Writing Problems: Space and the Tyranny of the Left Margin

Prufer, Saroyan, Pritchard, Kyger, Dickinson, Howe, Paz, Didden, Frost, Brock-Broido

Most poems have their most interesting words and moments of surprise on the poem’s right edge. That’s where the punchiness, revelation, and thunderbolt occurs, and that’s where the eye and ear are drawn. Little articles, prepositions, and interstitials live on the left margin where they hope to be overlooked or not be seen. 

The right margin has all the reading interest because it needs it to provide countervailing pressure to the gravitational pull of the left margin. But, what if the gravitational pull of the left margin wasn’t there? What if insisting on it makes poems too torpid or stodgy? What can be learned from poems that are free to expand the page’s space? What precedents are there in poetry for moving away from being nailed to the margins?