Poet Sarah Busse says, “If you’re having trouble writing a poem’s concluding line, it may be because you’ve already written it.” I had advised students to conclude with the image in a line near the end and delete what followed because it belabored what was already powerfully conveyed in the image, but I like how Sarah’s keen insight coaches the author in a more succinct and helpful way.
I’ve struggled with last lines myself. Sometimes I can’t see how my ending lines bog the poem down or stray from its central motif. Case in point: “Seasoning for Courage,” written for my book Justice Freedom Herbs. Courage underlies acts of witness for justice; Swinburne presented a lack of courage in terms of herbs and thus gave me a way to connect courage to the motif of the book. I wanted to get at the subtle physical sensation of courage the way I experienced it, so different from the bravado I expected. I drafted this poem:
Seasoning for Courage
There grows
no herb of help to heal a coward heart.—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Taste
bile churning up
into your throat?That’s the bitter moment before
courage Courageitself has a wild, fresh air taste
something like the soft grey-green of sagelike cold air warming up for snowfall
like oolong tea brewed with artesian water
perhaps slightly over brewedBefore the taste the sound
the melting of ice above the tree line
the shift of wind from west to north
the essential rush of greening maplethe beating of a mother’s heart
at the moment of giving birth
My editor suggested deleting the stanza break following “Before the taste the sound” and the last three lines. The shift of wind, she said, already clearly signals the emergence of courage. It also fits with the wild freshness mentioned earlier in the poem. She saw the birth metaphor as extraneous to the rest of the poem and maybe clichéd.
I thought of the way I usually hesitate before doing an act that requires my courage. I thought of the push into courage as something akin to the push that delivers the baby. That is, I still think, a worthy metaphor. Then I realized that a north wind doesn’t bring spring, and I did not want to suggest the moment before a birth was bitter. I accepted the edits.
I don’t remember now why I wrote “the essential rush of greening maple.” I puzzle over what’s essential, over green as essential. Thus this prompt:
Write a poem about what you consider essential for courage. What process, what color? Is there something essential on your desk, in your garden, in your backpack, or stored on your phone? List the specifics you experienced or observed. Let them lead you to a poem. Title it “Essentials” until you think of a better title. End the poem on an image.
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Margaret Rozga is a University of Wisconsin – Waukesha emeritus professor of English who continues to teach poetry workshops for adults and teens. During a creative fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, she researched western expansion, slavery, and women’s issues for her fourth book, Pestiferous Questions (Lit Fest Press, 2017).