Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is the author of Sightseer, winner of the 2010 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. She was the 2004-05 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and is the recipient of a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist Fellowship. Cynthia received her MFA from George Mason University. Her work has appeared in Pleiades, Mid-American Review, Fence, Best New Poets 2005, and Crab Orchard Review. Cynthia has taught creative writing and composition at George Mason University, the University of Wisconsin, and Edgewood College. She works at an electrical engineering firm in Madison, WI, where she lives with her husband and daughter.


A LABOR OF MOLES

At first sight of the World’s Light, it commonly
Yells and Shrieks fearfully; and seeking for a lurking
Hole, runs up and down like a little Daemon,
which indeed I took it for.
– John Maubray, MD, 1724

On one such occasion I chanced to deliver a woman of a mole
as herein I describe this true and certain happening. The woman
was of the country. I entered from the gate where bees leapt forth
from the carcass of a small animal. And at the door a spoiled
mound of hay where countless squealing vermin bred, I saw
their naked tails swiveling about. And inside her chambers
the woman crouched upon a sour heap of rags. The fetus
inside her thrashed about so that I saw from cross the room
her belly boiling. She was hard to still I begged her push.
I readied my hand. And now I must report upon the midwife
who was taken of her post beside the open stove
which presently was coughing up a raucous spitting smoke.
And all the while the clouds were hurtling past the sun
so what I saw a moment in light the next was fraught with
shadow. A donkey brayed in the yard, whence upon a stillness
settled in the woman’s belly and she looked to me with opened
lips as if to ask a question but the answer came too quick
the hairy beast shot forth from her legs, such speed
that in its flight it struck my knee and bowled me to the floor
I can attest I felt its pointed snout. I saw its stubby tail its claws
clacked along the floor it spun about I can attest. The woman
shut her legs and drew her toes from off the floor
as if to keep the loathsome thing from touching her. And
again I must report upon the midwife who presently was
calmly stepping forth and bending to the ground
as if to shoo a chicken from the roost she clapped her hands
upon the Daemon and it wriggled there its paddle paws
flapping at the smoke through which she waved it I suppose
to douse its wickedness and then she tossed it in the stove
and shut the door. Indeed the Hand of God
thus spake. The smell of burning pelt flushed the air.
And thrice we knew the fire was requisite.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

This poem was written in February of 2009 in the midst of a flurry of research and writing on the subject of birth and medicine which culminated in a manuscript called Paper Doll Fetus.

I uncovered a scholarly article about the early eighteenth century physician John Maubray and his insistence that he had delivered a Dutch woman (and indeed later many women) of a mole-like animal while traveling aboard a ship. According to him, the animal had a “hooked snout, fiery sparkling eyes,” and ran about the cabin while others on board tried to catch it. The occurrence among these “sea-faring, and meaner sort of people” was so common that it was almost expected, and women who attended these births were often prepared with a fire to dispose of the creature.

I had been keeping a list of about a hundred ideas for the manuscript, and they couldn’t all become poems, but I couldn’t stumble upon this kind of information and ignore it.

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

Probably a week of intense drafting followed by several months of tweaking. I tend to revise as I write, so that by the time I have something that resembles a poem, it is already very close to its final form. The first things I put down on the page were a picture of a mole, notes from my research, a list of words I liked, the epigraph, and a title. Then, I started playing with the language until images arose and the people in the poem began moving about. I usually type each sentence several different ways in a list, rearranging the order of the phrases and clauses, before I commit to it. I never trust my original syntax, and trying the sentence in different ways helps me listen for the rhythm of the poem that wants to come out.

I don’t think I knew when I started writing that John Maubray would be speaking the poem, but perhaps because I had been reading his original work published in the early 1700s, a kind of formal and vaguely antiquated voice arose which was sort of my own twenty-first century reinvention. Once I heard him, the poem moved swiftly from there.

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

I believe in inspiration, but I do not believe that inspiration writes the poem. And I don’t believe that you have to wait for inspiration, either; you can go out and get it, whether that means living your life better attuned to receiving it or hunting it down deliberately through research.

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

The voice determined a lot of things about the poem – the musicality and diction of how the story was told, how the speaker transitioned from the woman to the midwife and back, and the length of the line. I was also conscious of running thoughts together without proper punctuation in some places, which I felt intensified the tension and urgency of the event.

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

Two years. About a year after the poem was finished, it was accepted – along with five other poems from the series – as part of an “Intro Feature” in Pleiades. The issue was published a year later (February, 2011).

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 about how long a poem must sit. I never send poems out right away, partly due to my distrust of a new poem but mostly due to my deplorable submission habits.

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

I had been looking at several original physicians’ texts from the 15-1700s which each contained accounts of “monstrous” or unnatural births, and I noticed that the most unbelievable events were always relayed with strongly insistent language, such as “this true and certain happening,” or, in Maubray’s case, “in order to convince others of this admirable Truth.” There is something distrustful in those excessive declarations.

Physicians were still periodically subject to the guile of superstition, as was the rest of the population at the time. I can understand that they might have believed a story told them by others, but what is the excuse for diagnosing the birth of a mole firsthand? Didn’t Maubray know better? Or, was he lying? At the time, his claim was hotly contested, spawning the publication of a rebuke by another surgeon, and the whole controversy may have increased book sales. If that’s the Truth, I’m disappointed. Not that I want to believe that a woman could birth a mole, but I want to believe that somehow a collection of mysterious circumstances had aligned such that Maubray could have believed it.

In the poem, I simply let the (albeit suspicious) claim of “Truth” speak for itself and allow the speaker to bear witness to a specific event. It’s up to the reader to decide whether it is true, but certainly the idea that it may be true is more captivating than the lie.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes.

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

If I were reading poetry at the time, my memory of it is not tied to this poem. Of course I am influenced by other poets, but what I remember most is the language of the sources I was encountering during my research.

I was reading, or trying to read, John Maubray’s “The Female Physician” which, in the version I had access to, is essentially a photocopy of the London publication from 1724 – unbearably tiny, wobbly type with strange capitalizations, italicizations, and rarely a distinguishing feature between the letter “s” and the letter “f.” The article that started the whole thing was A.W. Bates’ “The sooterkin dissected: the theoretical basis of animal births to human mothers in early modern Europe,” which inspired at least two poems.

I was also heavily informed by my reading for the rest of the manuscript, which included numerous articles and books, as well as online forays into anything related to something I might include in a poem, such as a mole. This includes a bunch of useless fascinating junk, such as the fact that moles can exert a digging force of thirty-two times their body weight.

I always feel that there is more than just one poem to be written, that just one poem is insufficient. I don’t think I could have written this poem successfully if I weren’t in the midst of writing all the other poems, too. There was so much pre-writing going on that by the time I actually sat down, I was bringing a world of characters and images and stories to the table. Being so fully absorbed in a topic allowed the poems to flow more freely and be, even in their earliest forms, more fully realized.

