What you think I would have learned in my personal poetry 101

I would know myself well enough to know that after two weeks of parenting these boys myself, my husband six time zones away; and the week before that two week trip he was gone more than usual; when ten days out of fourteen I had both boys in the bed with me (and somebody tell me, please, how a boy who is 68 centemeters long take up so much space); after I’d leaked tears in public and yelled at A in private; when the sleep deprivation is like grit in my eyes and a forest of ticks colonizing my nerve-endings; when all I want to do is hide in a closet with a nice bottle of red wine and a chocolate cake, fork optional; on this day of all days I would know better than to open the SASE from the magazine that was a long shot to begin with.

“Thanks for sending us your work, but it’s not right for [us].”

Parenthood and poetry. Two of the crueler gods in the pantheon. Yet both so beguiling. How can I not worship in their temples?

Swooning over this simile

Listen to this line from The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon: “He checks behind the hot-water tanks, lashed to one another with straps of steel like comrades in a doomed adventure.”

Wow. Wow oh wow oh wow.

Tired

I’m exhausted. My husband left for the US eleven days ago; I’ve been on my own with the boys since then and don’t expect him back until about noon on Saturday which suddenly seems like a long way off still. Beyond the physical exhaustion of parenting from just after six in the morning until eight at night – my three-and-a-half year old A is a non-napping early-riser – the emotional weight of being on call all the time is grinding me down. I’m tired of making all the decisions. I’m tired of being the sole disciplinarian. I’m tired of cooking dinner and distributing dinner and cleaning up dinner. I’m tired of giving baths and changing diapers. I’m tired of laundry. But most of all I’m tired of having to decide which child gets my attention and which one has to wait. I’m tired of saying not right now, in a minute, I’ll be right there, just as soon as I finish with your brother. I’m tired of always being the one letting somebody down, making somebody wait, listening to somebody cry. I’m tired of having to decide by myself how long to let C cry in his crib before I do or do not go rescue him. I’m tired of it being my fault that somebody is crying, that somebody is alone. I am tired of choosing between my sons.

It built up slowly, like being buried on the beach one grain of sand at a time. What’s one grain of sand, it weighs nothing, what’s one more grain of sand? But suddenly the weight of all those grains is compressing your chest and you can’t breathe and you can’t move and you’re buried, buried up to your neck and you don’t know how you got there and you can’t get out and all those grains of sand are so heavy. I’m up to my neck. I can’t stand another grain, I can’t stand another day of inadequately parenting my children.

How do single parents do this?

(If you’re wondering then how do I have the time to write this, it’s because my in-laws, bless their hearts, have taken A for a sleep-over and C is supposed to be falling asleep but there are an awful lot of tears involved and I’m trying to decide how long to let that go on and hoping that by the time I finish writing this the situation will have resolved itself.)

Lather, rinse, repeat

Revision. For me, revision is the difference between journaling and writing. If the sudden rush of words in a first draft are all heat and fire, then revision is about shaping and forming like a glass-blower. As a much younger writer I resisted revising my poetry, so in love with the first words was I. I have always been a ruthless editor of my prose, but it took time to come around to editing poetry. I’m not sure why. Perhaps, as a younger writer, I bought into the romantic imagery of poems arriving in toto on the page, deposited there by some generous muse. Now and then a poem still comes to me that way, but they’re rare. These days I revise everything.

My initial drafts are almost always written in my notebook. I carry it everywhere, either tucked into the undercarriage of the stroller or slipped into my bag; I no longer buy purses or shoulder bags I can’t fit my notebook into. I might start off by jotting notes on an image or a memory or an idea I’ve been toying with. I make some false starts. There is much crossing out; circling of lines or entire sections and drawing of arrows to the place they really belong; insertion of little asterics and fresh lines jotted at the bottom of the page. I wish I could scan a page from my notebook to show you what a mess the first round is. Eventually it becomes so chaotic that I have to copy it out again; at this point I generally type it up and print it out. The next round of revisions is also done by hand, on the printed page. When that page becomes too cramped to continue I type up the revised poem and print it out again. I do this as many times as I need to. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’ll spare you all the intermediary iterations of this poem – I’m not sure I could reconstruct them anyway – and just show you the first full draft and the current one. The first draft isn’t even really the first draft, as my notebook shows several false starts on this; some lines from those attempts did survive, though, and the moment behind the poem was there from the start. As for the current draft, I don’t think it’s the last draft but I do think it’s almost the last draft. For now.

Draft One: (I have four alternate titles on the first draft) Leaping? Swift Current Lake? Exaltation? Bound? (I have taken the liberty of fixing all the misspelled words I scattered along the way)

The only way to do it was to run
one two three four
down the short dock
where the canoes tied up
and close my eyes
when the air brushed the soles of my feet.
You’d gone ahead
(you always did)
shouting in blue lipped exaltation
and surfaced to shake your hair like a sheep dog
(you wore it long that year
like the boys did back then
with a courduroy jacket for school picture day)
I was the girl who eased into even indorr swimming pools
little toe top shin knobby knee skinny thigh
breaking out in goose flesh and rattling teeth
while you bounded off the board
getting it over with
and I took little steps, bound foot steps
tasting every degree.
But even I knew that there
under a feeble late summer Montana sun
the only way to do it was to run
one two three four
down the short dock
where the canoes tied up
and to close my eyes when the air brushed the soles of my feet.

