Writing Problems: What is Enjambment For?

Enjambment is really about non-alignment. Enjambment is overspill and silhouette. It signals juncture and pause, but also half-meaning that is in harmony or defiance of the sentence’s meaning. 

If you increase non-coincidence in the frame, syntax, or thought in a poem, enjambment is the tool to convey it. Two trains leaving a station: one train says “closure” and one train says “go on.” To Elvis it was a mystery, and it remains one.

When a reader encounters the inherent tension of a line broken across a sentence, their awareness also rises. So, enjambment increases complexity, the infinite versus the finite, and the un-fulfillment of expectation; it’s the arbiter of surprise.