devour

do you mind
if i devour you?
you are like
a bright yellow
egg yolk.
when i am
nearest you
i feel
the sun.

A morning interlude

My son told me this morning
Of a hurt long ago
We were working
But something reminded him of a hard name
That had been spoken
The story brief, and in the telling
Not such a hurt at all
But he looked down at his coloring and sighed
When I was telling, he said
I colored outside the lines
I wondered myself
How often
I might have done the same

The Death of Helen Burns

no amount of time
can change me
when I think of you
I feel my heart in my chest
like a wounded animal
it staggers
it cries blood and
heaves viscera
I am no huntsman
you know my tiny hands
I cannot give it rest

I'm struck as I reread this passage in Jane Eyre by Bronte's focus on the outdoor world.  She describes a young Jane set free across the wild moors from dawn until sundown, while the whole school is consumed with sickness.  The wild flowers, the river, the sky, the low mountains - all are described beautifully.  Only as complete blackness descends does Jane finally enter the house.  Jane tarries the longest outdoors - sending companions away, staying in the garden to plant some roots by moonlight.  She is reluctant - one senses even Bronte as the writer is reluctant - to enter the sickness and to confront Helen's death.  I wrote this poem thinking about Helen. But I was also thinking about how any love poem I write from Jane's childhood would reverberate through the years to also encompass Jane's relationship with Rochester - which also features a staggering loss.

The Honorable Rev. Brocklehurst

I'm continuing my work of writing poems inspired by my rereading of Jane Eyre.  Brocklehurst seemed one-dimensional to my younger eyes, but this time around some of the details of his character were a little more chilling - his fixation on the girls' stockings and hair.  Inspired by my LOFT Poetry Out Loud class, I tried to write a poem from a perspective other than Jane's own.  This was an attempt to get into the man's head - perhaps voice his side of the tale.  Many of the details are from the book - Jane herself notices Maria Brocklehurst's name on Lowood's front edifice on her very first day at school.

 

The Honorable Rev. Brocklehurst

they are so little these girls

they cannot see

but I watch them.

I take their cares to my breast.

my own mother

was always leaving.

I brought her the coat

and she took it from my hand

and didn’t notice

the difference

between her son and the man

she paid

only coppers.

she left her name on silver trays

on buildings

on men.

I took the coins

I bought them needles

and bid them be handed out

only one by one

that they might remember.

I remember

my mother’s curls,

my mother’s laugh,

the maid who did not

darn the stockings

and the blows that fell.

she was the first girl I

ever kissed

she laughed and squirmed

- a little thing.

I watched her fall

beneath the blows.

my mother didn’t notice her son

or the man.

resurgam

should it matter

that you are here

a church yard stone

does it matter who

unmade me

or that I was unmade

the stream

the low ground

our bare feet left there

impressions

filled with water

they did not last

there were white stones

no bridges

in crossing them

our feet

stained them black

Re-Reading Jane Eyre

Since I began my poetry project I’ve been re-reading Jane Eyre s-l-o-w-l-y.  Usually I have treated the book as a mad race to the scenes with Mr. Rochester (it’s a love story after all).  Keep in mind that I first read this book when I was just thirteen.  As I’ve added life experience my interaction with the book’s earlier scenes have changed.  The childhood scenes at Gateshead are painful now to read as a mother.  I’m struck by the clarity with which Bronte describes first post-traumatic stress disorder and then depression (before these terms were invented) in a child of ten.  The scene where Jane describes looking at a pretty plate she’d always wanted to touch and not caring, is heart-breaking. 

As a mom now, I find John Reed more menacing than ever.  A large boy of fourteen, recently sent home from school.  A thick, fleshy boy on the verge of manhood who has been used to indulging all his tastes and appetites.  Trapped in the house with him, is a thin and stunted Jane, who has been for years a convenient outlet for John’s sadism.  As a grown woman now, it’s not hard to see where this will all end up in a few years.  Perhaps that more than anything explains Jane’s miraculous escape (as it seemed to her at the time) to school.  It must have been obvious to the physician (apothecary) called to treat Jane’s bruised and cut head after her seizure in the Red Room.  He professes to be concerned for the child’s nerves, but I’m not so convinced that’s the only worry.

