So, with our assignment this month to write a poem or story with an ironic twist or surprise ending, I've been doing a lot of thinking about endings, and I've been realizing just how important those last lines are. They often make or break a poem or story. A wonderful ending doesn't have to be purposefully clever and surprising. In fact, that device, if not used with a sort of gentle light touch, often can feel like a sort of cheap trick. But I'm inclined to believe that an ending that perfectly, and yes, even surprisingly, transforms a poem or a story into something that lifts me up out of the dim room of myself is one of life's most sublime pleasures.
More than once I have literally cried out with sheer joy upon reading a perfect ending. Kay Ryan's poem "Things Shouldn't Be So Hard," and a recent reading of Alice Munro's story "Friend of My Youth," both showered me with such uncontainable delight.
I'd like to point you to one of the most delightful and perfect and even surprising endings in modern poetry. The poem is "A Blessing" by James Wright. Read it now, and let me know your reaction.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16944
I don't know enough about writing to say for sure, but my best guess is that the way to write endings like this is to let them surprise you, the writer first. At least this is one way to guard against cheap tricks. Just start writing, as Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver, and Alice Munro and many other masters claimed to do, and see where you end up. If you allow yourself to be surprised, the reader will be as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The poem by Wright is delightful and I feel like it must have been a true moment when he had this realization, not a poetic epiphany that he made up because it sounded amazing. A friend told me to take a look at the writing that I've done that wasn't "commissioned", meaning the poems and essays that I just had to write, no matter whether anyone would ever see them, and that I would see myself there very clearly. The things on my mind, the things that I care about, the worries and fears. I suspect that for all writers these are the most likely to have those surprise twists, where we come to see ourselves and our situations in such a clear and new way that we can suddenly realize, like Wright, that we would blossom but for the body holding us back.
Post a Comment