Poem with a Great Last Line

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I have just written a poem.

I read it to my granddaughter.

“Hey! Great last line,” she says.

“But what about the rest of the poem?” I say.

“Great last line”

I go back to the poem.

Read it a few times.

It is a great last line.

So what I do is this: I jettison the rest of the poem and keep

the last line,

I read it a few times.

I read it to her.

She hesitates.

I read it again.

It seems to lack something,” she says.

So I put the poem back together like it was and read it to her.

“Great last line,” she says.

11 thoughts on “Poem with a Great Last Line

    • Ginninderra rejected my most recent poetry collection, John. It hurt, but when I look at it, they gave that motley scrap heap of poems the treatment they deserved. Trying to rush the making of a poetry collection doesn’t go well. The next time I submit a collection to Ginninderra it will be a more considered thing, and I will have shared my words with other poets whose opinion I respect.

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  1. I’d be pleased to be one of those people, Carolyn. I have a complete collection I’m ready to submit to G but I want a little more time with it first. I don’t want to be rejected. I know it hurts. i empathise

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you John. I need to get a collection that works as a whole the next time I submit to them, not something I scrabbled together in one afternoon. Which is not what it was actually, but it just gave that impression, because I got rushed at the end, and handed it in before I should have.

      Liked by 1 person

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