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

I don’t write for a particular reader in the sense that I would change what I’m writing to fit the needs of an imagined readership. I want my poems to be both accessible and surprising, so I think they would find a good home with a reader who values user-friendliness, so to speak, but is also willing to work just a little. Also, since my projects tend to vary stylistically, I imagine that each manuscript would find a different ideal reader.

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?

At the time, I had two poetry groups who met regularly every three or four weeks. I shared this poem with one group shortly after it was drafted, and I shared it with the other group as part of the completed manuscript. Having those two sets of trusted readers was invigorating, albeit a little exhausting. During the four years I met with both groups, I was fiercely productive.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

Every new project I begin has its own set of governing traits or obsessions, so this poem has a lot in common with the other poems in Paper Doll Fetus, but that collection differs a great deal from my first book, Sightseer, and from my other projects.

I suppose this poem would be categorized as a persona poem, and although there are other persona poems in this manuscript, it is not a technique I normally gravitate toward. I sometimes find that persona poems can detract from the cohesiveness of a collection. However, they can be a driving force when many voices speak collectively toward the overall message of the manuscript.

What is American about this poem?

Given that the speaker is a re-imagined John Maubray, who was a Scottish physician working in London, I’m not sure I can claim much American-ness here. Perhaps the presence of God. Perhaps the voyeurism.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Somehow it seems less worthy to say a poem is finished, as if there were a failing on the part of the poet to continue to see all the endless possibilities of language. But ultimately we have to say that we made our choices. This poem is finished.

James Richardson

James Richardson's most recent books are By the Numbers: Poems and Aphorisms, which was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award, Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award, and Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays (2001). His work appears in The New Yorker, Slate, Paris Review, Yale Review, Great American Prose Poems, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists, The Pushcart Prize and five recent volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Princeton University.


IN SHAKESPEARE

In Shakespeare a lover turns into an ass
as you would expect. Others confuse
their consciences with ghosts and witches.
Old men throw everything away
when they panic and can’t feel their lives.
They pinch themselves, pierce themselves with twigs,
cliffs, lightning, to die—yes, finally—in glad pain.

You marry a woman you’ve never talked to,
a woman you thought was a boy.
Sixteen years go by as a curtain billows
once, twice. Your children are lost,
they come back, you don’t remember how.
A love turns to a statue in a dress, the statue
comes back to life. O god, it’s all so realistic
I can’t stand it. Whereat I weep and sing.

Such a relief to burst from the theater
into our cool, imaginary streets
where we know who’s who and what’s what,
and command with Metrocards our destinations.

Where no one with a story struggling in him
convulses as it eats its way out,
and no one in an antiseptic corridor
or in deserts or in downtown darkling plains
staggers through an Act that just will not end,
eyes burning with the burning of the dead.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

Maybe it really started in 1970, when I started reading Shakespeare seriously and saw my first Royal Shakespeare Company production – Judi Dench as Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, which figures prominently in the second stanza. Certainly by then I was already getting the poem’s main idea, that the most fantastic moments in literature are often realer than mere realism. But more practically, I see that the poem’s first line and the seed of the Lear part (“old men throw everything away”) appear in a 2003 notebook.

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

I probably chanced upon that brief 2003 note a million times, occasionally adding further thoughts, before I first really worked on the poem seriously during 2006. It was published in The New Yorker in 2007 but I tinkered with it through 2010 when it was included in my book By the Numbers.

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

If “inspiration” just means “something out of our conscious control,” then everything we say is inspired – we speak easily, but the process of assembling even the simplest sentence goes on out of sight. We have no idea how we do it. Which in a way collapses the difference between lines “given” and lines that are “willed” or “worked.” I.e., even when you write a line during a period of hard, hard work—where did it come from?

But with poems, there are times hard work will help, and times it won’t at all, or when it will hurt. Even if I know in advance where a poem is going to go (and actually I’d rather not know) I can’t just make it happen through will and work. There are moods and times when it will “come” and you have to wait for them (though there are ways to encourage them). If you force the poem, you wreck it. Actually, I don’t like the feeling of hammering at a poem. I like to let the lapse of time do most of the writing, to get it to the point where working on it is a pleasure rather than a boredom and an agony.

All this seems to me part of the normal mystery of the mind – I don’t imagine it as having anything to do with a Muse or any other kind of divinity.

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

As above, I’d quibble with the everyday distinction between “consciously” and “unconsciously.” But “technique” in the sense that dancing or graceful movement or good singing come out of technique? Certainly. And the things I fuss with longest and think it’s most important to get right might be called “technical,” essentially matters of movement—rhythm and the hesitations and runs, hangs and falls of syntax.

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

Maybe six months.

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?

Usually at least a few months, often much longer. And of course the poem has often, as with this one, been around in one form or another for years.

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

It doesn’t seem to me there’s anything factual in the poem, except the facts of the plays (and I might have even made up one or two of them). Though maybe the whole poem is about the relation between fact and fiction, our real lives and the imaginary worlds we read about. I.e. Shakespeare’s “statue in a dress” scene is about the way relationships alternately cool and warm, the appearance and disappearance of children is something all parents know about, and we often “wake up” and think something like “What have I been doing for the last sixteen years???” Of course I have felt these things in my life, but there’s nothing specifically autobiographical in the poem, nothing that couldn’t have happened to almost anyone.

Is this a narrative poem?

Don’t think so. I disapprove of narrative in my poems, thinking it a great temptation to slackness and self-indulgence. Though other poets are allowed to use it! But I often write poems, like this one, that are about other narratives.

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

I usually read dozens of poets at a time, so that’s hard to say. Of course it’s about Shakespeare, but I wasn’t reading him at the time, except maybe sonnets (which I teach) and of course it doesn’t sound anything like him.

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

In a way I must, since I have a real horror of talking too much, of being pedantic or insisting on the obvious, and just generally of boring people. But the person who’s judging that is Me the Reader, who is pretty much simultaneous with (or just a little later than) Me the Writer. I think if you think too much about audience you get too inhibited in some ways (Saying the Correct Thing) and too uninhibited in others (Preachy and Rhetorical).

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?

Only my wife, who is a great reader, a Poetry Person and a Professor of English.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I think I write too many kinds of poems to know what my Standard Poem is, and therefore to say how this one varies from the standard. A lot of my other work is either more purely lyrical (less discursive) or purely aphoristic.

What is American about this poem?

I don’t think of myself as anything but American. I’m not worldly or cosmopolitan—e.g., I wouldn’t even know how to want to be European, or anything else, much less be it. So the poem must be American. Is it “typically American,” whatever that is? I don’t know, but I suspect I wouldn’t want it to be.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Abandoned. I mean, I like it pretty much, but there are still things about it I’m not satisfied with. They seem little, individually, but after a while you realize that to fix them you’d have to change everything and you just can’t. Or rather, you can do that only by going on to the next poem.

