Hook Lines in Songs and Poems

I was just thinking about similarities between songwriting and poetry, and how the important 'hook line' is common to both. I was listening to Pete Townshend's "The Sea Refuses No River". The song builds on the title line over and over, and each time it's introduced it means more, and draws more power to itself. The line hooks you and draws you in.

I'm including two new poems with this post. The hook lines in these poems, I think, are at the end, especially in the first poem. If anyone sees the hook somewhere else, please let me know.


WATCHING THE LILACS IN MARCH

It's true, the world holds its secrets
and reveals them, sure as the taut
buds of the lilacs will hear
the first spring tone and burst

forth, as they say.
Where I come from
love is measured in drops,
maple sap gathering,

the old men distilling
the sweetness inside them.
I found love in the smoke
wreathing from my father's pipe,

in the small gestures he made,
leaning over the bed each morning
to kiss me
into the day.



LIVING THE DAY

Each day we have this chance
to live again, so why not
step out, grateful,
into the light?

Last night I dreamed
I opened a wooden box.
Inside were neat bundles
of sticks--one for each year

of my life? No, one for each
day, there were so many of them,
some dark, some brown as grief,
others the whiteness of wings.

The day opens for each of us.
A crow flies out
from its stickly nest,
fully awake to the world.

(Copyright Allan Cooper, 2006)