Aside from the new menace I feel from the opening pages - I am struck by one other thing that I missed through all these years.  Bronte chose to give both the torturer of Jane’s childhood and the cousin/potential suitor at the end of the narrative the same name.  The second character is St.John Rivers to be sure.  But it can’t be coincidence (even for a common name) that Bronte created this echoing connection between the characters.  They practically book nd the narrative.  Bronte (subtly – she was a minister’s daughter after all) connects St.John’s zeal with the abuse Jane suffered in her youth.

 

New Poetry Project

For a number of years now, I've been posting here a variety of love poems.  I am a novelist by trade, but I've always felt that poetry keeps me honest. So I write it. Even in a day and age where love poems seem slightly embarrassing, something best confined to heart covered notebooks in the 5th Grade. 

That's a shame really, because the world needs more honesty. More love poems.  And anyone whose been in love knows that real love doesn't fit neatly in the pages of heart covered notebooks. 

After a number of years, I've put my love poems together in a book and I'm looking for a publisher.  So it feels like time to start a new poetry project.  One thing that strikes my passion is Jane Eyre - a love story writ large.  I've loved it since the 5th Grade. I've begun a new series of poems rewriting the book in verse. Here is the first in this series.  If you've read the book, you'll recognize the opening window scene.

 

the view

when I was a child
there was a certain window
where I would sit and draw the curtain
it would rain only for me
the wind pushing the wet, shivering birds
across the garden.
there were stories and
I would read them
it did not matter
who owed the books
- the words, the rain, the birds
they were mine.

Drafting A Novel - Writing Process

I’m always a little amazed when I do readings at how interested folks are in the mechanics of my writing process.  I suppose it makes sense, that many readers are writers.  And writing is a lonely process.  It develops naturally – a little like a speed skaters movement on the ice.  It’s interesting to know how others go about it.  One thing that is pretty constant about my routine is the way that I handle novel drafts.  I’m working on my seventh novel now and the pattern that emerged for the first few has held consistent over the years.  So in case you’re curious – here is my drafting process:

Draft One: Open a document and pour it all out.  Do not revisit scenes, do not correct.  The goal to create enough pages that there is the semblance of a novel.  I don’t make myself write in sequential order. If I want to write an end scene, I write that.  If I want to write a love scene (even if I have no idea where it fits) I write that.  The next day I may tackle the very opening scenes.  This draft usually generates between 120-150 pages.  It ends with some big gaps. 

Draft Two: I fill in the gaps. I may generate an outline to start this draft, noting what I’ve written and jotting down ideas to fill in the holes.  I go back and I fix things in this draft, but it is still mainly a process of adding scenes and ideas.  The goal of this draft is to have a fully written novel from page 1 to the end.  This is usually where I have 200-220 pages.

Draft Three: I feel like sometimes you have to be nice to yourself.  The only thing I do at draft three is spell check.  It’s an easy victory, and it makes me feel better after the work of the last two drafts.

Draft Four: This draft builds on the last and I go through the whole thing and correct bad sentences and bad grammar.  This is mind numbing.

Draft Five:  I read the whole thing aloud.  Hopefully the last two drafts will have caught any technical errors, but this draft makes the language sing.  This is an intensive draft (almost as much as draft one).  This is where most of the cutting occurs, since finally I am turning an eye (ear actually) to sound and flow.

Draft Six: Another easy victory.  I hire a professional editor for find any problems in the manuscript.  I really labor to send a polished and finished manuscript to this editor.  The goal is to have them catch the things that you start to overlook after 6 months of work on the same damn document.  After awhile you lose your ability to see flaws.  This is also a good “rest” period, since the manuscript is gone for a month.  Sometimes the silence tells you more about a project than grinding it out.  So how dada of me – this is the draft that I write by not writing.

