Consider the high-five: a friend raises their hand in celebration or encouragement, asking you to make contact, emphatically, with it. A point of contact — human to human — that is tangible, auditory, and visual.

The openings of well-made poems are often like this. But the author and the poem are not always a familiar presence, not always a friend, so perhaps this analogy is best understood as two strangers gathered at a concert who turn to each other to punctuate the final power chord. Or maybe two sports fans from the same city who’ve just met in adjacent seats, celebrating an unbelievable comeback win. Or, still yet, two folks attending their first protest rally, bonding over the call-and-response but also over the gratitude of standing together against oppression. The palm-to-palm that asks, “Are you with me?”

All of this is to cast a light on the opening lines of poems as a place, the first place, in fact, to build trust with the reader.

EXAMPLES:

“Two of my children turn red
 in the face when something’s

hurt them. Lighter than the others 
and everyone knows

they belong to the white man
I used to do housework for.”

– from “Ruddy” in Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home

A man wants my take on his novel
where a wife dies with a peanut in her mouth
after we’ve met her husband, in the act with his secretary
in the passenger seat of a late-life convertible.

– from “Death by Chocolate” in Sandra Beasley’s Made to Explode

That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean

for home, could be Odysseus,
home-bound on the Aegean;

– from “Sea Grapes” by Derek Walcott 

One of the reasons I like the idea of high-five as metaphor for the opening is that a high-five is not elegant. It relies more deeply on emphasis, on the demonstrative power of action, but it’s also communal. A high-five is something that can’t be done alone — Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” joke notwithstanding — without it becoming simply an act of clapping.

And so, perhaps, writers who seek to connect with others should not let decorum or lassitude prevent us from crafting openings that announce themselves emphatically. This need not be done “loudly,” per se (for a hand raised for a high-five is silent), nor does it need to be done as some kind of public performance. Any parent can attest to high-fiving a partner when the children aren’t around (and children, in turn, likely do this with each other; intimacy does not negate emphasis).

*****

Handshake — can be the parting or greeting, but what happens if this is done in the middle? Longer than a high-five. More akin to respect. There is a parallelism to the handshake that sustains. And, yes, the equality of movement exists in each, yet it is most formal in the handshake.

Consider this example:

Tender

The tenderest meat
comes from the houses
where you hear the least

squealing. The secret
is to give a little
wine before killing

– Toi Derricotte

*****

Hugs — the embrace, the pulling in, the lingering in language. Lovers, friends, siblings, parents, all forms of relationships do this. We build trust when we allow levels of vulnerability to be brought to the heart of another person. To be in the chest-to-chest moment.

Ex.:

— Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

– from “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop

Steven Leyva’s latest poetry collection is The Opposite of Cruelty.