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Feeling break

Sound
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

A break in a poem designed to register heightened emotional effect

Detailed Definition
A Feeling break is a deliberate pause or rupture in a poem—marked by punctuation, lineation, or white space—that isolates or intensifies an emotional moment, allowing the reader to absorb a surge of feeling such as grief, joy, or revelation; distinct from grammatical caesurae, this break serves affective rather than syntactic purposes, functioning as a breath or silence charged with emotional weight.
Example
Example in poetry:
A shift in emotional tone, such as in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” to “Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, / Haply I think on thee”
Additional Notes
A Feeling break is a pause, silence, or sudden shift in rhythm or thought in a poem designed to emphasize or allow space for an emotional response, either from the speaker or to be felt by the reader; it's a strategic use of silence or disruption to foreground emotional content, related to the use of caesura or a line break's emotional impact.
Also Known As
Emotional break Feeling fracture Affective rupture Affective caesura
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