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 love telling the story of the penultimate poem in my most recent collection, THE QUEEN OF QUEENS. The poem, “The Challenger,” recounts the speaker’s response to the Challenger disaster in January of 1986. I chose this poem because it was conceived late 2016, early 2017 as I was walking home from my local YMCA. We had been listening “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse and her voice was still in my head as I walked (which is always generative for me; I think it’s the rhythms). The sky was very clear, and I was in the process of finishing my previous manuscript, MY TARANTELLA. I was thinking of Amy, and the sky reminded me of the sky the day the Challenger exploded. Up here, in Massachusetts, it was cold and clear. A beautiful day.
From there, I wrote “A God Lives in the Amygdala,” (published in TINDERBOX POETRY JOURNAL, 2017) where images of the smoke plumes from the explosion looked like “an angel’s viscera.” I was 24 when it happened and horribly narcissistic.
That image, though, and that time, stayed with me. In 2020, I returned to that image and wrote “The Challenger,” which tackled head-on my own excesses: men, drugs, sadness. The image of the smoke followed me!
So, the “final form” happened twice (so far), yet four years apart!
Click to read about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster
Click to view the music view to Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”
Click to watch the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
Click to order MY TARANTELLA from Amazon
Click to visit the Tinderbox Poetry Journal Archive
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I write—predominantly—in my home. “The Challenger” was written during the pandemic, so my home was very crowded with both kids back here and my husband working out of the house! I wrote most of THE QUEEN OF QUEENS in my bedroom, on this old industrial-style desk and my beautiful long-haired black cat, Maria, on the bed behind me. The light here is gorgeous. Just above my desk are these two casement windows facing west, so in the late afternoons, the light is golden.
I have all my books here, too!
What month and year did you start writing this poem? January, 2020. I remember because it was the anniversary of the explosion. Also, I finished it just in time for it to be added to my chapbook!
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?
Here is a section from the very first draft:
Someone said uh-oh. (I’ve seen so many televised deaths
since that one, right?) I think I knew when Christa’s
parents knew: looking up from the stands, hot under
that sun, shading their eyes.
Obviously, this is very clunky. My impulse, though, was about “knowing” and “seeing.” The speaker in this poem is very immature, very short-sighted in so many ways. I wanted to show this differently though. I was afraid, too, of cheapening Christa McAuliffe’s death as well as my parents’ grief.
George Bush Announces Christa McAuliffe as the First Teacher to go to Space
In 1985, Christa McAuliffe Tells TODAY About Being A Challenger Crew Member
https://search.aol.com/aol/video;_ylt=A0geJaK5izpinLQAKS1pCWVH;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3BpdnM-?q=christa+mcauliffe&s_it=searchtabs&v_t=comsearch#id=2&vid=1f61561e49c9223539fab68991c7012d&action=view
Christa McAuliffe HD Training Footage 1985 STS-51-L
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? This poem concerns itself with “knowing.” The whole book is about being able to predict what might happen as we go about our lives. Could we change anything? Would we? The Challenger disaster occurred during a pivotal time in the country, when “greed was good,” and we had an administration that had ignored the AIDS pandemic as it raged. Sounds familiar….but still, here we were!
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The first line, “I came home to my mother and cried myself into strep/fevering over a boy. . . .” Again, my book is about knowing things, seeing things. My mother had Alzheimer’s Disease, and in the end, knew very little. And yet, I still think of going to her.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? This poem was published in my chapbook, IN THE YEAR OF FERRARO, from Nixes Mate Press (2020).
Click to order IN THE YEAR OF FERRARO from Nixes Mate Press
https://nixesmate.pub/product/in-the-year-of-ferraro-%C2%B7-jennifer-martelli/
It is (also) in my full-length collection, THE QUEEN OF QUEENS, just released from Bordighera Press (2022).
Click to order QUEEN OF QUEENS from Bordighera Press
Jennifer Martelli (she, her, hers) is the author of The Queen of Queens (forthcoming, Bordighera Press, 2022) and My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. She is also the author of the chapbooks In the Year of Ferraro (Nixes Mate Press) and After Bird, winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work will appear or has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem a Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Thrush, Cream City Review, Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review(winner, Photo Finish contest), and Poetry. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series. Jennifer Martelli received degrees from Boston University and the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers.
Click to visit Jennifer Martelli’s website
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