From Jericho Brown’s poem Another Elegy, I learned how to use turns more effectively.  A turn is when the poet leads the reader to expect something and then suddenly flips the meaning or outcome in an unexpected way.  This is often done using clever line breaks in order to give an unexpected and sharp transition.  For example, in his poem, he writes:

You believe in the sun. I believe
I can’t love you. Always be closing,
Said our favorite professor before
He let the gun go off in his mouth.

He begins with believe and sun, both hopeful concepts.  So at the end of the first line, when he says believe once more, we expect more hope.  However, after our eyes process that line and move on to the next line, he suddenly switches the meaning to a darker one about lacking love.  Similarly, he then talks about his favorite professor, so he leads us to expect a happy memory, but it again has a sudden and unexpected transition into the violent imagery of the gun and suicide.

Brown’s poem is full of these kinds of sudden transitions, or turns.  In imitating his poem, I similarly attempted to play with turns by juxtaposing opposite imagery and using line breaks to surprise.  I especially enjoyed using line breaks to break up phrases that normally go together, in order to give a new meaning to the combination.