The First Year

And now, we interrupt this ballad-fairy tale-whatever it is already in progress to bring you something completely different....

I'm working on poetry this morning, trying to whip this manuscript of mine into something resembling shape. I created it during my senior year in college, while I was doing an independent study in poetry with Joan Larkin and Kate Johnson. Then I refined it a few years later, when I submitted it to the Yale Younger Poets contest. Now it's been nearly eight years since I first put it together, and I have a ton more poems worth integrating into it, which is great because there were some weaker poems in there originally that I needed to fill space.

Still, at times it's sort of like going back through your middle school yearbook. I cringe at the occasional turn of phrase or maudlin sentiment. But, it's much, much better than the middle school nostalgia trip because I can actually fix the lame crap in my writing.

I can tell it's been a while since I really concentrated on poetry, because when I first started looking at the poems in The First Year, I almost felt afraid to change them, like the roof would cave in or something equally dramatic. I was sitting there trying to decide if I should change a word or tab some lines over or whatever, and I would find myself speculating about it for five minutes instead of actually trying it. As long as you're smart about saving your versions, you can always get the original way back, and the only way to really improve and edit poetry (at least for me) is to really tear it apart and start messing around with it, trying different line breaks or punctuation or whatever the case may be. Actually, the editing process has always been one of the things I love most about writing poetry, which I guess is why it felt so funny to be momentarily paralyzed.

Anyway. Back to it. Cheers. Here, have a poem - this is the first one in The First Year.

she prays

let the birds shit on my head and bring me good fortune.
let the heron fly low over pine trees, o gods
let me round the curve just before it disappears.
let me be kind to the flowers & shameless as leaf-pummeling rains.
let me dance in the rain as if I am already dead.
let the music lead the way into the night’s mazes;
let me come out the other side.
let the sun rise for the first time tomorrow, and turn the sky to ashes.
let us collect the ashes and return them to the water where our loved ones rest.
o gods, let me live amazed; pores gasping, eyes wide.