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Broken verse

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Verse that contains interrupted, fragmented, or incomplete lines

Detailed Definition
Broken verse describes poetry that intentionally violates metrical, syntactic, or typographic norms through fragmentation, ellipsis, or disjunction to convey instability, rupture, or resistance; emerging from modernist and postmodernist aesthetics, it privileges rupture over resolution, as seen in the work of Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, or contemporary avant-garde practitioners.
Example
Example in poetry:
Broken verse: Verse lines intentionally irregular or fragmented, often in free verse; Used to reflect chaotic theme or emotional disturbance; Seen in experimental poetry.
Additional Notes
Poetry that is deliberately fragmented, disjointed, or formally incomplete; Achieved through fractured syntax, abrupt line breaks, non-standard punctuation, or the omission of expected structural elements; Often conveys psychological distress or a critique of ordered language.
Also Known As
fragmented verse disjointed lines disrupted poetry disjunctive line Fragment lyric jointed verse Poetic fragment
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