One of my Capstone goals was to successfully execute a poem
with a happy ending…or at least a hopeful one. The trouble is, I don’t know
how.
As I discussed with many of you in Advanced Writer’s
Workshop last fall, I feel like the exhortations that I’ve kept hearing the
past few years to avoid overly “tied up” endings and clichés has caused me to
produce mostly pieces that focus on the confusion/chaos/pain side of life. I can only think of one thing that I’ve
written my entire college career that has a hopeful ending.
While I really appreciate the way we’ve been
encouraged to delve into the complexities and brokenness of our world in our
pieces, not all of life is broken. There are certain moments that are happy and
hopeful and conclusive. And I want to capture those too—but I’ve avoided them
the past four years because I know they’re much harder to capture in a way that
doesn’t sound cliché.
My poem that I submitted for critique this week was my
attempt at writing a more hopeful poem. The idea was to show my childhood
surprise at how the sweetness or syrup hid a bitter taste (life isn’t as rosy
as we think when we’re kids), but then point to how bitter sap can be turned
sweet (the hard things produce an unexpected sweetness). I liked the idea, but
it ended up coming out more bitter than I intended. And I don’t know how to add
the more hopeful ending that I had intended in a way that doesn’t sound sappy.
I know that if I’m to write about happy or hopeful themes
successfully, I need to find some good examples to follow, but I’m not sure
where to find them. Lately I’ve been reading three books of poetry that McCann
gave me Bread Without Sorrow by John
Hodgen, After All by William
Matthews, and Facts for Visitors by
Srikanth Reddy. They all contain some beautiful and varied poetry, but I can’t
find any with hopeful endings.
Can you relate with my struggles to capture an artistically
hopeful ending? Do you have any techniques or tips to offer? Do you know of any
examples of quality writing (poetry or personal essay) that has a hopeful
ending?
I definitely share your frustrations, Elizabeth! Sometimes I think back on all the things I've written since college and wonder when I got so morbid. Haha.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I know my writing skill has grown immensely since I've started to embrace the "darker" side of things--my writing is more honest, complex, and compelling now than it was when I was writing on happier, more superficial topics. But you're right--there are happy moments in our lives that AREN'T superficial, that deserve our attention as writers--but how do we write about them in non-sentimental ways? Your guess is as good as mine.
I think that having an appropriate tone is a huge component in pulling off a more hopeful piece. You don't want it to be too solemn, thus contradicting the hopeful ending and making your readers feel cheated, but you don't want it too be too cheerful either, so that the happiness feels simplified and false. I think the key is to maintain balance, both in the tone and in the content you choose. Having a little bit of dark to play up the light (or, in your case, bitter to play up the sweet) might make the piece more believable. Hopeful pieces CAN be done, and I'm sure you will pull it off! :)
P.S. Was the "sappy" pun intentional? Because I loved it. Haha
Ahhh, I totally get this! I definitely had the same problem in high school - and even my first year at Northwestern - of making my endings too cliche. I was trying to find ways to end them with hope (redemption, God's saving power, etc), but I couldn't find a way to do that without making my professors scold me. So I guess I was the opposite, until I started making my writing really dark. Since then, I've tried to intermingle the hope within the darker writing to make it more raw rather than a contrived story or plot.
ReplyDeleteI think scattering hope throughout a piece in underlying ways can work if you pull it off well, rather than slamming it down at the end. This looks different for everyone. I believe you can do it, and I've never been particularly struck by the lack of hope in your pieces before, so I think you are doing well (:
P.S. I laughed really hard at the "sappy" pun. Oh my word. Best thing I've read all day.
I guess I haven’t really thought about this in my shorter workers as much—I’ve seen how the balance between despair and hope plays out in novels, especially fantasy and scifi, but it’s much harder to balance in shorter works. Poetry, I think, is hardest of all because of its bare-bone emphasis on details, on letting things speak for themselves—you can’t have characters arguing about the big picture in poems, so you have to…well, I think part of it is that you can’t try examining any one piece on its own, but look at the entire body of work, yet within those works there can be hints of both sides.
ReplyDeleteAnd it’s funny you should say that about darkness, because it’s only as I look back now that I realize how dark some of the stuff I wrote in high school actually was. I mean, I had a main character with a physiologically abusive mother, an absent father, and a kidnapped brother who was a villain’s blood bank. Yet I don’t think I took it seriously enough at the time—if I were to rewrite, I’d have a lot of thinking to do about the grittiness of it all.