"I’d say I value the following three traits most highly."

While I approach all poetry with an open mind, and I’m always willing to entertain new voices, perspectives and ways of expression, over the past twenty years, since I started writing, reading and listening to poetry, I think I can safely say the poems which hook me all share the following three characteristics. The following list is not an exhaustive list of what I look for in poetry (I don’t always know what I’m looking for), and the beauty of reading poetry is that we always find some new angle or way of seeing things, however I think, if pushed, I’d say I value the following three traits most highly. 

Surprise  

Whether it’s a title or a first line, all of the poems I can think of which attract me, all possess something surprising about them. The surprise does not always have to be contained in the opening line or the title (that definitely helps, but it’s not always a guarantee - see point 2) and it may well be that I’ve had to wait until the last line for the poem to pivot or take me somewhere I had not thought it would. Also, the surprise does not have to be ostentatious, it can be a subtle kind of surprise, or a sense of devastation or overwhelming pathos. A good example of the latter would be ‘The Owl’ by Edward Thomas, which I wrote a blog post about recently. Patience Agbabi’s ‘Eat Me’ is a great example of a shocking ending to a poem that comes entirely unexpectedly. You may well know that famous Old Testament quote from Ecclesiastes, ‘There is nothing new under the sun’, but that shouldn’t stop us trying to be inventive with language. 

Movement

Surprise alone, though, is not enough for a poem to live on. If, for example, a poem begins with a startling first line such as Emily Dickinson’s ‘I heard a fly buzz – when I died –’ the poet has then got to think about where to take the poem, which leads to a myriad of possibilities which also means a myriad of questions which therefore leads to a myriad of choices, and the best poems are the ones where the best/most innovative/original choices have been made. So, I’ve often thought the best poems move, and unfold, and develop as we read through them; they might take a twist or turn or reach new heights - whichever is chosen, there has got to be a change in the dynamics of a poem. It’s not enough for a poem to simply sound out the same note again and again, from the first line to the end. But, how does a poet do this? Well, a good example would be from Vicki Feaver (a poet I rate very highly) in her poem ‘The Gun’ In this poem we can see how the poem begins with the introduction to the gun in the house and then moves so unexpectedly to the dead animals in the fridge and the strange image of the last line. What a poem! And it’s all down to the twists and turns of enjambment, and the movements between stanzas and the imagery in such short, intense lines. 

Clarity

Pablo Picasso once said ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.’ Auguste Escoffier, the founder of modern cuisine, once remarked in French ‘Above all, keep it simple.’ Robert Frost said ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’ I’ve always felt that clarity/simplicity (both are interchangeable for me) is the ultimate goal of a poem - to say something that’s clear. But, the problem with language is that every word is full of multiple meanings, which makes the task of writing something simple or clear almost impossible. Simplicity or clarity, for me, is the hardest thing to achieve in a poem. There are so many ways in which the clarity of a poem can be derailed. And also, in writing something which appears clear or simple, we have actually written something which is amazingly complex. Paul Muldoon, an inheritor of Robert Frost’s ability to write seemingly simple poems which are amazingly complex, demonstrates this ability in the first poem in his first collection New Weather, with his poem Wind and Tree, or his Pelt from one of his most recent collections One Thousand Things Worth Knowing. Michael Longley was another one who was able to achieve this effect and we can see this in his poem The Trees. 

So, these are my three elements that make or break a poem - now we know them, writing a poem should be easy, right?