[line breaks and flow]

I came across this poem today over at Cassis's blog at Frontline Books. In her post, Cassis talks about flow: "Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi uses the term 'flow' to describe the state of absorption in the creative process. He defines flow as "an automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness." Ah...where is my flow? With flow rustling in my mind, I read the remainder of Cassis's post which contained this poem:

Woman Writing

A woman writes at a desk in a study. Furiously
awake
at five a new theorem buzzing, she constructs it
with her pen-
Thermodynamics and the Heartbeats of Tree-
Frogs in Sarawak. Her hair is
electromagnetic:
why brush it, it is white thought. Behind her a model:
molecules, a tree of them, primaries, red, yellow.

Today is blue.
She allows it to happen. This is not
a woman writing her memoirs . She is
writing off the edge
of the planet. What mirror? What toothpaste?

She is newly painted vibrant criss-cross dashes:
her sweater,
glasses, the lines on her face.
This hour could have been a century blasting
away a stockade of men in white coats.
Today she is eighty-five. So much
to do. So far to go.

["pureangel," Images of Women, eds. Dilys
Wood and Myra Schneider, Arrowhead Press]

Rather interestingly, instead of flow, I found myself very aware of the line-breaks. Perhaps I was more aware of them simply because the idea of flow preemtped feelings of continuity, effusion, succession. What especially made an impression on me are these two enjambments:

"she constructs it
with her pen..."

and

"She is writing off the edge
of the planet."

The way the lines seem to break the flow of thought startled me as I was reading. As if each line contains (at least) two possibilities, constructing something, and constructing something with an aid...as if the flow then attains a clarification or a (re)focus. Re-reading these lines now also seem strangely metafictive; the poet describing the creation of her poem. For the reader too, my eye-movements mimicking the break, falling to the subsequent line. I especially enjoy how "edge" switches from noun to adjective - but this is only clear to me when my eye makes the leap from one line to the next.