Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall is the author of Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She was the 2008-09 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and currently teaches at Western Michigan University, where she is a doctoral associate and a Kings/Chavez/Parks Fellow.


NOLI ME TANGERE

We do not understand why they are dying,
but we know the disease spreads when they touch

so we let the tree frogs sing to us. We answer,
beckoning, faking mating calls to lure them

to our wet hands. We take note of their length
and weight and wounds, and put them in plastic bags.

Separated, their confused fingers press the surface.
This is not the body they longed for, no broad back

and speckled knees, no eggs waiting to release
and swell. But still, they sing like prisoners

with hands full of moonlight, and I want to quiet them,
the way, as a child, I broke a shell to keep it

from crying out for the sea. It’s so loud here,
this country where a flower dreams of its color

before it opens, where we coax the sick from the trees.
Each morning I wake to kookaburras and a man stroking

a guitar, singing a song another man wrote about love.
At night, we transect creeks, eels skating our shins,

swollen leeches hooked to our calves as we shine
our flashlights on the banks. Everywhere we look

vines are choking the trees. They cling until they suffocate
the trunk beneath them, the strangler taking the shape

of what it has killed. Maybe some animals want to die
this way, to hold fast and feel something weakening

underneath them. Sometimes we interrupt the small male
in amplexus, gripping his lover’s generous back,

limbs freckled by sores, their pile of eggs, round
and imperfect. When we return to our tent, we take off

our clothes. This is not what we expected. We believed
in gristle, tendon and bone. Pathogen and host.

But we are minor kingdoms of salt and heat.
We trace each other’s scars—proof of our small

green hearts and violent beginnings, engines of cell
and nerve, yielding to a silent, lonely union.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

In the winter of 2004 I went to Australia and traveled around New South Wales with a team of biologists catching endangered frogs. Many of the frogs were afflicted with a disease that spread when they touched, which most often happened when they were breeding. The ones that weren’t infected, we released. The ones that had clearly developed sores, we put in plastic bags and brought back to the labs for testing. I wrote the first draft of this poem my first semester in grad school (2006).

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

This poem went through many drafts over a period of three years. I wish I knew the number. Somewhere in the double-digits though.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

I definitely believe in inspiration, but this poem is the end product of a lot of drafts and conscious choices.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

This poem went through many drafts where I reorganized and cut down the original version of it. At some point I decided to completely reinvent the poem. Some of the original lines survived, but I basically started over. I wanted to leap more, pull in the landscape, make it bigger than a single moment. I also invented a lover for the poem to sort of mimic what was happening in nature and to make the problem of desire tangible for the speaker.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

About six months after it was finished it appeared in The Missouri Review.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

It varies a bit poem by poem, but I’m definitely guilty of sending poems out pretty quickly. I find that I’m often wrong in what my best poems are, or at least can’t guess what an editor will like. Several of the poems I was convinced were the best poems from my first book never found homes. If I let a poem sit around too long, I’m liable to think it’s not any good, so I just shove the fledglings out of the nest and see how they do.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

I mentioned before that I invented a lover for the sake of the poem. I think many poems, especially ones that come from autobiographical experience, have to weigh the value of truth and Truth. It was more important for me to get closer to the complexities and dangers of desire than it was to adhere to the play-by-play facts of the experience.

Is this a narrative poem?

Definitely, although less strictly narrative than it was in its first draft.

At the heart of this poem is the specter of morality, the idea of right and wrong. Is all good poetry in some way ethical or just?

Perhaps if a desire for understanding is ethical, then this poem is ethical. I think many poems seek to discover something, even if it’s just beauty. Even if it’s just the grotesque. Knowledge and inquiry do not make a person just or moral, but they can give us the tools we need to make those choices.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I remember reading Yannis Ritsos around the time I finished this poem, although I don’t see him in the poem. Continual influences would definitely include James Dickey, Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Larry Levis.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

I read that Annie Dillard said her audience for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was two monks she’d never meet. I’d like to borrow her answer.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

I had a group of writers in grad school who were extremely helpful. Now my writing partners are people who see rough drafts not so much for editing suggestions, but as a way to check in with each other and see what we’ve been working on.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

This one was more difficult to write than most, largely, I think, because it took me a long time to figure out what it was that I was trying to say.

