examples
a few poems that land and a few that don't.
In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, held his heart in his hands, and ate of it. I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter—bitter," he answered; "but I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart."
"In the Desert" · Stephen Crane
the second answer reframes the first.
I loved him so much it hurt me. I wonder if he ever felt hurt. My hurt, or maybe his.
poem is trying to explain itself.
I am so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife and cut the world in two — and see what worms are eating at the rind.
"Tired" · Langston Hughes
rewards a second read.
Her heart was filled with enough love to fill the ocean. Her voice stopped songbirds in the morning, and her touch could soothe a rampaging bull. He only saw a woman he could have met anywhere else.
abandoned metaphors, and an unearned ending.
the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle
"Between Walls" · William Carlos Williams
you are slowed down to see the image.
Today you worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow you will forget about today.
more fortune cookie message, less poem.