We asked the poets to write their last line first
Poetry is alive, growing feral like weeds, we’ve been waiting. I went out to hear the art in my city, talking to itself, talking to me, unleashed and wild in the rain. My city in stars and streetlights. My friends all coming out to play.
When I showed up at Novel, the sun was still out. She set at 7:02 when notebooks were out and the whiskey in my hot toddy moved quickly, warm w/ lemon and shared w/ the Rat before showtime. Why had I expected a quiet night? This thing I do w/ hope, trying to temper it for myself, to contain the flame. You never know, you know? It could be incredible, watching the forest catch.
I was there early w/ the Wizard, the mic and small speaker, sign and clipboard and magicians’ hat - packin’. We found the light in the room and rearranged everything to bask in it. The poets came! And w/ each one, warmth and excitement. Familiarity grows week by week, word by word. We challenged the poets to write the last lines of their poems first - the rest, wide open.
There were extra microphones in the room, for podcast, for radio. Young local artists recording the event and interviewing Chaos, keeping to the corners and catching it all. These two weren’t yet 21, weren’t allowed at Lincoln’s, but they were welcome at the Workshop. I guess we’re going to be on the radio now!
The list moved quickly, new shit in perpetuity, and a few brave new voices on the mic. Hill opened the show and M closed it. Benjamine read a Dickinson poem (below) after their own. I wrote about loving through endings and ended w/ a question. Walt wrote two poems w/ the same last line, for contrast. The Rat swore up & down, fuck! More and More, poetry filled the room, like flooding, like finally, while the rain beat on around us. I’m thinking next month of moving slower - the way I get all caught up in everyone - of moving w/ more care, courting the chaos of creation like we have centuries, centuries to love one another.
I N T H E R E C O R D I N G
We didn’t have any concrete examples of poems written last-line-first but Benjamine was called to this Dickenson poem. Something about how the ending stuck in the brain, how it was a finalization but also an opening, the whole poem leading up to And finished knowing - then - like interrupted or nothing else to explain. Benjamine read this to the room before we wrapped up, I heard it all the way down in the bowels of the restroom, my friend commanding the room.
Benjamine actually sent me the first draft of their poem - wizard to wizard, friend to friend - to show proof of process, how the poet gets from here to there, traveling across time and instinct to get read in front of a room. They struggled w/ the order of things, deciding and dedicating themself to the final line: that I may too fall without hesitation upon my face - this line that felt humiliatingly human and beautiful. Many of the phrases from the first draft carried into the Workshop edition, rearranged w/ fortitude and ambiguity, stunning the senses in that way Benjamine’s words often do.
I asked them to say a little something about it for the class
'Into The Sun' ends with an active line which reminds the reader of gravity & the consequences of action. it was my intention to counter this stumbling humility with the awe & grandeur of gazing upward. My first draft started with this fantasy, the nocturnal climb of the sky to chase a setting sun across the globe. Sadly, it seemed flat & fantastical. What had happened was, my excitement & anticipation for the final line stifled the process of getting to it poetically. My solution was to start the piece with the penultimate piece & work back down to my chosen ending. This freed the language from sheer momentum & created a tone of unsteady footing, hyperbole, & a kind of wandering giantism which I had initially intended to convey.
~ BS
When I sat down to write my piece, I was still tangled in ideas from the week, the weekend, the last month or so. I felt humiliatingly human myself, but bubbled w/ hope - am still bubbling w/ hope. I wanted to write about endings. It seemed appropriate. It seemed unavoidable. The way I’ve been approaching final breaths w/ the heart of an optimist, room for all of it. These days, I find myself full of hope and balancing it w/ the happiness of Now.
In my morning pages and in poems from the last year or so, I’ve been wading through how life feels when the end is inevitable, how to approach this kind of existentialism w/ liberation instead of restriction, of a heart wide open to the world, unafraid. It was Monday when I sat down to write and I caught myself rereading work from the last week. I pulled some lines, some images, some sentiments from my pages. I pulled my first and final line from a recent entry, feeling so tethered to it still, and hung it right on the bottom of the page. I started off w/ an inside joke, Insane!, just something to get myself started but I didn’t change it after the rest came together - in the sense that I still feel precious w/ my beginner’s mind. I knew I wanted to end w/ a question, but wasn’t sure how to back it up w/out color and light. Questions are often my way into a piece and I like how they feel restless at the end of one. Doesn’t that feel right? A poem restless and right in the middle?
The poetry wrapped up but everyone still in the room, talking talking, getting to know, pens and notebooks changing hands, donations made, I hope to see you all soon. I left thank you on my lips, tucked thank you into everyone’s pockets. Fuck, how I love this thing we are doing. We were thanked for the whole thing and I said, this is why we do this! For people to show up, for artists to play, for voices to be heard. Thank you.
The mic and small speaker, sign and clipboard and magicians’ hat, all in the back of the Soul until next month. The world beautiful and all wet. Every fresh hour w/ friends tightens the threads between us. A bundle of love and nerves, across the street to the Jewel Box to sing, sing, sing. Until next month, friends ~
✺ In the spirit of the Internet, if anyone would like to participate virtually in the Workshop to some degree, be sure to follow Portland Poets Society on instagram and please get in touch w/ me somehow and we can develop that together.
The Workshop IV, a podcast