What is American about this poem?

Pleasure can ruin you anywhere, even America.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Both.

James Brasfield

James Brasfield was born in Savannah, Georgia. His book of poems, Ledger of Crossroads was published by Louisiana State University Press in 2009. He has received fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Twice a Senior Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine, he is a recipient of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Prize in Translation and The 2000 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha (Harvard University Press, 1999). He was a visiting professor of poetry at the University of Memphis for 2008-2009. He teaches in the English Department at Penn State University.


LETTER FROM GERMANY

for my father (1909-1952)

Many things have been done
And many hours merged into so many days
Since I last had time to write you.
It has rained all day and the blossoms
Have nearly all been beaten down.
The bareness and gray scud clouds
Add to the gloom. Cold rain
Keeps us aware that there is a war on.
With the wind behind it, the rain feels like
Someone slapping you with a wet towel.
And the mud is like Prairieville mud.
I was fooled last month,
It was pleasant and the fruit trees bloomed.
I fell to 145 pounds at the front
And I am somewhat embarrassed
The way my clothes drape about me.
I am on swing shift tonight.
Staring into the river, I quit thinking
For a while. I have this dream that I pass
A place called "Hotel Moderne":
I want to rent a room and don't have the time.
The first chance I get, I am going back.
It looked clean from the outside.
Last night I went to the USO show.
Three performers in an old building.
I felt sorry for them. The dancer
Couldn't dance for sour apples,
But got a big hand from the boys
Because she had so little on.
The comedian was good, the best
Was the old fellow who just sang.
He was not good. We wanted his songs
And he sang them. Tonight
There are flares and tracers, stories
Of paratroopers, but no sign of them.
I bought a doll finally for the little girl.
I didn't pay much, it was the best
I could find; there are more dolls' heads
Than dolls on the shelves. I have a radio
Now and get the news hot off the air
And real American jazz. I need
A particular big eyed, light hearted woman
To dance with. But she is not on this side
Of the Atlantic. Looking
At your picture, I have almost
Forgotten how you are. Alabama
Better have a big sweet potato crop
The year I come home. And get a bottle
Or two of bourbon stashed away
If you love me. It has been too long.
There is nothing normal left.
The smell of guns massed in this valley
Hangs bitter in the air.
A town burns across the ridge.
I know the distance. It is late,
And being out of candles, I have to quit.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

“Letter from Germany” is the earliest poem in Ledger of Crossroads. I completed and published the poem soon after I completed graduate study. Since “Letter from Germany” I have published a number of poems that were not included in Ledger. But this poem has held up for me and for other people and has its place in the book’s themes.

My father died weeks after I was born. I knew him from photographs and from things of his—books, fishing tackle, pipes, objects brought back from WWII, etc.—and from stories about him. My mother had a box of his letters written during the war, many of them written on small V-mail pages. I read the letters during my last year of graduate school. In them I heard the voice that I think of as my father’s. The letters were the closest I had ever been to my father. As I read I took notes, many pages of them, and afterward carried the large correspondence in mind. Eventually the poem emerged, sculpted as a portrait.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

I don’t remember how many drafts were necessary to complete the poem. Most often, many drafts are necessary.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

I do believe in inspiration. In a sense the entire poem was dictated by my father, spoken as if from a moment in time about recent and relevant events under the ongoing pressures during a pause in combat. That I was learning who my father was, line by line, adding to his always incomplete and imagined presence, created a heightened intensity.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

From the beginning, the poem was conceived in what Frost might call “loose blank verse,” as a dramatic monologue in the form of an epistle.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I have no rules. Practice varies with each poem. I have poems that I have been working on for years, knowing they have yet to be realized. Tsvetaeva believed that a poem she was at work on had already been written. Her job was to remember the poem exactly. So there are times when a word might suffice, yet it is not, so to speak, what has always been written. Strange how a poem may seem to be remembered correctly, yet overnight, or over a week, or much, much later, the actual word or words come to mind, replacing the misremembered.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