Stephanie Brown

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008) and Allegory of the Supermarket (University of Georgia Press, 1999). She was awarded an NEA Fellowship in Poetry in 2001 and the Margaret Bridgman Fellowship in Poetry at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference in 2009. She has taught creative writing at University of California, Irvine and at the University of Redlands but has primarily made her living as a librarian and library manager. Her poems have been selected for four editions of the annual anthology, The Best American Poetry (Scribner's) and her poetry and essays have been anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon, 2000), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner's, 2003), The Grand Permission: New Writing about Motherhood and Poetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2003) and others. Her work has also been published in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Slope, Pool, ZYZZYVA, LIT, and others. She was a curator for the Casa Romantica Reading Series for poets and fiction writers in San Clemente, California from 2004-2010 and is currently the book review editor for the electronic journal, Connotation Press and poetry editor for the website Zócalo Public Square.


THE SATANIST NEXT DOOR

What is that? Is that a kid? Is that Tom?

No, it’s her.

Eew, I think that’s a whip.
No, it’s a hand coming down hard.
No, listen, there’s like a wind-sound to it.

I need to go to the bathroom.

That one was fake.

Are you still awake?

She probably has to do that to get him to finish.
Listen: he sounds like an angel.
No one has ten orgasms in twenty minutes.
I can’t tell.
Oh yeah, a lot of those were fake.
They’re up all night doing meth and they have to have sex all the time.

Should we do it now?
Did that make you horny?
No, but we are awake. In fact, it’s creepy to hear people.
She’s a moaner.

It’s getting light out.
Close the windows.
The seals are barking. I like that sound.
Can you hear the parrots?
Oh, yeah.
They live across the street in the canyon.
I think I smell that chemical smell.

Close the windows.
Do you think they ever put spells on us?
Whatever you think is happening, it’s not happening.
It’s all a lie.
Um hmm.

It sort of scares me.
Freedom of religion.
Yeah, you’re right.
And we have the Jehovah’s Witnesses on the other side. It balances things.
I’m going to put a holy card of St. Michael on the fence between us.
God will protect us.

Turn on your side.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

This poem started as the title. I liked it and I carried it around with me for months before I ever got the poem, which I received one morning, writing down a conversation. It started with the first line as it reads now. I have found that there are two ways that I write poems: about one percent of the time I have a title and the poem comes later, unbidden and mostly finished. The second, 99-percent-of-the-time type grows out of lines and is completed with much revision. This poem is one of the one-percenters.

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

Aside from some tinkering, the first draft was the final draft. I think title-driven poems gestate differently—arriving whole and feeling received, ready to go. I usually revise extensively, sometimes for years—at least, this is the way I think that I write most poems, though when I went back recently and looked at longhand drafts in a notebook, I was surprised at how close to the finished product many of them were.

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

I believe in inspiration. I think it comes to me all the time, sometimes in cycles—a lot for a while, not a lot for a while. I think you have to listen for it. Most completed poems are built from sweat and tears, though. This is a received poem. One is not a better way of writing than the other, but for me the received type is rare. Maybe rereading is a kind of revision: I reread a poem many times and may or may not change little things. I always play around with line lengths, look for stronger words, and play with punctuation. Sometimes I read and do nothing to it. Sometimes I keep only one line of a poem and rebuild from there. I get rid of everything that is problematic, makes me feel frustrated, or leads me to a dead end. Sometimes I think that you can go in the wrong direction from where an inspired, unbidden line meant you to go. If I reread and feel that way, I get rid of that stuff and let the line take me someplace else.

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

Since it began as dialogue, I wanted to make sure that the poem was written completely in dialogue. For instance, I note time passing by having the speakers note that it’s getting light out rather than having that described. I could have stepped out of the dialogue at that point but decided not to. I don’t think I’ve ever written a poem that’s completely in dialogue before this one, but it felt right to leave it that way.

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

I think it was pretty soon. I thought it was pretty good, and sent it out in a group to APR soon after writing it. It was published in APR in 2005.

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?

This varies by poem. Sometimes I can feel that something is ready right away. In general they sit for a long time. I enjoy the tinkering process quite a bit; revision is a joy to me. The first draft is the hard part—to stop and listen to a line and take the time to write it down. First drafts often come at inconvenient times. I often don’t want to write them, don’t write them, forget them, and that’s a disappointment for me. Very consistently I’ve found that what I think is good or bad while writing a first draft is neither. A few years ago I found a folder of poems that I had written in my 20’s. I found a few that I thought were very good. I should have revised these but I had not. Instead I pursued the wrong poems, ones that I had loved in the first drafts, and I rewrote and rewrote but always reached dead ends. The good ones were written in a voice that’s not mine anymore, so it is too late to use them now. That experience led me to sit with first drafts for a long time before revising—but not too long. If I have an emotional reaction to something that I’ve written, if I cry and feel purged, I almost always find that this is not a good poem. Ones that I dismiss often turn out to be the poem to pursue. I think it’s good to really examine what you have written before you bother revising it. Some of it is just bad, and that’s fine. It’s private. Poems to be published have to have a public persona: technical savvy and avoidance of bathos. Even things that I have published that are very confessional, they are still nothing that I am embarrassed about. I am embarrassed by some things I’ve written in journals. They are not meant for the world.

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

This poem was inspired by true events. Like most of my poems, the negotiation was found in revision. Once I know what a poem is “about,” I rewrite to heighten that. For instance, you really can hear the sounds of wild parrots and seals from my bedroom. It is near a canyon. I would have taken out those details if they served no purpose to the narrative. In this poem, they were counterpoint sounds to the sounds of the couple next door. The poem asks: why is one a better sound than the other? Are all of them part of a sexual, sensual world?

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes, I think it is driven by the narrative.

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

I know that when I wrote this I was re-visiting William Carlos Williams, and I see an indirect influence. He sometimes uses dialogue and conversation in his poems, and he often writes in a minimalist style about daily life, though they were never just about daily life. I really admire his work, and how sly it is—the settings and places seem mundane, even banal, yet they are masterful takes on the human condition. Williams is wise.

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

My ideal reader has a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd, engages his or her full emotions in life, and has read widely and well. This person has been symbolized by different real people throughout my writing life, and I often will write for a specific person.

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 keep all drafts to myself. I let my husband read some of my finished poems. One time he told me that something made him think of Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein—and it was not intentional. Woops! I show them to him before I send to editors, to see if there are any gaffes like that, and to see if it affects him as a reader. I don’t exchange poems with friends, though I did for a while after graduate school. I don’t have a writers’ group. I was talking to a friend recently about that, and he was surprised that I didn’t show my manuscripts to friends, and I was surprised that he did. I always long to hang out and talk to poets about writing and life and books and ideas—this inspires me to write, and feels great.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I don’t usually write in dialogue. Soon after, I wrote another that was mostly dialogue, called “You Ger Comfortable and Relax.” It was more clearly influenced by Williams.

