Issue 11

SECOND THOUGHTS

ISSUE NO.11 AUGUST 2025 ISSN 2719-6739

EDITOR IN CHIEF Dominika Front EDITING & PROOFREADING Yousif Al-Naddaf Adrianna Bartoszek Dominika Front Piotr Gorczyński Karolina Kordońska Julia Krzeszowska Julia Sułkowska Kacper Kusio Sara Kusio Szymon Malkin Antonina Nizielska Aleksandra Socha Maria Stabulewska Jan Ziętara Helena Żegnałek ILLUSTRATORS: Daria Chmielewska Paulina Durakiewicz Julia Kozłowska Sanaz Nouri Palina Sachyvets Natalia Urban FRONT & BACK COVER DESIGN Julia Kozłowska DESIGN AND LAYOUT Janek Bodzioch Want to join us in preparing the next issue?

Write an email: second.thoughts.texts@gmail.com Follow us on Facebook and text us there! @second.thoughts.uw Find us on Instagram! @sec_ondthoughts

The views and opinions expressed through our magazine, social media, websites or any medium of information we send out are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Second Thoughts student club. Any content provided by our authors and designers are of their opinion and are not intended to malign anyone else’s opinion or beliefs.

Kaaviya Balakrishnan

Lead-in

celebrities’ takes on Ukraine, animal rights, and human trafficking all seem relevant because they’re advertising your favourite products. Silence is mistaken for ignorance or worse – indifference. Increasingly, silence has become a privilege. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live in that country, aren’t informed about that issue, or lack the resources to form a nuanced opinion; you’re expected to have one anyway.

When we first settled on this issue’s theme, I couldn’t shake off the uneasy question: How affordable is silence?

Since I sat down to write this piece, I’ve received two texts, an email, and a weather update. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I wasn’t reachable. The constant need to make myself available isn’t unique to me.

The expectation is a global standard.

Technology didn’t just make this demand for accessibility possible, it created it. With every scroll and swipe, we consume endless streams of news, opinions, and urgent calls to react. Silence, in a world built on noise, doesn’t seem like much of an option.

This demand for round-the-clock commentary is exhausting. Even with access to all the world’s information, the question remains: how much can we truly process, understand, and internalise? We are human. We are constantly working, adapting, unlearning, and learning again in a rapidly shifting world. The volume of information that we are asked to process daily, along with the biases we must navigate, is staggering. Silence is not a luxury, it’s a right – one you’re allowed to exercise. Saying you don’t know enough yet or you’re still processing should be okay.

I remember sitting in India in 2016, following the U.S. presidential election. It should have felt entirely irrelevant to me, but the fear of not having an opinion to share at a casual coffee with friends kept me tuned in. There was pressure to know, and even more pressure to speak. We’ve created a culture where not commenting feels like a moral failure.

Janek Bodzioch

Celebrities who remain silent on social or political issues are publicly scrutinised, despite the fact that their job is to act, not to advocate. But simplicity isn’t acceptable anymore. The public demands opinions on everything: suddenly, some C-list

3

2

Silence doesn’t always signal apathy. You are allowed to take your time. And in many cases, withholding comment until you’re ready might be the most honest, intentional thing you can do. When you finally do speak, let it come from a place of care and clarity, rather than pressure to perform.

Weaponising silence against those who are overwhelmed, uninformed, or simply don’t have the space to respond will cause more harm than good. Not everyone can afford to speak, and not everyone has the platform, time, or safety to do so. Of course, in the face of current injustices like wars, displacement, and climate collapse, silence can feel morally uncomfortable.

We are asked to fight for those who can’t.

But even then, we must hold our silence responsibly until we have taken the time to learn. Speaking up without understanding does no favours to the cause. If we want to advocate, we must also research.

This issue of our magazine captures precisely that tension. Silence can be a refuge for the overwhelmed. At the same time, knowledge must be the backbone of any voice that chooses to break it. Here, you’ll read thoughts that are both personal and carefully formed – voices shaped not by urgency alone, but by reflection.

Sanaz Nouri

It’s an ode to what silence is, what it could be, and what it absolutely isn’t.