From facts in his letters, the life-moment of the epistle’s occasion is a fiction made from thoughts and feelings of my father and me.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes and no. The letter’s details of remembrance have the feel of chronology, yet there is no story, per se. The facts’ storyline works wholly by association, by juxtapositions over the duration of the letter, that is, a pattern of associations is woven for the illusion of a summary story told on a single night.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I was discovering many poets, poets in translation as well as English-language poets who may be present in the poem. Also, at the time I was much interested, as I am now, in what a line alone might convey, yet I wanted, too, to be able to write a more pliable line, not simply by utilizing an awareness of means for enjambment, but lines as extended resonances of tone unfolding down the page. When writing “Letter from Germany” I was studying the timing, the feel, the management of duration, in the stichic poems of Daniel Halpern (one of my mentors at the time), as well as in Lowell’s “The Public Garden” and Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.” Well, since then, there are of course many more poems and poets I’ve come to admire for their various means of shaping a nuanced velocity for emotion.
Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

The addressee is my ear formed by poems that come to mind (and those deeper in mind, unrecalled but part of the psyche) as emotion to match the intentions of what I feel as I work. Reading widely is important for me, discovering new possibilities for what is sensed and thought to be heard and voiced.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

It is the only dramatic monologue I have written. So the poem is “heard” differently, derived from my father’s words. Though I have written a verse play, I do not write usually in the guise of another, except perhaps in the way in which Yeats considered the mask assumed—“creative life is a rebirth as something not oneself…perpetually renewed.” “Who is it?” Stevens asks in Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

What is American about this poem?

Certainly, the arena, the soldier, the details of devastation, the moments of humor, the loneliness, and the message home are ancient and universal. But a few phrases are what might be called American English.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

The poem was finished.

Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010). She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. She has taught Creative Writing at Mills College, and Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, where she is co-editor of Doveglion Press. For more information, please visit BarbaraJane’s website.


A LITTLE BIT ABOUT LOLA ILANG

During the war, the old women would still go outside the house to smoke their hand-rolled tobacco after cleaning the suppertime dishes. But so the Japanese soldiers would not see them, they learned to flip their cigarettes with the lit ends inside their mouths. They flipped their cigarettes with their tongues so fast, and we kids would try to copy them. We burned our own tongues trying. Lola Ilang used to do this, and I tried to copy her. It hurt! It hurt so much when I burned my tongue! Yes, Lola Ilang used to cook the best pochero, and foreigners thought it was a little weird to cook banana with bok choy. You use the saba banana. No other kind is sweet enough. Do you know, when she died, everyone had already forgotten how old she was? We asked her some years ago, and even she had forgotten. But I was saying about the war. No, the women did not want the soldiers to find them. You know what the soldiers did to the women here. The Japanese buried so much gold in our hills. This is because our northernmost provinces were the last places they set foot before their ships left, after their emperor surrendered. They stole this gold, Spanish gold, from our churches. You know, not too long ago, some of the Japanese who had gone into hiding were found in the hills. They were so old. They never knew how the war ended.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

July 20, 2007. I just now searched my old blog and found this post, in which I discussed the Diwata manuscript revision process. At the time, I was thinking about digression in storytelling or talk story, how digression can be very much the point of the story, that the manner in which a story is told is the point, sometimes more so than the story itself. Sometimes.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

This poem underwent very little to zero revision, and very little time elapsed between the first and final draft. I think this is fairly uncommon for me. I oftentimes am skeptical of “first draft, last draft,” and think of it as a justification for laziness or unwillingness to revise. That said, I also have to remember to be open to poems which arrive like gifts, and to allow myself some good duende.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

Having just mentioned duende, I do believe in inspiration. As well, the word “diwata” also means “muse,” after all. As above, almost all of this poem was received, and gladly so, especially because the rest of the manuscript in its entirety was a result of much sweat and tears.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

It arrived to me neatly in its digressive prose form. A great portion of Diwata occurs in prose poetry, and so the use of form of “A Little Bit About Lola Ilang” was automatic. The talk story digression I believe necessitates the continuous poetic line, rather than metered couplets or pantoum quatrains, which are other forms I utilize in Diwata. Rather than the story being ceremonial, formal, incantatory, this is the kind of story elders tell spontaneously, in the course of conversation around the kitchen table when no one is in a rush to go anywhere. Perhaps the talk story would even include a cigarette flipping on the tongue demonstration. The talk story would also include rounds of San Miguel beer, or something harder.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

