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
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
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.
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