Draft

11
Jan
2024

Mammoth Spring (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 19 October 2023

Mammoth Spring, AR

65º sunny, breezy perfection!

Park 10 of my project took me north to the Missouri border to visit Mammoth Spring. For this expedition, I spent a long weekend based in Mountain View (thank you, friend with a cabin there!) and covered 3 parks, with Mammoth being the first. On the heels of my fall at Mount Nebo (pun intended), I planned carefully to avoid any parks with strenuous hiking and was pleased that my knee held up for a weekend of walking and one easy hike (see next post). Named for the 10th largest natural spring in the world (yup, in the world), Mammoth Spring State Park features the spring, the lake it forms (Spring Lake), an historic Frisco train depot museum, a dam built in 1888, the hydro-electric plant built on the dam in 1925 and used until 1972, and the headwaters of the Spring River, one of Arkansas’ major trout & floating rivers. I want to give a huge shout-out to the staff at the visitor center, who on my arrival let me know that if I wanted to tour the train depot museum I needed to head over there right away because they all had to go to an eclipse meeting in 90 minutes. Mammoth Spring, like other parts of Arkansas, will be in the path of totality for the April 8th eclipse, and the park system is planning ahead to deal with an influx of visitors.

The main attraction of the park, the spring and the lake, features a self-guided walking tour around the lake’s circumference, with the train depot at station 8 (of 15). I fast-walked over to the museum so I could meet the park interpreter there, and I’m glad I did. I’ve learned that if I step up and let the park staff know what I’m doing there, and if I ask my questions, they are happy to talk with me, a willing and eager audience. In this case, Katie, a fantastic park interpreter gave me a private and extensive tour of the 1886 Frisco Depot Museum. The oldest of its kind in the state, the building preserves a time in history when railroads ruled the rural south and elsewhere, with 1900 – 1930 being the peak years for the Mammoth Spring station. While a major train line still runs alongside the museum, neither freight nor passenger stop here anymore. In the depot I saw exhibits of the segregated Black-Only and White-Only waiting rooms, separated by the working office of depot personnel featuring telegraph machines, log books for freight, and passenger tickets. I found out that at the beginning of the 20th century, peaches were the 3rd largest export out of Arkansas behind hogs and cattle. (Today, nearly all of the peach orchards of Arkansas are gone.) Of course, of all my pictures from the depot, I prize this one the most of the central agent’s typewriter with a tiny sack of flour from a mill that once stood nearby, powered by the river.

After the depot, I headed back to station 1 and wound my way counterclockwise around the 10-acre lake, with the spring being one of the last stops. The trail is only 6/10 of a mile but I took my time, stopping to take pictures and read the information in the tour brochure. When I visited, a large flock of Canada geese floated on the blue-green water with a smattering of ducks thrown in for good measure. I even got to see a clutch of goslings learning to dive for food alongside a mature goose. They may seem like nuisance birds to some, and I know they can be aggressive, but I love to watch them toodle around on the water.

What you see in the picture above is the pool formed at the site of the spring with one set of rapids (not the spring!) in the foreground where the pool spills over its banks into the lake. As the water of the spring erupts from a subterranean artery more than 70 feet deep, the pool covers the actual bubbling up you might expect to see at the source (this other photo illustrates). This pool then spills over in two channels around a small island, and without the dam, would have been a river from there. The building of the dam created Spring Lake. The color of the lake stunned me at every view as the sun shone all day. It turns out, the color comes from the high nitrogen content of the spring water. In fact, the water contains concentrations of nitrogen and oxygen that are too high for most fish to survive in the spring or in the lake. In addition, because the water filters down from the surface of Missouri before entering the underground channels that form the spring, it also picks up harmful human-created chemicals. When the water runs over rapids, and most importantly over the dam, the action creates aeration, bringing the levels down to the perfect environment for the fish and other aquatic life of the Spring River. Yes, that’s what made it into the poem!

