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?“A White Room, A Piano” began with a prompt from poets Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar in a workshop I attended. We were given a word bank, and while I don’t remember the whole list, I can remember “wound,” “candle,” “son or sun,” “pin,” “stitch.” The idea of writing about the twin boys I miscarried in 1985 immediately came to me. We probably had 20 minutes to write, and then we shared with the class. I remember saying that I thought I was done writing about the twins since I’d written another poem a year or so before. Dorianne replied that I might never be done writing about them, and that’s okay.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. At the Sarah Lawrence Summer Writing Seminar in a classroom with 10 other adult students. We all sat around a large table with Dorianne and Joseph at the head. The room was pretty non-descript in one of the more modern buildings on the campus in Bronxville, NY. I remember it being rather sterile, and it had a large window.
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? These two in the fourth stanza got deleted pretty early on, because they were telling the reader, not showing, and were totally unnecessary: “If I could pin the moment I healed, / it would be my daughter’s birth.”
I also deleted the phrase “but it felt like he did” after “The doctor did not cut my womb,” because the tone of the first three stanzas — and also the last line of the first stanza — make it clear I had been in pain.
I had also workshopped an earlier version with poet William Wright who suggested I use the word “placid” in the last line instead of my original “gentle” and delete “ready” before “breast.” I know I made many, many other changes each time I looked at the poem over the five years. I submitted it to 12 journals before it was accepted.
The original title was “In West Paces Hospital,” then quickly changed to “Loss and Gain,” and again at some point before publication, changed again to “A White Room, A Piano.” I settled on that title when I added the epigraph from Ralph Waldo Emerson: For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else. I had also reordered some of the lines of the poem before it got published.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? My hope is that the poem works to communicate the rather universal and comforting idea that great loss can be followed by something beautiful. If I hadn’t lost the twins, I most likely would not have my daughter, and that idea is inconceivable.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?“One breath each. Such slight air / wouldn’t ripple a candle’s flame.” The idea of them living for just that tiny moment is so very sad, and putting it to paper brought a clear picture to my mind, making the scene real again for me. But I also found that writing it was cathartic.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? In 2017, the poem was published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal. There’s also an audio version on their website of me reading it.
The poem ended up in my second book, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018). Editor Diane Lockward had asked me to add a reference to music earlier in the poem to foreshadow the piano in the last line, so I added “both of us carried into legato sleep.”
https://www.terrapinbooks.com/store/p17/No_Such_Thing_as_Distance.html
Karen Paul Holmes has two poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown. Publications include Diode, Valparaiso Review, Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner and many other journals and anthologies. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and was named a Best Emerging Poet by Stay Thirsty Media.
https://www.facebook.com/karenholmespoetry
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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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