Poetic transformation
I wrote this poem about a year ago, in the Poetry Thursday days (I was writing on a different blog then) and have been trying to turn it into a villanelle (there’s a good discussion of the form here). I almost always write in free verse; when I write to a form it seems to me that it’s pretty obvious that I’m not comfortable with the structure. My sonnets feel like diddys, my villanelles come out sing-songy. It takes a truly light hand to use forms to enhance the content rather than allow the content become slave to the form. I don’t think I have that touch.
With that in mind, this weeks’ ReadWritePoem prompt – to rewrite a formal poem in another form – was a perfect time to return to work on my villanelle; I’d set it aside a long time ago. Technically, I’m not quite responding to the prompt; we’re supposed to take a formal poem and transform it to another form and I’m taking free verse (but with a structure) and turning it into a formal poem. Still, it does demonstrate how changing the form transforms the poem.
Here’s the orignal free verse poem:
Fresh water fugue
My father was a fisherman.
The rivers he fished echo through the summers of my childhood like a fugue.
Their names are smooth and round in my mouth
like the river rocks I rolled in my hands as a child:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
My father was a fisherman.
I grew up bathed in the light of his long love affair
with the waters of the American west.
Trained by an angling eye, I learned to worship
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
My father was a fisherman.
He lived many miles from the headwaters of his heart
but summer after summer he fished those rivers
and summer after summer those rivers restored him:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
My father was a fisherman.
From him I learned the rhythms of happiness,
rhythms of happiness that flow at the pace of trout streams.
Like a cygnet I imprinted on the river valleys of
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
My father was a fisherman.
He gave me gifts that glistened like the scales of a brook trout,
gifts I used hard and fierce without thought to value
the way children use gifts, their measure taken only years later:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
My father was a fisherman.
Though I have watched the sun rise over the Grand Canyon
and seen it set on the Swiss Alps
at night when I dream my heart dreams of
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
For my father was fisherman.
And perhaps there is river water in my blood
or some gene my father handed down.
Or perhaps it is simply that we love best those things that we loved first:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.
#
Now here’s the villanelle:
Fresh water fugue
My father was a fisherman.
His heart began to beat
in autumn when the brook trout ran
churning river rocks and sand.
At the headwaters of his heart
my father was a fisherman.
His river home, the Madison
and river water in his blood
in autumn when the brook trout ran
pulled my father off the land.
At the headwaters of his heart
my father was a fisherman
all the years I knew the man.
He hatched his most honest self
in autumn when the brook trout ran.
It’s the single truth I know.
If but one memory holds:
my father was a fisherman
in autumn when the brook trout ran.
#
The orignal free verse poem is actually a cannibalized essay. I like that I’ve gone from 3000 words to 56 lines to 19 lines. I think by the time I get it right, by the time I say the one true thing about my father I’ve been trying to say since he died almost 20 years ago, it will be a haiku. It would satisfy the fly-fisherman in him for me to tell the greatest truth with the fewest words. He knew the pleasures of landing a big trout with a light touch.
You can read more transformations here.
Filed under From my notebook, My process, Poetry | Comments (4)
Saturday morning poetry
Whatever else happens during the week, Saturday mornings are mine. My husband is in charge of the boys and I have two or three uninterrupted hours of my own. I usually head for a coffee shop and I usually work on my poetry. I only have a few hours because my baby will not take a bottle, not a bottle of breast milk and not a bottle of formula and it’s completely frustrating and we’re working on it. The hours are precious; I feel the minutes acutely as they pass and it’s time I can’t let slip away. One Saturday I was having trouble working, the words weren’t coming and when they did they were as graceful as a three-year old on ice skates. But because time alone is such a premium I can’t let it slide by unused. Here’s my journal entry from that morning:
“Having trouble working. Jumping around. Do some Goldberg 3 lines in 3 minutes.
[I looked out the window for inspiration]
The flag outside
waves goodbye
To winter
Blue sky tricked me.
I have my sunglasses
but it’s started to rain.
[I looked out the window again and noticed a stall at the market strung with Dream-Catchers and dangling crystals.]
She sells rainbows at the market
hanging from fishing line
and dancing to the wind.
[I liked that and thought I could keep going]
She sells rainbows at the market
hanging from fishing line
next to the wool socks
and dancing to the wind.
They are always in season
but sometimes hard to find
during the long March days.
She knows the secret places,
the hollow under the tree
on the north slope
and the thick mud of the river bottom.
You’d be surprised
the places she finds them:
the second floor of the sandstone building
next to the clock tower,
and her brother-in-law’s cellar.
She collects them all week
and sells them on Saturdays
rain or shine
setting up her stall next to the man with the spices and herbs
and across from the well-made wooden playthings from Germany.
She does a good business
in all kinds of weather.
People always want rainbows
with their steaming cup of coffee from the couple selling cobbler
and heady homemade cream.
It’s a sideline, selling rainbows,
Her real work is the greasy brown of dirty dishes
and ketchup stains
and people who seem to be tipping less these days.
The rainbows keep her in the black.
[at this point I can feel the poem is really breaking down and I think I have enough of an idea there to come back to and tear apart and revise later and maybe turn it into something. I stop the free-flow of writing and go back to read it over once and make the following minor changes. The real work of revision will come days or weeks later when I come back to it.]
She sells rainbows at the market
hanging from fishing line
next to the wool socks
and dancing to the wind.
They are always in season
but sometimes hard to find
during on the long grey March days.
She knows the secret places,
the hollow under the tree
on the north slope
and the thick mud of the river bottom.
You’d be surprised
the places she finds them:
the second floor of the sandstone building
next to the clock tower,
and her brother-in-law’s cellar.
She collects them all week
and sells them on Saturdays
rain or shine
setting up her stall next to the man with the spices and herbs
and across from the well-made wooden playthings from Germany.
She does a good brisk business
in all kinds of weather.
People always want rainbows
with their steaming cup of coffee from the couple selling cobbler
and with heady homemade cream.
It’s a sideline, selling rainbows,
Her real work is week days are the greasy brown of dirty dishes
and ketchup gravy stains
and people who seem to be tipping less these days.
The rainbows keep her in the black.
At the line “she collects them all week” I’ve jotted “stumbles here” in the margin and starting at “It’s a sideline, selling rainbows” I’ve written “Breaks down here. Move this idea up top (and reworked)? Drop altogether?” At the bottom of the page I’ve noted “Cute but doesn’t go anywhere.”
I type up the drafts from my notebook and keep editing them; this draft is sitting on my desk, still cute, still not going anywhere, but still with a few good lines in there that might have a future.
Filed under From my notebook, My process, Poetry | Comment (1)