How do you know when a poem is finished?
When I write the last line. That sounds facetious but what I mean is that the whole process of writing a poem is for me a high wire act which could go tragically wrong at any given moment causing the audience to gasp and look away in horror, but when I do finish what I consider to be a successful attempt I have a visceral sense of completion and for me that always rests in the last line or two. I also know that without that ending the rest of the poem is a failure and that there’s no way at all for me to save it. Sometimes the last line is the first thing that I write and then it’s just a matter of finding my way to it. Those are usually the quickest poems to form, at other times it will take a week or more to find that last line and sometimes it never does arrive – sadly those poems become orphaned.
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