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 usually draft longhand before going to the computer, but was surprised to find that this originated on Google Docs. The first draft is dated the day after Christmas in 2017, just after my father had suffered a stroke and had spent that holiday in the hospital. Seeing him fragile and frightened, my mother the same, drove my thoughts toward what it means to be strong, how that definition changes as we age. Since I was visiting the hospital daily, I also was spending a lot of time in my childhood home. I imagine I was trying to distract myself by writing, to wrestle with some of these ideas in a way I could understand. It was evident that I didn’t find it successful or compelling as a poem because I didn’t open it again until August of 2020 while doing an exercise where I steal the best lines from my failed poems and try to repurpose them. Mid-quarantine, the new draft became more about aging, the body, and the uncertainties of the future.
Right: Donna In August of 2020.
Copyright by Donna Vorreyer
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I don’t remember. I would guess that I was on the couch in our den for the original draft, probably half-watching a movie or some terrible television. I’m good at tuning things out, and I sometimes like the physical company of noise, my husband, my dogs, when I am drafting. I imagine I was seeking some sort of escape into words. For my revision, I worked almost daily in my office during quarantine, so I was most likely on the couch or at my desk there. I tend to want comfort when I’m drafting and a more formal place to sit when revising.
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? The first draft was called “Bloom” and it began with an image of me as a girl playing in the swirling maple pods outside my childhood home. The lines regarding the “smooth green promise of the seed” and “I want to be peeled back that way” come from this section, but in a completely different context. The whole middle of the original poem, which used other natural images to consider the ideas of strength and invisibility. was cut. It was too abstract, not interesting. The ending lines contained an early version of “how veined and fragile beneath my coat,” an image that I found important and visceral as I left the hospital each day into the Chicago winter.
Right: Donna with her brother at their family home.
Copyright by Donna Vorreyer
There is actually another poem about just that called “After Leaving My Father at the Hospital on Christmas Day” which was written in the same time frame. It was published by Longleaf Review.
https://longleafreview.com/donna-vorreyer/
Most of what was cut is not worth sharing, but the section about strength included the lines “I want instead the strength/ of an iris, papery and and brown-tipped,/its stalk still tensile.” And the ending was more sentimental, less realistic than the final poem ending with “but still it is sprouting.This seed. My heart.”
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? That, despite its title, it is not about desiring a return to youth, but more about the difficulty of admitting that, as weage, it is still important to be seen as something of value, something lovely and full of promise despite all the ways we are breaking or have been broken.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The first two images – the body a mitten full of bees, a drawer or angry brooches – were ones that I struggled with for a long time. The soft container of the body holds so much – scientifically, anatomically – but it also holds hidden stings, pains yet to come that can’t be seen, emotional damage that is invisible from the outside. I wanted to show those to the reader: the surprise of my father’s stroke; the need to appear strong in the face of trials; my own aging body; the inability to change the course of what is to come. Those were emotional to write because I wanted them to feel accurate to my experience.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? Yes, Salamander included it in their Summer 2021 issue.
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
The images in this specific piece are granted copyright: Public Domain, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law.
The other images are granted copyright permission by the copyright holder, which is identified beneath each photo.
Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly
The CRC Blog welcomes submissions. Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7