92º ~ an air quality alert for the day, although the humidity has sunk to 35% and breathing was hot but easy an hour ago when C. and I ventured outside for a bit, thankful for the breezes that have accompanied the heat each day

In the past few days, I talked about revising on two different levels (the pruning of newish work and striving for consistency over the range of the manuscript).  Today, I went in another direction, the revising that happens as a part of the process of submitting poems. 

First, these are the poems that are well-pruned and settled. Upon re-reading (out loud) there are no stutters, stumbles, or bogging down. These poems hold fast.  After I decide on the packets I’m going to send out and to which journals, I work poem by poem.  I am revising with a singular focus here and not really thinking of the project at large, hoping that the attention I’ve paid to the entire manuscript in the past will insure that I don’t revert to some inconsistency.  As I worked through the first packet today, I found myself getting rid of a few more “ands” or “&s,” catching a few cases of passive voice that easily made the move to active, and, in one case, changing a fragment back to a clause because it no longer held up on its own. 

I often bemoan the amount of time it takes to submit poems and keep up with responses from editors; however, today, I’m reminded that, for me, the process is crucial to my revision process.  It’s a time when I am even more able to look at the poems with the healthy skepticism of a good editor.

One slight difference today is that I’m sending out a good number of sickly speaker poems that have never made the rounds before.  Later, as the responses come in, there may be more revision.  An acceptance is no guarantee that the editors might not make a wise suggestion for a cut or a tweak.  I’ve also learned that an acceptance is no guarantee that, when the time comes for the poem to work in the book as a whole, it won’t need another tweak here and there.  The accumulation of a number of rejections usually means another combing through to find any snarls.

So, it seems I’ve learned to love the wheel inside the wheel inside the wheel of revise, submit, response, revise, submit, response, &etc. 

Gear Wheels, click for link

86º ~ edging into the high 90s by the turn of the weekend, lows not daring to dip into the 60s, last evening, one of those terrible jokes played by the gods & goddesses of weather ~ a sudden darkening of the sky at 6:30 p.m., gusts of wind shifting the weathervane in fits, terrible pressure on the sinuses, all signs pointing to a storm, then…nothing…sigh

This morning, I bring you the question of the ampersand, dear readers.  I’ve just spent a solid chunk of time with the entire manuscript, reading from start to finish, but darting to the computer to make minor tweaks for consistency throughout.  One involved the phrase “the woman I called mother by mistake.”  Sometimes I’d italicized and sometimes not.  I went with the italics. 

The other inconsistency I noticed was my use of the ampersand.

From Wikimedia Commons: An ampersand (&) is a logogram representing the word “and.” The symbol is a ligature of the letters et, which is Latin for “and.”

From this definition I’m startled by the words “logogram” and “ligature.”  Logogram simply because I’d forgotten it and think it’s a cool word; ligature b/c I watch too much Law & Order and associate it almost entirely with a method of killing (i.e. strangulation), but when looking it up again, I notice that it applies to typography and to music as well.  The music definition I once knew and had forgotten, the typography definition seems new to me.

from Creative Commons, click for link

So, apparently, there are people in the poetry world who have strong feelings about the ampersand.  My most vivid memory is from an interview I found once online that included Jeanne Leiby (may she rest in peace), who at the time of the interview had just become the editor of The Southern Review.  What I remember is how adamantly she spoke against the ampersand, claiming that poets used it frivolously and should just type out the word “and” b/c it wasn’t saving any syllables so it must be a purely visual thing and she thought that detracted from the poem itself.  One brave student in the audience (it was an interview at some grad program) offered that she used the ampersand in homage to Larry Levis, but I can’t remember Leiby’s response to that.

I confess, I love the ampersand.  I love the symbol and the word.  I love how it looks on the page and I do believe that I read it slightly differently than I read the word “and” but I’d be hard pressed to prove that.

As I was reading the manuscript-in-progress this morning, I saw that I had sometimes used the ampersand and sometimes not, so I really started looking at the why and how of it.  It seems to me that the ampersand works very well when grouping two nouns or verbs in a way that they become nearly one word and their distinct definitions blur together a bit in the mind.  I also think it works to speed the pace of the poem, but again, I can’t prove that. 