Here’s the current draft:
Bound

The only way to do it was to run
one two three four
down the short dock where the canoes tied up
and to close my eyes
when the air licked the soles of my feet.

You’d taken flight ahead of me
(you always did),
surfaced to shake your hair like the stray dog
who’d claimed us the day before
and to shout in blue-lipped exaltation.

I was the girl who eased into indoor swimming pools
toe shin knee thigh
breaking out in goose flesh and rattling teeth.
You got it over with,
bounding off the high board.

But even I knew that here,
Montana in the fall,
the only way to do it was to run
one two three four
and then to surface shouting in blue-lipped exaltation.

#

Peek at more revisions here.

Supposing

This week’s ReadWritePoem promt was a good exercise for me: take yourself out of the poem, let the narrator of the poem be somebody receiving a story rather than telling it. (You’ll notice I didn’t quite pull it off.)

 Suppose

Suppose I had looked right
instead of left that day.
Would he still have caught my eye,
taken my hand,
my life?
What would I be
if I’d looked right?

(It’s not something she should be asking
me)

Suppose I had said no
instead of yes.
Woul have have asked again
Persisted, insisted on
acceptane?
Where would I be
if I’d said no?

(It’s not something I want to hear from
her)

Suppose I had gone to college
instead of typing class.
Would I have had a sorority sister
a homecoming
a life?
Who would I be
if I’d gone?

(A good question, but not one to ask
your child)

#

You can read more stories here.

Who are you reading?

A while back Poet Mom wrote this post about who the top selling poets in the US seem to be: either dead (Gibran, Whitman) or well-known (Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver). It wasn’t that Poet Mom was suggesting that the poets on the list aren’t quality poets, but that there are so many good contemporary poets writing today that don’t seem to get attention (to the extent that poets in modern America are getting any attention at all); that casual readers of poetry reach for names they’re familiar with and aren’t willing to read a new name in poetry the way they might be willing to read a new name in fiction.

Which got me wondering. Who are you reading these days? Who’s the last new – new to you, that is – poet you stumbled upon and how did you make the discovery? What’s the last book of poetry you bought? I’m reading Dorianne Laux and Anna Akhmatova at the moment. My most recent “discovery” is Jack Ridl; his poem “From our House to your  House” in the current issue of Poetry East spoke to me enough to inspire me to order his book Broken Symmetry, and while I was at it I also ordered this and this.

So tell me. Who do you like? Who do you read? Who’s on your “must read” list?

Breathe

My husband is out of the country for two weeks – in our old home town of Washington, DC, ironically enough – and I’m flying solo.

My three-year old doesn’t nap; he’s an early riser; we’re talking fourteen hour days here, people, and a six-month old who still wakes anywhere from two to four times a night. Two nights ago he slept from 10pm until 6am for the first time ever, but needless to say lightning did not stike twice. It’s ten minutes to nine and I’m going to bed. This post right here, this constitutes my me-time for the day. Bed calls.

She felt a tug at her shoulder,
turned,
but it was just the wind
pulling at a thread on her sweater.
She walked on
oblivious to her unravelling.

Like dragons in the sky

Two fighter jets scream through the grey waiting for rain sky, their afterburners announcing themselves like dragons. Flying dragons. I point them out to my son, all excitement, tracing their receding shapes with my finger.

“Do you see them?” I ask my three-year old. “There!”

Teaching him the words “fighter jets” then telling him the German Kampfjets so that he can tell his grandfather what he saw. I do all this before I have time to reflect that – military blood on both sides of the family notwithstanding – I do not want him to think these dragons are exciting. The jets circle and pass again, a training exercise, two jets low and fast and close together sending a cry out over the sky that rumbles in the clouds like thunder long after they have passed from sight. Again, unbidden, I follow them with my finger as if painting their paths.

“Do you see them?” I ask my son.

“Ja! Ja! Fighter jets!” he answers.

This is how it begins, isn’t it, with these gestures that speak before we have time to form words. The body language of teaching, of impulse, of naming, of love. I give my son the names for his world, even these names – fighter jets, Kampfjets - for this imperfect world. Arming him with this one thing I can be sure of, these nouns and the pictures we can paint with them.

“Listen!” I say as the jets rumble off. “They sound like dragons in the sky.”

Protected: When I watch you

Four a.m.

Jillypoet is writing a poem a day in June and inviting others to join her. I think I can try to write a poem a day in June – my husband will be out of the city for one week and then out of the country for the following two, so this is either a really good idea for my mental health or a really bad one – but I’m not sure I can commit to actually posting them every day. I’m happy to post pages from my notebook now and then, to work through the creative process in public on a poem here and there, but I’m not sure my fragile poet’s ego is prepared to post poem after poem that misses the mark, that dissatisfied me, that seems so pale compared to the colors in my head that I meant to describe. I took a long, long break from writing poetry and I’m so pleased it has come back to me like a homing pigeon bearing the answer to a missive I had forgotten I’d even sent. I don’t want to burden the poor thing with too many messages too fast. It was a long flight and my cooing bird needs to rest in its coop and get strong on sleep and grain.

I’ll do the writing, but I’m not brave enough to share it all. Not yet.

That said, I did write something this morning. Very. early. this morning.

You are incandescent
at four a.m.
even I
have to smile
rub sleep
from my eyes
give you my pinky
to chew
for awhile
in this minute
between dream
and day
at four a.m.