Ode to Teachers

Mora breaks the lines to convey both action and narrative progress. For example, in the first stanza, the line break at “so that you wouldn’t see / me” (Lines 4-5) mimics both the speaker’s self-consciousness and the avoidance that motivates the action. This technique of continuing a sentence across a line break is known as enjambment. In the third stanza, Mora uses enjambed line breaks at “I read and reread your notes / praising / my writing” (Lines 16-18) to suspend the reader’s expectations (are these notes of reprimand?) before delivering the relatively surprising development that the speaker has not only begun writing, but has produced writing worthy of praise! Similarly, in the teacher’s whispered encouragement to share their “ideas” and “stories” in order to create a “fresh path” that will “take us to new vistas” (Lines 21-24), Mora breaks up the single statement into several enjambed lines. This approach prolongs the reader’s arrival at that vista and allows them to follow the path as well. Mora’s line breaks and use of enjambment provide a central means of converting the narrative drama of the story into a poetic event, thereby re-enacting the speaker’s own learning process.