One of the things that has surprised me about my project is that some poems suggest themselves quickly and some of them are being quite stubborn. Mammoth Spring’s poem worked itself onto the page in November and in December I revised it to a point where I’m ready to include it in my next set of submissions. I wish I could document the process of the quick drafts in order to understand why some of the other poems are so recalcitrant, but alas, there’s no rhyme or reason (hah! another pun).

Next Stop: Bull Shoals – White River

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
27
Dec
2023

Mount Nebo (52 Parks: 52 Poems)

Date of Visit: 23 September 2023

Dardanelle, AR

77º and breezy, full sun

After sitting out eight weeks of the hottest temps of the year, I returned to my parks & poetry project with the onset of slightly cooler weather. For my ninth park visit, I chose Mount Nebo, and as promised in the last post, it was a doozy. The morning started well enough as I navigated (by car) the elaborate set of switchbacks on state highway 155 that lead up and up and up to the park entrance, past a gorgeous overlook of the Arkansas River valley, and then on to the Visitor Center. Between 1933 and 1935 the Civilian Conservation Corps played a crucial role in reviving what had once been a thriving resort area on the mountaintop, and I have to thank the CCC for my adventurous day. But, I get ahead of myself. As with all of my trips, I started at the Visitor Center and met several friendly staff members. We talked about my hiking choices, and I set off for the Rim Trail, which boasts some stunning views from the flat top of the 1,350 foot mountain.

The official description of the Rim Trail reads, “Originally blazed in the 1890s, the trail was fully developed by the CCC in the 1930s with the addition of stone steps and retaining walls. Spectacular views spread over 100 miles of the Arkansas River Valley before you, including the 1830s water route of the Trail of Tears and 34,000 acre Lake Dardanelle.” The maps list it as easy-to-moderate, and having already hiked Devil’s Den, Pinnacle, and Petit Jean, I never stopped to read the fine print about the one “strenuous” stretch from hwy 155 to Sunrise Point. Instead, I fell enthralled to the views and set off down the path with nothing but thin air stretching out to the left the entire way. You’ll see in this picture from the trailhead the distinct differences in elevation. At the base of these stairs, I turned east (right) onto a partially dirt and partially sandstone trail. I stopped to take my numerous pictures of lichen and moss covered boulders and appreciated the shade of oaks and hickories. I traipsed down rough-hewn stone steps, thinking of the men who nearly a century ago swung pickaxes and hammered chisels to make my hike possible today.

After stopping to chat with some folx camping and practicing what I first thought was Tai Chi but turned out to be Ba Gua, or Bagua Zhang, a Chinese martial arts form, I crossed hwy 155. About 100 yards after crossing the road and moving east, the trail comes to a glorious promontory rock. I met some oncoming hikers and their dog and then took my turn standing on the edge of the earth, stunned by the landscape rolling by beneath me. And then I stepped back onto the trail, starting to get a bit hungry for my lunch which waited for me back in the car. I came to a series of three tight sets of switchback stairs carved into the mountainside, carved I suspect by the CCC troop all those years ago. I made it down and around the first two with ease and stopped to take a picture of the last set to share with Mom so I could hear her gasp at what I’d traversed. With my phone secured in my pocket and my trekking pole in my right hand, I took the first step down. Unfortunately, I must have looked down through the reading section of my bifocals instead of the distance section and I misjudged the depth of my step. Where I thought my foot would strike stone, it sank through the air and I became instantly unbalanced.

And so, dear readers, I took a fall, the worst fall of my life, but still a fortunate one. A fallen tree brought my tumbling body to a halt, preventing me from sustaining far more serious injuries. No broken bones, but a laceration at the top of my forehead that proved what I’d always heard about head wounds. They do indeed bleed a lot. I came away with a puncture wound to my left knee and took my first ambulance ride. I’m so grateful to Mark & Tory (the EMTs), Ellen (the park ranger), Adam (Yell County 911 Dispatch), David (the first hiker on scene who calmed me down), and to Genevieve and Stephen (the next hikers who also happened to be RNs…I gotta say, if you’re gonna fall off a mountain trail, these are the people you want to meet…double thanks to Stephen who hunted through the brush until he found my glasses!). Finally, huge thanks to the good friends who came to my rescue that day and over the next couple of weeks. You know who you are. I love all y’all.

