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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The music one looks back on: Stephen Dobyns



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.