I spent much of yesterday working on a poem draft, and the experience was tedious and slow, though eventually I did make progress. This was no day spent wallowing in creative drunkenness: the task was a slog from beginning to end. But work happens, whether it's fun or not: I have to relearn that lesson every single time I sit down to write. And because I find it easier to recall the bits and pieces of the slog-day process than to reprise the glory of in-the-zone, I also have an easier time explaining to other people what I've been doing.

So, the poem.

Late last week I started a draft that I had temporarily titled "Weather," a description of a rainy night. Yesterday, when I pulled the piece onto my screen, I saw some self-satisfied language, a boring arc, and a smug speaker--in short, I saw the sort of poem that I dislike myself for writing: glib, unsurprising, and superficially emotional.

My first urge was to trash the poem and never look at it again. But the language, though glib, had its attractions: I wasn't doing a terrible job of trying to describe the inside-outside experience of lying in bed listening to a rainstorm. Essentially, though, the poem was boring, and it was going nowhere. There was no turn, no dramatic movement, to shift it toward an ending. The piece was merely a chunk of nice-sounding words.

So I flipped the draft: I made the last stanza the first stanza, and rewrote the piece so that its events moved in the opposite direction. This was Shakeup Number 1: Suddenly several of my pet phrases, comments I'd been rather pleased with, turned into irritating pronouncements. Out they went. Out went some of the nice descriptive passages, which suddenly began to seem bloated. The draft was losing weight; its bones were starting to show.

Then, as the fat went, I began to notice that I was repeating sounds--rhymes, near rhymes--within the lines. Okay, then: Shakeup Number 2: Rewrite the poem in quatrains. For a stanza or two, this was easy, as I already had some rhymes to work with. But then there were the stanzas without them: now my brain had to rethink the piece as sound, and new rhymes were changing the direction of the poem radically. What was I talking about now? Where was this piece going? Finally, I was starting to surprise myself.

Which led to Shakeup Number 3: Quatrains are a double-edged sword. Yes, the rhymes can force surprises, but singsong meter and neat rhymes can also create boring sound and ridiculous syntax. So I split the quatrains into couplets: e.g., the rhyme scheme still existed (ABAB, CDCD, etc. ) but there was now a line space between them (AB // AB // CD // CD). As soon as I inserted that line space, I became able to break metrical bonds. The cadence loosened and the rhymes became less insistent. I felt as if I'd just opened a window: I still had the frame to lean on, but now the wind was hitting me in the face.

Finally, Shakeup Number 4: This draft, which I was learning to love, was insisting that it needed two extra lines. It did not want to end in a quatrain. I had to change the pattern and close with a rhymed couplet, but this had the potential of becoming too neat and slick: creating a smug aphorism, slamming a door shut. So, to parry this tendency, I changed my sentence style. The rest of the poem was made of long loose sentences that crossed lines and stanzas. The final line of the couplet was composed of three brief fragments.

Today I'll look at the draft again (now tentatively retitled "Island Weather"), and I'll no doubt make more changes. But I think the piece is probably in its final structural shape . . . because I did not throw out something bad, because I tried to divert my habits, because I messed around with the way the piece was moving down the page.

Tom arrived home last night just before 7, and I fed him and made him go to sleep early, with hopes that he'll stagger through his work day without too much trouble. Brooklynitis is a debilitating condition for those of us who aren't accustomed to staying up all night.

This morning I need to remember to bring my car to the garage for an inspection, and then I've got various smallish projects to keep me busy while I'm waiting for my next batch of editing to show up: writing, class planning, house and yard stuff, reading the Iliad, mentoring a friend's poetry manuscript . . . I think the electrician is supposed to show up sometime this week, to give us an estimate about our giant job, and I need to start moving the woodpile into the basement to make room for the green load that's supposed to get dumped in our driveway next week. All of a sudden I'm feeling the pressures of autumn: time to pull in and close down.

But yesterday was still summery. I spent the afternoon sitting in my neighbor's leafy backyard, visiting with her friends, eating a grilled feast and drinking sangria as blue sky blinked among the tree branches and Ruckus perched on her recycling bin and howled because there was a dog at the party. Oy, those Siamese-cat lungs.

I woke up yesterday in the forest, this morning in town. My trip up north was quick and in some ways sad, because I avoided the Harmony Fair and thus could not see friends I really wanted to see. But I didn't have the wherewithal to deal with that anti-mask hotbed, so I ducked out to Wellington and lay low in the woods with Angela and Steve, and had a lovely evening with them. Steve grilled pork loin and I made spaghetti carbonara and Ang cut up garden tomatoes the way her Italian mother used to, and the trees surrounded us, and I woke up to a fire in the wood stove, and my heart was refreshed.

Meanwhile, Tom went south to Brooklyn and actually found a parking place right on Paul's street: a miracle! So things are going well down there, and I expect him home tonight, no doubt exhausted from city late hours.

Since getting back from Wellington, I've been rattling around the Alcott House on my own, grocery shopping and doing some yard work, watching a movie and eating hot cornbread with cheese. Today I'll wash sheets and bake bread, and then midday I'll make a big salad and take it next door to a lunchtime party at my neighbor's, where I'll meet some of her friends and co-workers.

