Poetic Endings: Nailing Down the Threshold

Grist Journal has published a poetry craft article, Poetic Endings: Nailing Down the Threshold, that I co-authored with poet Deborah Bacharach. The poet Ellen Bass called it excellent. The article is free to read. Here is the opening paragraph:

The End. Wouldn’t it be a relief if you could just end a poem like that? Every reader would know the poem had resoundingly concluded. You, as the writer, would know too. “The End” puts a final stamp of approval on a fairytale, but the story must still earn its ending by resolving a plot, finishing characters’ arcs, and getting our heroes back home. Just as there are structures in fiction that signal the story has concluded, there are also structures in poetry that accomplish the same goal. But here’s a big difference. While a powerful novel ending shuts a door by tying up loose ends, a powerful poem ending blasts a door open. It leaves the reader on the threshold feeling vivified by a confluence of energy and language that brought them to a new insight or understanding. 

Read the rest of the essay here.