Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? “Elegy For the Red Dress” came into being via a writing prompt from the wonderful poet Cecilia Woloch.
http://ceciliawoloch.squarespace.com/
The prompt was more-or-less as follows: write an elegy for an inanimate object. Immediately upon receiving the assignment, I thought of the red dress that had been hanging, unworn, in my closet for years because I could no longer fit into it. It deserved an elegy!
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. It’s my recollection that I started writing the early outlines of the poem driving home from Cecilia’s workshop. And though it’s not my specific recollection, I’m usually like a Schnauzer with a bone when I’ve hit upon an idea for a poem so I suspect that I continued outlining it when I got home that night.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I can’t say with specificity when I started writing it but my best guess is 2005 or 2006 because the original version was included in my first collection Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press Book Award.
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) I can’t tell you how many drafts I wrote before settling on the version that’s included in Beg No Pardon (BNP). What I can tell you is that I was never completely satisfied with that version because it was not the original version of the poem I submitted with the manuscript. I was persuaded to substantially modify the BNP version and was not secure enough to challenge the editor’s request. After the book was published I would share both versions at poetry readings and more often than not, the audience preferred the original version. As a result, I published the original version of the poem—retitled “Last Elegy for the Red Dress”—in my second collection, Start With a Small Guitar! (SWSG). I’m attaching both versions of the poem for your readers.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? As you can see from the version in BNP, the poem has only two stanzas. In the version in SWSG, the original stanzas (including the two in BNP) are restored in their original order along with the couplet at the end which was also excised from BNP.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?Two thoughts: first, a poet has to decide whether or not to trust her instincts. I’m not sorry that I published the poem as it appears in BNP; in fact, I think it tells a story different from the original which is fine. It was also a good way to come to understand the way that the poet and the publisher/editor come to work in tandem. Secondly, I want readers to remember that, ultimately, the poem is theirs and, quite possibly, never finished. Thus, they remain free to edit it in subsequent publications. That was such a revelation to me!
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Ultimately, the poem deals with the ways a woman engages in life; that is, the free-fall freedom of her youth and her joy in the physicality of that engagement. Then, there are the sudden ways in which that engagement changes profoundly, not just in the way she sees herself but in the way she sees herself in the world, the mourning for that something that time demands be left behind.
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