4 3

Contents Leader | Kaaviya Balakrishnan

SOCIAL 5

Who’s Afraid of Silence? Or, Why I Hate Van Gogh | Emma Panasiuk

CULTURAL 9

When Silence Says More than Words Ever Could | Małgorzata Komor

13

After Silence, There Is Music: Revisiting SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides | Aleksandra Bieniewska

17

I can’t finish thi Poetic Space and How Lines Break | Natallia Valadzko

5

4

Emma Panasiuk

Who’s Afraid of Silence? Or, Why I Hate Van Gogh I don’t necessarily mean that attending such an exhibition once or twice would be a detrimental or unpleasant experience.

It could be fun, who knows. What seems much worse is the persistent narrative that this is the inevitable future of visual art – more attractive and engaging, meeting the visitors’ expectations to a greater degree than the traditional museums, which should swiftly move in this direction if they want to remain part of the game. At the immersives, the pictures are animated, the floors welcoming and cozy to sit on, even the smells improved. The usual silence of traditional art galleries is also eliminated – with music playing, not a single sense is left out. (Aside from taste, but maybe soon there will be a solution to that as well.) These comforts, although arguably distracting from the pictures themselves, are seen as advantages, helping the guests achieve a more pleasant experience.

They also promote the strange idea that exhibitions or museums are visitor-friendly to the extent that they alleviate the burden of doing any perceptive or interpretative work, which begs the question – why even go there at all?

My dislike towards those exhibitions was not caused by a particularly negative experience at any of them, it’s really just the idea itself. The way visitors are encouraged to participate in them seems like the very antithesis of a quiet, focused, and conscious looking – the paintings magnified and projected onto walls, their glowing surfaces necessarily losing all the physical properties of the canvas the artist actually touched. Painting, like most things, can be made to seem effortless only by putting in a lot of effort, and recognizing this is a skill in itself. This is not to say that a piece of art gains value simply from the fact that work was put into it; rather that all this work behind the subtle details cannot be fully appreciated through a few short, distracted glances.

5

Paulina Durakiewicz

The title is clickbait, I admit. I don’t actually hate Van Gogh; what I hate is Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. Many of my friends and relatives living abroad would probably beg to differ. Over the years, I have watched their preferences shift – at least when it comes to the attractions they choose during their regular visits. For a long time, our (fantastic, in my opinion) National Museum was the undefeated winner of different must-see lists. During the last couple of years, however, I have watched them gravitate towards the immersive exhibitions – more entertaining, more appropriate for a fun city break, I guess.

Paulina Durakiewicz

6

It’s very easy to dismiss the immersive exhibitions as just kitschy. But I think their main problem lies in how strongly they embody the contemporary desire to “smoothen out” any encounter with art, eliminating all possible inconveniences.

In her recent essay Machine Yearning, cultural critic Rayne Fisher-Quann connects the effortlessness of consumption under contemporary capitalism with the increasing popularity of AI-produced, sloppy art: “This availability culture […] relies on the mystification and obfuscation of labour. Capitalism ‘teaches us that the objects surrounding us are inert and barren of any human origin’1, void of history. It demands and rewards the transformation of art into pure product, beholden to the needs of the market”, she writes.

One example Fisher-Quann cites in her essay is the 2024 investigation into the socalled ‘ghost artists’ on Spotify. As described by the journalist Liz Pelly, the Perfect Fit Content (PFC) initiative had employees quietly fill different playlists with massproduced pieces whose authors had waived their rights to royalties. The sole aim was maximizing the company’s profits. The scheme concerned mostly music that users were likely to play in the background, for example while working or relaxing – so genres like jazz, ambient, classical. Each is unique in its own right, requiring as much effort and craft as compositions with vocals. Still, they were all sensitive to this particular type of expropriation precisely because of the inattentive way listeners interacted with them.

This is, of course, to some extent understandable – sitting in complete silence, alone at home all day, can be unpleasant, and people seek to escape that. Silence in general is very often uncomfortable, frantically avoided in modern urban life. Yet it is also a natural part of life and, arguably, the perfect embodiment of the discomfort we’ve begun to abhor. In Pelly’s book Mood Machine, there is a quote by one of Spotify’s exemployees: “I honestly think that the core of the company’s success was recognizing that they’re not selling music. They’re not providing music. They’re filling people’s time. And he [Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify] said at a company meeting [...] ‘Apple Music, Amazon, these aren’t our competitors. Our only competitor is silence.’”