What is American about this poem?

I love this question! The characters live in a house set between households of Satanists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. That setting is very American! America is eclectic, even wacky-weird, and I think this poem embraces that. The people in the poem resolve their unease by reminding themselves that in the US we have freedom of religion. We are not a theocracy. If the speakers had lived in the American colonies and been so inclined to, they could have had their neighbors arrested for witchcraft. Moreover, there are theocracies on the planet today. It is American to resist living in one.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

It was finished. I almost never feel that they are abandoned, though sometimes that’s the appropriate way to finish—stop trying, like the poem for what it is, and let it go.

Michael Dumanis

Michael Dumanis is the author of My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, as well as the co-editor of Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). He is Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University, and serves as the director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.



TRAVEL ADVISORY

Do not endeavor
to snapshot the locals.

Do not trust anything
that could snap shut.

Try to pass quickly
through slipshod locales.

Do not give alms.
Make no eye contact.

Do not confuse
yourself with your reflection,

this span of ruins with a system,
this inn with a place to come back to.

Rein in the impulse to build
a new city from these scattered twigs.

Do not poke around in the abandoned
houses of the damaged village.

Do not get curious
about shiny metal in the grass.

Do not plant kisses
on the blind accordionist.

Leave the mermaid alone,
it is not meant to be.

You will cause offense.
You will not hear the knob turn.

You will wake to find stones in your mouth
and a lake in each eye.

Do not ring the concierge.
Do not search for the consulate.

Regard every centimeter
of ground as suspicious.

Trains are essentially useless.
The timetable lies.

Each day you are bound
to lose something.

Each day you are bound
to lose something.

Do not meander too far
from a given road's shoulder.

Owning a car does not give
you the clearance to drive.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

In one sitting, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the Fall of 2000, with a recent Lonely Planet Tourbook to Bosnia Herzegovina in my lap, and Leonard Cohen singing “Everybody Knows” in the background. The year before, I had been a Fulbright Fellow in Bulgaria, and had wanted to travel by train to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia. This is just a few years after the Bosnian War, not long after the American airtstrikes on Serbia, and in the midst of the refugee crisis in Kosovo. I did not go to Bosnia, but I did buy a tour book published at the end of the war. I remember opening straight to the “Travel Advisory” section. There were many things you were not supposed to do as a tourist in wartime. In assembling the poem, I imported a few of those travel advisories from the Lonely Planet, then added a few of my own.

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

I have a somewhat unorthodox approach to revision. I chisel one line (or in this poem’s case, one couplet) at a time, until it feels right, and don’t go on to the next line (or couplet) until it does. Every line is then sonically and rhythmically/metrically triggered by the lines preceding it. So I am basically revising as I am writing the first draft, and the poem structurally doesn’t invite much revision after the first draft has been completed. I may change a word here or there, but my first drafts are ultimately quite similar to my final ones. The first draft of “Travel Advisory” had only two differences from the last. The phrase “abandoned houses of the damaged village” had originally been “damaged houses of the abandoned village,” a direct lift from the Lonely Planet. Also, the phrase, “Each day you are bound to lose something” may have originally appeared only once. I think I chose to repeat the phrase a week later.

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

Well ten percent of this poem was received, that is, triggered by, my encounter with the Lonely Planet tourbook. Some rhythmic osmosis may have transpired from the conscious decision to play Leonard Cohen in the background while writing it. The rest of it is sweat-and-tears, though in my case, the sweat-and-tears occasional tend to resemble more a manic, caffeinated frenzy, some pacing, and a lot of talking to oneself in a loud whisper.

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

I wrote the first two couplets first. They set the rhythm for the other couplets. I was, at the time, heavily experimenting with creating tension through how I chose to enjamb the first lines of closed couplets. The poem immediately seemed to want to enter a couplet form. As elsewhere in my work, words I used would trigger other words, so that “snapshot” in line two would morph into “snap shut” in line four and then into “slipshod” in line six, et cetera.

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

It originally appeared in the now-defunct journal Chelsea in Fall 2002, two years after I wrote it.

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?

In writing my first book, I would send my poems off as soon as they felt individually finished. In assembling a second manuscript, I have been less eager to send off the poems too fast, and have been happy to let them accumulate for a while first, so I can see how they engage in dialogue with one another instead of getting distracted by some kind of madcap rush to get them out into the world.

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

I don’t know the difference between fact and fiction. I believe in emotional honesty. I meant everything I said after I said it. I am not trying to tell anyone some kind of story. I am trying to induce an emotional state in somebody else. How does a painting or a symphony negotiate between fact and fiction? The mermaid is as factual as the word “slipshod” or as the uselessness of some trains.

Is this a narrative poem?

No. I don’t know what narrative poems are, either. Or yes. It has, after all, like narrative, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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

Besides travel guides, I was probably reading a lot of Wallace Stevens, John Berryman, Michael Palmer, James Tate, Heather McHugh, Carolyn Forche, Lucie Brock-Broido, Donald Justice, and Mark Strand. I had also, around that time, fallen in love with two first books by then-emerging poets, and was spending lots of time with them—Some Ether by Nick Flynn, and And Her Soul Out of Nothing by Olena Kalytiak Davis.

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

Yes.

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?

Yes. I met them over time in Houston and Iowa City and New York. I call them on the phone and bother them.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I rarely use text from other sources in my writing, so in that way, this poem is a bit of an exception.

What is American about this poem?

You know, I never know what that means, and then I feel stupid because I feel like I am supposed to know what that means, but I don’t. I was once asked to write a piece called “What Is American About American Poetry” for a poetry website, and I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I failed. I feel like the question is complicated for me, as a bilingual poet born abroad, in the former Soviet Union, who feels like what is being asked is, “What is American about you, Michael Dumanis? And answer quick, before we deport you to a poetry gulag.” I also know that that is not what is being asked, that it’s really a way for American writers (of which I am one) to assert and define and celebrate their American-ness, but I also feel the question is somehow exclusionary, as though a poem written by an American could somehow be an unAmerican poem.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Finished.

Gray Jacobik

Gray Jacobik, a professor emeritus, is a poet, mentor, and painter who lives in Deep River, Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, American Poetry Now, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Poets Guide to the Birds and Poetry from Paradise Valley. Among other honors, she has received The Yeats Prize, The Emily Dickinson Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and served as the Frost Place Poet-in-Residence. Her book, The Double Task (University of Massachusetts Press) received The Juniper Prize and was nominated for The James Laughlin Award and The Poet’s Prize. The Surface of Last Scattering, published by Texas Review Press, was selected by X. J. Kennedy as the winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Brave Disguises (University of Pittsburgh Press) received the AWP Poetry Series Award. Little Boy Blue: A Memoir in Verse is newly published by CavanKerry Press. Gray invites anyone interested in learning more about her work, upcoming readings, essays, paintings, or in linking to her blog at the Michigan Quarterly Review’s website, Come A Little Bit Closer Now Baby (dedicated to the art of close reading), to visit her website.