I’ve already written a poem about the fall, but I’m not sure if it fits the project. I do know that I want to return to Mount Nebo and finish the Rim Trail. I might have to take the advice of one of my wise friends who just turned seven and scoot down those stairs on my butt, but I am nothing if not stubborn and determined.

Next up: Mammoth Spring

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
31
Jul
2017

Process Notes: The Dolorist Confesses

83º at almost noon ~ no heat index! window open, cicadas doing their thing, home construction noises in the background, the sun delightful & no threat

∞

With lots of busy work under my belt, work for the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference mostly, but also some recording of rejections from recent poem submissions, followed by sending out the poems anew, I have turned back to a focus on writing new poems. Lately, I’ve gotten back into the habit of walking, perhaps the writer’s best physical support system. All through history, in both the West and the East, great writers have recorded the connection between walking and writing, and I’ve seen that connection at work in my own past many times. It’s great to be returning to an activity that sparks new poems. (I should note that the spark only works for me if I’m walking without listening to any kind of music, NPR, or audio books. It works when I simply walk and observe, listening to the world around me.)

Because of this recent return to walking, I’ve had several lines rattling around in my head. I knew these lines were the beginning of a political poem, one that, again, records just how exhausting it is to be woke. However, once I put the lines down in my journal and then in the computer, I knew the poem wasn’t finished. It hadn’t accrued that critical mass necessary for survival. This time, I turned to a trusted friend and sent the “wee draft” for a diagnosis. Said friend hit the nail on the head and gave me awesome advice for coming back to the poem in the future. Thanks, friend!

In the meantime, with those lines out of my head and off in the world, I started re-reading (Laynie Browne’s The Scented Fox) and word-gathering. Normally, this sparks lines to form. Instead, it sparked me to remember a thought I’d had while walking this morning. I was thinking about a letter that I needed to write and about how I went into a minor depression at the beginning of the summer, a depression I’m working myself out of thanks, in part, to walking. So, I set down the lines I’d imagined including in the letter.

It wasn’t a lack of funds that kept me
but a lack of fortitude, of fiber.

The poem evolved in couplets today (my native form), and at first the poem was titled after a phrase from Browne’s book. After the poem showed me where it needed to go, that title no longer fit. I cast about. I scrambled. I came up with “The Dolorist Confesses,” but I’m not super happy with it.

Also, I had the poem laid out in three parts with subheadings. However, with only three couplets per section, the headings quickly proved to be too heavy. Then, when I got to the last “section,” I realized that the real ending would need four couplets instead of three. The three sections announced the onset of the depression, described what happened to my body because of it, and then detailed how I started pulling myself up out of it. Now, they are simply one poem made up of ten couplets, still covering the same content. I did use several of the words I’d gathered from Browne’s book, but much of the energy of the poem came from the initial phrase I’d constructed while walking.

Here’s to breathable air and the time to stretch my legs (and mind) in it.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
22
Jul
2017

Process Notes: The 14 Most Common Causes of Fatigue

95º feels like 108º ~ SCUBA weather out there

∞

After two weeks of silence, two posts in one day. Wahoooza.

I’m happy to report that I did meet my goal of drafting a new poem today, as I stated earlier. I wasn’t sure I would, given the chaos of the last two weeks. And therein lies a problem of mine. I tend to convince myself of certain narratives about my own being. One of these narratives is that I must have calm and quiet, long periods of focus, to write. I hold the summer up as WRITING TIME. This summer, I have taken on many new roles at UCA which have meant extending my work off contract (that’s right…I don’t get paid for these hours). This has “cluttered” my life with tasks and problem-solving that have nothing to do with writing poetry (directly). So, I need to break out of my own narrative. Really, all I need to write is a small chunk of time amidst the busy-ness of the rest of life. I’m hoping this realization, this work against my own inner critic, will extend into the real chaos of the academic year. Fingers crossed.

