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?

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?

When I watch you

I’ve been writing from some old black and white photographs of my parents when they were young, pictures mostly taken by my grandfather the amateur photographer. In a family that didn’t tell stories about itself these photos are the few stray bread crumbs left in a trail that the birds almost picked clean. They lead somewhere, these pictures, these moments. They lead here, of course, to me, to my sons, to today as surely as the past always leads to the future; but they lead someplace else, too, down other paths to alternative futures my parents could have, but didn’t, live out. And they lead me backwards, as well, back to each of those moments to wonder which was the moment they chose this future instead of that one, or that one.

Did they in fact even choose, or did they just take the car out of gear and let the momentum carry them?

 Christmas 1953

The back of her hand
meets her brow
in a gesture so theatrical
it could almost be posed,
the distress signal of a dozen
damsels in distress.
Her arm is all slender grace,
the branch of a weeping willow.
Her eyes are closed;
she is tired of pretending cheer,
wants to leave.

He is turned to her
his hand grazing her exposed back:
a solicitous reflex -
I almost say “as always”
but on the back of the print
her careful hand has noted
Christmas, 1953.
Married a mere seven months
there is no as always
yet.

He is wearing a suit,
she glamorous in black strapless.
They are smoking
(as always)
but there are no cocktails
unless they’ve been cropped out
or that habit has not developed
yet.

She is just twenty
but looks already weary:
that arm frozen in time
hand to brow
those closed eyes,
the beginning of a sigh
as if she already knows
all the disappointing years
before she dies.

#

You can catch other poetic glimpses here.

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.

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.

Protected: My father’s hands

water birth

The latest ReadWritePoem promt is mothers, a poem about mothers. I wrote a poem about becoming a mother.

water birth

Battered by waves of contractions
like so much flotsam on the open sea
I drown,
surface,
drown,
surface,
my eyes on the horizon where you wait,
sending up flares to lead me to shore.
I stumble onto the sand,
my hair wrapped around my neck like seaweed,
licking salt from my lips and
gasping for breath.

And there you are,
sea-creature clumsy on this sudden land
and smelling of salt water and blood.
I watch you cling to me,
you shipwrecked survivor
with me your plank,
and I drown.

I drown,
I drown,
I drown.

That’s me running around on the field

I love this line from Trish: “Emerging writers are just seven year old kids, playing their hearts out and hoping that someone on the sideline thinks they’ve got potential.” That’s where I am with my poetry right now: full of the enthusiasm of a seven year kid (and perhaps sometimes turning a phrase as clumsily as one) just playing the game. There are days when I believe I am talented. There are days when I’m full of doubt. But mostly, these days, I’m running around kicking words like a ball and laughing to see which direction they fly off in. I’m having fun; even the work of revision is fun. In fact, the work of revision is often more fun than the rush of the first draft. Honing, fine-tuning, molding something raw into something with form and shape and purpose. Finding just the right word and putting it in just the right place. For now this is enough, knowing that I enjoy this.

I want more. I’ve got plans for more. I’m working towards more. But I also want to enjoy running around barefoot on the cool grass kicking balls with all the passion only a seven year old can muster.