I do remember that when I was putting together a group of 10 of the early poems to submit to some fellowship application or whatnot, I took all the ampersands out b/c I was afraid whichever reader got my application might be one of those ampersand detractors. 

What do you think?  Do you think an editor or reader for a fellowship/grant would dismiss a group of poems for the use of this symbol or do you think I’m over-thinking this? Does the ampersand bug you or feel right at home in the poem?

87º ~ for conditions, see every post from the last week, and so it goes

Today, I set out to read the 48 poems I’ve accrued (43 in the voice of the sickly speaker and 5 in the distant voice of definition) for this project in order to get a sense of what is missing and what is weak.  Dear Reader, I confess, I never made it past the first poem.  When I placed the definition poems, I ended up placing them first, middle, and last, with the other two halfway between first & middle and middle & end. 

So, the first poem I read this morning was “The Definition of a Febrile Body.”  I didn’t make it to the second stanza before I started pruning in my head.  I tore the sheet down from where I’d taped it yesterday and went to the computer to begin.  As I pruned, I also decided to toy with italicizing each of the phrases that I got from the dictionary, just to see.  And, yes, this worked too, which led me to revising all five of the definition poems, which led me to think about revision.

from Wikimedia Commons

~ after the initial gusto of the first draft, and then the resting time, be it a day or a month or more, I absolutely must be ruthless in my pruning ~ the extra words tend to stick out like so many sore thumbs, but it’s taken years of writing and re-writing to develop this instinct

~ in all acts of revision it is important to read OUT LOUD to hear where the word/line trips, skips, or bogs down

~ I welcome the voices of my one or two trusted readers even if they haven’t seen this particular poem ~ I am able to hear what they would say about  the weaknesses of a certain poem, again only after years of exchanges

~ knowing one’s own weaknesses is paramount ~ mine = too many adjectives and too much over-writing ~ I must approach all lines with editorial suspicion

~ sometimes a linebreak that I crowed over while drafting the initial poem, the break I thought so witty as to be perfect, wilts after the settling and must be destroyed for the sake of the poem

~ check each “and,” each “this” and “that,” every prepositional phrase…prune what isn’t necessary ~ clutter will kill the forward progress of the poem

~ read it through out loud again and again, always on alert for where the writer brain is making corrections to smooth out the flawed ~ the writer brain will try to trick the editor brain every time

83º ~ too much wind to call this the doldrums and we aren’t even close to the dog days yet, but the repetitive weather pattern, sunk in on partly sunny and hot, hot, hot, wears one down, still someone said the word “solstice” on a blog this morning and my first thought was “no, no, no, no, no, no…” I am not ready for the light to begin leaving us already ~

Fact: Writing is a physical act.  No matter how one writes, there must be some physical act that gets the words on paper.  I think of all those folks who draft in long hand whole novels.  I think of several friends whose bodies no longer allow movement and how they either dictate the words to a confidant or use a specially adapted keyboard.  I think of my own fingers, first curled around the pen and then tapping, tapping, tapping.  There is much going on between mind and hand (or mouth), and yet, the body is mostly still.

Yesterday, the stillness reached a breaking point and I couldn’t keep my BIC.  I confess that I did not draft.  I did not revise.  I did not look at the sickly speaker poems.  Instead, I worked in the yard a bit, scheduled and got a hair cut, went to the farmer’s market, and both read and watched the TV.  It appears that Tuesdays have become my day of rest from the desk of the Kangaroo.

Last night in the nearly sleeping time, I was thinking about how I’d printed off the poems in A Fever of Unknown Origin on Monday and how I should probably read through all the poems today.  I also remembered a blog exchange.  I think it was with Molly Spencer, but for the life of me I can’t find it now.  One blogger friend (Molly?) mentioned reading some other blog in which a poet mentioned being at a writer’s residency and being able to pin all of her poems up on the wall and then sleep with the draft of her mss. floating above her.  At the time, I knew I wanted to do this but was fixated on the pinning part and couldn’t figure out how to make it work in my house.  I dreamed of putting cork over an entire wall but never followed through.  Then, last night, just as I was falling asleep, I realized that I could use what I already had: my two sturdy bookcases and a roll of Scotch tape. 

And voila:

* See note below

This morning, I got physical with the manuscript and taped (not pinned!) each poem in the current order.  I miscounted on the first row, so I have one sad poem all alone on the bottom rung, but that seems good to me now, given that I have no idea if there will be more poems coming from the sickly speaker. 