Availability culture has long been a hallmark of how we obtain physical commodities like food or clothing, ordered through a finger tap and delivered straight to our door by an invisible stranger. But now it has begun to sneak into experiences and sensations too. Just compare the two settings – the challenging, yet meaningful silence of the traditional museum vs the easy, yet overwhelming stimuli of the immersive exhibition. Similarly to how the frictionless purchase of goods easily leads to disregarding the human labor put into their production, immersive exhibitions are bound to simplify our engagement with art.

1

This is quoted from Zoë Hu’s essay on Andrew Tate.

7

Paulina Durakiewicz

As consumers or audiences (and this, too, is a choice), we would be mistaken to think we are not a part of this cultural shift. It’s easy – and mostly valid – to shame the dystopian politics of companies like Spotify. And yet, the PFC initiative couldn’t have been born if the executives had been certain that a considerable part of listeners would quickly notice. If the only drive behind listening to music or viewing paintings is this frantic desire to kill the uncomfortable quietness around us, we’re eventually likely to become desensitized to any sort of perceptive effort. This, in turn, will likely lead to more art being transformed into consumable content, and the reasons behind choosing either may become similarly mechanical, escapist. A rejection of this shallow engagement must necessarily lead to the poignant question Fisher-Quann asks at the end of her essay: “can we handle the silence?”.

All this puts contemporary audiences in a cultural landscape where the default mode of experiencing cultural texts is changing. I think this shift should lead to a critical examination of not only how we look at art, but also why: to experience something profound, connect with a different human being, grow as viewers and as creative thinkers? Or just to pleasantly distract ourselves from the daily frustrations? Of course, the latter isn’t all that bad – I love a good song when I’m stuck in traffic. But demand creates supply, and so experiencing creative output only in this low-effort mode of consumption is starting to sway its production this way, too.

Considering that the companies supplying us with art and content are not human- or worker-, but profit-oriented entities, and with AI already replacing human artists at unprecedented levels, this is something that should be taken seriously.

Paulina Durakiewicz

It’s clear that the consumer-friendly, tech-driven approach to art development is reaching its limitations; or, perhaps, it already has. I would argue that the astounding technological progress of this century and the increased availability of nearly every commodity have lured some of us into thinking we can effortlessly bridge the gap between our psyche and the external environment. But the question remains: are there any shortcuts on the road to genuine connection, to profoundness, to transcendence? The answer, I think, is still no.

8

Małgorzata Komor

When Silence Says More than Words Ever Could

Recently, I saw a film that instantly became one of my favourites, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I enjoyed it so much. While it did feature complex characters and an engrossing plot, typically associated with highly acclaimed cinema, I felt it wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

Finally, it came to me. I realised that what made the film stand out was the dialogue, or rather, often its absence. In the most important scenes, the characters don’t deliver long, flowery monologues, exchange heated lines, or shout with tears streaming down their faces. Instead, they usually resort to silence. In the case of this film, it works perfectly well.

from the lantern inside, which highlights the juxtaposition between a safe shelter and the dangers of untamed nature. She spends the entire night in front of the house, hoping to be let in. The next day, Kahlen is shown organising the books on his shelf.

This can be seen as emblematic of his deep-seated need for order and structure, which is one of the main reasons for not letting Anmai in: it would be a diversion from his meticulous plan. We then see Ann giving him a stern look, making him finally acknowledge that the girl should be welcomed into their household. Kahlen opens the door and makes an inviting gesture towards Anmai Mus, who comes running inside. A high-angle shot in this scene – with the camera looking down at the girl – emphasises her vulnerability and showcases her dependence on Ludvig and Ann.

The Promised Land (2023) is a historical epic directed by Nikolaj Arcel. The film takes place in 18th-century Denmark and tells the story of a retired army captain, Ludvig Kahlen (in this role Mads Mikkelsen), who takes it upon himself to tame the desolate Jutland moorland, cultivate its soil, and form the first settlement on its lawless grounds. Along the way, he meets Ann Barbara (played

by Amanda Collin), a runaway who finds refuge with him.

