Home › Glossary › Letter F

fragment verse

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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 poem or section consisting of deliberate fragments or incomplete units

Detailed Definition
Fragment verse describes poetry that intentionally adopts a broken, incomplete, or provisional aesthetic, using syntactic rupture, abrupt shifts, or omitted connective tissue to evoke instability, trauma, or the limits of expression; it foregrounds the poetic process as inherently partial, inviting readers to engage with absence as much as presence.
Example
Example in poetry:
Fragment verse appears in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” collaging voices and texts; In Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,” cultural fragments mourn lost coherence; In H.D.’s “Helen in Egypt,” mythic shards reconstruct narrative; In Anne Carson’s “Glass, Irony and God,” essay-poem fragments explore desire; Contemporary poet Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” uses prose fragments as poetic form.
Additional Notes
Fragment verse (or fragmentary poetry) is poetry that utilizes fragment composition, relying on incomplete lines, clauses, or images to convey meaning; it often emphasizes rupture, the limits of language, and the subjectivity of memory, requiring the reader to actively fill in the gaps.
Also Known As
Fragmental verse partial poem fractured lyric Clastogenic verse truncated line
Skip to main content