#308 Backstory of the Poem: Carolyn Martin’s “Hollow”

Right: Carolyn Martin. July 4, 2021. Copyright by Carolyn Martin

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? “Hollow” is the third in a series of poems I wrote over the past seven years. Each was inspired by a chance encounter on an airplane with a family on their way to Maui. I sat next to a mother and her three-year-old daughter. Across the aisle was the father and a seven-year-old daughter. As the mom and I engaged in conversation, she kept mentioning three children. When I looked confused, she explained they always include their only son in any family conversation. He died at age two of a rare form of cancer four years ago. Her story touched me so deeply that I crafted this trilogy.

The first poem, “How to explain death to a three-year-old,” (published in Verseweavers in 2014) was basically the step-by-step lesson plan she and her husband devised to prepare their young daughter to face her little brother’s death.

https://oregonpoets.org/publications/verseweavers/

The second, “One month since,” (published Delmarva Review, 2014) was based on the singular event that pushed the mother out of her bed after a month of debilitating grief. In this piece, I used the facts she shared about that event––her three-year-old coming into her bedroom begging her mother to get up and make pancakes––and added my own imagined details to create a portrait of a mother finding a reason to live.

https://delmarvareview.org/

The final poem, “Hollow,” was just published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice on June 19, 2021.

https://writinginawomansvoice.blogspot.com/

“Hollow” will appear in my next collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments. This final piece once again combines facts with my imagination.

Dr Carolyn Martin’s Webpage

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.  I don’t remember when or where I wrote “Hollow.” A shorter, less detailed-filled poem appeared in the Peacock Journal in 2017. I returned to it in 2020 and knew it needed more depth and richness to make it a better poem.

https://peacockjournal.com/

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? Two of the best revisions I made from the earlier version to this one was to write the poem in first person rather than second, and to delete the final two lines – “Four years, you tell anyone who’ll hear./Telling rarely soothes.” The first made the poem more intimate; the second saved me from being too obvious.

Dr. Carolyn Martin’s writing space. Credit and Copyright by Dr. Carolyn Martin.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Anyone who has experienced grief can identify with the mother in “Hollow.” Not being a mother myself, I could only imagine the pain the loss of a child would rain down upon a parent. When I write “A mother never loses loss,” I believe in its truth.

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? There are two over-the-top emotional moments for me in this poem. The first appears in the first stanza as the speaker contrasts her grief with that of her husband. In her mind, his has diminished while hers remains oh-so-raw.

The second arrives in the last three lines when the mother reveals her daily ritual: “What I won’t admit: I lock my bedroom door/and trace his outline on our sheets/a dozen times a day.”

Both of these moments are products of my imagination, not part of the story I heard seven years ago. These are emotional truths, not factual ones.

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

The images in this specific piece are granted copyright:  Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.


The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo.

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Feel free to contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7

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