find a translation

One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my reading life was to pass over the foreign words and phrases I encountered. My loss. Now I pause and get at least a rough or partial translation. Of course now the web makes things easier. In any case, my reading has been deepened by taking the time to find a translation.

filled in the blanks

Poets write the white space too.

bottom drops out

Until it’s too late, a reader can’t be certain that a space or a pause in the poem is not an abyss.

wait as they whet

One of those pauses during a writing workshop when in the background you could hear steel being sharpened on a grinding wheel.

hanging pause

At the end of a poetry reading there is that hanging pause before the plausive moment.

eloquent silence

the pause—that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it.

—Mark Twain (from the autobiography)

end of the line

The end of each line or verse (the turning) allows for a resonance to fill the brief pause and also opens the line up to a moment’s reflection.