A
Small
Queen’s
Untimely Fall
Jan
18 2026
I
hate poetry.
There,
I said it.
Strong
language, I know
especially
in a form
where
ambiguity is prized.
I’m
guilty of it myself.
Committing
poetry, I mean.
So
could this be self-loathing,
revulsion
at
my own pretension, self-indulgence, showing-off?
But
actually, more often than not
it’s
other people’s stuff I can’t stand
(mine’s
too cringeworthy
to
even revisit).
Which
I know looks bad,
so
I’ll ask you to keep this confession
just
between us;
a
small intimacy
shared
with my favourite reader
with
a wink and a nod.
Or
is it the grip it has on me,
the
compulsion to write?
As
addictive as opiates
celebrity
sex.
As
the elation
of
landing on the perfect word,
so
smugly sure
generations
will learn me by heart;
recited
by tipsy best men
at
legion-hall weddings
where
fights break out,
or
lugubriously intoned
over
freshly dug graves.
So
mellifluous a work
I’ll
be assigned in high school English
where
students are required to memorize a poem;
like
force fed geese,
fattened
up
so
their livers pass the grade.
But
then I stumble upon a poem
so
simple, trenchant, and unexpected,
and
with so exquisite an ending
it
leaves me breathless.
A
closing line
as
final as a bank vault door,
2
tons of solid steel
thudding
shut.
Yet
as ambiguous as the aftertaste
of
a vintage wine
prized
for its complexity,
a
late ripening Cab
sipped
from Baccarat crystal.
Something
as simple
as
a cold plum,
as
particular
as
a small queen’s untimely fall.
Two
good poems. William Carlos Williams’ This Is Just to Say,
and Billy Collins’ Snow Day. So I don’t really hate
poetry. … Just most of it!
(Both
poems can be found below, copied-and-pasted from the Poetry
Foundation website.)
I love
how in Williams, such simple language shoulders so much weight. He
feels no need to impress with big words, no need to hold the reader’s
hand with a big song and dance of a backstory (an attentive reader
appreciates the trust), and writes with marvellous economy and
compression. The reader is allowed — invited — to read into it,
make it her own.
Snow
Day has a delightful whimsy that perfectly matches its
subject. I love Collin’s conversational tone, the simple vernacular
language that makes his work so accessible. (Although he prefers the
term “hospitable”, and I once heard him tell an interviewer that
the reason he dislikes “accessible” is because it sounds too much
like a highway on-ramp!) He has the impish wit of his Irish
ancestors: a dry humour spoken in a wryly bemused voice. The
ending — the sudden malignant turn, the dark side of girlhood —
lands perfectly. Again, the precisely honed economy of words that
final line exemplifies is what makes his poetry so enviable, so
admired by both general readers and aspiring poets: every word
carefully considered, all the fat culled. His powers of observation
are equally admirable: after my first reading, I never forgot that
image of “the dog porpois[ing] through the drifts” …
actually, (said with another wink and nod) so good I plagiarized it a
few times! He is not promiscuous with his line breaks, not
insecure enough to leave a sentence dangling just to appear
“poetical”. Rather, he uses them for emphasis: to take
advantage the prominence of being last in a line confers on a word —
the built-in pause that makes it linger just a bit — and to give
the fragment its intended emphasis. (Aren’t line breaks — the
freedom to end a line in the middle of a sentence — really all that
separates poetry from prose?) You will note how gently but
effectively he returns to the martial metaphor that runs through the
poem, and which not only helps cinch it tight, but helps give the
ending its weight. Because without that foreshadowing, those last
lines might seem like cheating: a contrived turn just to be
provocative.
The
best example of how brevity in a poem works is this famous single
line piece (often attributed to Hemingway, but — Hemingway-esque as
it is — is actually of anonymous origin):
For
sale: baby shoes; never worn.
And
for someone like me, who tends far too much toward prolixity, such
examples are necessary: excellent correctives I would do well to
return to time and again.
(I
have to add that I do love the presence of a
semi-colon in that single line poem: any regular reader will
recognize how fond I am of them. And unapologetically so!)
This
Is Just To Say
WILLIAM
CARLOS WILLIAMS
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were
delicious
so sweet
and
so cold
Snow
Day
BILLY
COLLINS
Today
we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its
white flag waving over everything,
the
landscape vanished,
not
a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and
beyond these windows
the
government buildings smothered,
schools
and libraries buried, the post office lost
under
the noiseless drift,
the
paths of trains softly blocked,
the
world fallen under this falling.
In
a while, I will put on some boots
and
step out like someone walking in water,
and
the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and
I will shake a laden branch
sending
a cold shower down on us both.
But
for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a
sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I
will make a pot of tea
and
listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as
glad as anyone to hear the news
that
the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the
Ding-Dong School, closed.
the
All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the
Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along
with—some will be delighted to hear—
the
Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little
Sparrows Nursery School,
Little
Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the
Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap
your hands—the Peanuts Play School.
So
this is where the children hide all day,
These
are the nests where they letter and draw,
where
they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all
darting and climbing and sliding,
all
but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And
now I am listening hard
in
the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying
to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what
riot is afoot,
which
small queen is about to be brought down.