This poem appeared in the anthology, Field of Mirrors: An Anthology of Philippine American Writers, which was released in January 2008. It had been accepted by the editor Edwin Lozada some months before.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I don’t think I sat on this poem at all. The writing and completion of it was so fast, that there was no reason not to send it out. That said, my practices vary per project. It’s been a long time since I’ve written a poem unattached to a larger project; these days, I typically write long form, which makes submitting work for publication challenging. It’s hard to know how much context to provide in a cover letter, or even how to excerpt a long piece.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

Almost everything in the poem is true, if I believe all the stories I was told! Lola Ilang was my grandmother’s spinster sister; I’m told she really did forget how old she was. My husband actually double checked with my mother on this, and her answer corroborates my poem. In the Philippines, I’d missed opportunities to look at Lola Ilang’s headstone, to verify this for myself, but I think actively doing so would have verged on biblical “Doubting Thomas.”

It’s also true, again, as far as I’ve been told, that one reason for the cigarette flipping was so that when smoking outside at night, the old ladies would not be seen, especially during the war. I was never actually told this by any specific member of my family; in fact, I can’t remember now who told me this. But stories “be” that way.

What I do not know for sure is whether foreigners really think it’s strange, to cook banana with bok choy in a stew.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes it is, a digressing narrative, but a narrative nonetheless.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I was reading and article, “An Old Man and His Balete Tree,” by Ronaldo O. Borrinaga, about a very old man who practiced ritual and possessed anting-anting, protective amulets which enabled him to cut down mythical balete trees inhabited by spirits. I was also reading the Book of Genesis, Bataan Death March survivor testimonies, articles on “magic” and “religion” on the island of Siquijor, and “The Engkanto Belief: An Essay in Interpretation,” by Francisco Demetrio, S.J.

The direct influences for this specific poem are my grandfather and my aunt, to whom I dedicate the book.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

Not anymore. My expectations are always blown out of the water in that people I think are the least like me end up being the most visibly and vocally interested in my work, and those most like me dumbfounded and backed up to a safe distance from me. So then my idea reader would be someone who is open, who isn’t afraid of complication, who doesn’t tend toward oversimplification.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

From my head, I blogged this poem, typed it directly into the dialogue box, and hit “publish,” before I realized it was a poem and that I would actually include it in my manuscript. I always share my work in progress with my husband Oscar Bermeo. He’s my external bullshit meter as my own frequently malfunctions.

I also read from works in progress at literary events, which is when I get to hear the clunks and awkward stuff that needs to be edited and tidied.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

Its spontaneous appearance, the fact that it was never revised, barely edited, makes this poem different from my other poems.

What is American about this poem?

Well, it takes place in a place colonized by Americans.

In all seriousness, I am thinking of Williams, “Say it, no ideas but in things.” In the blog entry in which this poem was born, I also wrote a bit about sustaining the poem’s persona, using words particular to the speaker and his/her locale, refraining from words which the speaker would not use, such as “atrocity” to describe the Japanese actions again the Filipinos during WWII.

That isn’t specifically American though.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Finished, and served on a banana leaf with a heap of fried fish and steamed rice.

Josh Rathkamp

Josh Rathkamp was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He received a BA from Western Michigan University and an MFA form Arizona State University. His book of poems Some Nights No Cars At All was published by Ausable Press and is now distributed by Copper Canyon. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Indiana Review, Meridian, Passages North, Puerto Del Sol, Gulf Coast, Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, and The Drunken Boat. Rathkamp has received awards from the Arizona Commission for the Arts and been named the Arizona representative for the National Arts and Letters Society and a Virginia G. Piper writing fellow. He is currently the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Mesa Community College.


WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING HUMAN

I lived two houses down a dead end street.
When the river ran rough
we checked our basements.
We called to each other to help.
We hauled boxes up
from the dark like large fish.

When Mary or Mark or Helen died,
little by little,
we all did. We sent flowers.
The street took to looking
like a Cadillac. It grew bolder.
It grew rosy cheeks.