I’m thrilled with this breakthrough, and I found myself taking lots of time with each poem, feeling the weight of each piece of paper in my hand and while not reading every word, skimming titles and knowing the essence of each poem, getting a feel for if the poems belonged the one next to the other.  The pieces of tape might not be as easy to rearrange as pins, but I can still see that I’ll be able to move the pages as necessary.  This makes me happy.  I feel a shift in the work for the remaining 10 days of this self-imposed homestead residency.  I want to think of the mss. as a whole.  I want to revise what was written earlier this month.  I want to contemplate where other poems are needed.  I want to be okay with knowing I didn’t write a draft a day but that I was getting the work done regardless.

*What you don’t see in this picture is the pile of junk I
took off the top of the shelves and from in front of many of the books. 
That’s all piled on the floor now, but also a good thing, as I’m sure
it needs to be sorted and either used or recycled or what-have-you.

85º ~ high temps inching toward the middle 90s rather than the low, aside from that I grow bored with repeating that “partly sunny, slight breezes, birdsong, dry dirt” refrain

Particle Physics!  Click for link.

Fact: There is no magic formula for creating a book of poetry.  If anyone tries to tell you differently, they lie.

This morning as I drifted through my routine, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with my writing time.  At one point, I thought I’d re-read The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido and work through the difference between inspiration and imitation (I even saw a blog post for today on the subject).  I also thought about using the day for revision.  Throughout these thoughts, the same feeling of being swamped by the project kept surfacing.  I felt like the poems were growing out of control, too many drafts have sprouted so quickly.  As most of you know, my typical speed is a poem a week.  Today, the full weight of having 16 new drafts in 17 days nearly knocked me down, nearly prevented me from getting to the desk.

So, I decided to try and take a look at the project as a whole.  This means that I went through each of the poems still in the “In Progress” manila folder on my desk and added them to the body of the manuscript in the file on the computer, even though I knew they weren’t “ready for consumption.”  For the older poems, the ones from the beginning of the month, I did some revising. Again, I felt the pressure of “too fast, too fast,” as I’m used to letting poems sit, but as this project is barreling along, I also really want to get it completed.  (I’m a bit of a mess, really.)

In any case, as I sorted through the drafts, I mostly just placed them in the order they were written and added on to the file for what is now called A Fever of Unknown Origin, but when I changed the name of the file on the computer, it came out Fever Unknown, and I thought that might become the collection title at some point.  Titles!!!!  Not easy for me.

When I got all the sickly/healing speaker poems in line, I was left with the five definition poems.  Adding them in was much harder.  Yes, I wanted them to break up the speaker’s voice, but when it came time to do so, I hesitated. Regardless, to follow through with the exercise, I placed them.

When every draft was placed in the larger single file of the manuscript, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes: exactly 48 pages, the bare minimum for most publishers.  I must be bad at math b/c in my last count, I thought I was only at 45 or 46.  Still, I’ve checked and double checked.  This does not mean the manuscript is “ready.”  I still don’t trust all of the drafts, and there is much revision needed in these June poems.  What it does mean, is that I can see the speaker’s progression more clearly.  My next job will be to print the whole thing out and see where it holds and where it springs leaks, which drafts sing and which still need more time under the revision scalpel, which might have to be abandoned (yikes!), and where I might need a different, new draft.

Fact: Every part of being a poet includes listening to the gut.  From which word goes next on the line and where that line should break all the way up to which packet should go to which journal and in what order the poems should appear in the collection, it all requires some element of instinct over formula.  It takes time, study (i.e. reading poetry!), and endless efforts that result in failure before those few, those mighty successes build the voice of that instinct to a sure thing, something to trust and follow.

87º ~ the heat is on (outside obviously), tho the humidity holds in the manageable ranges, still no hint of rain for the week that stretches out “mostly sunny,” the birds are happy when anyone waters the lawn

Today, I did not think that I would draft.  I slept very late and I’ve mentioned in the past how disorienting that is for me. The same was true today, but I woke early with a splitting headache and retreated back to sleep.  I wandered through what was left of the morning and even the cats got shortchanged of their normal play time. 

I decided that I would cut myself some slack, that I would work on submissions instead of drafts, that I might not even do that, that I might, instead, spend the day on the couch with endless reruns of Law & Order or reading a memoir I picked up at the library last week. 

