Gibbons Ruark

Gibbons Ruark has published his poems widely for over forty years. Among his eight collections are Keeping Company (1983), Passing Through Customs: New and Selected Poems (1999) and Staying Blue, a 2008 chapbook. The recipient of many awards, including three NEA Poetry Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, and the 1984 Saxifrage Prize for Keeping Company, he was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and grew up in various Methodist parsonages in the eastern part of the state. Educated at the Universities of North Carolina and Massachusetts, he taught English largely at the University of Delaware until his retirement in 2005. He lives with his wife Kay in Raleigh.


SESSION BEGINNING IN SUNLIGHT

The day’s too warm for the tart smoke of a turf fire,
Though dust motes in the sunlight are a kind of smoke,
The brass is polished, the stained-glass panels make
A gossipy row of snugs along the bar.
A shadowy hand. The fluent stick on the taut
Rim of the bodhran summons a ramrod dancer.
Suddenly deft fingers flying on the slender
Whistle. Tin. The tenor banjo’s picking out of thought,
The gaiety of flutes evaporates our cares.
One fiddle. Two. Something come apart is mending.
Heat lightning. Night coming on. Soon there will be stars
And strangely in the dark the lark ascending.
Here’s a health to these harmonious Irregulars:
Let this reel unwind the music’s only ending.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

The truth is that this poem has been quietly germinating since the fall of 1981, when I heard my first session of traditional Irish music in Galway City. I’ve alluded briefly to such sessions in several poems over the years, but didn’t get around to facing one head-on until the summer of 2006, after I’d been listening in on Sunday sessions in The Hibernian in downtown Raleigh for about a year. But it was that great session in Cullen’s bar in Galway that got the inner clock ticking.

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

Oddly enough, this poem started for me as an effort to use the “haiku” stanza that Richard Wilbur has used so beautifully in a number of poems, beginning I believe with “Thyme Flowering Among the Rocks,” but after several false starts at that I gave up and fell back on the pentameter and eventually the sonnet. One of my musician friends said that he loves the way the poem “becomes” a sonnet. I hope he’s right. In any case, I believe that I have learned that anything shorter than the tetrameter line doesn’t lend itself happily to my voice. There were three or four days between the first version and the first “final” version, after which I moved from the notebook to the keyboard. But I always make a few more changes after that, and evidence of those last revisions dissolves into ether. For example, I don’t find the line “The gaiety of flutes evaporates our cares” anywhere but in the final typed text.

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

There was some sweat but no tears. Luck is the main kind of inspiration I believe in, but I always have to qualify that with a remark by Jack Nicklaus: “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”

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

The answer to the first question: By means of work and luck. To the second: Yes.

Was there anything unusual about the way in which you wrote this poem?

I suppose I finished it a good bit faster than is normal for me. Maybe that’s because it had been lying in wait so many years, and maybe I just absorbed something of the tempo of those Irish sessions.

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

Thanks to Rod Smith at Shenandoah, a little less than a year.

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 usually send poems out not long after I feel they are finished. It can take various lengths of time for that feeling to take hold.

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

I have frequently objected to the fairly common view that fiction writers are inventive, whereas poets simply tell the truth. In fact, I objected so often in the hearing of my older daughter that she gave me a T-shirt emblazoned with the words I MAKE STUFF UP. I believe that shaping one’s materials into something like a sonnet is itself a form of invention, so a “made thing,” as Leon Stokesbury calls his fine anthology, is a kind of fiction even if every word of it is fact. When X. J. Kennedy saw this poem in print, he said “Do Irish larks indeed fly by night? Bejaysus, what’s got into them?” I replied that I guessed the larks were an auditory hallucination induced by the music. But given the magical and painful distinction Shakespeare draws between the lark and the nightingale in Romeo and Juliet, my nocturnal larks might be a little hard to credit.

Is this a narrative poem?

Since the sun goes down between the beginning and the end, there is a narrative element, but I’d have to say it’s mainly a lyric poem.

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

I never read other poets while working on a poem, and in fact have often found prose to be more influential on me than poetry. Though Pound is not one of my touchstones, I love his remark that poetry ought to be at least as well written as prose.

