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? It’s funny, I teach analytical and creative writing. My students ask me if I follow the same process that I teach to them. My answer is always yes, at least in principle, and no in the details. To answer the question about process, most of the time (I say this very cognizant of the possible 50% of the time this actually happens) I will find a moment of inspiration in nature, in a conversation, or in some banal occurrence. Then I write down something, a couple of words, a single verse, a sentence, just something that concretizes the thought so that, at least for me, it is moderately legible. I then usually sit on it for anywhere from a day to a year, letting the verse stew in my subconscious, until I look on it again and decide what details to add around it, how to expand it, what is or is not important in the piece. After all that comes the editing.
For this poem in particular, it began a year before the date at the bottom when I had an article rejected from a decent journal. Not only did I receive a rejection, the tone of the comments (and specifically from “Reader #2,” of whom we jokingly say is always the more pungent in their comments) waivered between condescending and downright insulting. This article ended up published in a higher-raking journal a couple of years later. In any case, upon reading these comments I usually block out the negative comments and look solely for constructive criticism. This time, though, I decided to take a walk around the campus where I have worked as a professor for 15 years, Kennesaw State University’s Kennesaw Campus. It is a lovely, colorful place year-round, so I knew I could take my mind out the moment for a time. As I walked, I noticed the fresh dirt around trees of differing colors, and drew the metaphor of renewal from that. When I came back to my office, I wrote the first four lines as a single, tight stanza. Six months later I returned to the poem, composing the rest and reformatting it to fit better the tone of the walk to which it refers, adding references to the manuscript itself (the “… chinelos born from / Dead wire of the 70s …”). The circularity in the poem rests on the physical act of beginning and ending in the same space, as well as the act of constant revision and submission of work, as if you were planting and replanting in different types of dirt, hoping each time the new environment, plant type and size, and seasons will let its beauty hold.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was in my office at Kennesaw State. It was a small, drab, extremely crowded space, about 100 sq ft., with bookshelves crammed against every wall and corner, and a sliver of a window from which sunlight never entered at a good angle. I have since moved to a larger space with no window but plenty of shelving.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? Summer 2015.
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 cannot recall how many drafts, since from December 2015 to July 2016 I revised it many, many times. Since it was always the same document, unfortunately I have no marked up, or otherwise different, versions to show. I can tell you, however, the first four lines were their own stanza, with other breaks set between different verses and a lexical selection unlike what you see here. This includes the use of translingual rhyme (“leite / place”, “road / almoço / know”) to denote my own thought process, usually in two or three languages simultaneously.
https://findwords.info/term/translingualism
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 am sure there were, unfortunately I got rid of them when I finalized the poem (I say “finalized” as though you could truly complete any work of writing, or any project at all. Generally, I follow Billy Collins’ idea of abandonment, rather than completion).
https://billycollinspoetry.com/
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? In academia we talk about the “publish or perish” mentality, how it informs, guides, and ultimately consumes us. You cannot escape it, just as much as you could escape breathing. The anonymized nature of the double-blind peer-review process comes with its own unfortunate spaces for laughably inappropriate behavior, as especially in larger fields of research it is virtually impossible to identify the readers of your work. This allows those with a certain emotional carelessness to wrap manuscript authors in an overheated blanket of jarring criticism. One has to develop a very thick skin to survive the sometimes dauting onslaught of nastiness we receive. As author of around 75 peer-reviewed publications, including books, articles, reviews, book chapters, poetic collections, and individual poems, I have received my fair share and have developed coping mechanisms, including the highly recommended walks around campus.
It this vein, I would like the reader to take away from the reading and understanding of the feelings of trauma, and ultimately renewal, a manuscript rejection can bring on for us.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Although the whole experience was both taxing and cathartic, I found the final two stanzas the most difficult to type out. In writing them I had to concede my powerlessness in the process, and simply begin again.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? The Musician, Finishing Line Press, 2017, p. 21.
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-musician-by-robert-simon/
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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