In early autumn, there’s a
concerto
possible when
there’s a guest in the house
and the guest is
taking a shower and the host
is washing up from
the night before.
With each turn of
the tap in the kitchen,
the water
temperature increases or drops
upstairs and the
guest responds with little groans—
cold water for the
low notes, hot water for high.
His hair is soapy,
the tub slippery
and with his
groaning he becomes the concerto’s
primary instrument.
Then let’s say the night
was particularly
frosty and now the radiators
are knocking, filling
the house with warmth,
and the children are
rushing around outside
in the leaves before
breakfast, calling after
their Irish setter
whose name is Cleveland.
And still asleep,
the host’s wife is making
those little sighs
one makes before waking,
as she turns and
resettles and the bed creaks.
Standing at the
sink, the host hums to himself
as he thinks of the
eggs he’ll soon fry up,
while already
there’s the crackle of bacon
from the stove and
the smell of coffee. The mild groans
of the guest, the
radiator’s percussion,
children’s high
voices, the barking of a dog,
even the wife’s
small sighs and resettlings
combine into this
autumn concerto of which
not one of the
musicians is aware as they drift
toward breakfast and
then a leisurely walk
through the fields
near the house – two friends
who haven’t seen
each other for over a year,
Much later they will
remember only a color,
a golden yellow, and
the sound of their feet
scuffling the
leaves. A day without rancor
or angry words, the
sort of day that builds a life,
becoming a soft
place to look back on,
and geese, geese
flying south out of winter.
Poetry Questions: Stephen Dobyns
By Rebecca Foresman
April 2, 2012
This week, the magazine features
“Determination,” by Stephen Dobyns. I had the chance to ask the author about
the kindling and spark that fed this comic poem.
_“Determination” begins with and
loops back to that infamously slippery “first word” of the blank page. The poem
is about an amateur writer’s restless foray into a first draft: as soon as the
first word is set down, the writer’s attention wanders from the page to his
pen, desk, and walls, then beyond walls into the far reaches of “even before
college, / back in high school in fact” before landing once again on the “first
word of his first novel”— but no further.
I’m curious: how did you settle
on a fitting “first word” to start this poem?
I wanted a word that was noisy,
silly, inappropriate, and didn’t suggest a narrative. “Onion,” for instance,
satisfies three requirements, but it’s not noisy. There was an absurdity to
“cabbage” that I liked. Try saying it ten times very quickly.
Do your poems typically spring
from an unusual or evocative word? Or does your inspiration for a poem begin
with an image, something not moored in language?
My poems always begin with a
metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound.
And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there
is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much
like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook. So I wait and hope to reel it
in. Sadly, a certain number get away.
This poem—particularly its wry
yet empathetic tone—seems to spring from personal experience with an unruly
pen.
I can’t believe there is a poet
who hasn’t eagerly put down a word one day, only to erase it the next day
deciding it was sheer lunacy. It’s part of the process of selection. As for the
fellow in the poem, what he does may be comic, but he himself is very serious.
He’s a sliver of the human condition.
In past drafts of fiction or
poetry, have you struggled to get over the hurtle of the first word?
The beginning is usually written
in my head, so I have lots of time to find that first word. However, once I am
into the poem that word may be changed, or the whole line may be cut or moved
elsewhere. Every bit of it must remain malleable until I decide that the poem
is finished. But even then I can continue to make small changes long after the
book has been published. Perfection is approached, but never reached. Still,
that process of approach can last for years.
“Determination” stands out for
its humor. The first five stanzas roll irresistibly toward the punch line, so
to speak, of the final line.
Many of my poems try to use a
comic element to reach a place that isn’t comic at all. The comic element works
as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing. In “Determination,” it can
propel the reader back through the poem a second time.
Did it take considerable revision
to shape the rhythm of “Determination” into a humorous ending? Or did the lines
naturally take on this tone from the start?
The rhythm I wanted took a long
time. The poem is a single sentence that slows, speeds up, and slows again.
That took a lot of fiddling with line breaks, pauses within the line, use of
double stresses, off rhyme, and other stuff. I think of a poem as a sound on
the page, and I try to discover a sound that will inform the content. Also, I
had been writing a number of poems where I wanted to put the effect before the
cause, more or less. “Determination” was one of them.
_There is a pervasive—perhaps
culturally instilled—superstition that certain materials or spaces enable the
writer’s Muse. The writer in “Determination” seems to cleave to this, hoping to
generate a novel. But his superstition goes beyond artistic aspiration. The
writer hopes that the desk and lamps will bring him dignity, redemption, and
self-preservation:
… a place planned
for many years
… about which
he’d dreamed in free moments
at his office, and which kept him
sane during those tedious years
of doing the taxes of strangers,
but now at last begun…
Writers can be very
superstitious. They must use a particular pen, a particular kind of paper. They
must write in an empty room with bare white walls and no windows or a crowded
room with lots of windows. Apart from perhaps journalism, a writer cannot will
himself or herself write. Instead, the right brain will open a crack, and
something pops out. Who knows why? So the next time the writer might try to
repeat the same conditions, because most writers fear that once the piece is
finished they will never write again. A lot of lucky rabbits feet are used up
that way.
Do you have an ideal environment
for composition?
Not necessarily. I like it to be
quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in
my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find
myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I’d rather not accumulate
superstitions.
Is your composition space
markedly different from the environment that inspires you to write poetry in
the first place?
A poem, for me, can begin
anyplace. It can wake me up in the middle of the night. At least a dozen have
started when I was swimming laps. I fuss with one line in my head, then another
and another, and then I have to write it down. I’d prefer them to show up only
when I’m ready at my desk, but they are willful.
Do you believe—as the writer in
“Determination” seems to hope—that inspiration gathers urgency and momentum if
it is prepared for, but not acted upon? Or do you lean toward the theory that
writing is a muscle that must be exercised daily to hone agility and increase
imaginative circulation? Perhaps you believe something else entirely?
Writing is a job, a craft, and
you learn it by trying to write every day and by facing the page with humility
and gall. And you have to love to read books, all kinds of books, good books.
You are not looking for anything in particular; you are just letting stuff seep
in. But I think you have to learn how the craft developed, what led to what,
and how that led to something else. And you have to gain a sense of the culture
in which it was written, the history of that culture, and how it affected what
came next. You are also trying to absorb more of your unconscious into your
conscious mind and to educate your choices, while realizing you will always be
a student. It’s a long list, and none of it will necessarily make you
successful. The fellow in “Determination” has a lot of work ahead of him.