Anti-Climax

Anti-climatic ending: an ending of a story or poem that contains no surprises.


There is a Creative Writing professor here at UWEC that believes solely in the anti-climatic ending. To him, there is no such thing as an "exciting ending" or a "surprise ending." (I am under the firm belief that if a student did dare include a surprise in his or her ending, this professor would die from shock.) This post is dedicated to that professor:

Anti-Climatic Poem
Insert a man:
Average colored brown hair,
Moderate height,
Medium weight.

Insert a woman--

--They’re both on a bus by the way.
Bother, I always forget to put in a setting.
It’s as though my characters are just floating there,
Waiting for somewhere to be.

Oh sorry.
Insert a woman:
Give her the same characteristics as that man up there.
Put her in a light gray blouse too if it makes you feel better.
And just for the hell of it,
They can sit across from each other on the bus.

That’s fine.
Trust me, it won’t matter.

The man is not aware of his surroundings:
Day-dreaming of a closet filled with nothing but colorful ties.
Do not ask me what all those ties are doing in his day-dream.
It’s not important.

The woman is much more conscious of her whereabouts.
Looking out the window she says in her mind what she sees:
Tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, brown fence.
Literary scholars will later deem her
the most boring character ever written about in a poem.

Nothing happens between the man and the woman.
They do not gaze at each other over their newspapers.
There will be no passionate kiss, not even an exchanged number.
I will not even describe them getting off the bus,
because nothing happens then either.