Another good example of an end-stopped
line is the third line of stanza 3. In the first three
lines of the stanza, the narrator (who can be
identified with Oliver) contemplates the snake’s
body, now still and quiet in death. In the third
line, she compares the snake to a deceased sibling
and then closes the line with a period. The com-
parison is shocking to the reader; few people ever
consider a snake as a brother or a sister. Yet for
Oliver, who believes in the connectedness of all
nature, the snake is a member of her creaturely
family. The period at the end of this line allows
the reader to take this in and meditate for a brief
moment about how the snake’s death diminishes
the narrator and all of creation. At the same time,
of course, the period also signals an ending—the
ending of the snake’s life as well as the ending of
the section of the poem that concerns the actual
killing of the snake by the truck. The fourth line
of the stanza, after the period, focuses now on the
first-person narrator, not the snake.
Another way that a poet chooses to introduce
pauses into his or her work is through the use of
caesura, a word that in verse simply means a
pause, usually in the middle of a line rather than
at the end. Oliver uses this device several times in
‘‘The Black Snake.’’ In the second line of stanza 4,
Oliver places a colon immediately after the itali-
cized word ‘‘death.’’ A colon is often used in writ-
ing to introduce a list. Thus, the caesura produced
through the use of the colon signals to the reader
that Oliver is about to list something profound,
something at the heart of the poem. Then, after
two brief, end-stopped lines, Oliver again uses
caesura in the middle of the last line of the stanza;
after listing three true things about death, she
stops. Her next sentence, beginning in the middle
of the fourth line of the stanza, starts with the
word ‘‘yet.’’ This word functions in this sentence
in the same way that ‘‘but’’ or ‘‘however’’ might: to
signal a shift in idea. In this case, Oliver shifts her
focus away from death, toward a consideration of
what makes life persist in the face of certain death.
The use of caesura here with the word ‘‘yet’’ reads
as if Oliver has constructed a sign that says,
‘‘Stop! Prepare to turn!’’
In addition to end stops and caesuras, poets
sometimes choose to carry their thoughts or syn-
tactic units over lines or stanzas in a technique
called enjambment, a French term for ‘‘striding
over.’’ Oliver addresses how a poet can use
enjambment to control the reader in herOhio
Reviewessay:
When the poet—enjambs the line—breaks syn-
tax by turning the line before the phrase is com-
plete at a natural point—it speeds the line for
two reasons—curiosity about the missing part of
the phrase impels the reader to hurry on, and the
reader will hurry twice as fast over the obstacle
of the pausebecause it is there—we leap with
more energy over a ditch than over no ditch.
Oliver uses enjambment throughout ‘‘The Black
Snake’’ with fine effect. The last stanza of the
poem illustrates the combination of end stopping
with enjambment that drives home the message of
the poem. The first line of stanza 6 is end-stopped,
the syntactic unit completed. The second line of
the stanza, though it begins with the same two
words, setting up a parallel structure, presents a
thought that is continued over the next three lines.
In this case, the lines provide a description of the
snake moving as snakes do, through leaves and
greenery in the spring, all symbolic of life. The
enjambment, weaving across the lines of the
stanza, mimics the snake’s movement through
nature. It is also significant that lines 2 and 3 are
two of the longest lines in the poem, also mimick-
ing the long, lean body of the snake. The enjamb-
ment continues to the last, suddenly short, end-
stopped line.
The effect of the combination of enjambment
and end stopping is at once startling and dazzling.
Through her subtle use of poetic devices, Oliver
entices the reader to slide quickly through lines 2,
3, and 4 of the last stanza, freely moving with the
snake through the happiness of spring. Like the
snake moving unaware into the road, not knowing
that he is in the last seconds of his life, the reader
slides into the last line of the poem, slamming intoBraided whip(ÓMichael Rutherford / SuperStock)The Black Snake