Twist ending or Twit ending?

Ever been to a movie, watched through the entire thing on one plot-line, then in the last few minutes, the director decides to take a sharp left turn toward a different destination than what you originally thought? I’m speaking of twist endings, of course. The use of twist endings has been existent in many forms of art for centuries, and its effect can be diverse. A twist ending can either swap the audience’s perspective on what they’ve seen before to see it from a completely different angle, confuse the audience, or it can infuriate the audience by not feeding them what they expected. For me, Toomer’s poetry uses a type of twist ending that just leaves me with confusion.

This week’s poet contrast will be between Jean Toomer and Heather Christle. Both have poems that twist things around in a matter of lines, but the lasting impression that this twist had on me were very, very different. For Toomer, I’ll use the example of “Her Lips are Copper Wires”. Toomer’s poem starts by describing the yellow globes of lamp-posts, and comparing the beads of water on them to woman’s breath against him, but then the poem, in my opinion, take a turn for the strange. After describing lamp-posts and his wanting for a woman to be close to him, Jean ends the poem with these lines:

Then with your tongue remove the tape

And press your lips to mine

Till they are incandescent

I’m not a professional critic of poetry, nor will I ever be, but I have read this poem dozens of times over, and I can’t figure out why the first line of the three above needs to exist. To me, this is a type of twist ending. What is the tape doing over her lips? Is that weird to anyone else? Because it’s definitely not normal to me.

By contrast, I’ll use Christle’s poem “I Can’t Swim”, because she offers a type of twist in her poetry as well, but a much different type than the strange, confusing twist of Jean Toomer. Here are the first few lines of Christle’s poem:

I can’t swim, because I can’t fit

Into the water

I am

Two million feet tall

Even though this collection is figurative and obviously a slight exaggeration, I like the twist there, because it causes you to view the poem in a completely different light. She continues by saying that if someone wanted to use her as a weapon, they’d ask her to lay down on New York. Her twist at the very start of her poem actually adds to the poem, while Toomer’s twist at the end took away from his poetry, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like the difference is between having a twist ending and a twit ending.


Suggested poetry blog of the week: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/