Then, in going through my usual breakfast routine of eating my Oat Squares while checking email, my blog feed, and Facebook, I stumbled on a reply to a post on FB from yesterday.  My good friend (and excellent poet!), Al Maginnes had commented on yesterday’s draft, and I had replied about feeling worn out and unsure if I could continue.  Al wrote, “Stay with it as long as you can. There will be too many days without poems.”  When I first read that, I felt a deep disappointment with myself for taking the easy way out today, but I didn’t grab up my journal.  I continued to troll FB and the blog feeder.  I did some online banking. I went and made my cup of coffee.  I drifted into a bit of daydream…

And WHAM!  There she was, the sickly speaker, dictating that letter that I referenced yesterday, the one that announces her escape.  It begins:

Dear Madame–

I send this letter in advance of my escape.

The whitecoats hint at my release but offer
only obstacles. Their latest word is destitute.

from Wikimedia Commons, click

The draft continues for 22 lines, following the pattern of single line/couplet, but ending on a single line.  Now, how did I get to “destitute”?  

Well, I’m still working through the whole “escape” thing rather than the “release.” And in this draft the speaker explains her impatience.  She KNOWS that she is healed but the whitecoats keep delaying.  So, I was thinking, why would they delay?  This combined with that little bit of online banking I mentioned above.  (No Mom, don’t panic!  I’m not destitute!)  Without getting too personal, I don’t believe in credit card debt, paying any balance off every month, but this month, my personal card has a bit of a steep balance. I was feeling a bit upset about this, castigating myself about not following the plan and having to dip into my savings. 

I’m sure this financial stress bled through into the speaker’s voice.  Once I’d stumbled across the word, though, I knew it was perfect, as a huge percentage of the bankruptcies in America result from health care events.

The draft goes on to explore how the attitude of the whitecoats has changed now that the speaker is no longer a medical mystery.  Sure, they still don’t know what caused her illness, but she’s better so they want to move on, bored by her (think House). She plans to make her escape on the next new moon (shhhhhhh!) and stop briefly at her mentor’s for shelter & advice.  

Again, I came up with the title on my own rather than stealing as in the past.  It plays on the phrase “in sickness and in health,” although the speaker isn’t romantically involved with her mentor or with anyone. Still, I love the rhythm of that line, so I wound up with “Cloaked in Darkness and in Health.”  Many thank, Al, for the nudge in the right direction! 

Finally, I’m wondering, is this the end?  Don’t I need to write the escape poem?  Don’t we need to know where she ends up?  Will I ever feel like we’ve reached the end of the story?

conditions the same

And just that quickly, I wrote another draft on top of the one I just posted about.  As I was finishing that post, it came to me that the speaker MUST escape rather than being released.  This is the only way she will recover her own power.  Also, throughout the series there is always something she is holding back, something she is keeping secret, and that was missing from today’s earlier draft.  I even had the title as I began, “Preparations for the Moment of Escape.”  I can see the two poems on facing pages in the manuscript, one a poem of compliance and one of defiance.

The new draft begins:

The fact is I will choose the date of my release
and to whom I will return with this new health.
I never ceded control, not even during the fever.

It goes on to show that she has hidden a knife with which she is working loose the bars on her window, those bars that come up repeatedly in the first half of the series, and which she discovers are “more ornament than guard.”  For those of you out there wondering, yes, her window opens inward, “a fatal flaw.” 

Wikimedia Commons, click for link

I can’t tell you all how much happier I am with this draft, although it is also in chunky tercets, seven of them to the previous draft’s eight.  It is amazing to me how the speaker teaches me her story as we go along. 

~~~~~

If all the drafts survive, I now have 20 poems of fever, 20 poems of healing, and 5 of definition.  None is more than one page. That’s getting close to the minimum for a full-length manuscript, and I need to think whether I want to go back and add 5 more of fever and 5 of healing or what.  I sense the need to write one more “Dear Madame–” letter that announces the speaker’s “escape,” but after that, who knows?  I think I definitely need to print the whole thing out and see what’s what in a solid read-through.  Still, I’m thrilled with so much progress during my little, self-imposed homestead writing residency (tho’ the world threatens to intrude & the threat grows more intense every day).