#290 Backstory of the Poem: Grace Bauer’s “Ms. Schadenfreude: The Early Years”

Grace Bauer in July of 2016. Copyright by Grace Bauer

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? This poem is part of an ongoing series of “Ms. Schadenfreude” poems I’ve been working on (on and off) for several years. The project got put on the back burner for a year or more as I worked on putting together Unholy Heart: New and Selected Poems, which was recently published by The Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska, and then trying to promote that book as best I can in the midst of Covid-craziness, but I am turning back to the series now.

I don’t recall the genesis of this particular poem, but I do remember the genesis of the series it is part of—which was the key word of the titles that recur throughout the series: schadenfreude—that distinctly German word with no equivalent in English. Linking harm with joy to describe the sense of taking pleasure another’s misfortune. Not the most admirable human emotion, but one I suspect many of us have felt from time to time.

It’s a word I’d known for years, but suddenly I found myself encountering it everywhere—in articles, poems, news reports, even a conversation with my kid brother, who I would not have expected to know it. I read or heard it so often that the sound of the word became like an ear worm (its sound is much prettier than its sense: echoing shade, Freud, fräulein…) until it (the word) became she (a character). So I thought I’d write a poem about this unlikely character, but it soon became clear that it would take several poems—each its own snapshot of Ms. S as she makes her way through various adventures and encounters with others (Ms. Schadenfreude’s First Time, Ms. Schadenfreude Meets the Motorcycle Black Madonna, Ms. Schadenfreude Meets Miss Know It All, etc.).  I’d begun in medias res with a character fully grown and doing womanly stuff, and decided at some point I needed to take her back to her origins, which is when I began this poem taking her back to infancy. I had the title with no idea of what her “early years” might look like until I wrote the poem.

I have worked before on series of poems. My book The Women At the Well is a series of persona poems/monologues in the voices of Biblical women, while Beholding Eye is a book of various kinds of ekphrastic poems, so I knew how a series can take off on its own. It’s like a snowball that starts small but picks up speed and energy and all kinds of stuff as it gets rolling and—if you are writing such a thing—your job is mostly to follow to see where it will take you. To keep up with what becomes a kind of obsession.

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?) My practice in the drafting/first writing of poems in a series is to let everything in, knowing I’ll probably have to cut a lot later on. And that’s the advice I’ve given to many students over the years—go for it! Don’t censor yourself now, but know that your editor brain will have to have its way with the accumulated material later on in the process. I didn’t know how big this snowball would get. Maybe just a couple of poems? Maybe a chapbook?

Since I’ve been away from the series for a while, I can look at it/her with new eyes—literally re-vise/re-see Ms. S and her evolving story. For the “big picture” I’m mostly wondering how I will bring all these episodic poems to some kind of conclusion. And what I will possibly title the series overall. But for now, I’m working with some of the fragments, polishing some of the poems that are close, but not quite finished, and submitting more of the poems that are finished to journals—so Ms. Schadenfreude is getting around. I’m anxious to see where she will take me next. Only time—and the writing—will tell.

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? At this point I have about 50 pages of Ms. Schadenfreude poems, so it’s looking like more of a full-length collection. Many of the poems are finished, some of them are more fragments and/or false starts. About a dozen have been published in various journals—so I’m reasonably confident that the series is not a complete bust. The writing is mostly fun, rather than emotional, because the character is giving me permission to go totally over-the-top and be as snarky as I can possibly be. I’ve heard actresses talk about how much fun it can be to play a villain, and I imagine it’s a bit like that—though I don’t want Ms. Schadenfreude to be a villain, per se, or one dimensional. I’m at the point in the series where I can look at the poems I have and ask: what do I need to add to make her a well-rounded character? How can I make her at least a bit of an “everywoman”? Are there gaps in her life experience I need to fill in?

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? Poem appeared in Tin House.

Grace Bauer in May of 2019. Copyright by Grace Bauer

All Backstory of the Poem LIVE LINKS can be found at the very end of the below feature:

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html

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