THE EX

In the placable air of long dissolved discord, we wait
with our daughter, days overdue, our single shared
goodness. She carries our first grandchild.

I saw him last at her wedding––before that, as rarely
as faint decency required. We’ve led vastly different
lives. He’s not unkind, only holds a dizzying number

of opinions. Like bombarding mosquitoes they fly in
and out of range. Across my face I draw a tight mask
of passive acquiescence. The skeleton underneath

threatens to grin, but he’s the one who’s dying—
of AIDS and its complications—the effeminate,
virginal boy I married when I was twenty-two.

Can anything be said to those we betrayed and
abandoned? Neither of us knew ourselves; each
feared we’d be destroyed by the other’s needs.

That fear seems exorbitant from here, and pointless,
yet I remember staggering about for weeks feeling
as though a beast were daily ripping the sternum

out of my chest. We shred our nerves against the grate
of one another’s youthful insecurities. Weak, slight,
vulnerable, only his voice is unchanged—

I must have loved its sound once! Maybe, strangely,
in the unreckonable realm of human life—our daughter’s
and her child’s—whoever we marry is ours forever.

And in some sense he is mine, and I almost want him––
but only out of pity, or forgotten guilt. All the dross
that had to go was long since skimmed off. Here

we are, his once-wife, my once-husband, the child
we made who is with child, this summer evening’s
sterling light and the mystery of how each moment

goes on and on and holds us present until the last.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I wrote this poem in late July 2002 while I was poet-in-residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. The occasion the poem describes, my former husband and I waiting with my daughter over a period of several days prior to her giving birth to our first grandchild, occurred six weeks earlier, mid-June 2002.

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

I don't remember precisely. I was free to write all day and my best guess is that I worked on it for several hours one day and then revisited the poem, making minor revisions over a period of days.

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

I don't believe in inspiration as traditionally conceived: that is, as having something to do with a god blowing an inspiriting breath into the lungs of a poet, or a visitation by a muse. I agree with critics, such as Harold Bloom, who says that "poems beget poems." I read a lot of poems, read, study, analyze, teach, think about, write out in long hand, and thus I am inspired through the cultural mechanism of writing and reading: inspired by literature.

However, I want to add that I went back and looked at my journal entry of June 11, 2002; five days before my grandson was born, written while my ex-husband and I were visiting our daughter. Referring to him, I wrote that "his voice hasn't changed low these thirty-six years since I first met him. Neither of us is in anyway the same person we were in 1966 . . . I can hardly remember who I was then . . . " Then, referring to my daughter, I wrote that she "thanked me for being gracious this morning toward her father. What else would I do? In fact, I hadn't tried at all to be gracious."

So while I hadn't had my journal entry in mind when I sat down to write this poem, I believe that having put on paper some of my thoughts of the moment, the kernel of the poem began to form in my subconscious mind. Here I am saying that "writing begets writing"--another form of inspiration.

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

Although these lines are longer than those Wallace Stevens uses, I have his tercets in mind quite often, and I can see Stevens' influenced in some of the words and phrases: "placable," "long dissolved discord," "unreckonable realm," perhaps even "sterling."

Principles of technique? My technique consists of writing the best sentences I can write, trying to vary type and length of sentences, adding as much rhyme, consonance, alliteration, and assonance as I can without sounding too obviously poetic. Then I spent a lot of time searching for synonyms that might be more interesting, more precise or more musical than my first word choices. I know that I stop myself a few times and ask whether or not I've got something to say; any central idea. The ideological level of poem making is important to me. I don't care for poems that carry only impressions or sensations and little or not thought. I try to make sure there's at least one line that aims at what I like to think of as the intellectual underpinning of the poem. Lastly, after everything else has settled down, I begin shaping the poem into lines and form, although some lines, as lines, form themselves from the beginning. This is a simplification, of course, since thousands of decisions, some conscious, far many more unconscious, are made while writing a poem; at least that's my sense of things.

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

"The Ex" was accepted by Peter Makuck and published in Tar River Poetry about sixteen months after I wrote it. Later it was anthologized in a collection called The Breath of Parted Lips: Poems from The Frost Place, Vol. II. This last is edited by Sydney Lea and published by CavanKerry Press.

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?

As a general trend, the older I've gotten, the longer I've written and published, the greater the length of time I sit on work. I know longer fall in love with my own creations and race off to share them with the world, as I once did -- sometimes mailing off work the very day I wrote it. I have several dozen poems, probably publishable ones, that I've been sitting on for eight years or less. My practice does vary. I try to psych-out the fit between the publication and the poems I'm sending for consideration, but I question my powers of discernment in this regard, and still wonder whether trying to find this fit is a waste if time and energy. I still receive dozens upon dozens of rejection slips.

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

There's not much fiction in this one. It's fairly autobiographical. I do not recall feeling anything like what is expressed in the phrase "I almost want him." I am pretty sure I said that for dramatic effect. I do remember having a long meal in the evening on my daughter's patio, and my ex-husband expressing what struck me as numerous ill-founded opinions. I remember feeling strained into keeping a pleasant expression on my face. I was being duplicitous for the sake of geniality. I remember, as well, how beautiful the California evening light was, and I was overcome with a sense of the mystery of "the present moment," the sense, that I try to capture in the poem of "how each moment/goes on and on and holds us." I have always been captivated by the idea of successive moments of now being all we ever know, or can know, of existence, and yet each moment is so ephemeral, so fleeting. That fascination I take to be the real subject of this poem, along with the idea that occurs earlier that "whoever we marry is ours forever" in "some sense." I am married to my third husband, and when I think about the previous two, I do feel tied to them even though they are complete strangers to me. I suppose because I pledged myself to each in good faith when I married each and I had a child with each. Such things bind us in a metaphysical sense even if nothing else does.

Is this a narrative poem?

I would classifying it as a lyric poem with narrative elements. It is primarily a meditation and thus fits the definition of a lyric fairly closely: a short, personal poem that focuses on a single emotion, and that is primarily meditative or reflective in nature. I'd call the emotion a blend of two: nostalgia and wonder.

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

Well, I've mentioned Stevens, and I can see a touch of Bishop here as well, in, for example, the simile that describes the ex-husband's dizzying opinions as showing up "Like bombarding mosquitoes" that "fly in/and out of range." Bishop may show up in the phrase "as rarely/as faint decency required." Since I wrote this poem in Robert Frost's former home, and while I was re-reading his complete poems, I wouldn't be surprised if Frost, as well, isn't hiding out somewhere in these lines, probably in the tone.

