Poetic workshop Talk presents: A More Substantial Reason Why I Didn't Contribute As Much To NaPoWriMo

Ah, revisions.

For once, working a poem over and over and over for workshop has become more rewarding and less wearying. In my school days, when I'd revise a poem, I'd get to the point where even if it became a "good" poem thanks to repeated suggestions from the class (and I'd agree with them) I would end up not caring about it as much as when I started. Now, I don't think it's the case--at least not as much.

I can't wait for the training session I'm heading now (commuting to Providence every day on the Amtrak) to finally end so I can rework the ones I jotted down during my failed attempt at the NaPoWriMo challenge and the ones from my last workshop.

Thursday night, I started my third workshop (most likely the last one this year) with Tom Daley, which I hope will be the charmer. The last poem I did with the group was the best to come out in a while. I want to publish it elsewhere, so the draft that is closest to the finished product will only be behind the curtain (ie: in the "comments" section) until Sunday night.

The premise behind the first poem was one of Tom's assignments: take an everyday character in your life and give him mythical or at least outrageous, proportions ("Nestus Gurley" by Randall Jarrell, which I can't find a copy of online, would be one example). I decided to take a chapter from my not-too-distant past.

Mandy

Mandy got more out of cartoons than me,
though we watched together
every time I visited her mother.
It was definitely her drawing talent
that let her see far more potential
as a participant.

All week the neighborhood
requests prints of twenty dollar bills
or a map of all the known Bin Laden sightings
for easier reference during the news.

On weekends there's her father,
who fails to convince her
about things like cigarettes with different
scents, water with coffee beans.

Amidst the custody battle
for her mind, somewhere inside her,
a truth has a chance to grow.
Too young, she pelts the seeds
for revenge, invades the lies
seen on paper, TV, other distractions.

She's added truer monsters and gore
to books of Scooby Doo--
that mystery-in-a-rubber-mask--
and sat back to enjoy the added conflict
to frat, sorority, and phony hipster lives.

She even brought the mouthless manga cat
on her sister's t-shirt to tears,
taunting both of them
like a Buckingham Palace guard.

The criticism of the first version from the workshop could be summed up into two points. 1.) Too much explanatory prose. 2.) The last stanza was the best. I decided I was feeling too close to the subject and focusing too too much on the absurd elements. Hence the new (and inferior) title of the second draft, and the ability to take the poem in a more sentimental direction, making it a completely different poem.

The Artist Daughter

The word balloons in her cartoons
would make you think she was sitting
outside her mother's room
when the potential stepfather visits
and they think she is asleep.

But her mother will tell you
her imagination is only a problem
at school, or on weekends with her father.

He's started to train her drawing hand
on twenty-dollars bills
and a map of the neighboring towns
he found in a drawer.

It distracts her while he explains
that his cigarettes just smell different
and Sambuca is any water
with a coffee bean plopped in.

Where wild things roam,
a cottage home with suspicious architecture
was penciled in--an unaffordable dream house.

For her creative resume,
she attempted to liberate Charlie Brown,
tracing him aside to explain how the dog
just strings him along under his shadow.
She hasn't treated her pets well since.

She even brought the mouthless manga cat
on her sister's t-shirt to tears,
taunting both of them
like a Buckingham Palace guard.

She sketches capes on most photos
of the men her mother dates.
It gives them the power to want to stay.

For my last class, I merged them into what you'll see if you click on "comments" between now and the end of the weekend. Yeah, I'll probably take out the stanza about the cigarettes and coffee beans, but I really liked it until I came up with better lines.