When Jack repainted, John
repainted, and the painters
ate lunch on the roof.

We said “it looks nice,”
nodding at our mailboxes.
We waved while shoveling snow
off the walkway no one walked
but the dogs and our manic-depressive mailman.

When we wanted an egg or a glass
of milk we drove to the store.
We stared out our windows.
Our children grew without parents.
We grew into speaking without words.

We thought our reflections
in the lamplight were only there
out of loyalty, and, if given
a chance, would run
like Mrs. Eddie's dead son
naked, through trees.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

This poem started during the monsoons in 2005. I had been living in Arizona for three years and was still mesmerized by the way the storms blew in each evening. They came with pounding rain and a mile high sand cloud. They stayed like good guests, a few hours, and then vanished. They made me think of the storms of my childhood. In Michigan, it rained for months at a time, it seemed. All day long I’d stare out the window hoping for the sun to peek through. This poem was about a true event, the Saginaw flood of ’85. The Tittabawassee River (the one rumored to breed three-eyed fish) rose and every basement in my neighborhood drowned, except mine. How lucky we were. My Atari still sat waiting for me, dry.

So, my family spent the next few days helping our neighbors set up sump pumps and carry boxes. It was weird walking into people’s lives and seeing that kind of damage. Watching these new storms, ones that ripped trees up in minutes, reminded me of my old storms, my neighborhood, and the people there.

I started the poem easily with a statement about where I lived. I wanted to make it universal. I wanted this neighborhood to be every neighborhood. That is partly the reason I used specific names. Theodore Roethke and I share the same birth town, but it was just too much to use the name Theodore (sorry Theodore).

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

Once I started this poem, it came pretty easily. I think the repetition helped. Doubling back on words and phrases sometimes allows me to push forward in new and interesting ways. Most of my poems go through numerous revisions, mostly pacing, sound, syntax, nailing the words so they at least sound right in my head. Who knows what they sound like to others?

I worked on this poem for about a month. I usually fiddle with poems for a week or two then allow them to sit. If I’m still happy a month later, I call it a success.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

I think most poems are “received.” I don’t like the idea that a writer has to sit and toil and sweat to get something good down. Of course, writing is sweat and work, but I don’t think it’s a must. The majority of my poems come in one sitting. I live with my first line or two for a couple days then sit down to write. I might not nail the ending, but I will discover my real subject in that one day. If I can’t uncover that idea, I find the poem falls flat.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

Yes and no. I didn’t follow any formal rules of meter, but I had definite ideas of what I wanted to happen in the poem. The title could be a statement or a question and the short and precise lines sound a little robotic, just facts. I thought this worked well with the title and playing against both its possibilities.

This poem is about a place in which I no longer live. I wanted to be both a part of the world, by setting myself down in it (the inclusion of the “we”), but I also wanted to show the distance. I feel the form allowed for that “distance.” I incorporated all of the repetitions (almost every stanza has either a word or action or both repeated) and the listings, to call attention to the nature of our lives—how even when we live next door to our neighbors for years, we don’t even know the picture hanging in the entryway of their house (or at least I didn’t). The robotic/fact voice helped bring it all home.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

The poem first appeared in the online journal The Drunken Boat in 2008. It took close to two years.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I send off in batches, usually a couple times a year. I pull all the poems I’ve written up to that point and send them off. I like a little time from completion of a poem to sending them out. Really, it’s just my laziness, although I like to call a lot of other things.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

Yes, I’d be delighted. . . It’s important for me to ground the audience. This happens easily through fact. I use the world liberally. I take stories I hear, experiences I’ve had, TV shows I watch, and I start a poem. But, imagination, as Stevens said, is the “necessary angel.” I love that idea.

In “What’s Wrong With Being Human” everything could be true, but most isn’t. We had a painter paint our house. In college, I painted houses and we liked to eat our lunch on the roof. It was much better than sitting in the grass. My town was a GM town. All my friends’ parents worked the line in the factories. So, of course we needed a Cadillac in the poem. We needed a car that was glitzy, at least for Saginaw in the 80’s. The mailman wasn’t manic depressive but the idea of sadness of the people needed to contradict the happiness of the things in the poem: the newly painted house and the rosy Cadillac. I use whatever I possibly can, imagination or reality, to make meaning. My goal is to hopefully hop from one to the other seamlessly.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes. Although time line isn’t sequential in my mind, the poem is a story of a neighborhood. I think the ending speeds up the timeline and also halts it. The actions could be years apart or the same day. Maybe you could call the poem a lyrical narrative. Call it whatever you want. I just hope someone likes it.