So, after finishing that last blog post, I turned to my journal. I let myself spew for two pages, jotting down all the inner dialogue, all the inner questioning. Then I wrote, “the truth is…” and recorded some more objective observations about my recent days. Finally, I turned to a new page, labeled it, as always, “Tell the Truth” and wrote 4 really horrible lines. I’m still thinking about political poetry, and at the same time, I’ve been struggling with some mild depression and fatigue (of all kinds) this summer. Today, I started writing about headline fatigue and the fact that no amount of “feel good” news can counteract the difficulties of this world today. These were the really horrible lines.

Then, I turned to my old friend, the Oxford English Dictionary, through our subscription at school, and I searched “fatigue.” As soon as the results popped up, I realized that I’d spent some time on these pages two and a half weeks ago when last I wrote. So, I opened another tab and thought I’d give Google a whirl. One of the first hits was from a pseudo-medical site, “The 14 Most Common Causes of Fatigue.” This was the typical info-article interspersed with a zillion ads. It listed things like sleep dysfunction, anemia, diabetes, heart disease, depression, etc. and gave very brief information about each.

It struck me that I’d used a headline to generate a poem earlier this month, so I copied down the title and started drafting a catalog poem. In my journal, I didn’t consider the order of my list. Instead, I focused on trying to generate images that would stand for the things that have been making me fatigued lately. One example is a bit about “grass that insists on growing” and the mower waiting there like a truancy officer. Of course, mowing a tiny lawn is no big deal, but I mean it to stand for all the everyday chores that must still be done, even as we try to make positive change in this world.

Once I turned to the computer to draft out the complete poem, I considered order. I actually only used about 3/4 of the list from my journal and created new “entries” once I was on the screen. The screen can reveal soft or clunky lines more easily than the handwritten page. While a catalog poem seems easy on first sight, there are many considerations. The order of the entries should create a kind of forward momentum, and since, in my case, there’s no narrative to the content, this has to be an emotional movement. Also, the poem must transcend the form of a list. In other words, I couldn’t “fill” any of the entries with fluff just to make the number. Yes, 14 was arbitrary based on the headline of the article and I could have cut myself some slack and changed that number, but for the draft I wanted to get there. As with all poetry, concision is the key, and every word counts, so adding more is a tricky business.

Finally, I was conscious the whole time that I wanted this poem to stretch beyond my own experience to encapsulate the fatigue I know so many people are feeling these days about the political environment. While some of the entries in my list are taken directly from my daily life, the others are plucked from headlines (e.g. the famine in South Sudan) to broaden the scope of the speaker. Like most of the political poems I’ve been writing, I’m hesitant about this one. I will set it aside for a few days and return with fresh eyes.

The whole process I just described reminded me, again, of John Keats and Negative Capability. For those unaware, Keats defined NC as when a person is “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” It struck me again today that the whole process of drafting (of creating any kind of art, really) requires this of us. I had to find a way to set aside the inner critic and my own attempt to control the process. I had to “dwell in Possibility” as Emily Dickinson wrote. Today, I’ll mark my attempt down as a success, as a goal met, regardless of whether the poem makes it to publication or not.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
08
Jul
2017

Process Notes: Transplant

78º ~ rain-cooled, headed for a high of 90º ~ birdsong replacing the thunder

∞

I preach to my students about the BIC method of writing, which would be the Butt-In-Chair method. There’s one sure thing in this world; if your butt isn’t in the chair (which also means switching off the noise of social media and actually giving your body & brain the time & space necessary to go deep), you won’t get anything written. Once again, practicing what I preach has made all the difference.

I did my duty this morning. I repeated my goal of drafting a poem and I sat BIC. I scribbled some ugly lines with no music. I read a few poems. I cast about. I let myself be in the stillness. I continued to think about my current obsession: how can I interrogate my whiteness? How can I make art that might make a difference in this difficult time?

