The Line Break
Six Memorable Poem Endings — & What Makes Them Great
Perfect last lines from Danez Smith, Sharon Olds, Terrance Hayes, and more.
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I love a good ending.
I also hate endings. The pressure of an ending. They really matter, you know? Like how a terrible series finale can feel like a slap in the face when you’ve been following a story for years.
You want people to invest time and energy into understanding your poem. And you don’t want them to regret that by reaching the end of the piece and feeling meh about it.
Not that you can skimp on anything in a poem—but if you could, it definitely wouldn’t be the ending.
When I first started writing, I thought an ending should be like the last note of a song on the piano — something soft, reflective. Resolving any disharmony.
This led to writing a lot of endings that felt obligatory or rushed, like they were skipping to an ending the poem wasn’t trying to provide in the first place.
My approach to endings improved considerably after receiving some sage advice, which I am happy to pass on here.
Almost a year ago to the day I’m writing this, I received helpful feedback on a submission I’d sent to a literary journal:
“… Ultimately, however, we often found ourselves wondering about the ending of these poems, as they tended to fizzle the great tension that they had built or to summarize when we wanted them to open up, complicate, or arrive at a new discovery.”
This advice helped me understand why my endings so often fell flat. An ending shouldn’t summarize—it’s not a five-paragraph essay (does anyone else feel like those assignments warped their brain?).
Among other issues with how I was taught to write, the five-paragraph essay is filled with repetition; poetry doesn’t have the real estate or the need for that kind of rehashing.
The best endings, I’ve heard said and heartily agree, make you want to immediately go right back to the top of the page to re-read the piece. Creating powerful endings is about the set of words and relationships between them that reveal more as you read deeply.
I believe the poems below illustrate a few variations on a powerful ending—and how all find a way to “open up, complicate, or arrive at a new discovery”, rather than recap what’s already been said.
Jump ahead:
∘ “Feared Drowned” by Sharon Olds
∘ “Mystic Bounce” by Terrance Hayes
∘ “Black Oaks” by Mary Oliver
∘ “Snakes In Your Arms” by Shira Erlichman
∘ “I’m Going Back to Minnesota, Where Sadness Makes Sense” by Danez Smith
∘ “Failed Essay on Privilege” by Elisa Gonzalez
“Feared Drowned” by Sharon Olds
In “Feared Drowned”, Olds gives an ending that’s both surprising and poignant. The poem details the speaker’s (relatable) experience of losing sight of a loved one in a crowd and panicking — only to see them again and for the crisis to be averted. The end of the piece beautiful reframes this moment of identification:
“Once you lose someone it is never exactly
the same person who comes back.”
Olds builds tension throughout the poem, as the speaker scans the crowded beach. Once she finally sees him, she doesn’t really recognize him — the moment of separation has changed the speaker’s perception somehow. This is a surreal feeling, but one I know I can relate to. The ending works by introducing this idea of misperception, reframing the nature of the piece and making you want to go back and re-read with this in mind. It’s the opposite of resolve, but true to life in that multiplicity of experience.
“Mystic Bounce” by Terrance Hayes
The end of “Mystic Bounce” by Terrance Hayes is striking, reflective, and the perfect example of how an ending can deepen the reading of a poem as a whole. The poem starts with concepts of “ascension” and “power”. Once we get to the end, we can re-read the beginning with a better sense of the poem’s relationship with power. Here are the last four lines:
“Does the anthem choke you up? When I asked
God if anyone born to slaves would die
a slave, He said: “Sure as a rock descending
a hillside.” That’s why I’m not a Christian.”
While the speaker seems to jump around subjects early on (meditation, fixing the world, history), the ending pulls these subjects together and provides context. Hayes is a brilliant crafter of language; the cadence of the piece, and the way we land at its final line, almost feel like a rock rolling down a hill: surprising yet inevitable.
“Black Oaks” by Mary Oliver
This poem about trees by Mary Oliver kicks off by employing her often conversational tone: “Okay, not one can write a symphony”, she states, introducing the reader to the trees as admittedly unremarkable as far as earthly entertainment value.
By the end, however, it’s revealed that the trees hold a greater meaning:
“And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”
The piece begins by acknowledging these trees aren’t divine or artistic. However, by the end, we see how they are precious to the speaker, how she longs for them over the outside world where she has to “sell [her] life for money”. Oliver is expressing such a simple desire here — the ending doesn’t make us gasp — it’s not a firework, but it’s satisfying and somehow intimate.
I don’t want to come in out of the rain either, Mary.
“Snakes In Your Arms” by Shira Erlichman
In this prose poem, Erlichman takes us into a scene between a patient (“You”) and their doctor. The reader can see, throughout the piece, that the subject is not being heard by the doctor, who seems ambivalent. The tension builds to this final line as he deflects the patient’s mental health struggles:
“He visibly relaxes. As if he has done his job.”
Erlichman leaves the reader here, with the satisfied doctor, juxtaposed by the speaker’s short and effective use of “as if” — cutting through any pretense that he’s been helpful.
It’s succinct and cutting — an especially poignant ending given how the “You” in the piece feels stifled by the doctor.
“I’m Going Back to Minnesota, Where Sadness Makes Sense” by Danez Smith
I loved this poem immediately the first time I read it, and not just because I’m also a Minnesotan by origin.
In “I’m Going Back to Minnesota, Where Sadness Makes Sense”, Smith portrays a speaker’s struggle with living in California: how they are “nervous” at the sun, the ocean, and the trees that are “always bear[ing] green”.
Halfway through, there’s a turn where the poem begins to describe Minnesota in winter, the brightness of reflective snow and ice. By the end, the sadness foreshadowed in the title sets in:
“& it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can’t shine.”
In the end, we see the logic in the “sadness” the speaker finds in that wintery terrain, how the light gleams from snow and ice but is ultimately inaccessible (as he states of the cold: “If you stay too long, it will kill you”).
As the reader is given this last piece of information, it becomes clear that the focus of the piece is the sadness. The weather is only a factor in the speaker’s conceptualization of the sadness, making it easier (in Minnesota) or more difficult (in California) to make sense of or excuse.
“Failed Essay on Privilege” by Elisa Gonzalez
In “Failed Essay on Privilege”, Gonzales has a matter-of-fact, straightforward tone (I grew up X, I left Y) but the last lines feel surprisingly open-ended:
“I paid so much
for wisdom, and look at all of this, look at all I have — ”
There’s something so delicately wry about this ending. It’s not a gut punch, but it feels like a final turn — the speaker is telling us to “look”, but it feels more like a question. What did I get? What are these words worth? What is this life worth? It works gracefully as a culmination of the “I” statements, complicating the reading of the piece while concluding the speaker’s “failed essay” in a satisfying way.
What endings have resonated with you? What are your struggles in ending a piece of writing? Please share in the comments!
