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Paratactic enjambment

Device
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 line break that coincides with the end of a grammatical clause, creating a sense of independence and clarity while still advancing the poem’s momentum.

Detailed Definition
Paratactic enjambment occurs when a sentence or phrase runs over a line break without syntactic pause or subordinating conjunction, creating abrupt juxtapositions and heightened immediacy; common in modernist and imagist poetry (e.g., Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow”), it emphasizes visual and rhythmic fragmentation over logical connective tissue.
Example
Example in poetry:
Paratactic enjambment in William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow”: “so much depends / upon”; In Ginsberg’s “Howl,” clauses run on without subordination: “who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed”; Paratactic enjambment in H.D.’s “Oread”: “Whirl up, sea— / whirl your pointed pines”; Contemporary: Claudia Rankine uses paratactic enjambment to juxtapose racial incidents without causal links
Additional Notes
Line break separating parallel grammatical structures without subordination. Creates paratactic effect across lines. Contrast with hypotactic enjambment. Emphasizes equality between clauses and immediate, cumulative impact.
Also Known As
Coordinate overflow Side-by-side run-on Equal-clause continuation Non-hierarchical enjambment
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