How does a poet know how to phrase writing? How does a dancer know how to phrase movement? In a turning point of enjambment the phrase hangs in mid-air…this sounds like dance, and this is poetry. The poetic term enjambment comes from the French “jambe” for “leg”. Lines have legs. They reach and extend.
If you’re beginning to experience a blurring of poetry and dance, this is my intention. The vocabulary of both includes: line, phrase, rhythm, sequence, punctuation, spacing, form, narrative, and so on. There’s the blank page and the empty stage. The oft quoted “dance is poetry in motion” could be inverted as “poetry is dance motioned into word”.
As for those opening questions, they aren’t exactly rhetorical but they are akin to trying to solve a mystery. The best answer I can give is: attention to timing and artistry of creating suspense. Other poets have taught me, by their example, the brilliance of a line without an end stop, a comma or period. And choreographers have demonstrated during rehearsals, calling out, “no stopping, don’t let it stop”. The feeling of sustainment as a dancer is sublime––it’s like the breath that hovers around a dangling phrase of a poem, until continuation allows the exhalation of completion. When you watch the great ballet dancer Nureyev on archival footage (I did see him once live, near the end of his career), you will see that his phrasing is relaxed within the demands of his craft, and full of surprise.