In poetry, enjambment (pronounced /ɪnˈdʒæmənt, ɛn-, -ˈdʒæmb-/; from the French word enjamber, meaning "to step over") is when a sentence or phrase continues from one line to the next without ending punctuation. This creates a flow of meaning that moves from one line to the next. Lines that do not use enjambment are called end-stopped because they end clearly at the line’s conclusion. The word enjambment comes from the French enjamber, which means "to cross over" or "to encroach."
When reading poetry with enjambment, the pause at the end of a line creates a sense of suspense. This tension is resolved when the reader encounters the words that complete the sentence (called the rejet). The suspense comes from the line’s end, which stops the reader, and the incomplete meaning, which suggests the sentence should continue. Although rhyme often gives a feeling of closure, enjambment can still be used in rhyming poems. Even in couplets (pairs of rhyming lines), older forms of poetry used open couplets, where rhyme and enjambment worked together.
Enjambment has been used in poetry for a long time. Homer, an ancient Greek poet, used it, and it is common in alliterative verse, a style of poetry that uses repeated sounds instead of rhyme. In the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible, enjambment is especially noticeable. In England, Elizabethan poets used enjambment in dramatic and storytelling poems before rhyming couplets became more common. John Milton, in his poem Paradise Lost, used enjambment and described it as a key feature of his work, saying it allowed meaning to flow from one line to the next.
Examples
The beginning of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land includes lines 4 and 7 that end with complete thoughts:
"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers."
Lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (written around 1611) use enjambment, meaning the lines continue without a pause:
"I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown."
In these lines, meaning flows from one line to the next, requiring the reader to move to the following sentence. This can create a sense of urgency or disorder. In contrast, lines from Romeo and Juliet (written around 1595) are completely end-stopped, with each line ending with a complete thought:
"A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon'd, and some punishèd."
Each line matches a complete unit of thought, such as a clause in a sentence. Early Shakespeare used more end-stopping, but as his style developed, enjambment became more common. Scholars like Goswin König and A. C. Bradley have studied the frequency of enjambment in Shakespeare's undated works to estimate their dates.
Lines 2–4 from John Keats' Endymion include:
"Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us…"
The song "One Night In Bangkok" from the musical Chess, written by Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus, includes lines like:
"The creme de la creme of the chess world in a Show with everything but Yul Brynner This grips me more than would a Muddy old river or reclining Buddha."
A technique closely related to enjambment is "broken rhyme" or "split rhyme," which involves splitting a word to rhyme with part of it. In English poetry, this is often used in light verse. For example, Willard Espy's poem The Unrhymable Word: Orange includes:
"The four eng- ineers Wore orange brassieres."
The clapping game "Miss Susie" uses a split like "…Hell / -o operator" to hint at the word "Hell" before replacing it with "Hello." Similarly, the Spanish song "La Camisa Negra" leads listeners to imagine an obscenity before completing the word more politely in the next verse.