The Hinge

How and where poems turn

#Field Notes

Dear Writers,

Let’s just get right into it. It’s that important to your poems. Without the volta, your work is missing the point.

Every strong poem pivots. Sometimes it’s a small hinge—one ‘but,’ one white space. Sometimes the floor drops out. The volta is the moment the poem reconsiders itself.

By “the moment the poem reconsiders itself,” I mean the hinge where the poem changes its mind, or at least its angle. It revises an earlier claim, widens or contradicts it, or lets a new pressure in that forces the thinking to adjust.

Reconsidering isn’t repeating; it’s qualifying, complicating, or re-seeing. If you are repeating, you are missing the point and missing the chance to make your poem more than a grouping of words, lovely as they might be. Your volta awakens the reader to a forthcoming deeper meaning, and it makes the difference between, as Ira Sukrungruang said, “…how one understands life, not the life itself.” It’s not enough to tell an event. One must convey the “So what?” of the event. And the volta, or turn, or pivot is the alert that the “So what?” complication has arrived. It represents, above all, poetry’s ability to be in continuous dialogue with itself and to take readers on a nuanced, complex journey.

photo by K. Adams

Where Turns Live

• In fixed forms:

  • Shakespearean sonnet: Often into the couplet

  • Italian sonnet: After the octave

  • Haibun: At the cut

  • Ghazal: Within each refrain

• In free verse:

  • often at two-thirds, but can be anywhere the pressure changes

Types of Turns