The first line is a door

The hook, in the notebook, is what opens: an image, a break, a question. In the workshop on the first line, that becomes practice.

There is more than one way to enter. Each opening promises something and charges a cost. One opens with a scene. Another with an assertion that will later have to be held. Another with a gap.

The work is not to find "the" pretty first line. It is to write three entrances to the same text and keep the one that lets the reader in without explaining the poem too soon.

Source: the workshop "Seven opening lines," and the note on the hook.