Formula of Delight

I was going to name this post "the Left Turn" but since it has nothing to do with politics I didn't want to confuse anyone. It is about an element of poetry that I think is essential for a good poem and that I see in almost all good poems, yet I have never heard anyone mention. It must be widely known, though, because it shows up everywhere.

I first became conscious of it a few years ago, reading Billy Collins. He does it in every single poem, and it's not something he's trying to cover up. (And since his poems start in delight and end in more delight, hence the title of the post.)

Collins, about three-fourths of the way through a poem, introduces a new element. That is the left turn. It changes the opening theme. It is precisely equivalent to the complication that occurs in almost every single movie or most novels: it re-arouses the spectator's interest, and finishes the narrative in a rich, fulfilling and unexpected way.

All the boring stories in the world have no second act, no complication. All the boring poems just finish what they've started, and lack a left turn. They drive straight down the road they painted in the first few lines, and that's it.

For examples of Collins' left turns, I've arbitrarily taken his first two poems on poets.org:

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16497

The left turn on this poem starts at the bottom of stanza 7, with the museum in Philadelphia line. (The bit about the rabbit at the end is just his defense of the vividness of the imagination, which goes both ways now thanks to the left turn ((art to mind, mind to art)); the rabbit has to be there to braid in the left turn and finish the poem.)

Forgetfulness
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19754

The left turn here is when he brings "you" into the poem, on your way to oblivion. (6th stanza) A lesser poet would have ended the poem at the word "spleen" a stanza above. The first two lines of stanza 6 make way for the left turn, they are kind of like the off ramp, or rather, the green road signs before the off ramp. He pushed himself in this poem, as he pushes himself in all poems. He found the second theme.

It might be a little more obscure in some other poets, those who smear in the left turn rather than taking it outright, and of course there is a whole huge group of poets who you might call irrationalists who have no need for one single left turn when their work is all left turns, like spaghetti, all ambience, nothing linear about it. But it's almost always there when the poet uses text in its natural, linear state. Just like the complication is almost always there in the narrative arts. Anywhere there is theme, there are left turns.

A musician friend of mine told me that Bach could weave in three themes together, and that's what proved his genius, as most musicians can only do two. Bach could make three left turns, that's what I’m saying here. Thanks for reading.