MEDDLERS ANONYMOUS

Learning to live the muddy moment

After a year and a half in graduate school for poetry, one of my teachers noticed that I was writing lily-livered poems. “Manring,” he said, “I dare you to stop every line at its end.”

What he was referring to was my habit of enjambing—which in my case, because it was so constant it became a tic, meant I was always corralling the line forward towards som…