Palina Sachyvets

Then, one night, a young girl called Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg) sneaks into Kahlen’s house, but the man kicks her out, arguing that they barely have enough food for two people and can’t take her in. Despite that, she does not leave. Until the very end of the sequence, no words are uttered. The only sounds we hear are footsteps and a creaking door. In the shot where Anmai stands in front of the house, the sky takes up most of the frame. Its cold, blue tones contrast with the inviting glow coming 9

10

Sanaz Nouri

This is one of the most crucial scenes in the film, as it alters our perception of the protagonist and reveals that he cares for more than just his settlement plan. And yet, there’s no dialogue. Everything we need to know is shown through camera angles, colours and, most importantly, silence.

Not only does it allow us to imagine what is going on in the characters’ minds and deeply immerse ourselves in the scene, but it also shifts our focus to the details that otherwise would go unnoticed.

Most of the emotional tension in their parting scene is conveyed through closeups, enabling us to focus on the characters’ feelings, while the latter part of the scene is dominated by long shots. As Anmai is leaving, Kahlen stands in front of his house, with vast fields visible in the background.

This measure makes his silhouette smaller and more distant, which can indicate Ludvig’s loneliness, since he is now going to be the only person remaining on the farm.

The long shots can represent a detachment from the previous stage of his life that he shared with Anmai and contrast the affectionate close-ups that showcased their bond. Throughout, the only thing that we can hear is melancholic music in the background, which slowly increases in volume until Ludvig is left alone. This symbolises the intense emotions that he experiences. Similarly, the complete absence of the score in the next scene signifies the emptiness he now has to live with.

Palina Sachyvets

Later in the film, Ann Barbara is imprisoned after killing a nobleman. The man falsely claimed Kahlen’s land as his own and was prepared to do everything to gain it, even if it meant killing its owner.

Ann saved Kahlen’s life at the cost of her own freedom, leaving him and the girl as the only ones on the farm. Consequently, Ludvig and Anmai Mus grow very close.

The bond they created over the years makes their parting later in the film even more heartbreaking. When Anmai leaves the nest, there are almost no words exchanged between her and Ludvig – she only thanks him for everything and leaves. One might imagine that this would make the characters look rather indifferent. Nothing could be further from the truth. It takes only one glance at the screen to realise the immense weight of this scene. It’s visible in the way Ludvig encourages her to follow the path to a new life with one simple nod, in Anmai running to hug him one last time and in the wistful look on Ludvig’s face with sad, teary eyes. Anmai leading a life that she chooses for herself is the only thing he desires more than her staying with him.

11

12 12

What I love about The Promised Land is that it leaves ample space for viewers to interpret the events. This approach to dialogue aligns perfectly with the film’s pure and beautiful simplicity. When I watch it, the silence echoes in my ears, allowing me to fully immerse myself in the moment, concentrate on the experience, and notice details that might otherwise be overlooked.

Sanaz Nouri

In the final sequences of the film, Kahlen tries to keep up with the regular work on the farm after Anmai Mus’s departure. He dutifully completes his usual tasks, but the loneliness that bears down on him is clearly visible, especially in the high-angle shot of him eating alone in an empty, quiet house.

The vastness of the moorland and extended shots of him working on the farm reflect the emptiness within him. The entire sequence is swamped by dark, greyish tones, which further emphasise his melancholy.

However, as he leaves the settlement, the sun finally shines, and everything seems at least a bit brighter. He ventures to free Ann Barbara from a prison transport in the last possible attempt to help her, as she is supposed to be transferred to Copenhagen for involuntary servitude. The rescue scene isn’t shown, but a close-up of open shackles lying on the grass near an empty carriage is just enough to piece everything together.

In the next shot, they approach the seashore on horseback, something Ann has always dreamt of doing. A calm sea and the green hills of the Danish coast stretch in the background. This natural landscape contrasts with the gloomy atmosphere of the empty farm, evoking a sense of peace. The significance of this moment is heightened by slow, melancholic music, which gradually becomes more powerful throughout the scene until the very end of the film. Furthermore, the sea they are nearing may symbolise freedom, but at the same time, the unknown, as they leave everything behind, willing to start from scratch.

