Saccadic lineation is a poetic technique that mimics saccadic eye movements—rapid, jerky shifts in visual focus—by structuring lines with abrupt breaks, enjambments, or disjunctive syntax that force the reader’s attention to leap unpredictably across the page; this form disrupts linear reading habits, creating a fragmented, cinematic, or perceptually unstable experience that mirrors modern consciousness, trauma, or digital distraction, as seen in the work of poets like Anne Carson or Claudia Rankine, where lineation becomes a tool for enacting cognitive or emotional disorientation.

Line breaks mimicking jerky eye movements. Experimental technique. From vision science term. Tip: Short, choppy lines creating staccato reading rhythm; often modern fragmented narrative.