You Can Write Poetry - Jeff Mock [49]
PRACTICE SESSION
1. Select the best and second-best first lines from the previous practice sessions. Use the best as the first line of a draft and the second best as the second line. Write a draft following the patterns these lines together suggest.
2. Write a draft based on a fairy tale. Keep the characters the same, but modify the time, setting and events. For example, you may have Snow White enlisting in the army or Hansel and Gretel at summer camp. Keep old characters you like and introduce new characters as needed.
3. Write a draft about making or building something: an omelet, a V-8 engine, a shed, a quilt, a pyramid, a ship in a bottle—anything you like. Focus on the actions. Some assembly required.
4. Read the outlandish headlines of grocery-store tabloids, but don't read the stories. Select a headline and write a draft telling the story. Invent.
The Final Period
Readers can be kind. They forgive slight missteps in a poem if the ending delights them. The ending, if written with grace, conviction and just the right phrasing, makes the poem a complete experience. It provides the necessary sense of closure, the feeling that the poem has truly ended. A poor ending has the reader turning the page to read the rest of the poem, only to find nothing more. The poem has ended in midcourse and denied the reader a satisfying experience. With a good ending, the reader immediately feels the fulfillment of the poem, an exquisite achievement.
Good endings are as difficult to write as good beginnings. Again, there's no blueprint to follow. Each poem requires something different, depending on how the opening leads to the middle and the middle leads to the ending. But there are types of endings you can adapt and modify for your poem's needs. Maxine Kumin, in her essay "Closing the Door "notes four types of endings. One is a reiteration or repetition of an earlier line. It turns the poem "back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth," creating a circular movement. The ending appears in the beginning, the beginning in the ending. This type of ending is especially effective with forms—the villanelle form with its recurring repetitions explicitly calls for such an ending—because it allows the poet to reiterate the gist of a poem. Robert Frost was a master of such endings. His poem "Mending Wall," for example, presents the speaker meeting his neighbor at their common property line to rebuild a stone wall. Why rebuild it? The neighbor can say only what his father before him said: "Good fences make good neighbors." The poem deals with following tradition for tradition's sake, for no other rhyme or reason. Frost's speaker can't convince the neighbor that rebuilding the wall is a senseless activity, and the poem ends, "He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'" The final line emphasizes the neighbor's strict, thoughtless adherence to tradition, the absurdity of it.
A second type of ending Kumin describes is "the understatement that startles or arouses." You'll recall from chapter six that understatement creates emphasis because the reader perceives the difference between what is said and what is. The reader recognizes the seemingly unimportant as quite important. Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Prodigal" presents the squalor of the prodigal son's situation after frittering away his fortune. His plans have gone awry, he drinks too much to ease the disappointment, and for pride he suffers the consequences. He works as a farmhand, living and sleeping in the stink and