Draft Seven: I review the professional editor’s comments and then work those into the manuscript.  This is usually the part at which I am “Part 1” done.  At this point I start drafting pitch letters and the dreaded synopsis needed to sell the novel. 

Additional Drafts:  If the manuscripts sells there are likely to be additional drafts based on the editor’s comments.  With my about to be published novel The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake, I believe there were four additional drafts to fix problems/gaps and spot errors.  I think it’s important to point out however that I try to be very surgical about these drafts.  I fix what I’ve been asked to look at and treat everything else as off-limits (unless it’s glaring).  I’m a firm believer that you can rework a manuscript too much – until it’s more like a limp dead salamander than a story.  Time and distance help with the urge to savage your manuscript.  Usually there is a great big pause between Draft Seven and working with an editor.  In today’s publishing world it can take me 2-3 years to sell a complete story and get it back from the editor with comments.  By the time this happens, it almost seems as if somebody else wrote the story.  I try not to mess around with their work too much.

wound

Oh papaya,

I am not certain

your flesh

was worth

this cut.

you have no teeth

- my own devotion

makes me bleed.

pressed to my lips

pressed to another’s

you are the same.

Fall Leaves

Here is the difference.
When I was young it didn't matter

the color or condition.
I gathered all the fall leaves
to save them
with wax and paper.
Now even the most perfect leaf
red –the color you preferred
I’ve learned
does not belong to me
an old believer
here by chance.

 

looking at your picture

I didn’t mean for you to haunt me.

there are no dead
these days.
we sing only elegies of the defeated
full mouth
full bellies
grieving, sad.
I can’t name you
- not to others-
though all night long I speak to you.
it cuts the cloth of the dark.
the world is always alive
all memories, all feelings
lit with electricity.

On the Occasion of an Abundance of Maple Seeds

 

You brought me home a maple seed
Held aloft like a magical dragon wing.
You had never noticed them before
And  wanted me too to try
To make it spin to earth.
And I thought -
Child
   Child
       Child
How can it be that I am the tree?
I am this seed
Falling
   Falling
     Turning and whirling
when you are close to me
Through this brief time
We are blessed
To share together.

lessons picking berries

 

things you learn picking strawberries:

you are old.
joints hurt bent among the rows
so close to the ground.
 I am old, true
but then when I was  young
I would not have been picking strawberries.
others would have done it better.
and the berries, hiding in the straw
would not have reminded me
of my own shy child
meeting his new teacher
pressed damp and nervous to my legs.
when I was young, I would not have smiled
to think of the food the berries would make
for my family – spoonbread,
pies, jam.
when I was young, the packages
disappeared into my grandmother’s kitchen
and came back out as plates of food.
I didn’t understand then the alchemy
of sugar, crust, butter and milk.
my grandmother had a hard life
and didn’t suffer children well.
certainly,
not in the kitchen.
I was never forgiven the Thanksgiving
I was underfoot
when the turkey came out of the oven.
for her mistakes were indelible
like berry juice
spilt on white shorts.
when my grandmother died
my mother asked me if I would like her recipes.
she’d lost use for them years ago,
-in fact , long before she left.
I use them to make jam
while my own children sit on the kitchen floor
coloring, stuffing berries into their mouths.
even as a child I knew
I knew it was better to be old.
to be old picking berries.

worm love

tonight our love

feels like a worm
summoned to the surface
by the vibration of the rain.
my dim cluster of nerves
- a brain of sorts - you might call it
struggles to remember
this sound of danger.
-have I heard it before?
like an earthworm I'm
washed away
by less water than it might
take to fill a child's little cup.