At the heart of this poem is the specter of morality, the idea of right and wrong. Is all good poetry in some way ethical or just?

I think all good poetry is truthful. Call it “just” or “ethical.” I want to read poetry that touches me, line break, in the heart.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

To be honest, I don’t remember who I was reading at the time. I just finished graduate school. I was inundated with new poets. I’m surprised I even remember when I wrote the poem. But, I am consistently jealous of Larry Levis’ poems.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

No. I just picture myself giving me a thumbs up, a little wave. He has a beer in hand. He takes a sip and then offers it to me. He can’t even crack me a fresh one.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

My first rule for a girlfriend/partner/lover/wife is she must be able to listen to the same poem thirty or forty times. I find this rule only allows for relationships that last about three weeks. But, I am lucky enough to have Norman Dubie as a friend and mentor. He sees every one of my poems before each goes out to the world.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

The voice is different, more robotic and fact driven. The sensibility is the same. I hope my poems question the world and share small insights into what connects us to each other.

What is American about this poem?

Me. The subject matter. My town. Saginaw was the smaller Flint and the smallest Detroit. What happened in the bigger towns trickled down. I remember hand-written notes on my friends’ doorbells that said “Don’t Ring!!!!” Their mothers or fathers worked third shift and slept after school. We’d be hushed and told to go outside to play.

So, we did. We grew up outside of our houses. In a way, that is how we all must feel at times—we live so far outside our homes, our communities, our families, our kids, our loves—it’s nice every once in a while to be told to come back inside.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

I finished it. I finished it. I finished it. I think.

Donna Masini

Donna Masini is the author of two collections of poems -- Turning to Fiction ( W.W. Norton and Co. 2004), and That Kind of Danger (Beacon Press, 1994), which was selected by Mona Van Duyn for the Barnard Women Poet's Prize -- and a novel, About Yvonne, (WW Norton and Co. 1998.) Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Poetry 180, Open City, TriQuarterly, Paris Review, KGB BAR Book of Poems, and Parnassus, among others. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, and a Pushcart Prize, she is an Associate Professor of English at Hunter College where she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program. She lives in New York City and is currently at work on a novel, The Good Enough Mother.


SLOWLY

I watched a snake once, swallow a rabbit.
Fourth grade, the reptile zoo
the rabbit stiff, nose in, bits of litter stuck to its fur,

its head clenched in the wide
jaws of the snake, the snake
sucking it down its long throat.

All throat that snake—I couldn't tell
where the throat ended, the body
began. I remember the glass

case, the way that snake
took its time (all the girls, groaning, shrieking
but weren't we amazed, fascinated,

saying we couldn't look, but looking, weren't we
held there, weren't we
imagining—what were we imagining?)

Mrs. Peterson urged us to move on girls,
but we couldn't move. It was like
watching a fern unfurl, a minute

hand move across a clock. I didn't know why
the snake didn't choke, the rabbit never
moved, how the jaws kept opening

wider, sucking it down, just so
I am taking this in, slowly,
taking it into my body:

this grief. How slow
the body is to realize.
You are never coming back.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I found a typed draft of this poem dated 4/23/99 and titled “Snake.” Out of curiosity I went back through my old notebooks and journals, and found the first version of the poem (same date) breaking into lines in the middle of an entry. I see that I went back into this handwritten version and crossed out a word, a sound here or there, added a line. What I found startling, surprising really, was that as I looked at the surrounding entries, dreams, images, events I recorded, I see how much of all this is in the poem, not literally, but in the images and actions, correspondences. Things I never think of as part of the fabric of this poem.

The image of the snake and rabbit is one of those childhood images—something I saw on a class trip—that I carry around. It comes to me from time to time and feels sort of loaded. Feelings and thoughts collecting around it, kind of thickening, without being specific or definite.

