I spent some time yesterday with the early (1970s-era) poems of Gjertrud Schnackenberg, a formalist who has won all sorts of prizes yet seems to get almost no press. The poems I've been copying out appeared in print very soon after she graduated from college, so their tone and subject matter are young, yet her linear control is remarkable. Also notable is the delicacy of her end words: it's very easy to overlook the fact that these are rhyming poems.

During a long walk around Back Cove yesterday with my son, we were talking about the endings of works: how much he loves hearing an ending, or reaching one in his own creations; and I agreed: the endings of poems are one of the great pleasures of writing. I feel as if I must always be preparing for an ending yet I cannot preplan exactly what that ending will be. I need to balance awareness of the dramatic movement of a piece with a willing leap into ignorance and surprise. Otherwise, I tumble into Aesop--by which I mean that slam-shut moral tidiness that is so disheartening in a poem.

I was reading these Schnackenberg poems before I had the conversation with Paul, but I've been thinking since then of how she, too, prepares herself for the ending. Because she's writing formal poetry, she's constrained by that structure and expectation. So her approach to endings must be complex but cadenced: her ear needs to work toward a sonic resolution even as her drama must follow its own path.