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

The vast majority of my poems are addressed to specific people, but this one is an exception to that rule, so I might say it is addressed to anyone who wants to listen to the music with me, and it is of course for harmonious Irregulars everywhere.

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 don’t show unfinished work to anyone, and I show finished work only to my wife before sending it off. On one or two occasions I haven’t even done that if the poem was one for her which I wanted to be a surprise.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

I’ll leave that for others to say.

What is American about this poem?

Strictly speaking, the poem is set in America, but it invokes Ireland, so one could call it Irish-American.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Finished.

Joseph Millar

Joseph Millar's first collection, Overtime (2001) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. A second collection, Fortune, appeared in 2007. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania and attended Johns Hopkins University and spent twenty-five years in the San Francisco Bay area working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His work has won a fellowship for the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2008 Pushcart Prize. In 1997, he gave up his job as telephone installation foreman to try his hand at teaching. A new chapbook, Bestiary, is now available from Red Dragonfly Press, and a third collection, Blue Rust, will be published by Carnegie-Mellon in 2012. Millar is now core faculty at Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program and lives in Raleigh, NC with his wife, the poet Dorianne Laux.


AMERICAN WEDDING

The yarmulke hides the bald spot on my goyische skull
as I watch my new son-in-law's size 13
stomp down on the linen-swathed wineglass.
My daughter looks radiant, no other word
for it, gowned in white satin the color of light.
We're surrounded by Jews dressed in black
like the sea, like the streets of Manhattan,
whose young men will soon bear me up
on a chair, a floating throne
over the circle clapping and singing.
I've eaten roast duck at the rehearsal dinner,
listened to the cantor's plangent tones,
stood by while the two signed the ornate
ketubah, gold-leafed promise
unschooled like a map of the world.

My small wan gaggle of distant family
clumps together next to the aisle,
divorced, remarried adopted, nervous:
our dead father's third wife coughing behind
my stepchildren, ex-wife, half brothers, motley,
ragged, one nephew wearing a baseball cap.

When the groom lifts the veil from her
delicate temples, I'm thinking someone
should warn them: a future of funerals, car
payments, taxes, kids throwing up in the night.
It's a job you mostly won't know how to do,
your naked arm deep in a jammed kitchen sink,
burnt rinds of eggplant crazily adrift.

Your children will lift their small faces
toward you and give you reason to weep,
and if you manage to stay together
there will be nights you lie down
like strangers back to back
falling away from each other in sleep.

Above us the moon looks speckled, torn,
fluttering over the courtyard and I'm dazed by the perfume rising up
from this fleshy rose pinned to my worsted lapel.
I'm swallowing down the thick nuptial wine,
getting reading to dance all night.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

It started after we got back home from New Orleans where the wedding took place. I was having a spell of sadness, a kind of dazed aftermath. I knew my daughter was kind of going away forever.

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

It went through quite a few. These narratives usually require a lot of cutting and some pasting. I had the basic scaffolding, and then I kept remembering things (the jammed kitchen sink) and fitting them in there. Maybe ten months or fifteen. Sometimes I have to keep walking around for a while when I think a poem's finished and then I will find it is not. Sometimes when I can't get an ending, I need to be alive for a little longer, to wait and be patient.

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 and surely there must have been some of that, but the way most of this poem came was through the various avenues of memory: the Jewish wedding customs—the shattered glass, the Ketubah, the hoisted chair—they were obvious poetry. So the writing seemed like mostly conscious labor, but I had so much feeling about this, I was able to jump around fairly well.

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

Just the usual techniques of free-verse narrative. I tried to compress the syntax, make sure each line had something in it, tried to speak clearly and not overdo it...

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

It didn't appear until my second book, Fortune, came out in ‘07, maybe three years.

It was accepted by Paterson Review but I don't think they ever printed it because I failed to send them a computer disc of it, which they'd requested.

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 usually let them sit for a while. No rules but usually.

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

This poem is pretty much true to the facts. I think the spirit of a poem's truth is more important than its factual truth, but in this case the facts seemed enough.

Is this a narrative poem?

Oh yes.

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

Probably my usual influences: Sharon Olds, James Wright, Philip Levine, Nina Simone, Neil Young.

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

Usually a true friend, but sometimes an enemy or someone I don't like.