I notice that, in going from the handwritten version to the first typed draft, most of the changes I made (I usually like to type out the written version exactly) were toward compression, precision, music, adding a detail to open it up. Sometimes following a question or interrogating an image that popped up in the middle of the handwritten draft. The trajectory is essentially the same in all the versions. In each early version the language, rhythm, get more diffuse toward the second half. Unlike other poems, I didn’t have to do as much to this one—except follow it, press into it, cut. To find the places where it went down a wrong road, something I think happens when I feel a poem starting and try to “will” it—or know too soon what it’s about.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

Usually I keep all the drafts of a poem clipped together and dated—especially because I often need to go back to the early versions when something isn’t working. I know they are somewhere—but can’t find them. I imagine there were at least fifteen to twenty drafts, and, as often happens with a poem that sort of comes the way this did, that many of the changes in the later drafts were smaller – a word, shift in syntax – not a major reorganization, or “breaking into.”

The first draft was April 23, 1999. I imagine the “semi-final” draft maybe happened in a matter of months then stayed that way until I was revising this poem for my book. At that point I deleted a stanza – or several lines – toward the end of the poem –lines that felt too explicit, too reductive, that, I realized, shut the poem down. I had loved the sound of those lines. Loved the way saying the words kept the mouth and throat open. And I am so glad I got rid of them! So the final version was in my book, which came out in 2004. (I think the version that came out in 2003 in a magazine might still have the explicit and deleted stanza. But I can’t find the magazine.)

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

This poem felt received. I can see it just by looking at the way it breaks into a journal entry and comes out “fairly” intact. I do believe in inspiration. That said, it never happens that a poem “comes to me” when I’m not in some way paying attention. If I am not writing each day, or paying attention each day – I am probably not going to be hit with a poem walking down a street. The work on this poem was less sweat and tears, was slow and gentle. And I think, especially when I look back into my journal, was mostly about getting out of the poem’s way—

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

At one point I realized I wanted to keep the sentences going longer, and I made the entire poem one sentence – sort of like the snake’s continual act of swallowing, digesting. Then I worked back to where the syntax is now. Perhaps the biggest structural change is that I pulled it into stanzas. Which probably then made me go back again to seeing how the sentences moved across or against the white spaces. In Turning to Fiction – I was exploring “the stanza” in ways I hadn’t in my first book. Sometimes moving into stanzas helps me to tighten, to explore the relationship of line to sentence, to feel my way into the poem’s best syntax. But that decision – the “stanza decision” – is usually an instinct. What feels right.

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

A few years.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I don’t send poems out much. If someone “asks” for a poem – I’ll try to write it. If anything comes of it I will send it. I don’t think I’ve ever “whipped out a poem” and sent it off. I work really really really slowly. (No pun intended.)
Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

This question was an interesting one for me as I wrote the poems in Turning to Fiction. I was interested in stories, making up stories, “confessions,” in the way a story changes when you tell it – or the “meaning” of the story (to the teller) changes over time. The essential image in this poem—the snake swallowing the rabbit—is something I saw. At the Staten Island Reptile Zoo, which was the first class trip I was ever on—it was fourth grade, my family had just moved to Staten Island—I was in public school for the first time. Everything was strange to me. Probably I imagined the girls, but what I remember is that I was “taken” – or went into a kind of spacey trance kind of state. A dissociated state I now realize characterized a lot of my childhood. And the “watching” in the poem is really as important as the image.

So the image is actual, but an image isn’t a story. What sets it in motion is imagination pressing into it.

Is this a narrative poem?

I would say that this is a narrative poem with a “secret” or inner narrative. And that the work of this poem was to take the image and feel my way into it. Not tell a story. More like: why was this important? What had arrested me? And what is happening now that makes me want to write about then?

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

I was writing poems and fiction. I look through my journal from the time, see I was reading Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. I was reading (and still do read) a lot of Bishop. I had just really “discovered” or cracked into Brenda Hillman (I see this in my journal). Anne Carson probably. I see lots of movies listed: “The 400 Blows.” But I don’t think you’ll see any of these poets in this poem.