It's been an odd week, both social and solitary. I had not spent a night at home alone since well before the pandemic hit, so last night I was self-conscious about all the little routines of aloneness: making a meal, filling the hours before bedtime, waking up in the small hours. Yet within the past few days Angela has slept here, I've slept at her house, and now today I'm going to a party full of strangers.

For the moment, though, I'm ensconced in my familiar couch corner, drinking an entire pot of coffee by myself as the cat snores sociably in his chair. The living-room table is clogged with my stuff: the Iliad, a collection of Hadley's short stories, a New Yorker article about major-league umpires, a fresh crossword puzzle. A vase of zinnias sits beside me. Outside, in the gray morning, leftover rain clicks down from the trees onto walkways and chairs. The washing machine churns, and the lamps glow, and nobody needs me to do anything.

Another cool and beautiful morning, and we are idling a little before heaving ourselves into action: e.g., hauling Paul's furniture upstairs from the basement, shoving it into the back of the truck, flinging ourselves into our respective days. I am relieved not to be the person driving a load of furniture to Brooklyn today, but Tom seems pretty calm about it.

Things are peaceable here, on this first Saturday in September. Somewhere a pair of crows is squabbling, and I hear a nuthatch peeping. For the past few days black walnuts have been raining from my neighbor's huge tree, clonking cars and shed roofs, and thrilling an army of squirrels. But the tree is quiet now, and various squirrels are sitting up on their haunches gnawing big green nuts for breakfast, or busily burying them in my garden, or chasing each other round and round trees in pursuit of a better nut than the one they are currently clutching.

I have a few errands to run, and a few chores to do, and then, at some point this afternoon, I'll head north. This will be my first long lone drive since before the pandemic, and it will be good practice for me: some unstressful highway driving, on a nice day, to remind me that I know what I'm doing behind the wheel.

I'll bring along the Iliad, a bunch of ingredients to make spaghetti carbonara, and some ripe tomatoes. And then I'll just relax into the pleasure of being in the woods with some of my favorite people on earth. 

 

Yesterday, during my walk, I made a thrilling foraging find: this big Chicken of the Woods mushroom, which was growing from an oak tree on a residential street next to Baxter Woods, just three blocks from my house. The mushroom is huge; it fills an entire turkey platter, and it's very fresh, clearly having just emerged after the Ida rainstorm. I am ridiculously pleased with myself--not least because foragers tend to haunt Baxter Woods, so there's rarely anything left to find. We had a bit of the mushroom for dinner last night, and today I'll clean and cut up and saute the rest of it, and bag it for the freezer. There's a winter's worth of mushroom right here on this plate.

I've got a bit of desk work to do this morning, and then I'm going to spend the rest of the day with my mushroom and with making stuff for Tom to bring down to Paul tomorrow--banana bread and tomato sauce and such. The truck is back in commission, so the trip is still on, and Paul is always hungry for vegetables and home-cooked food.

It's a cool morning, here in the little city by the sea. Definitely there's a hint of autumn in the air--such a refreshment after our torrid summer. I'm reading the Iliad and some Tessa Hadley short stories and still pecking away at Homesickness, though I may give up on it shortly. I started another poem draft yesterday, which is still at the "eh" stage, but might catch fire eventually. I'm considering taking a quick trip up north while Tom's in NYC, just an overnight, though there will be lots of friends I can't see while I'm up there, because they'll all be at the Harmony Fair, which will be a guaranteed Covid hotspot.

But I am longing for the stars and the air and the owls and the circle of trees silhouetted against the sky.

This morning I'm shaken up by the videos of the terrible flooding in Brooklyn. I haven't heard from my kid yet . . . which is normal because it's 6 a.m., but still I'm antsy.

He's undoubtedly okay, but I do recognize parts of his neighborhood in some of the videos. Things look bad.

Here in Portland the rain is also pouring, though not at flood levels, and I dreamed all night about home invasions, so I'm not feeling particularly well rested. However, the coffee is helping, and I don't have a pressing day ahead of me. I've been spending much of this week working on seminar planning, including setting up the class web page, which has taken up a ridiculous amount of time. But things are in good shape, students are checking in, and I think I'm ready to teach. The class is completely full, and I'm looking forward to the venture.

Yesterday afternoon Tom's truck got towed to the garage, and if all goes well he should be able to pick it up this evening. The plan is that he'll drive to Brooklyn on Saturday, return on Monday . . . as long as the flooding aftermath is under control. Ugh.

It's a cool morning here, with a cloudy day forecast and then heavy rain on the way for tonight and tomorrow. The garden is beginning to weary--cucumber leaves yellowing, okra plants turning into knees and elbows--but still the produce keeps coming. Today I'll cook down another batch of sauce, and I'll still have enough tomatoes to give some away to Angela, in trade for the gorgeous leeks, onions, and beets she brought me from up north.

I think it will be a quiet day: more class planning, reading the Iliad, fiddling with my new poem, walking up to the library.

I'm feeling slightly melancholy . . . not in a bad way, just in an end-of-summer way; just in that old "Ode to Autumn," "season of mellow fruitfulness" way . . . Soon the garden will fade and I'll be lighting the wood stove in the evenings, and darkness will creep in from the east, earlier and earlier with each passing day, and my birthday will arrive, and I'll be 57 years old.

It's such a surprise, how things turned out in my life. But also no surprise at all.