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.