An attenuated line is a poetic line that is deliberately thinned—through sparse diction, minimal punctuation, or extreme brevity—to convey fragility, exhaustion, or emotional restraint; such lines often appear in poems dealing with loss, silence, or trauma, where what is left unsaid or barely articulated carries the greatest weight, and the visual and rhythmic sparseness on the page mirrors the speaker’s psychological or physical depletion, as in the late work of Paul Celan or minimalist contemporary lyric.

Line deliberately shortened or reduced from expected length. Creates emphasis through brevity or incompleteness. Related to truncated line. Useful for creating hesitation, fragmentation, or focus on essential words.