Once again, the key was getting specific. Most of the horrible lines in my journal circle around generalizations, falling into cliché and propaganda. Suddenly, I remembered the feeling, the physical feeling of my white guilt (a sinking and burning in my gut) when I heard family members express their own racism in jokes. I wondered why I had such a reaction and didn’t believe what they believed. I thought of the specific experiences in my childhood that gave me empathy and understanding for those who looked differently than I did. Finally, all of this made me remember coming to the South around the turn of the century and realizing that many native southerners had no idea that outright racism existed in the North. And so the poem began:

In the South, everyone knows Iowa is a pretty
white state, but I have to explain, not
in my hometown

This opening lacks the specific imagery and sound play that I usually rely on, but it does have a kickass linebreak. Because I’m working with some narrative in this draft, I fear I’ve lost a lot of my lyric strengths, so I’ll definitely be going back and trying to up the images and figurative language. This is one of my concerns about writing overtly political poems. The process is very different for me, coming at the poem with some ideas, some philosophy already in place, and I worry about being capable enough as a poet to create that strange elixir that is my goal.

The poem fell into four, five-line stanzas, and does go on to explore several specific, key moments from my childhood. It juxtaposes those moments with older relatives making what they considered “jokes” but were really moments of racist othering. In those instances, I’m afraid, I always remained silent, and I hope that by trying to tell the truth about where I come from, about my own silent complicity, I might be taking a step in the direction of interrogating my own skin, in making a tiny difference by (eventually) sharing the poem through publication.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
15
Jun
2017

Process Notes: A Being Admitted as Heir

74º ~a line of pop-up storms moving north to south, an oddity, radar-indicated rain non-existent on the ground, our days are reaching the 90s now

∞

Yesterday, I started reading Safiya Sinclair’s amazing book, Cannibal, and I hope to post reading notes about it in the next few days. (I’m only halfway through.) Born in Jamaica, Sinclair looks closely at postcolonial identity and focuses both on the personal and the historical. As I was reading, I was struck by an early poem, “Pocomania,” in which the speaker addresses her father, using “father” as anaphora. It opens:

Father unbending father unbroken father
with the low-hanging belly, father I was cleaved from

In Sinclair’s poem, the speaker deals with a tense, difficult relationship, just as I have been doing. In fact, at one point in the poem she writes, “Father / and his nest of acolyte women” … “Mother and I were none of them.” I had to stop reading for a minute to catch my breath.

Even as I read the poem, I knew I wanted to write one using the same repetition, but this morning, approaching my desk, it struck me, again, that I’ve written little of my mother. So, I sat down to write a mother poem, using the structure Sinclair presents. Sinclair’s poem is one long stanza filled with long lines, and jam-packed with electric images that expose a flawed man who caused his own child to hurt. I tried for the same long lines, the same electric images, but I was working with a healthy relationship, and that changed a few things.

There is a place in Sinclair’s poem where the speaker implores, “Father forgive my impossible demands.” I didn’t draft my poem line by line to imitate Sinclair’s, but I knew I wanted to include such an asking for forgiveness. In my draft, this occurred in line 7, and I wrote “Mother forgive my silences.” Because of the content of that line, it begged to be set off by itself, so I ended up with a 6-line stanza, followed by a single line, then another 6-line stanza and another single line of asking for forgiveness. Then, I started in on another 6 lines and I came up short. I have no idea where this poem wants to go or how it wants to end.

Here’s the issue: poems about difficult things have built-in conflict, which means they have a built-in need to end, to resolve, even if they are largely lyric (image based) rather than narrative. This poem about my mom is a poem of praise, an ode (although not in the formal sense), and I’m struggling with how to resolve it. It is pure lyric, so there is no narrative to wind to a close. I confess that I hit the wall with this draft, and today, the wall won. I had to save & print the draft unfinished, which takes a bit of the shine off the moment.

