I haven't been very good at blogs this semester though I'm trying to keep abreast of the book club. If any of you haven't joined it and you're interested, we're reading Bill Bryson's biography of Shakespeare this month and next month Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
But...I've been slaving over my thesis all semester, looking for a post-graduate job, and doing my internship at 30 Rock. My mind feels taut. But I turned in the first draft of my thesis to Charles Simic a few weeks ago and he just gave it back to me yesterday. He said I have some "marvelous poems" and a "very strong manuscript". Those two phrases are buoying me up right now.
I've never wanted to finish school but this semester has put me at my wit's end. I feel like I want to finish up my book for publication and just send it out and stop writing poetry for a while. Just for a little while. Write something else. Something funny. With less worrying about line breaks.
Then after enough time, a month or two, come back to poetry like coming home to my family dog.
Here's something I worked on with Yusef Komunyakaa the other day and I think his suggestions were invaluable to it. He helped me pare it down.
Letter to James #1: Growth Rings
To an Older Me,
You have issues of blood.
You are our family’s hope,
have grown to be a reckoning
stone, an axe, an ocean.
If these are men at all,
meet them on their own ground.
The edges have no doubt dulled for you.
If you sleep full-grown and unafraid…
then you don’t remember how the sun was a pendulum,
how egg thin the doors and walls felt, how laughable
was glass, how phones, even the speed of dialing
three numbers seemed too long, the minutes before
the cops reached us to stop the things He would do.
Remember yourself.
Five feet of slim stalked limbs and glass cased eyes.
Not enough skin to block a man from coming inside.
My biggest hope is that you’d grow into them,
against them, a tree, you up and among them,
with stature like a tree, with bark like a tree,
and all beneath be poised lightning.
If you’ve read this more than once, you’ve forgotten me.
How worn this page is will be your barometer.
Still, I won’t let you go.
Not if you haven’t done it.
Knowing me as I know you,
each word will rattle chains until you answer me.
In whatever life you’ve dreamed up.
You, 14
Good that you've finished a draft. I'm still working on a prospectus, and I am TIRED.
ReplyDeleteLove the poem.
I really enjoy your poems James, but they always freak me out because they often hint at some crappy childhood memory and it makes me worry about what happened to you guys. Anyway, your poetry again succeeded at making me feel some feelings. Good work.
ReplyDeleteI've accepted the fact that I'm a narrative confessional poet and there's some truth to most of my poems. But I wouldn't ever say this is truth with the capital T.
ReplyDeleteI've been experimenting with anger as a voice. This is not necessarily an anger I currently feel. The narrator is a fiction. But because it's easiest to believe that the narrator is the author, we immediately wonder what we're being told about the author's life.
I do it all the time. I'm a very literal reader and I immediately believe the 'I' to be the author.
I tend to believe that we can only paint facets or fractions of ourselves.
Great, now you made me feel relieved. There I go with those feelings. Gosh darn your poetry/comments.
ReplyDeleteI preferred the black donut hole version of this idea. The James sending messages from the past version scares the hell out of me.
ReplyDeletequite the poem my old friend.
ReplyDeleteThis is a chancy post, but I know you, James, will probably understand it.
ReplyDeletePast, future, present--I always wonder how they all cram into the present. And there's the question of balance also. That's why I smoked dope (in another life)because it taught me about the present--an underrated place in our current mind-time. And that's also why I quit tripping because I couldn't see more of the present, since I'd get too hung up on a leaf turning and twisting down a river and miss the changing color of the sky. But, this I know: "I" must turn into "eye"; then to be a writer eye turns back into "I." You do that well, James.
I enjoyed the poem.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you are still drafting this poem - but a few comments as a reader for you.
The first stanza was dense for me. Too much going on - made for confusing reading. Almost like it is an inside joke and I am not privy to. If it were my poem I might just cut the first stanza and start with the second
These lines were what did it for me though
"then you don’t remember how the sun was a pendulum,
how egg thin the doors and walls felt, how laughable
was glass, how phones, even the speed of dialing
three numbers seemed too long,"
I think these spoke to me as a reader because I think we have all been there. These are universal.
Oh and by the way - this is Scott Allen - from BYU-Idaho. I saw your recent publication in Rattle - loved it - and decided to track (stalk) you down. I sent you an email - Hope we can get back in touch.
I sometimes put off reading your poems because it feels like going to therapy, and some days I just don't want to do that. So a few weeks later, what I have to say is anger as a voice is a good fit for your here. I'm glad you're working with it because as a confessionalist writer myself I know the scared little girl voice can really start to drag on my personally. I feel like a whiner. I like the angry voice here because of the vigilance it demands of the reader. The reader (I, myself) don't feel pressed to compassion, but rather to meaningful action. And that's always a good response.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the comments, dudes.
ReplyDeleteI've been swamped with my thesis and haven't been doing much else.
Sky,
That's a very interesting idea. One of my class's biggest critiques of this poem is that it's the Present James finding the Past James within the Present James. And then I try to create a false pretense that the Past James is speaking but obviously it's the Present James.
I don't believe I'm trying to fool anyone. I'm definitely asking you to believe in the conceit but all the time you and I know that this is my Present Self dealing with all the things that have piled up. I have only a Present to deal with. I like your idea a lot.
Yes, James. (It feels so good to be understood...Did the Beatles say that?) I think writing has to be such an intricate balance. We write in the present. But, the past and future are there at the same time. My best writing is a balance between the three. When I own it all, and when I don't drift too far into the past (Oh, then, how the sad violins play) or too far into the future (which mostly sounds like false sugar), my writing is exciting and fun--on the very front edge of moi (whatever that is). And I like it!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, what is a "confessional poet"?(Whew. Such a negative connotation for reality.) Oh, yeah, right--the opposite of "objective correlative." Ummmm...How can a poet have just one label? Because if we're going to label, you mix with many. And it's good.
You're livin' the dream, James. Hang in there.
ReplyDeleteI still enjoy your poetry. I didn't know Rattle published you recently. I'll have to track that one down.
Oh, this is Mike Sackley from BYU-I, by the way. Drop me a line when you're not writing comedy scripts or composing award-winning literature.