How to Fall: Inspiration for Poetry about Falling

by Dana Collins

Falling is accompanied by innumerate interpretations. Falling in or out of love, expectations falling short, the leaves or the snow falling… Literature is overflowing with motifs of falling. Although there’s a plethora of concepts and experiences you might want to write about for this issue, sometimes that can make producing a poem even harder! When there’s a wide expanse of ideas to wade through, it can be difficult to decide upon a direction to steer ourselves in. As a result, we find ourselves unable to write anything at all.

Of course, here at Not Quite Sure we’re no strangers to uncertainty, so I’ve compiled some poems to serve as inspiration. Ways to access these poems are included at the bottom of this article. Most poets are cognizant of many love poems, and have probably experimented with writing them in the past. As such, I’ve decided not to include any poems about falling in or out of love within this list to save room for other interpretations. I hope these poems serve as helpful tools for you to determine where your poetry will fall.

In Miguel Hernández’s Elegy for Ramón Sijé, falling is depicted in the form of grief. Both its form, and its opening lines - “I want to be the grieving gardener // of the earth you fill and fertilise” -  summon the image of a coffin being lowered and interred into the ground. Hernández writes later on, “you were hurtled // in this pit of earth,” with his dear friend’s demise plunging the speaker into grief.

Throughout the rest of the poem, there are numerous images evocative of things falling, from “the rain” to “a sudden silent killing axe-blow [that] sent // you toppling to the ground.” The realm of physical falls - the axe, the coffin, death itself - is inarguably connected to emotional loss and grief. With each falling motif, Sijé’s death becomes more of a blow to the speaker, who becomes more morose and sorrowful.

(Find Elegy for Ramón Sijé here: Elegy for Ramón Sijé)

In Boot Theory, Richard Siken also links a physical fall to an emotional one. He uses and alters the idiom of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” within this poem to disorient the speaker and indicate a sense of despair.

The speaker can hear a man in the apartment building above him taking off his shoes, and says “You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up, you’re waiting… And then the second boot falls. // And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.” Using idioms in a text sets up a reader’s expectations. We’re in anticipation of the second shoe to drop, and expect for nothing more to follow that. As more boots hit the floor, Siken disrupts and rejects our expectations. Hits just keep on coming, indicating that the speaker is being worn down in life. Siken finishes with five boots, meaning there is an incomplete pair, so the speaker is back to where he started, still waiting for the other shoe. Through this repetitive structure and absurd approach to idioms, the speaker is condemned to a cyclical despair.

 (From “Crush,” published by Yale University Press)

Perhaps, like Hernández and Siken, you might use the semantic field of falling to allude to a deteriorating mental state. You could write about falling without using the word itself, or take Siken’s approach and put a spin on a popular phrase about falling.

Another method to consider is to write poems that physically fall down the page. Nathan Penlington’s annotated silence contains no words in the main body of the poem. Instead, the reader must turn to the footnotes residing at the bottom to read anything at all. These footnotes reveal the words hidden within the silence, which hint to the feelings of comfort and affection, “love unspoken,” we might feel from sitting quietly with a loved one. By setting the words of this poem at the very bottom of the page, the reader’s glance has to fall to read them, so our physical act of falling accentuates Penlington’s portrayal of falling in love.

CAConrad writes many poems that reject formal conventions, with this rejection exacerbating the written contents of their work. In Acclimating to the Discomfort of the System Breaking Beneath Us, the titular break creates an image of humanity falling down through the foundations of the societies we’ve tried to create. As the speaker alludes to how the world has become a harder place to exist within, the poem, unmoored from the left margin cascades downwards to emphasise the anxiety of the world is hurtling to its end. Conrad’s closing image, “as we hold on to / the side of one / another howling down / the velocity of seconds,” returns us to the concept of a fall. Like either of these poets, you could play with (or outright reject!) conventional form in a way that interacts with the rest of the poem.

(Find Acclimating to the Discomfort of the System Breaking Beneath Us here: Acclimating to Discomfort of the System… | The Poetry Foundation)

Nature in its many beautiful forms fits perfectly into this issue: rainfall, snowfall, or the leaves escaping from the trees at the end of autumn. Discussing how the pastoral might tie into our second issue’s theme deserves a whole article in itself. However, since I’m trying to help you feel more directed, not overwhelmed with choices, I’ll keep this short and sweet.

In Mary Oliver’s Beside the Waterfall, the speaker’s dog finds a dead fawn hidden beside a waterfall, an image that allows Oliver to ruminate upon how beauty and gore coexist in the natural world. Like in some of the other poems I’ve mentioned, the literal fall of water plays with the metaphorical fall of death. As the death has occurred beside the waterfall, Oliver may be implying that death isn’t evil or scary, but in this case, it’s clean and simple and inescapable. Oliver stares, unfazed, into the facts of life. At the end of the poem, the sun “dropped its wild, / [and] clawed light” across the scene. Falling, despite its negative connotations in many regards, is juxtaposed by an undeniable beauty within this poem, and lauded for its inevitability.

(Find Beside the Waterfall here: The Poetry Foundation)

Another example of nature being used as a juxtapositional tool can be seen in a tanka written by Mikajima Yoshiko. This poem presents nature’s capacity to transport us away from the worries of daily life. Yoshiko’s decision to set the poem at “dusk,” while the kitchenware has been strewn about “everywhere,” hints at some disarray within the home. We’ve reached the end of the day, where a bone-tiredness has set in and yet there is still tidying up to be done. Then, comes the “autumn rain.” The house is filled with a soothing, repetitive noise to wash negative feelings away. We can choose to focus on the beauty of the world around us, rather than stew in the difficulties of our domestic lives. Yoshiko also depicts falling positively, with the final image of the rain lingering on after her tanka is finished.

(Find this tanka here - it’s the first of the three: Three Tanka | The Poetry Foundation)

Although I love all of the poems I’ve mentioned here, this list is far from exhaustive. However you choose to interpret falling is up to you. All we ask for is that your poetry is on theme and makes us feel something in the act of reading it. Whether, like Yoshiko, you write to soothe the reader, or like Hernández, you write to excise an emotion, I want to be moved. Be brave, read well, and edit, edit, edit! We can’t wait to share your work with the world.