I’m going to seek out some poems of praise and check out how they end. I’ve always known that “happy” poems were harder to write than difficult ones (for me at least), and here’s the proof, again.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
04
Jun
2017

Process Notes: Wrestling My Father in the After

75º ~ the aftermath of a satisfying 20-minute downpour, the drip-drop sounds of trees shedding water

I hesitate to post, as the work of today’s draft imitates that of the last father sonnet in many ways. Yes, the sonnet appears to be the frame for this content, and again it was necessary because of the painful nature of the truth-telling, because of the need to address these truths in small measures. While these poems expose my father’s imperfections, they also expose me as an imperfect daughter. As someone born with the need to be “practically perfect in every way” (and with the required big ego as well), I’m always pushing up against my need to be liked. Yet, in writing these poems, part of my “tell the truth” mantra must include how I portray myself.

As you might have guessed, these poems have a lot to do with harms done, and I find myself wrestling with ideas of placing blame and of forgiveness. The content of the poems comes both from real life and from reading about the idea of forgiveness. In this way, I hope the poems open up from being personal to being public, if you will.

Today, I didn’t need to read much from others, and I didn’t need a word bank (as I haven’t for this type of poem). Instead, I needed to write a lot of really crappy lines in my journal. Crappy not for what they had to say but for how they said it. I stumbled on an image that resonated, but couldn’t get it to fit. I heard my squirmy internal editor say, “Stop forcing it. You’re done writing father poems. No one wants to read them anyway. You’re just whining.” So, I turned the page and tried to write a poem that would, perhaps, explain who my father was in my rounded details. Sure, I got eight semi-decent lines out of it, but they were lifeless.

I turned the page and thought some more about the whole situation, about where the pain resided & why. Then, I wrote:

What bothers me most, Father, is the silence
surrounding your sins, the way we were made to pretend

And then, I had my way in. Turns out, that image from earlier, the one I couldn’t get to fit, fell right into place by the fourth line. I’d say “magic, presto” but that’s not how I’m feeling. It was harder than that. I dug & I scraped to find the truth, gravitating to couplets and finding my instinctual internal rhymes (mostly slant). Then, I got to about 12 lines and realized I was nearly there, yes, working in the sonnet form. I went back and tweaked, condensed some so I’d have a bit more room at the end to get where I needed to go. Rest assured the only things deleted in the condensing were the overwritten bits (dear me, I love those adjectives! and still fall prey to over-explanation). Working in the sonnet form forced me to think in ways I don’t normally think about the purpose of the draft, of what I wanted to leave the reader with at the end. Of course, I think of this when working in free verse, but it’s a less focused thinking. Perhaps I’ve more to learn from this tried & true form; perhaps I’ve more father-daughter truth to explore within its frame.

Yet, there’s a weight to all of this. So why do it? Why bring up painful memories that hurt me and my remaining family? That’ something I’m wrestling with as well.

 

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
25
May
2017

Process Notes: Petition ~ after Malinda Markham

73º ~ bright sun, but the house so well-shaded that it remains on the verge of chilly most mornings like this

This morning’s desk time was a bit hither & thither. I did not do such a clear job of setting my goal before bed last night and repeating it this morning. I let emails distract for a bit, and truth be told, let a few emails, a text, and a phone call interrupt in the last few hours, but still, I have a new draft.

No father poem today, although I did start a really terrible, forced draft about the death of the father of one of my best friends, a sudden death that happened about 6 months prior to my dad’s well-forecasted dying. I was even counting beats, but the poem petered out after the first burst of energy, and I dithered. I decided I would simply word gather from a favorite book, and I wouldn’t make it a goal to write a poem. Given that I’m freshly back to drafting, I wanted to let myself off the hook for churning out a draft. Instead, I would just sink into the words.

