Guest Blogger: Keegan Lester -- The Poetic Turn

The turn happens in a poem when there is a shift in thinking or means of persuasion.  There is a wide variety of reasons for the utilization of this tool, but most commonly it is used as a vehicle for moving the poem toward a revelation.  In music we call this a bridge.  It is signified by either a chord or note change that is different from a verse or chorus and leads one either into the chorus or verse or to a shift in the music.  A great example of this is in the song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles, where the tone shifts musically and lyrically in the moment John Lennon sings: “When I touch you, I feel happy inside.”   Lyrically the disposition of the song changes from wanting to touch someone for the first time, and the mystery of that, to the longing that takes place when one waits to touch that person again.  The turn moves the song from the realm of speculation based longing to the kind of longing that happens after an actual experience.  Musically this is signified from the shift in keys from C to G minor 7.  One can easily hear the shift from a major chord to a minor.

So how does this work in poetry, without the music backdrop?  Sometimes it happens with a change in punctuation or syntax.   Sometimes it happens with a change in the speaker. In the poem “Scheherazade” by Richard Siken, it happens in a shift in language. The speaker moves from the Sultan character pleading to be retold details of a story in a borrowed language, and shifts to his own description of love, using words from his language.  In the poem, the speaker is mistaking his love of a person for his love of the language with which the storyteller uses.  The turn becomes clear in the fifth line, where the shift changes the poem’s movement from a series of questions using language exemplified by abstraction and lyricism, to the paired down and concrete language of his own words, revealing his own understanding of love.  

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