Dropped line

And all the various things that lock our wrists to the past. Something infinite behind everything appears, :::::::::::::and then disappears.|Charles Wright|The Other Side of the River}} ## Use in modern poetry Dropped lines have a variety of functions and uses. In Robert Denham's words, a dropped line is "a spatial as well as temporal feature, affecting both the eye and ear." It may be used to determine the visual appearance of the line as a whole. Wright, for example, uses dropped lines to reference landscape paintings, especially by Paul Cézanne and Giorgio Morandi, explaining why his use of dropped line "can be seen as imitating the sense of horizontal rhythm prevalent in paintings by Cézanne."{{Citation ## Use in dramatic texts Lines which are broken between two voices, as in the first two lines in the following scene in *Hamlet*, may also be called dropped lines. In this case, the line is broken to reflect a change in character while preserving a steady iambic pentameter across the entire line. In classical tragedy this technique of dividing a single verse line between two or more characters is called *antilabe* and functions "as a means of heightening dramatic tension." It was "frequently utilized by Renaissance dramatists" such as Shakespeare: :Did you not speak to it? **MARCELLUS** ::::::::My lord, I did; :But answer made it none: yet once methought :It lifted up its head and did address :Itself to motion, like as it would speak;|William Shakespeare|Hamlet, Act I, Scene II}} ## References ## References 1. (4 November 2010). ["A Way of Happening: Carl Phillips: A Review and an Interview"](https://awayofhappening.blogspot.com/2010/11/carl-phillips-review-and-interview.html). *A Way of Happening*. 2. (April 2000). ["Borzoi Reader"](https://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/hirsch/poetsonpoetry.html). 3. Eggenberger, David. ''McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama''. Volume 1. 1972, p. 219. 4. Eggenberger, p. 219. ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropped_line) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropped_line?action=history). ::