I’ve said this before, but for me it bears repeating. When I want inspiration to jumpstart my writing, I must go back to a book / poet I’ve already grown to love, a trusted source. Of all those books on the to-read shelves I mentioned yesterday, a very few will make it to that inspirational stack. This does not mean that I won’t find poems to enjoy and admire in most of them. I will; however, inspiration requires a much deeper connection fostered over many re-readings for me.

Today, I turned to Malinda Markham, a poet gone from us far too young, and her 2nd (and last book) Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart. To word gather, I read a poem slowly, usually starting at the beginning of the book, and revel in all the reasons I am inspired by it. Then, I steal 4 – 5 words and smatter them across a blank page in my journal. I intentionally separate words from an individual poem. I do this for multiple poems until the arrangement of the words on my journal page begins to suggest connections (I circle and arrow) and lines begin to form. Here’s a picture of what today’s page looks like.

Usually, I need about twice this number of words, so that there is very little white space left. Yet, today, I was inspired by a specific poem of Markham’s, “Petition,” and my word gathering had already suggested my own direction. Markham’s poem ends, “On the day I am narrow as glass, / you be the sun do not let me grow cold.” I heard “On the days I am heavy leaden, / bid me swallow the chemical thorn” and began to draft. No, I don’t suffer from the same kind of debilitating depression as Markham did, but I do take an SNRI for a milder case of depression and anxiety. The idea of an antidepressant as a “chemical thorn” meant to “wake” the speaker is the heart of the poem.

Today’s draft is back in my comfort zone of free verse with plenty of intense imagery & sound and no shackles of pentameter. Okay, the shackles serve their purpose, I admit, but it was great fun to simply let the lines expand and contract organically while I measured pace and sound with white space and end-stopped versus enjambed lines only.

It’s interesting that the father poems seem to be rooted in the plain speech of my first book, and of my youth, while this new poem today reverts to the lyricism and conversational baroque of my third book. Content drives form? Yes.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
23
May
2017

Process Notes: In Truth, Dad

68º ~ central Arkansas is easing us into summer with an actual spring (rather than jumping straight to 90º), the humidity does drape & cling, though, as the yard birds signal the business of their day

After a week of family business and traveling, I’m back at the desk and eager to begin a summer of drafting. As with my last post, I’ve written another poem about my father’s passing, another poem that probably doesn’t paint me in the best light as his daughter, but I promised to “Tell the Truth!”

For today, I used my old method of reminding myself before bed and then again on first waking that I would be drafting this morning. Sure enough, the first line came to me even in the half-wake before I got out of bed, and as it came to me, I realized that it was in perfect iambic pentameter, darn it! Apparently, these father poems are falling into forms, and I’m sure my teaching has some part to play in that. In my old job, with basic intro to creative writing needing to cover prose and poetry, I rarely had time to dig into forms of poetry beyond a cursory look at free verse versus fixed forms. Now, I’m up to my elbows in the intricacies of form (and how important it is to both free verse and formal verse).

But, back to my narrative, as I woke, I kept repeating the lines: “There is no devastation here. No death / inspired wails.” Yes, I heard the enjambment there before I counted and found the iambic pentameter in the first line. Who would have thought I’d become this, after years of swearing I had a tin ear?

As I showered, I repeated the lines and more came to me. After dressing, I rushed to scrawl it out in my journal. I confess that I paused then for breakfast and coffee; I paused because I had a healthy eight lines and I knew the weight would hold long enough for me to fuel up. It did, but the rest of the drafting did not come easy. I went into it thinking sonnet (even when I was scrawling by hand), but by the time I got to 12 lines I thought I had more to say, and I resisted the form. I wrote it out. I let it go long; I let the lines rush past pentameter. And then I realized that I was overwriting and I was not telling the truth; I was hesitating. When I focused on the truth and compressed the lines (shedding the hesitations), darn it, there it was, a sonnet.

On reflection, the sonnet form may be working for these poems because they contain such difficult material for me, as I reconcile myself to the fact that my relationship with my father was nowhere near healthy, and that I am not mourning him in the expected ways. With a sonnet, the poet tries to capture* one crystal clear moment amongst the chaos, thus being more prone to lyric than narrative. This helps as lyric is my strength, and when I was getting overwhelmed today with what I was trying to say, I reminded myself to go back to where the poem began and just tell that one, small truth (the fact that I’m not devastated).

