Hello! Oh, gosh, that’s sort of a tough question. But what I try to do is start out with a fact or an event, and make that fact or event very specific, something the reader can easily picture. I make that fact or event specific so that the reader will remember it and be able to connect it with the speaker’s own life later on in the poem.
So I start out the poem with a little fact/event, and then I move on to talking about the speaker’s life, and then at the very end of the poem, I try to tie up the speaker’s life with the fact at the beginning.
So I use some kind of key phrase that ties the two together. For example, in my poem “Cancer Statistics,” I wrote “My five-year-old cousin David thinks one out of every five people dies,” at the very beginning. That was the very first line.
But then at the very end of the poem, I wrote “Eight times out of nine, my mouth does the trick.” So both the first and last lines of the poem involved a ratio, numbers-basically statistics.
The fact at the beginning was therefore tied in with the anecdote at the end.
By the way, if you’d like to see that whole poem (“Cancer Statistics”) for reference, you can read it here: http://writingsforwinter.tumblr.com/post/42644438797/cancer-statistics. It might help you see what I mean more clearly.
I hope that helped!
Have a great day. :)
xo