The list-with-a-twist structure includes a list that turns–or twists–significantly toward the end.
Lots of poems use the list-with-a-twist structure. Many of the poems listed on this blog under other structures also are lists with twists. The poems here exemplify this structure.
“Birds Appearing in a Dream,” by Michael Collier
“Marginalia,” by Billy Collins
Billy Collins makes great use of the turn in his poems, and the list-with-a-twist structure can be found throughout his oeuvre.
“The Heart asks Pleasure – first,” by Emily Dickinson
“Counting Sheep,” by Russell Edson
“Guide to the Other Gallery,” by Dana Gioia
“Majority,” by Dana Gioia Also, a poem that makes use of the retrospective-prospective structure.
“Dream Notebook,” by Jane Hirshfield
“Once: An Assay,” by Jane Hirshfield (see p. 5)
“For the man with the erection lasting more than four hours,” by John Hodgen
“Baghdad Exceeds Its Object,” by Kent Johnson
Please note that the lineation of this version of the poem is off. For an accurate printing of the poem, read it in Kent Johnson’s Lyric Poetry after Auschwitz: Eleven Submissions to the War (Austin, TX: Effing Press, 2005), pp. 28-29, or Homage to the Last Avant-Garde (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2008), pp. 118-19.
“Brother, I’ve seen some…,” by Kabir
“We Are Afraid,” by Jennifer L. Knox (from A Gringo like Me: Poems (Soft Skull, 2005), pp. 45-46).
“Not an Outright Dick, Per Se,” by Eric Lawson
“Pity me not because the light of day…,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“I Could Have Loved You–Probably,” by Monica Piotrowski
“Subway Seethe,” by J. Allyn Rosser
from Amoretti (Sonnet LXXI: “Fair is my love…”), by Edmund Spenser
“Some People,” by Wislawa Szymborska
“Under One Small Star,” by Wislawa Szymborska
Notice in Szymborska’s poem the final twist toward speech and the making of poems. This self-referential turn is a feature common of a lot of poems. (Check out the Baudelaire and Kinnell poems here.)
[...] well, um, overlap. For example, you’ll see that I’ve added a structure on this blog called “List-with-a-Twist.” One of the things I mention about that structure is that it is one way to describe MANY poems, [...]
Piotrowski and Szymborska on the same page? I think I’ve reached my goal!
Yes–you’ve arrived, Monica…congrats!
Thanks again for letting me post your terrific poem!
[...] Wislawa Szymborska’s Some People, a poem employing a List-with-a-Twist Structure, the window-moment occurs at the poem’s final twist. As Hirshfield notes of the [...]