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

No I don't. I feel amazed, and honored, when anyone reads or listens to one of my poems. I'm happy with all comers and write for all comers.

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've belonged to the same poetry group for the last sixteen years; we've been a changing group, as such groups are. The members have vetted all my work, plus a few other friends I meet with less frequently. Often, but not always, my husband is my first reader. He's good at seeing what doesn't need to be there.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I don't think "The Ex" differs significantly from the personal lyrics I write. At this stage in my writing life, I'm writing more dramatic and narrative poems than lyrics, and I like to write hybrids that combine two or three modes and that sometimes incorporate fragments I have not composed myself. So of course "The Ex" differs significantly from such poems. Among the lyrics, I write some that are more outward looking, less personal, that take as their subject something in the natural or cultural or historical realm, rather than human interaction, than, let me say, the psychological domain of experience, as "The Ex" does.

What is American about this poem?

I think this poem might have as easily been written by a European or a South or Latin American poet. I do not see anything particularly American about it unless it is the mention of AIDs, although, by now, sadly, AIDs shows up everywhere in the world.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Oh, finished. I declared it finished. I've never found another way to finish a poem.

Alfred Corn

Alfred Corn was born in Bainbridge, Georgia, in 1943. His first book of poems, All Roads at Once, appeared in 1976, followed by A Call in the Midst of the Crowd (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), The West Door (1988), Autobiographies (1992). His seventh book of poems, titled Present, appeared in 1997, along with a novel titled Part of His Story, and a study of prosody, The Poem’s Heartbeat. Stake: Selected Poems, 1972-1992, appeared in 1999, followed by Contradictions in 2002. He has also published a collection of critical essays titled The Metamorphoses of Metaphor (1988) and a work of art criticism, Aaron Rose Photographs (Abrams, 2001). In 2008, his Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989-2007 was published by the University of Michigan Press. Fellowships and prizes awarded for his poetry include the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine, a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Award in Literature from the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and one from the Academy of American Poets. He has taught at the City University of New York, Columbia, Yale, Connecticut College, the University of Cincinnati, U.C.L.A., Ohio State University, Hofstra University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Tulsa. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Nation, he also writes art criticism for Art in America and ARTnews magazines. In October 2003 he was a fellow of the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, and held the Amy Clampitt Residency in Lenox, Massachusetts, for 2004-2005. In London, later that year, he taught a course for the Poetry School, and one for the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh Barton, Devon. He spends part of every year in the U.K.


AN XMAS MURDER

He sits at the table, cloudlight of March
One tone with his hair, gray-silver on silver.
Midday fare in Vermont is basic enough.
In West Newbury, eggs and toast will do—
Though our doctor’s had his sips of wine as well.
“Just don’t be fooled. They’re not as nice as you
Think they are. Live here a few more winters,
You’ll get to know them clearer, and vice-versa.”
Three years now, and we’re still finding our way;
Newcomers need a guide to show them the ropes,
And he has been explaining township and county
Almost from the sunstruck day we met him
That very first July in this old house.
“I’ll cite an instance of community
Spirit at work, North Country justice—
A case I just happened to be involved in.
No, please—all right, if you are having one.”
He holds his glass aloft and then lets fall
A silence that has grown familiar to us
From other stories told on other days,
The will to recount building its head of steam.
“Well, now, you have to know about the victim.
His name was Charlie Deudon, no doubt Canuck
Stock some generations back, but he
Nor no one else could tell you—if they cared.
Deudons had been dirt farmers here as long
As anybody knew. They never starved
But never had a dime to spare, either.
Charlie resolved to change the Deudon luck.
And that’s just what he did. Or almost did. . . .
He’d graduated two classes ahead of mine;
We knew each other, naturally, but not
On terms of friendship. Fact is, he had no friends,
And only one girlfriend, whom he married
Day after Commencement, June of ‘32.
And then he set to work and never stopped
Again, until they made him stop for good.”
A wisp of a smile, half irony, half
Bereavement plays about his guileless face—
Red cheeks, blue eyes, a beardless Santa Claus;
Whose bag contains (apart from instruments
Of healing) stories, parables and proverbs,
Painkillers, too, for when all else fails.
“What kind of work had all that hard work been?”
“Oh, farming, like his elders, only better.
All the modern improvements, fancy feed
And fertilizers, plus machinery—
He was the first in these parts to milk
His herd in any way but as ‘twas done
Since Adam’s boys first broke ground with a plow.
And anything machines couldn’t handle,
Charlie did himself, from dawn to midnight.
He never wasted a word or spilled a drop
Of milk or drank a drop of beer or liquor.
He was unnatural. And he made that farm
Into a showplace, a kind of 4-H model.
He made good money, yes, but not a dollar
Would he spend unnecessarily.
Do you get the picture? They hated him,
The boys that hung around the package store.
The most they ever got from tightfist Charlie
Deudon was a nod out from under his cap.
(His trademark—a baseball cap striped white and red.)
They envied him for getting his hay in first;
And there was more. A boy that he had hired,
By the name of Carroll Giddens, was their buddy.
Likeable fellow, regulation issue,
The sort that knocks back a pint or a fifth
In half a shake and tells off-color stories
Till he’s got them choked to death with laughing.
‘Course the wisecracks they loved best were those
About poor Charlie and his gold-plated farm. . . .
Just one more case of what’s been often said
By commentators on democracy—
How it helps everyone keep modest.”
Teasing mischief has crept into his voice.
A self-taught anthropologist as well
As teller of tales, he has other frames
Of reference to place around events
Local or international. He knows
That things can stand for more than what they are;
Indeed, says standing for things is why we’re here,
And quotes chapter and verse to prove his point.
“Think of the worldwide scapegoat ritual.
In halfway civilized societies
An animal’s the one relieved from life
Duty, am I right? A fellow tribesman
Will do in a pinch, if animals are lacking,
Or if communal fears get screwed too tight. . . .
Anyhow, it was clear that something more
Than common envy stirred up the lynch law.
Their own failure’s what they wanted dead.”
Seconds pass in silence as he stares
At something—perhaps a knothole in the pine
Floorboard. He looks up, eyebrows raised,
And twirls the glass stem between stubby fingers.
A coil of rope hung on the wall, we see,
Has made him pause and heave experienced sighs.
“Here. Have another. So: was Charlie punished?”
“I’m going to tell you—better me than others.
You see, I was involved—no, no, no,
Not in the deed, Lord, no, just as a witness.
It happened this way—hope you’re not squeamish.
Charlie had this boy to help with chores,
The one named Carroll. Married, two kids, I think.
Not too reliable. But so few are;
Nor could you call his wages generous.
His buddies must have stood him drinks, is all
I can say. He’d a skinful half the time—
Was certainly drunk that Christmas Eve morning.
No reason to doubt what Charlie told his wife.
Charlie’d been up to help at six with the milking,
And Carroll, drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, was there
Loading a pair of milk cans into the barrow.
He took a slip and the whole business spilled.
Wooden handle clipped him in the side,
And he fell, too, right in the puddle of milk.
And started laughing. Charlie, you can guess,
Didn’t join in; he told him to get on home.
‘What about the milk?’ ‘Go home,’ he said,
‘You’re drunk.’ ‘But what about the milk?’ asks Carroll.
‘Comes out of next week’s paycheck,’ Charlie says.
And then the trouble starts, with Carroll swearing
And yelping, till Charlie gives him a little tap
And goes indoors. By then Carroll could tell
The barrow handle had cracked a rib or two.
He drove into town to see his doctor—that
Wasn’t me—and word went out that Charlie
Had roughed up his innocent assistant.
That’s all they needed, Carroll’s friends. About
Time that stuck-up bastard got his due,
He’s gone too far this time, but we’ll show him,
Et cetera . . . . As it was Christmas Eve,
They had the leisure, the liquor, and the rope.”
“They hanged him?” “No, that’s not our way up here.
The honored custom’s to dump them in the river.
You see, the river’s New Hampshire all the way
Over to the Vermont side, and thus,
If the victim’s still alive when he hits the water,
New Hampshire law enforcement and legal justice
Steps in. It tends to confuse the issue, see?
In wintertime, the river freezes over,
And you can’t hope to fish the bodies out
Till the month of March at the earliest.
By then, who knows which state the victim died in?
A trick they’ve played a hundred years and more
Up in Woodsville, where the bridge is. That’s where
The loggers used to go to spend their money
On booze and hookers—who’d arrange for them
To get knocked in the head at the right moment,
And pitched off the bridge into the water.
A famous local industry, but rather
Fallen on hard days by the early fifties,
Just like others more legitimate. . . .
Well, our local rowdies knew the routine,
And, when time came to follow up their threats,
They laid their plans according to tradition.
They knew that Charlie’d have to do the milking
Christmas morning same as every day.
And when he came into the barn to do it,
They’d be waiting for him. And that’s what happened.”