Rich's Poem

This is a poem written for an old friend Rich Kooyer. He passed away this week in a manner that was as sudden as it was unexpected. I'm still trying to process my feelings through the shock. With his passing, I am feeling the silence after the note - the symphony of his life.  He was a good friend - always a good friend - even when I was not.  I will remember him for the rest of my life.


this past Spring evening
I went for a walk.
before leaving I had been troubled
by some piece of
television news
and the sky above seemed
like a furrowed field
rows of red sky
broken by thin banks of clouds
or perhaps a crumbling wall.
I thought
we are all that remains of this world
we live in the ruin of yesterday.
50 miles away
-though I wouldn’t know it
‘til morning - my friend lay dying.
38 years old.
strange that a man who was all heart
would be betrayed
in the final treacherous act
by what was revealed
to be a mere human muscle.
here is one thing that time
has taught me about both lovers and old friends.
if you loved them
-even years after-
when you think of them
it’s like a chord
or a bell being rung
in your body.
the silence after the note
-if they are absent-
is its own nameless pain.
if you never loved them, no matter
what you called them, or the words
that you spoke or the promises made,
though they made you laugh or cry
or swear or if you fought with them or shared
an apartment or just a meal
-if you never loved them
when they are absent
you simply never think of them at all.

Bridget Zinn -Author of Poison

I didn’t know the late Bridget Zinn personally, but I was moved by her story. You can read about it in words better than mine from the Chicago Tribune.

Ms. Zinn’s first book Poison was published this last week. She died of colon cancer at 33 (the same disease that took my husband’s mother at nearly the same age), before the publication of her first book. In support of her first book, we were asked to post about firsts in our own lives.

 I thought about returning to poetry – breaking through a long drought (ten years) to start writing it again. It felt like a first – perhaps the first time you see an old friend after years and years of separation.

 Thanks for stopping by to read my poem about firsts. If you can, please buy Bridget Zinn’s book Poison.

the first

 

like a needle you draw me

through the cloth.

like a needle, i know

how love is made.

nothing is new.

i feel the spinner’s hands

i know her age

she cannot hide it.

i feel the weaver’s breath

bent to the work

the knots took everything.

it is written there

in the lines of her mouth,

in the cloth itself.

like a needle you draw me

to the skin.

i know how it is made.

i know it is human.

nothing is new.

still we press against it

- eyes closed –

it feels like the first

sliding through our hands

silk, water

only cloth.

younger poem

i give you this love
as round as my thigh
- i give it to you
like bread between hands
like a woman.
i give you this love from the socket
of my hip
not from my heart
but from my heel
crushed hard against stone.

nights

there are nights
when i can think
when i can write the words
he never loved me.
if it is written
it must be true
if it is true, there can be
no argument
and i am weary of argument.
there are nights when i remember
in the silence
how you opened my chest
and my heart
fell apart
like the seeds of a
pomegranate.
you never loved me.
its written in books
in my poems.
i write the words.
i write the words
for the nights i can think.

to keep

here is the man i married
his great gentle hands
each the size of a dinner plate.
since I met him
I have long suspected
that I might unravel in those hands
like a soft skein
of gray wool
and simply be no more
- to never again fear to sleep
and never again unwind in worry
Here is the man I married.
I picture him gently
saving my loose threads in a cardboard box
carried to the closet
placed among his other things
labeled “to keep.”

mammogram

I had a mammogram today
the technician and I bent together
over her computer screen
peering at the picture
inside me
I smiled (why not?  – even the fatal
can be beautiful)
at great swaths of grey
how I’ve swollen over the years!
fissured with lines of coarser
tissue
stark and white
we might have been seventh graders sitting
at the science table staring
at pictures of the universe
my breasts
re-imagined by the Hubble telescope
I suppose
there’s an old belief here
on the Northern Plains
older than the farmers,
the railroaders, the doctors
and the reluctant junior high science students
that we come from
the stars
and we return to them
in this room I find them
alive in my chest
their strands and constellations
strung like a milky way
my own galaxy of tissue
and flesh