Poetry for Students, Volume 35

to explore the relationship of spirituality to the
world around him, to try to decipher the corre-
spondence between nature and the human spirit.
In ‘‘Words Are the Diminution of All Things,’’
the reader sees this effort in action as the poet
divines his destiny from what he sees not only in
his imagination but also in the skies, the weather,
and the passage of the day.

STYLE

Line Placement and the Stepped Line
Wright is known for the way he handles lines of
poetry. At about the time Wright was writing
‘‘Words Are the Diminution of All Things,’’ his
style was changing a bit as he increasingly con-
densed subject matter and lengthened the line. His
goal was to extend the line of verse as far as he
could towards prose without its becoming prose.
He wanted to have the conversational quality of
prose while maintaining features of free verse, the
sound patterns of poetry, and the compressed
meaning that can be conveyed by poetry.

For Wright, poetry is a matter of attitude

and perception, the latter being assisted by the

look of a poem. His distinctive style is to use the

stepped line, also known as a dropped line or, as

Wright calls it, the low rider. The stepped line is

one that starts flush left, as is normal, but then

is broken apart with the second part indented

on the next line. Sometimes the dropped line

extends to a third line. For example, in the first

stanza of ‘‘Words Are the Diminution of All

Things’’ lines 1 and 2 are stepped with the sepa-

ration coming at the point of the coordinating

conjunction to emphasize that the two lines are

one sentence. Lines 6 and 7 are stepped with the

break coming at the comma between the two

parts: one establishing that the names are sink-

ing down, the second explaining what is causing

them to sink.

In the second stanza of ‘‘Words Are the

Diminution of All Things,’’ lines 2 and 3 are

stepped. There is no coordinating conjunction or

comma to indicate two halves of a thought, but the

word ‘‘as’’ shows a cause-and-effect relationship

when saying that there is not much left to talk

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park and Blue Ridge Mountains in the morning(Image copyright
gary718, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)

Words Are the Diminution of All Things