We strain forward to hear him tell the rest;
The narrative spell is on him, and on us.
His voice weaves through fine-tuned nuances,
With sudden leaps in volume and skittish phrases
That somehow help flesh out what he describes.
We see the sprawling barn across the highway
From the white-columned porch of the old house.
See the barn closed up tight against the cold,
And the blue-gray light of December dawn
As Charlie crosses the road to do his chores.
The roosters shriek their morning alarm, the big
Doors creak open on the darkness—a darkness
Slit with tight-strung wires of light knifing
Through cracks between the boards of the east wall.
Tufts of hay spill from cribs on both sides.
The waiting cattle stir and low as daylight
Breaks in on the darkness. Their master strides
In past the parked pickup truck, his pail,
A battered Rath Blackhawk lard can swinging
At his side, a whistled “Jingle Bells”
His fight song for the working holiday.
He hears the verses harnessed to his whistling,
The tune drawing its text along march tempo:
. . . it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh-ay!
And then all changes. Smash of the blackjack
Against his skull, exploding carnival
Of fire-veined shock that flies to the far corners
Of night. Four assailants leap from the back
Of the truck and lift him partly erect, the quicker
To bind his arms behind and truss them to
His half-bent legs, as you might rope a steer
Or sheep you meant to brand or slaughter.
They take him out to where the car is waiting
And throw him in the trunk like a sack of feed.
Another car drives past but doesn’t slow.
The bandits duck and climb inside their own.
Tires screech, the driver slams onto the highway,
A smile and wink all round as they drive north
To Woodsville. The sun is coming up when they
Reach the bridge and stop the car. The lid
Of the trunk’s sprung open, its cargo discharged.
He is dragged to the railing, lifted, then heaved over.
The body falls, seeming almost to pause
In air before it hits the water and slides
Below the surface of the floating ice. . . .
Five miles back along the highway, the dark
Barn, the herd, a crushed tin pail, and signs
Of struggle in the dirt wait for someone’s
Startled face, back-lit in the doorway,
To see them, then whip aside with a shout of terror.

