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***This is the forty-sixth
in a never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote
that specific poem. All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end
of this piece.
#046 Backstory of the Poem
“Poem in the Throat”
by Nancy Dafoe
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 had not written a poem in a while and felt
stopped. After reading the poems, I thought about all the people in the world
who live under life-threatening (situations) and write poetry as food for the
soul. There is an urgency to poetry that we can (not) forget. These Cuban poets
from the revolution reminded me. My poem became my experience of this
discovery.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great
detail. I was wandering around
in an amazing bookstore called Before Your Quiet Eyes in Rochester. (https://www.facebook.com
This little bookstore is a throwback to another era when bookstores were homes
to writers and readers, the owner on hand, asking if anyone needed anything. 
In
the hallway, the owner had coffee and treats set out for those who were
attending a reading by an author. The shelves are overflowing with an eclectic
mix of books, artifacts, and artwork. A painting of a Greek God on canvas is
rolled up, and I unroll it and ask about the artist. Of course, the bookstore
owner Kenneth Kelbaugh (https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.kelbaugh.5lst=100029084873951%3A1314859461
%3A1544119399)
knows the story.
I also find a signed little book of Ursula LeGuinn's (http://www.ursulakleguin.com/) stories
that I buy for a dear friend. This is the kind of maze bookstore where you can
get lost in dreams. Around a corner, I find a collection of Cuban poets that
began the journey to my poem described here.
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And
can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?)
I probably created at
least 5 or 6 drafts of this poem, if not more. I tend to delete early drafts,
so I'm not exactly sure.
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? There were definitely eliminated lines, particularly the ending and
beginning. I wrote and reworked until they felt true to the experience of both
discovery and the necessity of poetry 
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The entire poem is emotional to me because it got me "unstuck"
and brought me to other poets in a very immediate way.
Has this poem been published before?
And if so where? This poem had not been published until it appears
in my new collection.
Poem in the Throat
Utterances not
yet given shape and sound
or
expelled
in
fury, perplexity.
Poet’s search
from the concrete and abstract,
each
trope
unreeling
alone
and scarred
from
a tangled knot of language,
parsed
after landing on the page,
slowly,
elongated like vowels swallowing sorrow.
One mute poet
stumbles over others discovered
in
a basement bookstore—
nothing
shiny and new there:
rough
gems ragged at edges,
worn
covers showing signs of abuse
in
any other arena except reading,
where
rip and stain, those fingerprints,
smudges
are writer’s lovers,
the
reader knowing where to turn again,
one
page earmarked.
How long this
little Cuban book languished
on
a bottom shelf, as if the verses inside
weren’t
woven silk,
their
poetry spouting revolution still new,
excited
voices
heard
again as the book is opened.
One note
claiming proud resistance,
another
suggesting whispers from dense, broadleaf forests.
“Poetica”
jumps off the page entirely,
running
around the bookstore, inhaling freedom.
Seeping through
fabric of Cuban Spanish,
with
hints of Haitian Creole in the neighborhood,
translations
follow across the spread; facing one another,
this
English consonant, that Cuban sonant.
Another poet
claiming America has no right to poetry
with
her oppressor’s bloody teeth,
but
this American oppressor oppresses her own,
and
poets emerge
out from under the jackboot,
waking and calling out
from
this amalgam of a nation.
Cuban poet
writes, poetry of the many is poetry of one
and
one
crude,
erudite,
political,
personal:
too
many spondees, iambs,
this
Cuban Spanish like American English
with
its own character:
here
shallow, over there,
pure
depth
loud
consonants, silent letters.
Leaving the
bookstore, the mute poet finds
a
blind man walks confidently down the street with a cane.
By a pillar,
another poet leans with a poem
in
her pocket.
Like the Cuban
revolutionary,
she
prefers to wear her poetry rather than assign it to shelves.
Poetry, she
said, currency for the living
https://www.facebook.com/nancy.dafoe.3
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM
LINKS
001 December 29, 2017
Margo
Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”
002 January 08, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake
Café”
003 January 12, 2018
Barbara
Crooker’s “Orange”
004 January 22, 2018
Sonia
Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”
005 January 29, 2018
Ellen
Foos’s “Side Yard”
006 February 03, 2018
Susan
Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”
007 February 09, 2018
Leslea
Newman’s “That Night”
008 February 17, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
009 February 24, 2018
Charles
Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”
010 March 03, 2018
Scott
Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
011 March 10, 2018
Anya
Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
012 March 17, 2018
Angela
Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
013 March 24, 2018
Jan
Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”
014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim
Honjo’s “Colors”
015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn
Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”
016 April 27, 2018
Beth
Copeland’s “Reliquary”
017 May 12, 2018
Marlon
L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”
018 May 25, 2018
Juliet
Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”
019 June 09, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”
020 June 16, 2018
Charles
Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”
021 July 05, 2018
Marla
Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”
022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s
“Studying Ariel”
023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus
Zombie”
024 July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag
2016”
025 August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only
Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
026 August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In
the Details”
027 August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen
Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
028 August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two
Deaths”
029 August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s
“Faces in a Crowd”
030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The
Risking Point”
031 September 24,
2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After
We Drove”
032 October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s
“Astral”
033 October 13, 2018
Robert Craven’s “I Have
A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
034 October 17, 2018
David Sullivan’s “Paper
Mache Peaches of Heaven”
035 October 23, 2018
Timothy Gager’s
“Sobriety”
036 October 30, 2018
Gary Glauber’s “The
Second Breakfast”
037 November 04, 2018
Heather Forbes-McKeon’s
“Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
038 November 11, 2018
Andrena Zawinski’s
“Women of the Fields”
039 November 00, 2018
Gordon Hilger’s “Poe”
040 November 16, 2018
Rita Quillen’s “My
Children Question Me About Poetry” and “Deathbed Dreams”
041 November 20, 2018
Jonathan Kevin Rice’s
“Dog Sitting”
042 November 22, 2018
Haroldo Barbosa Filho’s
“Mountain”
043 November 27, 2018
Megan Merchant’s “Grief
Flowers”
044 November 30, 2018
Jonathan P Taylor’s
“This poem is too neat”
045 December 03, 2018
Ian Haight’s “Sungmyo
for our Dead Father-in-Law”
046 December 06, 2018
Nancy Dafoe’s “Poem in
the Throat”
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