Enjambment In Thomas Lux's A Little Tooth

What is an enjambment? An enjambment is when a line of a poem comes to the finish. However, the sentence has a continuation to the next line. It is easy to spot when a writer is using this format due to the fact that there is no punctuation at the end of the line. (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012). When reading Thomas Lux’s poem “A Little Tooth,” you can get a feeling of rhythm. Indeed, if you can put the poem to a song in your head and reread the poem, the poetry seems to have a better flow. What the author does with his line breaks is done so the reader can get the feeling of the rhythm and flow.

As stated, the poem has an easily detected rhythm as the poem takes place in a setting that would be considered familiar by married couples who have been blessed and also cursed by having children. As a
At the age of 54, being married and a father of five children with seven grandchildren (so far), the poem is describing the ups and downs of parenthood. In fact, with the first stanza, “Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone.”(Lux, 2014). This is where the author is taking us from generally when a child is six months old when he receives his first tooth to the image of when the child moves on to the ability to eat solid food which in this case is meat that is still on the bone. In my own personal experience, this is also when the children change from having total reliance on the mother to provide liquid food (such as breastfeeding or formula) to the point where the child has the ability to eat solid foods and the father is more involved with the raising of children. The next stanza takes us to the child’s adolescence which generally happens quicker with the female than the male. The poem states “She’ll learn some words she’ll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweets talker on his way to jail.” ”(Lux, 2014). In most cases, the reader