“He wasn’t found until spring thaw; he washed
Ashore just south of Bradford, still tied up
And looking like they’d tarred and feathered him—
Partly decomposed, but not his clothes.
First thing was an autopsy to test if he
Had died by drowning or was dead before
Going under. Conclusion was, he’d died
On land, so as I said, his death belonged
To the Green Mountain State’s criminal justice.”
“And what about the killers—were they caught?”
“Several suspects found themselves in jail—
And that’s where I come in: as star witness.
It happened I was on the road that morning.
Real early. See . . . I’d promised my house guest
Of the night—young Marine on leave—I’d drive
Him back to Lebanon to grab his bus.
I always keep my word, especially
When given in the night hours. Nice boy—
He’s been a good friend ever since. We’d said
Good-bye until the next three-day pass.
Well, I was driving home like Merry Christmas.
Into the headlights comes the Deudon farm:
And then I noticed the car. A two-toned Kaiser,
Side of the road, beneath a maple tree.
Didn’t know whose it was or why it was there.
I saw one face, Calvin Renfrew’s, that’s all.
He didn’t have wheels so far as I knew.
Occurred to me right then that something might
Be fishy; but locals never meddle till—
Till it’s too late, sometimes. I should have stopped.
They might have banged me on the head, but then—.
Well, even as it is they got revenge.
I’m still alive, however, and mean to stay so.”
He laughs a low laugh that would chill the devil . . .
Then takes up the thread—how when he heard the news
About Charlie’s disappearance, he drove down
To tell the state trooper what he’d seen.
“That was the very next day after Christmas.
By nightfall Calvin Renfrew and Norbert Joiner,
The owner of the car (the Kaiser), and two
Associates were in custody. But not
For long. Someone bailed them out, someone
Rich, it had to be, an enemy
Or rival of Charlie’s. That’s often our way,
You know, to let others fix the person
We secretly hate, then give them secret help
When they get their paws burned in the process.
A lot of people coveted that farm,
However much disparaged it was in public.
When Charlie’s widow put it up for auction,
Don’t imagine nobody came to bid.
I still see things of his on others’ farms.
What didn’t surprise me either’s how the town,
Lord help me, the whole county took the side
Of those arrested against the murdered man.
They said old Charlie had it coming to him,
Treating his employee that way. Meanwhile,
Carroll had quietly slipped across the border
To Canada; no way to prove that he’d
Hardly been hurt at all. So rumor flew.
If words could put you under ground, why Carroll
Was dead and buried six times over, a martyr
Hounded to his grave by a maniac
Who should have been taken care of years ago.
These are churchgoing people, too, but they
Figure they have a special insight as
To what the Boy Upstairs considers right.
Man is born for sorrow, so we’re told,
And some try to make sure he gets a close
Acquaintance with the sorrow that’s his due.
Meanwhile, if you can say the things people
Want to hear, then you may lynch at will.”
He folds his hands and brings them to his chin.
“The rest of the story you can figure out
Yourself. Their lawyer asked the jury be
Directed by the judge to return a verdict
Of Not Guilty. Motion granted—as never
Before for a capital offense in this state.
They’d do it again, don’t worry, if the case
Was dear to their concerns. Sounds cynical,
I grant you. . . . But then, you see, they started next
On me for fingering the guilty parties.
State trooper drops by to ask some questions.
Why was I on the highway that time of morning?
Oh? And who exactly was this friend?
Oh, really? Stayed the night, did he? I see. . . .
A doubt or two’d been raised before already,
Given that I had never married, and
Was locally famous for my special hobby.
I’m sure I’ve told you: I play a little pipe
Organ at church sometimes—I even travel
To play it elsewhere. I know organists
All over New England, and the town gazette
Used always to mention when I went to play
At musicales in other towns and states.
Nobody thought it mattered much beforehand,
But once the tale about the serviceman
Got out, my friends, well, you can just imagine.
Overnight young Dr. Stephens was
As ‘musical’ as you can be and not
Get tarred and feathered. My patients, some of them,
Began to melt away like ice cream. Stephens,
A local name, respected in these parts,
Became a byword for things we don’t discuss.
I wondered whether I should move, of course;
Some rowdy threw a can of paint at the house;
I still get unsigned letters from time to time.
Things must be better where you two come from.
But this is where I’ve always lived, it’s what
I know. If I had had the sense to pitch
Someone unpopular from off a bridge
Instead of enjoying music, chances are
I’d be a favorite son. In point of fact,
I’ve given up the organ, seldom play it
Nowadays. I’ve got a different hobby—
Your health, gentlemen! No more today, though.
Another call to make this afternoon.
But listen, now: if you’ll come up to me
Next week, I’ll play some pump organ for you.
I can still do a rousing ‘Hornpipe’—the one
By Handel. Tourist attraction hereabouts.
I am fairly confident you won’t
Ever have heard it played my way before.”
He stands to go, consenting to be ushered
Out under the black trees of late March, down
To where his battered station wagon sits.
Thunder of engines takes him off. . . . But his words
Stay lodged in us like arrows, arrows aimed
As carefully as acupuncture and meant
Somehow to warn or counsel. Not that warnings
In the abstract often help stave off
Particular misfortunes, inevitably
The body of most stories drawn from life.
Misfortunes are the hinges life turns on?
Reprieves as well—along with persons, places,
Passions. A fluent paradox, the realm
Normally termed external, I mean its way
Of overhearing thought and mustering
Fresh evidence. . . . Today, for instance, how
New green on branches and a liquid birdcall
Suffice to announce the chaste approach of spring.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

I believe it was written in 1984-1985. A couple of years earlier my partner and I had bought a house in rural Vermont and fairly soon got to know a local resident, a doctor whose ancestors had lived thereabouts for many generations. He told me the story of the murder, and when I asked for more details gave me an article that has been published in a magazine, maybe Argosy, back in the 1950s. I read it and found the story fascinating and horrible both. I’d also been reading Frost, in fact, I read everything of his during those years, including his dramatic monologues like “A Servant to Servants” and “The Witch of Coös.” I saw that stories of rural New England could be gripping subject matter for poems.

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

I revise a lot but don’t count while doing it. This is a long poem, and probably required about forty drafts, I estimate. It took about a year to complete.

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

Yes, if you mean a sudden rush of excitement over an idea, an eagerness to do something with it, and the sense of being carried forward on a current of new insights as you work. In this case, the story was given to me, but I had to put it into lines, come up with a way to suggest the sound quality of a voice, and discover extra layers of significance in the story, aspects of a wider relevance.

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

Most of the poem is a dramatic monologue, and ever since Shakespeare’s plays, blank verse has been the schema most often used for that genre. I followed suit. But one formal innovation I added was a “frame” placed around the doctor’s narrative, written in my own voice. The frame introduces him, interrupts in the middle of his narrative to summarize what he tells, and then concludes the poem with some more general reflections. That is one way that the poem differs from Frost’s dramatic monologues, and apparently the innovation bothered one critic, who didn’t like the framing, probably because it’s not typical for poems like this. However, if you remove the frame, the poem doesn’t give the whole story, and its wider relevance vanishes. It becomes a versified magazine article, what the French call a fait divers, a “human interest story.”

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

Over a year. It came in in Poetry in 1987. Then it was done as a chapbook published by Ted Danforth’s Sea Cliff Press shortly after that. Then, in 1988, it was collected in the book The West Door.

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 poems to friends even before the ink is dry. When I no longer see glaring faults in it, I send it to editors. If it is sent back, I’ll reconsider it and might work with it again.

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

The story recorded in the voice of the doctor is nearly identical to the one that my Vermont friend told me. I don’t know if he invented any part of it. The more public narrative follows what was printed in the magazine article. The “frame,” my part in it, is generally factual, with some invented details. Since I left out hundreds of things that might have been included, the omission also counts as a fictional aspect of the poem, too.

Is this a narrative poem?

Yes.

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

As said above, Frost. Clearly he was an influence, but in order to earn being influenced, in my view, you have do something the original didn’t do. Hence the frame, which allows for a more elaborate description of events than would be credible in this country doctor’s voice.

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

From the practical standpoint, I think a B.A. degree is the price of admission if you want to read my poems or at least the autodidact’s equivalent. Ideally, they should be read by enthusiasts, people who read a lot of poetry and are used to its methods. Beyond that, I have no preconception of the identity of the readers. This poem in particular has had favorable responses from people from widely different sectors of the readership, so the self-flattering view would be that it is one of my very best.

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?

Yes, I have from the first sent poems to friends for responses, and still do. In the beginning that would have been David Kalstone, Richard Howard, Edmund White, James Merrill, and J.D. McClatchy. Over the years other poet friends who’ve willing to read and comment were John Hollander, Robert Pinsky, Grace Schulman, Mary Jo Salter, and Marilyn Hacker. I can’t recall now who saw this poem in draft.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

It’s the only one based on a crime as described in a magazine article.

What is American about this poem?

Its setting and its characters are American, including the author. Perhaps the plain-spokenness of it. What else? The civil rights activist Rap Brown once said, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” I think he was referring to the slaughter of the indigenous peoples of North America, slavery, the Civil War, lynching and vigilante raids, the Ku Klux Klan, organized crime, urban riots and the increasing number of wars waged by Americans on foreign soil. Since this poem is about a vigilante murder, I suppose it qualifies one more slice of American cherry pie.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

If I were to put it back on the worktable again, I would probably even now change a few small things. But I’ve learned to avoid doing that because readers never like revisions of a text they already know. It’s good to compose, and to finish, with abandon.