Essays
Essays and Interviews sampled from the printed edition of Arc Poetry Magazine, which hits magazine stands in June and December each year, and the Arc Annual which appears in August.
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Barbara Myers
Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
See how many ends this stick has …
—Montaigne
Essay in excerpt
To come to the end. To stop. Not necessarily the same thing, as far as poems are concerned. In fact, a frequent criticism of a poem is that its stopping place creates a “weak”ending or one that “doesn’t work.” I stumbled into this muddy field recently in asking poet-editors to read and comment on a book I was working on. Critiques of endings dotted the pages, rarely the same view, occasionally even contradicting each other.
How to go about “fixing” a poem when the ending doesn’t “work?” Whose advice to follow, and how does that advice sit with the impulse that wants to express something true and real?
The reader-critic seems to say, I want the satisfaction of knowing the dimensions of this piece, that it isn’t partial, not a draft, and that the writer hasn’t walked away before sufficiently attending to the birth. Conversely, the reader may find that the poem ends too abruptly, or is too neatly tied up, a package with no openings to enter into.
Rob Winger
A brief history of the Canadian ghazal
At a certain point in John Thompson’s Stilt Jack, the author looks up and away from trout, stones, water, bait, and hooks, and re-focuses his intuitive gaze:
Sometimes I think the stars scrape at my door, wanting in;
I’m watching the hockey game.
Essays
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- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
by Barbara Myers - A brief history of the Canadian ghazal
by Rob Winger
- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
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Log Entries Archives
- Recent Entries:
- Arc launches Issue #63 (the three-legged issue)
- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
by Patricia Young - Canadian Gothic
by Jim Johnstone - Crow, of the family Corvidae
by Gillian Wallace - Advisory
by Steve McOrmond - Fidelities
by Chris Jennings - Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
by Barbara Myers - Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
by Katia Grubisic - Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
- November 2009: Three calls for entry, and one new way to get Arc
- Calls for Entry coming up early in 2010
- Arc Digital Edition Now Available
- Lampman-Scott Award 2008 Winner
- Reactions to selections from Arc Annual 2010
- Frederick Ward’s blistering blues - Excerpt
by George Elliott Clarke
- Last Commented:
- PM reads Arc (1)
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