Aleksandra Bieniewska

After Silence, There Is Music: Revisiting SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides I was fifteen when I first stumbled upon her music.

as a wedding and party DJ, first releasing music in 2013 under a stage-name alias.

Early in her career, Sophie’s true identity remained a subject of press speculation.

Her debut studio album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, secured a GRAMMY nomination six years later. Its title is a smartly crafted reverse mondegreen of the phrase “I love every person’s insides” pronounced with a British accent. Apart from her personal projects, she worked with musicians such as Madonna, Vince Staples, and Charli xcx.

Her influence extends even further than that, as numerous celebrities have since quoted her as an inspiration for their work.

She kept producing music for several artists up until her untimely death in 2021.

It was the fall of 2020, and the COVID-19 blues were at an all-time low. At that time, I developed an awful pattern of not sleeping and mindlessly browsing the internet until the sun rose outside my window. To make matters worse, the silence became physically unbearable; I had to have background noise running at all times. Being a creature of habit, I was up one random night doomscrolling the YouTube explore page into oblivion. I was trying to find a thumbnail that looked appealing when I came across a music video titled “It’s Okay to Cry.” I caved in and clicked. From the other side of the computer screen, an orange-haired person was dancing and smiling at me. She was bright and mesmerizing, and I couldn’t look away. From that moment on, I was hooked.

I spent the following three months doing a deep-dive into the rest of her discography, examining all the nooks and crannies. The end of January came around, I lost track of time, and the next thing I knew, she was gone.

SOPHIE, or rather Sophie Xeon, was an English producer and songwriter. Above all, she was a visionary. Her work was a sugary, experimental take on pop music, pioneering a genre later classified as hyperpop. Considering her humble beginnings, it must have been her immense creativity and strong work ethic that earned her a place in the music industry. She started her journey 13

Natalia Urban

What initially drew me to Sophie’s songs was the way she played with electronic music and made it her own entity. She was a sound design master, and her ability to perfectly transcribe a desired texture to sound through synthesizers was ahead of its time. Imagine two bumper plates grinding against each other, pots and pans being hit with metal spoons, or balloons rubbing against a hard surface. Where most people heard a rather annoying, agitating sound, Sophie saw potential for music. She used simple waves (sine, square) and panning effects, stacking them on top of each other. I couldn’t retrace her steps even if I desperately tried to. It takes an immense ability to innovate to manipulate sound the way she did. Many aspects of Sophie’s work are noteworthy, as her discography is a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that never truly fits together without taking a second look. She traversed through genres, unafraid to merge them together. The beats she produced made dance-pop meet ambient, or even EDM trap styles. In a 2018 interview with Arte TRACKS, Sophie posed a question: “Why would any musicians want to limit themselves?” It shows that she practiced what she preached.

14

Sophie’s first full-length studio project opens with a stream of self-affirming lyrics: “Just know whatever hurts, it’s all mine/It’s okay to cry.” The ballad is a tearjerking beacon of queer joy and liberation.

Its music video was the first time the artist appeared publicly, simultaneously revealing her identity as a transgender woman. The second track, “Ponyboy”, stands in opposition to the opener, both in sound and topic matter. The project is full of pitch-shifting, which complements the ever-changing concepts between the songs.

With its loudness and radicalness, it still manages to be versatile. “Faceshopping” presents an interesting commentary on cosmetic procedures becoming increasingly common and socially acceptable. It also happens to be incredibly catchy and may lead listeners to repeat “my face is the front of shop” for the rest of the day. On the other hand, “Infatuation” is a soft and somber piece that sounds like a confession. Subtle aquatic chimes occur in the background and become gradually more audible as the track goes on. The lyrics are filled with yearning for another person. What connects the songs in the seemingly random tracklist are the themes.

At its very core, Xeon’s music is everything that has to do with the human experience.

