The End of the Line

When you're writing, you just write, like now, right?

Sometimes, yeah, off-the-cuff does the trick. And for poets, when we're in the thick of composition, that first blast is what we use to launch a poem -- and it often flies offhand.

But that's when planning and thinking ahead works for you. So, when the time comes, you and your mechanical pencil, Sharpie, Etch-A-Sketch, or whatever, are ready to go.

The last word is important in every line of poetry. Just look at the poems that have truly impressed themselves on your psyche over the years: they usually have very strong end words for every line. Clean, powerful, resonant end words can almost serve as a map for the basic sense of the entire poem.

So, when it comes time to rhyme -- those end words become doubly important. And that's why your planning, your aesthetic, your understanding of structure, your basic sensitivity to rhythm ("pulse"), etc. start to show their importance. They become like fingers on the potter's hands: they know where to go all by themselves, even while the clay is still spinning under the running water.

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As an aside, something may be worth mentioning in these, Our Troubled Times: it's during economic slides downhill when people look to the arts for help the most. That's when diverse movements in the arts often find the most sustainable growth (think: The '30's or the '70's).

Often, when the boom times start their "squeeze" cycle, many artists and writers get spun out in the mad scramble for "mo' munney." We then have to pick ourselves up and/or put ourselves back together (with help from our friends) -- and we use our material to help us.

But in Times Like These, The Folk depend on us to do our very best. To paraphrase John Mellencamp: "Our Time is Now!"