Unstressed

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A weblog from the editors of Linebreak

The regulars

Ash Bowen's poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, and Black Warrior Review, among other publications. He lives and works in Texarkana, AR.

Jennifer Jabaily's poetry has appeared in Mannequin Envy and Fickle Muses. She's a second-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Ashley Anna McHugh is a third-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Measure, DIAGRAM and Memorious as well as other publications.

Johnathon Williams's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, the Pebble Lake Review, and Unsplendid. He lives in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife and daughters.

Radiate meaning

By Johnathon Williams on Feb 23, 2009

In the first poetry workshop I ever took, now several years ago, Davis McCombs told me something about ending a poem that I’ve never forgotten. A good ending, he said, should transform a poem. It should shoot back up through everything that came before. It should radiate meaning. (That’s paraphrased, but closely.) I’ve read (and attempted to write) the endings of poems differently ever since, and I always take note when I stumble across an ending that exemplifies his advice.

The latest case in point is “Holidays and Sundays by David Bottoms, which was featured a few days ago on Verse Daily. It’s the last two lines that make the poem — everything else is there in service of them. The other lines are not without merit, of course; they’re filled with Bottoms’s customary music and keen eye for narrative detail. But they also seem restrained to me, filled with purposeful quiet, much like the men they describe. They go out of their way not to get in the way.

Oh, and the Bottoms poem I’m most likely to recite from memory when drunk? “In a U-Haul North of Damascus.” No question.

One comment // david bottoms, davis mccombs, endings

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