15

Palina Sachyvets

My favorite song of hers remains “Is It Cold in the Water?” – a three-and-ahalf-minute-long electronic monster that merges the syrupy vocals of Cecile Believe with muffled ambient sounds. It is reminiscent of long-lost recordings from Björk’s Vespertine album. The speaker in the song is restless in their search for peace: “I’m freezing/I’m burning/I’ve left my home.” Synthesizer chords cycle and grow in volume throughout the track, building tension that doesn’t find a resolution until the very end of the song. The lyricism is simple in form, yet cathartic in matter.

There is a wave of hope, a light waiting on the horizon. The singer cries out, “I’m swimming, I’m breathing.” During early 2018 live shows, Xeon performed the song with a backdrop mostly consisting of Shutterstock videos of the sea surface.

The mix of rich imagery present in the lyrics, as well as the haunting singing of Believe, makes for an incredible listening experience. One singular track can completely pull the listener out of mundane, everyday life and transport them somewhere else. I would strongly recommend it to anyone wanting to explore Sophie’s discography, as it shows a trailblazing change in the way a musician perceives and interacts with their art.

an intangible mark with their ability to make a person feel so much in a span of a little under forty minutes. My thoughts are only a speck amongst all the well-deserved praise. Her peers (Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent, to name a few) have since paid their respects by releasing homages dedicated to the singer. A posthumous album, SOPHIE, was released in September 2024. It includes features from her past collaborators. To my pleasant surprise, Sophie’s community remains anything but quiet. Silence isn’t the only thing transcending space and time, music is.

After all, we are just “immaterial girls, immaterial boys.”

16

Natalia Urban

Seasons change, grim memories fade, and the ability to sleep can be restored.

Despite the time that has passed, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides remains a highly relevant work. I would venture to say a lot of us have dreamt about a “Whole New World” or becoming “Immaterial” in recent months. It’s albums like these that leave

Natallia Valadzko

I can’t finish thi -

Poetic Space and How Lines Break

A page in a novel and a page from a poetry volume look drastically different in comparison. In the case of the latter, stanzas come in short lines or long lines.

Some lines can be aligned to the left while others may be indented differently all over the page. Older poetic forms might have a more predictable layout when it comes to the number of lines per stanza or the use of spaces. At the same time, contemporary free verse often exhibits way more freedom when it comes to unconventional punctuation and white space on the page. If one rewrites a few sentences of prose using the typical poetry layout, has the text been automatically turned into a poem?

is reciting and listening to poems, where the performed prosody and pauses are not necessarily restricted to what is recorded on the page (if there was a written record of the performed poem in the first place!).

However captivating both experiences can be, certain things are afforded by the graphic level. For example, how do you even recite indentation, extended spaces, parentheses, and punctuation besides expressing it just by pausing? Another thing that seems special about the graphic layer of communication in poems is that, in some ways it may transcend the linearity of language. To put it differently, the page space may be manipulated in a way that allows the reader to escape the linear order and attend to several things simultaneously.

The resources of page space could be exploited to convey meanings in unconventional ways.

Paulina Durakiewicz

While prose follows the constraints of the page, poets choose to break the text in their poems wherever they see fit. That is the defining characteristic of poetry – the poetic line. It is the marked threshold where a line of poetry ends, and the next one begins. The line does not have to form a complete phrase or a syntactic unit: there are no restrictions on what is left dangling or is moved to the following line. There are countless ways to break a poem, and each would result in a very different reading experience. Some say that a well-chosen line break is what distinguishes a good poem from a great one.

First, it feels important to sort out how poetry is consumed – whether it’s by being looked at or by being listened to. On the one hand, there is solitary reading of poems that includes attending to the page full of white space and well- (or ill-) behaved lines of writing. On the other hand, there 17

When we read a poem, we read more than its words; we read words against the page, against its white space. Line breaks are only one of the ways a poet may control the white space – there are many more opportunities since white space surrounds the “islands” of text from all sides. Poets and critics often talk of white space as the unsayable. It can be silence, fear (as the genre of horror might have taught us), grief, absence, hesitation, and time. Sometimes saying nothing is saying everything. This is why poets keep the silences, the white spaces, the careful line breaking in their toolboxes.

this article is not a poem it does not care for line breaks and negative space

and

yet should it

might

Paulina Durakiewicz

I’d be lying if I said that I put too much thought into breaking this string of words.

