We’re staying with the Writing Poetry paperback that Matthew Sweeney and John Hartley Williams wrote together for the Teach Yourself series.

In Chapter 12 they’re looking at first lines of contemporary poems, and the need to hook the reader:

Someday I will go to Aarhus
Hitler entered Paris the way
The strangest thing I ever stole? A snowman.
Brethren, I know that many of you have come here today
We gotta make a film of this, Jack.
After she left he bought another cactus.

All these lines are intriguing, but they work in different ways. The first is a vow, then we have the first half of a comparison that the reader needs to complete. The third is a question with its own answer, followed by a resolve in dialogue. Number 6 is a story that begins in the middle.

Here are first lines from some of the poems in my pamphlet A Stolen Hour (Grey Hen Press, 2020):

For just one minute of the day
If we were strangers,
His binoculars rest on the windowsill.
The week before I’d given my pleated dress away.
Bedrooms are for hiding white.
One hour was stolen from the time
I am the last stonemason.
Date of refusal decision: 13 September 2017

What do you think? Which is the one that intrigues you most and why? Feel free to use them for your freewrite, your ink waster. If you get a poem or flash fiction from a line, I’d be pleased to know!