In truth, I’m feeling more exposed, more vulnerable & raw than I’ve felt in a long time when writing. As I drafted, I kept hearing that little voice say, “you can’t write that” and “you can’t publish this; it will hurt so-and-so and so-and-so.” I’m pretty sure this is what people mean when they say someone is writing “necessary” poems; I’m just not sure these poems will be necessary to anyone else but me.

 

*(and capture is the right word, as the sonnet provides the frame — the cage?)

Posted by Sandy Longhorn
11
May
2017

Process Notes: The Mourner’s Response when Charged with Truth-Telling

75º ~ 70% chance of storms later in the day, the sky a greenish gray, the slightest of breezes as the air gathers energy for thunder, lightning, rain

“I went back to my hotel room and I scrawled ‘Tell the truth’ and the Roman numeral I on the cover,” he says. “I promised myself I would fill up a page every day, and it wouldn’t matter how terrible the writing was or how crazy it was. The only rule was it had to come from a place of truth.” ~ Charlie Worsham on NPR’s All Things Considered

“There is a charge // For the eyeing of my scars. There is a charge / For the hearing of my heart– // It really goes.” ~ “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant — ” ~ “1263” by Emily Dickinson

Finally, I am done with teaching for the semester and have spent several days doing absolutely nothing in order to recharge and regroup. Given that I haven’t found a way to teach and write in my “newish” job yet (as a junior faculty member and with all new preps each semester), I’ve renewed my commitment to writing during the summer. Last year, I had the added motivation of a summer stipend; this year I have the added motivation of my own mental health. Like most writers, when I’m kept from writing because of other commitments and concerns, my brain and my emotions tend to founder, causing temporary bouts of depression and anxiety. In other words, I write because I must.

So, as I was finishing up the semester, I happened to listen to the NPR interview with rising country star Charlie Worsham, and his method of re-igniting his passion for writing lyrics stuck with me. I started a new journal this week, and while I didn’t follow Worsham’s lead by writing “Tell the Truth!” across the front, I am writing that phrase on every fresh page.

Because my father died recently, I’ve been writing some about him and about grief, or lack of it, given that my relationship with my father was somewhat strained. As a farmer’s son and as a person whose skills rested in his hands and in physical labor, my father never understood this weird, artistic and intellectual daughter, who tried to do all of the building and growing things, but was pretty terrible at all things physical/manual. And my father made several moral choices with which I strongly disagreed. So, I’ve been trying to tell the truth about that, but it’s hard b/c this is a truth that doesn’t fit the “good daughter” role.

In the process of writing today’s draft, I thought of both the Plath poem and the Dickinson quoted above. Given that my most recent work has only been tangentially informed by my own experiences, I was most certainly telling my truth “slant.” In the manner of “Tell the Truth!” I’m working on “upright” truth. I’m working more in the non-fiction vein than I have recently, so I feel the Plath quote rising up as well. I’m risking more on the page and I can feel it in my heart, a stretching, an opening, and a scrunching up as well.

In terms of craft, the funniest thing happened, again. I scrawled out the rough draft in my journal, working the phrases out loud with tongue and breath and gathering them loosely on the page with many crossings-out and nearly illegible scribbling. Then, I went to the computer and put it up on the screen in a free verse form, but dang it, in the first line I use “three-personed” to describe my father, and you can’t allude to one of the most famous sonnets, Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God,” and not write a sonnet. Funnily, I didn’t even think of “sonnet” until I got to the end, a three-line closing that really contained a traditional sonnet-like couplet. Dang it! Those forms and theory classes really got under my skin. Of course, I re-drafted and now have sonnet before me. Dang it! On re-reading, the “turn” even ended up being in line 9.

Posted by Sandy Longhorn