Wednesday, 8 July 2020

Elaine Equi : part five

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I can usually feel it or even hear it. It’s like a click. Some people don’t like “the click” associating it with a predictable or overbearing sense of closure. But I don’t mind a good strong finish. I also like humor in poems where the last line is the punchline.  Open-ended poems give the opposite feeling – more like an “ah” – something intentionally left unfinished so the idea keeps traveling in your mind. I like those too. The only ending I don’t really like is “the sigh” – the one that announces what you’ve just been reading must be a poem. Though even that can be okay. I feel a poem should go somewhere, something should happen, shift, change. Once it does, the ending will take care of itself.

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