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

No. Well, I don’t think about anyone usually, especially once I am revising, but I want “normal” people as an audience. I don’t want to write poems (who does really?) that only other writers will read.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

I have a few friends – poets mostly—who see early drafts. This helps me enormously. Each person in their own way. And I always like to have a non-writer read the poem. One of my friends told me that all she has to do is stand next to one of her readers as he reads the poem and, without him saying a word, she knows.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I like that it’s short. And direct. The language simple. Perhaps most important, I think I learned a lot working on this poem. How to wait, to cut back. To stop myself from “making myself” understand what the poem was, from willing or imposing.

What is American about this poem?

Well the poem feels American to me for strange reasons. A class trip. A new place. I had moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island and in one day went from Catholic school to public– which meant boys and science, and class trips. And, having nothing to do with this poem, in going from reading about Constantinople to the Dutch settlers in New York. And the fact that if I remember correctly this class trip happened the fall Kennedy was assassinated.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

It kind of reached it’s natural stopping point. If you look at my copy of my book, many poems are “revised” or “cut” after the book comes out. But I don’t have any crossouts in this poem.

Peter Cooley

Peter Cooley is a poet and Professor of English in the Department of English at Tulane University. He also directs Tulane’s Creative Writing Program. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he holds degrees from Shimer College, the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa. Cooley has published eight books of poetry, all with the Carnegie Mellon University Press, most recently A Place Made of Starlight (2003) and Divine Margins (2009).


PHONING MY SISTER AT THE NURSING HOME

“Welcome to Diane’s Consolidated Miseries.
Diane is unavailable to take your call
but if you would like to leave a message just recall
the pitch and timbre and volume of her hostility.
Your call is important to us. If you want a tirade
against her father and mother, ninety-one and ninety-three,
press one; against her brother and his family,
press two; against the ‘entire goddamn world,’
press three; against the men who left her,
press four; against her body she’s shrunk to eighty-six
pounds, press five. The other five numbers
are screams, execrations, a witch’s Sabbath hex
against you. Remember, phoning her, you asked for it.
The machine took down your number. She’ll call you back.”


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

Like many of my other poems about my sister, this one was composed shortly after her death.

How many revisions did this poem undergo? How much time elapsed between the first and final drafts?

Probably I did about twenty drafts of this poem, and I worked on it obsessively in a two week period of time to get it done.

Do you believe in inspiration? How much of this poem was “received” and how much was the result of sweat and tears?

I believe that inspiration and blood, sweat and tears cannot be separated.

How did this poem arrive at its final form? Did you consciously employ any principles of technique?

Needless to say, I employed the form of the answering machine, a piece of “material culture.”

How long after you finished this poem did it first appear in print?

It took several years for it to be accepted.

How long do you let a poem “sit” before you send it off into the world? Do you have any rules about this or does your practice vary with every poem?

I did not let this poem sit for long (a month or so), though I have let poems “sit” for as much as a year.

Could you talk about fact and fiction and how this poem negotiates the two?

The poem uses a received form from technology in our culture to show my sister’s madness and bitterness. Obviously, the entire discourse is “fabular”: my sister had no actual answering machine like this.

Is this a narrative poem?

No.

At the heart of this poem is the specter of morality, the idea of right and wrong. Is all good poetry in some way ethical or just?

Probably it is, but in the case of lyric poetry, this is hard to talk about since feeling is more important. One can easily see in this poem that the sister’s hatred toward others is the result of her self-hatred.

Do you remember who you were reading when you wrote this poem? Any influences you’d care to disclose?

Dickinson. She always gives me the courage to “tell the truth but tell it slant.”

Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?

A reader who appreciates form and dark humor.

Did you let anyone see drafts of this poem before you finished it? Is there an individual or a group of individuals with whom you regularly share work?

My wife is my first reader. I then share my poems with my poetry group, composed of poets and teachers of poetry.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

A Place Made of Starlight, where this poem appears, is made up largely of formal poems but in more traditional (i.e. sonnet, villanelle, sestina), received form. I invented this poem’s form.

What is American about this poem?

The open expression of both speaker and his sister as well as the dependence on technology to show emotion.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

It was finished since the form was so self-conscious.