those little halts or pauses which are not accounted for by the logic of syntax” opens the workings of the poem to the reader, which also lays bare the workings of the poet’s mind.
The linebreak, in Levertov’s world view, is a scoring of the mind at work and does as much work as meter and rhyme, functioning perhaps as their modern equivalent.
Hank Kalet 