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? In 2018, I started writing poems for a new book. I’d published my first book of poems, Border Crossings, in 2017, and most of my existing poems were in that book. (I’m mainly a fiction writer.)
Jane Ormerod of the small press Great Weather for Media heard me read from Border Crossings and asked if I had another book like it. I didn’t, but I thought I could write one. I told Jane I would work on it, and she kept the project in mind.
https://www.greatweatherformedia.com/
I began with pieces about the sights and sounds from my daily routine, which centers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
But I needed some pieces to fill the beginning of the book, which goes back to my childhood. The poem above, “Where I’m From,” fits there.
After about a year of fairly regular work, I completed a new manuscript and sent it to Jane.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I wrote the poem in our Manhattan apartment. It’s a small place, and I work at a desk in our living room. Sometimes, when my wife has a Zoom meeting, she uses my desk and I move to another room. But in 2018, we had no work on Zoom, and our daughter left that year for college. I would work in the mornings, then head out to class—I teach at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
From my desk, I can look out on a major street, East Houston Street (Below Bottom)—a truck, fire-engine, and ambulance route. There is a median with trees in the middle of the street, and I’ve made sketches of those trees. (Below Top) There are no buildings directly outside, and we can see fairly far. At night, the tip of the Empire State Building is visible, and we can discern the colors of whatever celebratory lights are on at the time.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? I’m not sure of the exact month or year. This poem was probably written in 2018 or 2019. The book editors (Thomas Fucaloro, David Lawton, Jane Ormerod, and Mary Slechta) were working with me on the manuscript in 2019. Thomas gave the book its final title: Tricks of Light. The book was basically finished, at least in terms of the writing, by January 2020. I remember that date, because my wife and I were visiting our daughter in Washington, D.C., where she had an internship at the League of Conservation Voters. The editors and I were emailing during that trip—I doubt they knew I was in D.C.
Thomas Fucaloro’s Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/thomas.fucaloro
Interview with David Lawton
Jane Ormerod’s Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/jane.ormerod3
Mary Slechta’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/mary.slechta.7
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 can’t recall exactly what was changed from the rough to the final version, but all of my poems go through at least two drafts (by me), and the editors might have made suggestions after that.
I still question one of the poem’s lines: “For transportation, I used a bike, my feet, or skates.” I don’t know if “skates” is clear. Does it mean roller skates or ice skates? I used both as a kid. But would either mode get me anywhere? I don’t recall going past our porch on roller skates, and I rarely went far on ice skates. During very cold winters, the stream near our house and the water standing in the fields would freeze. If I skated on that ice, I might cover part of a mile.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Everyone has a home, and many people leave their home, but no one forgets their home. This theme came through when I read the poem aloud in at the Shevchenko Scientific Society here in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago. The reading organizer, Oksana Lebedivna, was a Fulbright scholar from Ukraine, and many people in the audience were from Ukraine. Still others were from someplace other than New York. So the idea of home, and of leaving home, might have struck a chord.
Shevchenko Scientific Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shevchenko_Scientific_Society
Oksana Lebedivna’s Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/oksana.lebedivna
I also want readers to take some details of my hometown from the poem. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, in a town that had one street and about thirty houses. The closest towns also had one street.
I was a person of color in this town, and my father, who was white, thought that shouldn’t matter. It might not have mattered to him, but it mattered to me and many of the people around me. Hence, my desire to leave home and live someplace that was the opposite.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The last two stanzas were most emotional. There’s the feeling of not belonging to one’s community, and there’s the idea of escape. I had this image, suggested by a high-school friend, of getting into a car (we had driver’s licenses) and going until the gas ran out.
Recently, our daughter asked me how long I lived with my parents after I’d finished school. I told her “two weeks.” I didn’t have much of a plan, but I had a destination, and I’ve been here ever since.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? This poem was published first in North of Oxford, an online journal based north of Oxford Circle, Philadelphia. Years ago, the people from North of Oxford (G.E. Reutter and Diane Sahms Guarnieri) came to New York to read poetry, and I went to Philadelphia to read for them. We’ve kept in touch, and I’ve contributed poems, prose, and reviews to the journal.
https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/
http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/
The second time the poem was published was in my book Tricks of Light, which came out last year. It seems farther back than that, but the Covid crisis telescopes time. The book had a successful Zoom launch; it hasn’t had a live launch. Still, it’s easy to find in the usual places.
Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Cornell University and The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Tricks of Light (Great Weather for Media), Border Crossings (Sensitive Skin), Guess and Check (Gival), Violent Outbursts (Spuyten Duyvil), Haywire (Starcherone, Blue Streak), Tetched (Behler), and Roughhouse (Kaya). Guess and Check won a Bronze Award for multicultural fiction from Electronic Literature. Haywire won the Members’ Choice Award, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution’s fiction best-seller list. Tetchedwas chosen as one of the best books reviewed in 2006 by Chronogram magazine.
He received a 2012 fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize.
His work is anthologized in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth), Up Is Up, but So Is Down (NYU), Screaming Monkeys (Coffeehouse) and other collections. His stories have appeared in Asia Literary Review, Copper Nickel, CutBank, Faultline, Fiction, Fiction International, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The International Herald Tribune, The Laurel Review, Little Patuxent Review, The New York Times, Phoebe, Pleiades, Potomac Review and many other publications.
He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute, Medgar Evers College and the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA, and has taught at Pace University, the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the Asian American Writers Workshop. He has visited the Community College of Philadelphia, the Gunston School, Rowan University, Rutgers University Camden, St. Lawrence University, San Jose State University, Tennessee Tech University, the University of Pennsylvania, Utica College and the University of Northern Colorado.
He is a one-time winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café Friday slam, the Poetry Versus Comedy slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, and the Syracuse poetry slam. He was selected to read in the former home of East German President Erich Honecker in Berlin. He has been a featured reader in Budapest, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Paris and Singapore, as well as in a number of U.S. cities.
He lives with his wife and his daughter in Manhattan.
Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM 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