Join poets Marsha de la O and Phil Taggart in an exploration of the challenge of ending a poem. We all want to end our poems with a striking image that packs a lot of power. In this workshop we’ll look at how that power might actually be working. It could clench the poem tight as a fist, open a huge imaginative space beyond the poem, or reflect a shadow back on everything that came before such that the meaning is changed. Or something else entirely. We’ll look at a number of poems with this in mind, and then offer the chance for participants to address their own work and explore endings through a pair of writing prompts.

Marsha de la O’s upcoming book from Pitt Poetry Series, Every Ravening Thing, is due out in Spring 2019. Antidote for Night, won the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award and was published by BOA Editions. Her first book, Black Hope, was awarded the New Issues Press Poetry Prize. She has published extensively, including recent poems in The New Yorker and the Kenyon Review, with work forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and North American Review.

Phil Taggart has three collections of poetry. His latest is Rick Sings (Brandenburg Press). His other two are Opium Wars (Mille Grazie Press) and an art book with artist Ann Harithas, Cowboy Collages. He served for nine years as the Poetry Editor of Art Life, ten years co-editing Askew and is currently editor of Spillway with Marsha de la O. Phil runs a weekly poetry reading at the EP Foster Library in Ventura, CA.