I'm happy to announce that I got stuff done yesterday. First, I finished reading the manuscript I'm consulting on (though I still have to write up my notes), and then I helped my high school poet move six of her poems into the "finished" pile . . . an accomplishment that thrilled us both. Today I'll write those notes and concentrate on editing, and I have to grocery-shop, and I didn't do any housework yesterday so there's still that to deal with. It was just as well I didn't do it yesterday, as Tom worked on the bed frame in the evening, and a new batch of sawdust got tracked upstairs. So now things are even dirtier.
It's cold again this morning, 8 degrees, but the temperature is suppose to rocket into the 40s. I'm feeling in need of the ocean. I'd like to walk out onto the sand and watch the waves, but I don't really have time for a jaunt. Maybe Tom and I can make a trek to the marshes this weekend, if the weather isn't too foul.
I've got pages of pre-poem scratches in my notebook that I have yet to transcribe. I've got the Aeneid to read and two Flannery O'Connor stories to finish. The poet life pays badly but it takes up lots and lots of time.
Here's another poem from the collection . . . one that was very hard to write. This is neither memoir nor fiction. I was trying to inhabit a state of mind that was not mine; one that I knew well, but only from the outside; one that belonged not to a single person but to generations. It was painful to live in this imagined mind, painful to force myself not to look away.
John Doe’s Threnody
Dawn Potter
because I bought the blue plate I built the shed I fixed the faucet because our children became beautiful curious sad because we moved to this faraway land because I have no friends you’re my only friend because we use the same voice when we talk to the cat because your body is warm in the night because remember the house we rented long ago next to the train tracks because we have no money because I hate my job because I’m lonely you’re lonely because you never listen you always listen you tell me what you think you lie to me because I cannot bear your happiness your tears because once we saw a half-grown eagle fly below us into a chasm because our dog has grown old and feeble because I can’t stop drinking because I like to drink because you make me drink because you don’t care you care too much you invent fabricate prevaricate because you fall asleep at nine because you wake up at three because you could fix everything if you tried because I’m afraid because I never thought I’d miss the bus because you because you because
[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]
2 comments:
I'm almost embarrassed to say that I had to look up "threnody"-- I've read the word before, but I was not entirely clear what it was. Now I want to try to write one (pursuant to the prompt you gave me this weekend)-- hm!!
You are always teaching me.
Thank you.
Like Carlene, I had to look up threnody & how fitting for you to write something dirgelike, for the day I've had I was ready for something more somber. bearing in mind your heads up that this isn't memoir but the intention is to write from a generational perspective or voice. As I read it, I felt there was a sense of sadness that comes from being a pilgrim or refugee ("because we moved to this faraway land") & the ensuing isolation/desolation. Interspersed are happy moments--it's not all a disaster ("because we use the same voice when we talk to the cat", "because once we saw a half-grown eagle fly below us into a chasm") which serves as a reminder that as tough as it is to be a refugee, or a stranger in a strange land--there are these moments of joy if you have someone you love to share them with. I thought that the word "because" repeated so many times would lose it's meaning, like when you say any word out loud for long enough & it disintegrates into noise, but here the repeated word forms a chain that links the different clauses like a chorus. I felt almost a desperation inside the repetition, a need to explain, or present a reason for how things are, in that way the word "because" becomes almost a mantra, a comfort. At least, it was for me--I search for meaning when things go wrong, a lesson to be learned, something to salvage from the wreckage. As always, snaps & thanks for sharing!
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