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 went to visit my mother in her final home, which was an assisted living facility in Mill Valley, CA. We played Bingo and this prose poem basically recounts the experience.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was back home in Portland in my office. It is my daughters’ bedroom from childhood. They are both grown. When everyone moved out, I painted the room pale pink, got pale pink curtains and a pale pink rug. It was like creating the room I wanted to have when I was growing up. Now it is filled with books and art supplies and the preferred lounge of my large goldendoodle Ruthie (RBG).
What month and year did you start writing this poem? This was written in 2015 in the fall. My mother died in December of that year. Although I just blurted it out when I first wrote the poem, as is my habit, I edited it a zillion times, changed the shape, the spacing, etc.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? It is really just a poignant slice of life—describing that scene in the assisted living facility with elders in various states of dementia and other disease. My mother had slight dementia at that point. She was in her mid-90s. Ninety-seven when she died, four days after her 97th birthday.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Just remembering how deft my mother was—how she wouldn’t really accept her decline. She was a lifelong daily exerciser and her physical abilities did not decline until she was like 94. Her lifelong moving was inspirational. I follow her example.
Has this poem been published? And if so where? “Bingo” was just published in The Poeming Pigeon.
Click on the below link to view Leanne Grabel read “Bingo” at a Zoom reading. Grabel’s reading is at the beginning
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