However, would it still come across as a poem to an unsuspecting reader? Perhaps, perhaps not. If this piece of writing were found in an artbook or painted on the wall, even if it didn’t start as a poem, would one perceive it as such? Even this simple example can be used to highlight a couple of things. A line break slows a reader down and makes them linger, so when we reach the end of “this article is not a,” we have the space to ask ourselves, “Is not a what?” And for a moment, there are infinite options, until we get to “poem.” It’s not a poem, okay.

What’s next? “It does not care for line.”

Lines? Oh, line breaks? But for a second, the idea of disregarding lines as well as line breaks may be entertained. The next line finishes with “and,” and one might expect another thing this article does not care for, but we are met with the opposite.

Instead of adding to what we know, we get the contrastive “yet” that leaves us with the finishing question.

Natalia Urban

One of the reasons why it might be hard to talk about a line break is that it doesn’t function independently of other poetic elements. You can’t divorce it from the meaning, syntax, sound, or rhythm; instead, it modifies and amplifies them all. Let me give a superficial example by embedding the concept into this very text. This article is not a poem; it does not care for line breaks and negative space, and yet, should it? It might. What follows next is a silly experiment in response to the question asked before: what happens if you linebreak a piece of prose?

18

So what are the possible functions (or the effects) of line breaks? I’d like to analyze parts of Ann Lauterbach’s poem “Table” as an example. First of all, line breaks are a game changer when it comes to creating tension and opposition. Take a look at the first two stanzas: People gather. They eat, drink, speak. They are among themselves happily. They celebrate this or that occasion.

The cat does not like the cat door I installed.

Line breaks are said to create movement; they shape the rhythm. Long lines are slow, short ones are fast, sometimes even ragged, edgy. The stanza above reads as somewhat asymmetrical, as if stumbling over your own words when remembering something traumatic. Besides tension, line breaks contribute to holding the intrigue. “I recall” – the pause is pregnant with the abundance and weight of one’s memories. A wellformed sentence, which could be easily placed in a prose memoir, is broken across three lines. The proximity of “I was a child.

I feared” creates an impression of causeand-effect; I was just a child, so I feared? As for the last line, isolating it makes the idea more potent when it is unobstructed by the surrounding noise of other clauses. At the same time, it may be read as a declarative: it is not the fear of whether they carried bombs; they did carry bombs.

It is not transparent.

Paulina Durakiewicz

Three lines end in “they” (where “They” also starts each of the sentences!), which isolates and puts the spotlight on a group of “them.” Due to the hesitation of a line break, what gets foregrounded is not what they do but rather the mere declaration of the existence of “them.” As a result, “they” are contrasted with something else. As I am reading it, I am thinking: “they” as opposed to us, me, the poet? But then we get to the second stanza that perhaps rewrites these answers – it is the cat. “The cat” is isolated by a line break and also cushioned by the left indentation. “They” and “the cat” are almost aligned on the page in neat opposition; but “the cat” is still keeping its distance.

The final point concerns the endstopped lines: instances when a whole idea or phrase stands on its own, almost like a complete sentence, often marked with a comma, a period, or a dash. Here’s the fifth stanza to consider:

The following part goes:

I wish to be clear.

A distant

Clarity is not the same

sound, a small engine

as the literal. I object

in the sky. I recall

to the literal.

planes at night when

What does this mean?

I was a child. I feared they carried bombs.

19

Natalia Urban

Line breaks serve a special purpose in every poem: they are a way to teach the reader how to read the poem, where to look closer, where to stop and think for yourself before continuing. It may seem chaotic, almost random, but providing readers with a unique experience requires knowing where to break the line .

Paulina Durakiewicz

There are two end-stopped lines here: the first and the last. End-stopped lines are thought to provide a sense of completion, finality, and even reassurance. Quite often, there is something anxious about breaking a line part-way through the clause or phrase. Such lines may keep readers on the edge of their seats or invite introspection.

“I wish to be clear” would not seem nearly as unfaltering if it were line-broken. It exudes determination and intention.

20