Besides line breaks, another way to add tension to your poem is by reverse engineering it. The means that you take the order of the lines and reverse them. I do this with almost all of my poems because when I'm writing a poem, I have a tendency to write it in a way that's very predictable. A predictable poem lacks tension, so by reverse engineering it (and revising a few lines to make the reverse-engineered version work), I'm making it less predictable.
Here's an example of my original version of beyond, which is very predictable.
Example: "What is beyond?
A void so deep
thriving oceans glare
in hate?
Where blind eyes
always search
but never find?
A world where suns
never drown?
Where leaves
never jump
from a branch's embrace?
A place where blackbirds
sing
but their melodies kill?
Where darkened stairwells are
safest
while streetlights expose pain?"
As you can see, this poem is fairly predictable. There isn't much tension throughout it. However, when I did some reverse engineering to it, the poem became less predictable.
Example: "while streetlights expose pain
safest
where darkened stairwells
sing
a place where blackbird melodies
kill
from a branch's embrace
never jump
where leaves
never drown
a world where suns
are never found
always search
where blind eyes
hate
thriving oceans glare
a void so deep
--what is beyond?"
This entire poem was reverse-engineered, but not every line stayed the same when I reversed it. I had to revise some of them to help the lines flow better with one another. When reverse engineering, not every line needs to make perfect sense. Some of them can seem a little odd. In this case, the reverse-engineered version of beyond feels a little twisted/off to me, which is the type of mood I wanted to go for. I wanted to create a world that felt strange, and the reversed line order helps to portray that mood.
Sometimes I use reverse engineering for only parts of my poem. While some of my stanzas may have tension, sometimes there will be a stanza that lacks the tension the rest of the poem has. In these instances, I'll only reverse engineer the weaker stanzas to see if that helps add more tension.
On a side note, you probably noticed I used the word "while" and a few others that, in the previous chapter, I labeled as "unnecessary words." It's okay to use these words on occasion if they help the poem. However, for most poems, they can be cut without impacting the meaning you're trying to portray.
