83º ~ feels like 88º ~ dew point 72º ~ we breathe in shallows
Today’s post must be quick, as I woke late and have other engagements. I fumbled about my desk and only half-assed my thoughts about drafting this morning, tho I had gone to bed with the goal of drafting on my mind. I flipped through a book on my desk and read two poems. Somehow, although not in either of those poems, my brain clicked into the word “dutiful.” Ah, I remember now, I got up to turn off the fan and was thinking about “dutiful writer syndrome” (wondering if I should let myself off the hook for drafting today) which led me to think about what it means to be a dutiful daughter.
When I got back to the desk, I knew I wanted to look into the etymology of “dutiful.” Of course, I knew it was a form of “duty,” but I wanted to read the various definitions through time. Thank the universe that UCA subscribes to the Oxford English Dictionary. (This is one of my favorite ways to get into writing a poem.). I logged in and started with “dutiful,” read on to “duty,” and then found the connection to “due” (which included debts, which ties in to a lot of what I’m exploring about my relationship to my father). I scribbled nouns & verbs, I copied quotes & definitions. Most importantly, in the “due” entry, I scrolled downward and found “to give the devil his due.” Shazam.
One of the things I’m struggling with is portraying a lot of negative things about my father. I fear the portrayal is lopsided, and the phrase “to give one their due” or “to give the devil his due” slips right in there as it means to admit something redeeming about an unfavorable person (I probably mashed that paraphrase with some quoting from the OED). So, I started thinking about how my father was not “the devil,” was not a monster, and I drafted:
I cannot give the devil his due, Father
as you were merely a broken man, no monster.
And then, I swore, for the rhymed couplet suggested form. Yet, the rhythm didn’t send me to the sonnet; it sent me to the villanelle. That common phrase “to give the devil his due” seemed to bear repeating and seemed to indicate song. With a little tinkering, these two lines morphed into the first stanza, and the refrain (lines 1 and 3, which are repeated throughout the form) became what I have here as line 1 and some additional language before “no monster.” I moved almost immediately to the computer with only the first stanza because the villanelle is regimented. I needed to put the refrains in place and write around them, all the while being willing to tweak the repeated language as the content unfolded. And then, Dear Reader, I confess it, I made a list of rhymes (hard and slant) in my journal for the father/monster end words. What have I become?
Again, the form provided me a frame to contain my difficult thoughts. In this case exploring my own complicity in my non-relationship with my father, and facing the reality that he was no devil, no person out to cause me harm on purpose. His faults are plenty, but they do not include malice. The tricky part is that when I write, “I cannot give the devil his due,” what I mean is “I cannot call you devil,” not that I can’t give you your due. So, that’s what the poem is trying to explore. We will see if it lasts on future re-reading. I’m thinking the layered meaning is getting lost. Time will tell.
