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? I wrote this poem during my MFA so it is about a decade old. Though I can’t remember everything about the drafting, I do distinctly remember the poem existing before the title. Some colleagues were studying mappa mundi and the concept seemed to fit the speaker’s aspirations. The poem was in a longer form, but since then has been trimmed, published, and republished in my latest book, Aria Viscera (April Gloaming, 2020).
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. Knowing which state I lived in when I wrote this means I wrote it in one of three apartments I lived in during that stint. The most likely is the last one which was a shared two-story apartment where the floors were always dirty and I often sat on a broken blue fake-corduroy couch that was rescued from a dumpster. If I wasn’t sitting there when I typed this, I typed it up from my black moleskine that I used to keep with me, or in a bed that was shoved up against a wall in front of a short hallway leading to a dark toilet. It was written in one of those places, but more importantly, it was written from an emotion that was so deep I didn’t recognize until years later what layers the poem held.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? November of 2011.
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 poem went through 2 drafts in 2011, and then the third almost a year later when it was being revised for inclusion in an anthology. Since then some minor editing of the floating lines has happened that makes the latest version slightly different. So, four or three and half, depending what you count as revision.
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? Absolutely. In the first draft, I had a metaphor about a truffle-hunting pig at the end, “Not knowing those bulbs/of black-gold have shriveled away/without a beast to covet them.” This was fun, but very much a darling that needed to be killed as it combined too many layers of metaphor and personification.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? As I alluded to earlier, this poem is about a recurring issue in my life which is my survival of abuse by narcissists. Much like the romanticized lover in many myths, songs and poems who knows how to please the beloved without need for communication, abusers assume that those they abuse can read their minds. This is because the distorted psychology of narcissism creates a solipsistic version of reality and thus, an inversion of facts. The speaker in this poem is bemoaning that the former lover (a narcissist) never really wanted to know them but is also at peace with the fact that such a “search” never began before the relationship ended. Though I hadn’t done my own research on narcissistic abuse at the time of writing this, the sentiment remains intact and further validated by the knowledge I’ve gained since.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? To build on my last answer, I have gained a deeper understanding of what this poem represents as I’ve grown older. Some of the violence toward the speaker’s body felt more painful back when this poem began than the overall solemnity of the knowledge I now have which is that anyone in a relationship with a narcissist is really a side-character in the narrative of the narcissist. Someone who will never be viewed as worthy of getting to know because the narcissist is the hero, and the only one with depth. It’s obvious that this is a flawed and abusive logic used to lead the non-narcissistic loved one on, but at the time I was still in non-romantic relationships with at least two narcissists. I hadn’t yet learned that abuse isn’t relegated to solely romantic love.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? This poem initially appeared in the photography and poetry anthology Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscapes
http://www.open2interpretation.com
and most recently in my newest book, Aria Viscera (April Gloaming, 2020)
Kristi Carter is the author of the poetry collections Aria Viscera(April Gloaming), Red and Vast (dancing girl press), Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem (Porkbelly Press) and Cosmovore (Aqueduct Press). Her work examines the combination of gender and trauma in 20th Century poetics. Her fields of interest include trauma narratives, trauma studies via gender studies and intersectionality, and most subfields of study tangential to these, with specific interest on agency and gender. She holds a PhD from University of Nebraska Lincoln and an MFA from Oklahoma State University. She teaches courses in English and Gender Studies at University of Nebraska Lincoln.
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