#301 Backstory of the Poem: Bill Cushing’s “With Dad”

Middle: Bill Cushing. Facebook Logo Photo

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? Like many poems, this one began with an image, specifically the moment I turned toward the mirror in the hallway to see myself in the jacket. I roughed it out two days after that event and found it was ready for revision within a week or so. In short, this poem seemed to have been bottled up inside of me and was waiting to take form.

Bill Cushing. Copyright by Bill Cushing.

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.  I was drinking a whiskey-and-water in O’Hare Airport. I was waiting for my connecting flight back to Los Angeles when I pulled out the preliminary notes I’d started over the weekend of my father’s memorial service in Virginia Beach and roughed out a first draft.

Bill Cushing’s father in uniform. Copyright by Bill Cushing.

What month and year did you start writing this poem? I can nearly nail it down to the time: it was sometime after midnight on Monday, October 8, 2007.

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?) The greatest irony here is that, while I constantly preach the need to revise one’s work as much as possible, this poem qualifies as what I would call the “found piece” in that it went through very few changes before it was written in a way I was comfortable with. Naturally it did through some changes, mostly cuts and some reorganization, but this was one of those moments of serendipity when things fell into place much more easily than they tend to in poetry—or at least my poetry.

Bill Cushing in June of 2021. Copyright by Bill Cushing.

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? I brought this piece in to a writing group I belonged to at the time, and a few people there made some very good suggestions in the way of cuts. For example, the end of the third stanza originally had a phrase about me being “blushing in embarrassment.” A member of the group suggested the cut that brought that line to simply “blushing.” That move helped me avoid a case of telling instead of showing.  As I recall, the original was written as a single stanza, but as I retooled it, I discovered that, by dividing it into three seven-line stanzas, it allowed me to leave the singular last line of returning the jacket, an image I really wanted the reader to focus on.

Bill Cushing’s parents at a Christmas party in 1952. Copyright by Bill Cushing.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? One of the most important and difficult relationships that men have in this world is the one with their fathers. My own father was a highly accomplished man, a fact that always weighed on me. It’s interesting how often he appears in my work—including a poem that was about my mother’s death. My hope is that this poem reflects the push and pull of that relationship where a man tries to “measure up” to his father while simultaneously trying to strike out on his own. I hope that other men will read it and find some personal connection to that moment. It will really succeed if women can take away an understanding of why the father-son relationship can so often be such a contentious one.  

Bill Cushing’s father in uniform holding Bill Cushing as a baby. Copyright by Bill Cushing.

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The final full stanza comprises most of the first portion of this poem that I wrote and the sensory image that kicked it all over. Looking at myself in a coat that didn’t fit properly transported me back to an insecure child who saw himself falling short of his father’s expectations.

Bill Cushing holding his own son Gabriel in February 2009.

Has this poem been published before? And if so where? It first appeared in an anthology named, fittingly enough, Getting Old. This poem is a part of my book A Former Life, which was published by Finishing Line Press and was honored by the Kops-Featherling International Book Award.

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/a-former-life-by-bill-cushing/

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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