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, the poet Dorianne Laux, sees all my work before I send it anywhere.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

It's not that different.

What is American about this poem?

There are a few American threads running through it. The Jewish ceremony, its old-world solidarity, the speaker's sense of estrangement, his own "recombined" family riddled with death and divorce. Also, a kind of celebration of the Other and the idea that marriage is probably somewhat the same for everybody.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?
I think it's finished.

Jesse Ball

Jesse Ball is a fabulist of the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. His many prizewinning works run through the fields of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and art. Most recently he is the author of The Curfew (novel) and The Village on Horseback (omnibus). He teaches lucid dreaming and general practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.






LESTER, BURMA

For J.Z.

Lester and Burma were speaking gaily. He had encountered her in the hallway. Hello, he said, you certainly are a sight for sore eyes. They proceeded to a room adjoining that hall, where a large window opened onto the street. I would like to have you for supper, said Burma, and took off her dress.

I am appalled, said the doorman to the coachman, and the coachman to the gardener, at the way the young lady dosports herself. You would think she had been brought up better than that.

Burma was wearing no underwear, and her slender body looked very nice on Lester's sofa. He said so. Thank you, said Burma. I swim each day, and use fine oils. Of course you do, said Lester.

What will happen, said Lester's father to Lester's mother, when that boy gets to the big city? Who will he fall in with? Will he return in ten years' time and shower us with gifts and rememberance? Or will he, said Lester's father to Lester's sickly uncle, die from the plague like all his cousins? Perhaps he will take to the sea and become a privateer, with a letter of marque. I would like that, said the uncle. I would like that also, said Lester's father.

A cloud of bees overtook the window and screened the room for a minute. Do you think they'll harm us? asked Lester. Why, no, said Burma, they're just curious. Aren't you ever curious? Yes, quite, said Lester, laying his hand upon her thigh.

The beekeeper paused by his hives. A cloud of bees is missing, he said, to no one in particular. I hpe the little creatures aren't up to any mischief. I hope they return by dark so I can tuck them in their little beds and read them fairy tales.

At any rate, said Lester, we might at least have a look in the bedroom and see what's going on in there. Yes, said Burma, we might at least do that. Just to know for sure. The bedroom door closed softly behind them.

And when the bees returned to their hive, the beekeeper was there with glad tears and an admonishing word. He read them a story from a fine book he'd just bought, in which a boy and girl go to bed together with no other reason than that it is nice to be in bed with a boy and it is nice to be in bed with a girl and it is nice to wake up midway through a life in early evening to the buzzing of bees in an adjoining room.


When was this poem composed? How did it start?

In the spring of two thousand and three. In a basement room with a glimmer of light through some sort of absurd duct poking up onto 125th street in Manhattan. I was attending graduate school at Columbia at that time.

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

None.

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

The mind runs on particular courses. Should such a course be presentable, perhaps it is a poem.

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

Delight. All labor, all love in useless, ample delight.

Was there anything unusual about the way in which you wrote this poem?

I did more of this sort of thing before March Book, and more after. Prose that isn't anything, that doesn't believe it has to be anything. It is an arrow approaching its target on foot, unannounced.

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

I believe the book appeared a year later, from Grove 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?

I most often write in volumes, so it is a matter of the publisher's will to action.

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

Poetry is non-fiction. Poems are battle-reports fresh from the field. You must wipe the blood off them to read the hastily written words. Also, poems are inventions, having nothing to do with anything. They are like the kisses girls give to imaginary crocodiles, if such crocodiles, if such girls exist.

Is this a narrative poem?

Some would say so. But not very much happens. Do things need to happen?

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

Well, then I was mad about Proust.

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

That person who is always walking back and forth to the mailbox to see if the mail has arrived.

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?

Once things are done, I tend to show my wife. But in two thousand and three, I hadn't heard of her yet.

How does this poem differ from other poems of yours?

It ends happily.

What is American about this poem?

It continues the continent's true heritage: that arrival must extinguish something. Somewhere another poem has been snuffed out. No, I suppose, I don't find that I am particularly American. Do you have to be, just because you were born here? I like the American transcendentalist tradition. I like free thought. I like Paul Morphy and Henri Darger. That's my America.

Was this poem finished or abandoned?

Abandoned into print.