A week’s worth:
Sleep
The birds
The week
Woodnote, by Christine Deavel
My daughter moving back to town for summer break
A fun evening meeting my sister-in-law’s friends
Some truly unusually beautiful June weather
Father’s day brunch at Jamie’s and all the family time!
Tags: gratitude
Do you write your title first? Last? Does it depend on the poem? Is it like a blind date? Or bumping into someone in the grocery store? Or is it like hoping, hoping, hoping the phone will ring?
I love a good title. I love reading a table of contents filled with good titles. I’ve been reading Sarah Gridley and Cole Swenson, and it’s a pleasure to read all those titles.
I especially enjoy a collection that has groups of similar titles. Structurally. A pattern. For example, in Oliver de la Paz’s Furious Lullaby: “Aubade with a Book and the Rattle from a String of Pearls,” “Aubade with Constellations, Some Horses, and Snow,” “Aubade with Bread for the Sparrows.” Or “God Essay,” “Penitence Essay,” “Mysteries Essay.” And others.
I also like finding a book with poems that have the same title. In The Wild Iris, Louise Gluck has 7 poems called “Matins” and 10 poems called “Vespers.” Immediately, I’m intrigued. I want to know what the differences are between the poems. Recently, I’ve found the “Gravesend” poems in Cole Swenson’s Gravesend and the “Baroque” poems in Sarah Gridley’s Green Is the Orator. Ooooh…
I remember hearing Maureen Owen read at Saint Marks, and how she gave her poems two titles: “This poem is “x” or “x”–and each title sounded amazing. Wow. Coming up with two titles.
I love what Martha Silano says about titles in her post Are Your Titles Like a Limp Handshake?
I love what Dean Young said at Seattle Arts and Lectures about a title being the most important line in the poem (I think; I’m paraphrasing).
Yet, with all this wonderful help, I struggle mightily. Often, I hate my titles. I write and rewrite them. I want them to be intriguing without being confusing. I’m wary of one word titles even though some people write great one-word titles. I want them to invite you into their poems.
Sure, every once in a while I find a title I like or even love (especially the long ones) without a long journey first. And I like to use titles as starting points (write 5 titles, pick one, write a poem for that title), because I can always change it (and there I am, back to hunting for that perfect, compelling title).
But today I’m talking about the titles that are stumping me, the poems that I think are working, reading, well except for that, um, kind of boring title.
Especially one title. That I’ve been working on for four years. I’ve tried thinking (and thinking, and thinking). I’ve gone back to old drafts, looking for lines I loved but had to cut (okay, that should be a warning sign). I’ve printed out the poem and written alternate titles in the margin. I keep hoping one of them will jump out and say, “I’m here!” That I’ll know it’s the one. (This is sounding like a bad romance novel.)
The right title hasn’t shown up yet. Am I reduced to throwing darts? Do I have any darts?
How do you find a title, when it hasn’t found you?
How do you start? Where do you start?
These are my killer roses, my wild roses, my proof that Sleeping Beauty’s castle could easily be engulfed by roses. And it wouldn’t take 100 years. These have been here less than 15 years. They’ve been untended, because I wanted them to burgeon–and burgeon they did!
Some years, I get out and make a dent, cut them back. Some years, I don’t. I’ve got my mother’s pole-pruner now, which helps, but it’s still slow going. I can’t even reach the parts I want to thin. I’ve got years of dead wood to clip away (it looks like a haunted forest). And I don’t want to cut up the honeysuckle that vines through it all.
Sounds like working on a manuscript.
Yes, I love doing the full immersion project, the deep dive, but now the waters are bigger, deeper. Instead of writing a chapbook, I’m working on a full-length collection–but I’m trying to do it the same way: Compile all the poems, make a rough order, and then start revising and re-crafting the poems in the context of the manuscript. Clip away the dead wood, see where images in different poems are growing together, cut out, plant, transplant. All of this longhand, on paper–just taking notes. Then back to the computer, to incorporate those notes, where the real writing, the real work begins. Then repeat again.
All made thornier by the subject: grief. It’s the project I have to do and sometimes the writing I dread. I’ve managed to make a tiny start, like clipping a few stems. A lot left to look at, think about, reconsider, do.
But if I feel stuck or overwhelmed–and the weather holds–I can take a break and work on those roses.
I’ll ask again: How do you take yourself by the hand and start?
Reading: Gravesend, by Cole Swenson
I brought this rose from the old house 15 years ago. It was one of the first four I planted there in 1994 when I started to dig up that yard, and it became a part of this poem.
Love Apples
Each cut and push of the shovel sings inside her
and she imagines the summer garden
awash in lavender and meadow rue.
In the darkest corner she’ll plant a bleeding heart,
fleshy pendants dripping ruby in the shade.
She invokes the names of roses: Gruss an Aachen,
Reine des Violettes, First Kiss
and wonders what he would plant if he were here,
whether it would be a good year for tomatoes.
Pommes d’amour. Each spring he would start
with ardent intentions, watch the sun ripen
garnet hearts that swelled to splitting,
lay sliced and bleeding on the plate.
He would eat them until his mouth hurt and want more,
regretting the slender harvest.
Sunlight eases between her shoulder blades,
warms the distant hilltop where she’s placed what he left behind.
She turns the earth over and listens for him
in the stillpoints of her stubbornly pumping heart.
“Love Apples” originally appeared in A Steady Longing for Flight, Floating Bridge Press.
E
ver since I switched jobs, I’ve been scurrying hard. It’s fun, it’s challenging, and at the end of the day I’m wiped out. So no blogging. Very little writing. But I’m grateful for the new job and the new team and all the people I’m meeting and the things I’m learning.
I still get up at 5:00 AM to write my morning pages, and I’m thankful for that practice. But I’ve been feeling like I’m not writing much poetry. (Except for noodling around on that one poem that probably won’t amount to anything.) That’s an uncomfortable feeling.
In a recent post, Penelope Trunk talked about loving your process more than the results. At first, I thought that meant process as in all the hoops you have to jump through (think paperwork). Noooooooo. Reading on, I realized she meant process as in the doing. Love the doing more than the results. I realized that I’ve been writing. I just don’t have the results I want. I’m thankful for the doing.
I’m thankful for a quick Tuesday trip to Open Books and all the poetry I brought home. It’s been a wonderful week for reading: Natasha Trethewey, Cole Swenson, Sarah Gridley.
I’m thankful my son’s recent adventure went well. (I’m being cryptic because it’s his story.)
I’m thankful for getting to spend time with both my father and my mother yesterday. A fun family day.
I’m thankful for my husband forgiving my little frustrations and tantrums.
I’m thankful for the peonies. I see more of them at the grocery store than I see this bloom here in the back corner of my backyard.
I’m thankful for a few nights of great sleep.
I’m thankful for the quiet moments.
Reading: Weather Eye Open, by Sarah Gridley, and Flow (PS), by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Open the door. Open my heart.
Tags: gratitude
