End at the End

Not a very snappy title for a prompt but I was playing against the title of a previous prompt 'Begin at the Beginning'... and because I mentioned in another post how difficult it can be to end a poem. Too direct an ending can lock out the reader, prevent them from entering and making the poem their own. Or worse, come across as didactic, or too telling, and no-one wants a finger wagged in their face at the end of a poem. But too oblique an ending can have the reader turning the page wondering if the last few lines have been left off! I've done that myself, while reading poems and stories!

So, what you'll find below is a list of last lines, or the two final lines of a poem you will write. It's a bit like going on a journey and having a destination in mind but not having any idea where you need to start from :)

As you can see, all the endings are taken from published poems but I suggest you write your own before checking to see how the original poet arrived there.

I can comment on upto 2 poems you may choose to post, and I recommend that they're no longer than 40 lines. That's a standard length in poetry competitions so it's not a bad idea to work with that every now and again.

Here are the endings:

1. until one world rings truer than the other.
(Michael Donaghy, 'My Flu')

2. the corpses of angels.
(Carolyn Forche, 'Selective Service')

3. from the root of the old one/ a new one has sprung.
(Grace Nichols, 'Epilogue')

4. you have no place in the world.
(Louise Gluck, 'Mirror Image')

5. I touch/ a flake of his skin.
(Pamela Gillilan, 'Four Years')

6. That astounded me most of all.
(Stephen Dunn, 'Each from Different Heights')

Write well.
L x