How do you know when a poem is finished?
Like in a sonnet or a romantic relationship, once there is a reversal or a twist, it’s over. Like an essay, once the thesis has been restated in a different way and wider implications considered, it’s over. Thesis / antithesis must both be there in some form. Sometimes a powerful image merely threatens to take down what has been set up, and readers are invited to decide whether it will fall. This is what I aim to do; I know I’m not always successful. Some poems are stories, with a protagonist and antagonist, climax and resolution, but I don’t seem to write these sorts of poems.
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