Sonnet

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
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