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***This is the fifty-fifth
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.
#55 Backstory of the Poem
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
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?
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was asked by poet Michael T. Young, (https://www.michaeltyoung.com/) who was guest-editing the journal Shrew (https://www.shrewlitmag.com/), for a one-sentence sonnet.
The sonnet did not
need to rhyme or follow iambic pentameter, but it had to be 14 lines, one
sentence, and have the traditional volta, or twist, at line 9.
So, I had this
in the back of my mind as the Kavanaugh hearings were taking place. Christine
Blasey Ford had come forward to tell her story and many of us were sharing our
experiences of rape and sexual assault.
I shared the story of how I lost my
virginity to a rape at age 13 on Facebook; I was among the many who didn’t
report such crimes when they occurred, or even speak of them, because I felt
such shame and that I was somehow to blame.
I was lying on my
massive tan couch backward when the image of myself as a young alcoholic passed
out on the subway struck me with force, and I jumped to my desk, which is a
mahogany dining room table piled with books, my computer, a printer, magnifying
glasses, pens, writing supplies, dictionaries and surrounded by two long and
high rosewood bookshelves. I began to type fast. As the words came, I realized that this
emotional content might be my one-sentence sonnet. The rush of words of a
survivor would be a long sentence with insistent clauses connected by the
conjunction, “&,” like a sharp inhaled breath.
The poem came out in one piece, fairly rhythmic,
and with rhyme. In the first eight lines, I vary the position of the rhyming
words for a kind of sprung rhythm. In the last six, for the volta, I use more
traditional end rhymes to change the pace and underscore the change in theme
What month and year did you
start writing this poem? September of
2018. (Left) I have included it in my fourth full-length collection, Dora
/ Lora, which is brand new and seeking a publisher.
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?)
Two drafts, pretty similar—as I said, the poem came out pretty much in one
piece. When I submitted it to Michael, he had me take out some semicolons that
were separating the clauses; these, he felt, were too much like end
punctuation. This edit had a good effect, because I then began the volta with
“but,” which underscored the poem’s shift.
I rarely write on paper, and do most of my writing
on a keyboard—my handwriting is abysmal. When I occasionally start a poem on
paper, it is a scrawl of illegible half-ideas.
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? A few words were changed. I just now swapped in “pick” for “select,” and
“scars” for “barbs,” which I had originally. It is not a perfect poem, by any
means, and it is very new; I will probably edit it more when some more time has
passed. Somehow, however, I am attached to the clumsiness of the rhythm at the
beginning, which seems suitable to its subject.
What do you want readers of
this poem to take from this poem? In the first eight lines, I describe a harsh
reality. But the poem is a victory because, in the volta, I reclaim the
vulnerability torn from me by rape and reach out for help, affirming that,
despite my scars, I can still love.
Which part of the poem was
the most emotional of you to write and why?
The volta –
vulnerability comes hard to me.
Has this poem been published before?
And if so where? Issue 8 of Shrew
guest-edited by Michael T. Young is available at https://www.shrewlitmag.com/issue8
&
My love, I see myself in a fur coat lying face down, drunk,
on the floor of the subway train, one heel lost, & I
feel a
hardened man raping me, my virgin soul frost, & awards
are easy, mama says, & they may pick and choose you,
but,
they don’t know you, Ms. Boss, & my father says that I
am
sexy & the time after that is lost & I know I am
fat,
that I cost, & before she dies, mama says she wishes
I was never born, my death in my mother’s eyes, crossed,
but my love, see this chasm &
wall here & be brave for me,
come swim the swamp around me & trust it is not within
me,
or if it is, come love this swamp creature until it is
drained,
and look at the dead in the moat, for here they will remain,
& sit here, still, with me & I will haltingly explain
I still love, beyond scars, beyond
wounds, beyond pain
Larissa Shmailo's new novel is Sly Bang, forthcoming in January 2019 from Spuyten Duyvil; her
first novel is Patient Women
(BlazeVOX).
Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country (MadHat), #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books), In
Paran (BlazeVOX), the chapbook A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva
Press), and the e-book Fib Sequence (Argotist EBooks).
Shmailo’s work has appeared in Plume, the Brooklyn Rail, Fulcrum, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Poetics Research, Drunken Boat, Barrow Street,
Gargoyle, and the anthologies Measure
for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House), Words for the Wedding (Penguin), Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey), Resist Much/Obey Little: Poems for the
Inaugural (Spuyten Duyvil), and many others.
Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the
world's first performance piece, Victory over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, the Brooklyn
Academy of Art, and theaters and universities worldwide.
Shmailo also edited the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian (Big Bridge Press) and has been a translator on the Russian Bible for the American Bible Society. Shmailo's work is int he libraries of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and New York Universityies, The Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn, and other universities and museums.
Larissa Shmailo, Inc.
www.larissashmailo.com
Wikipedia
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”
047 December 11, 2018
Jeffrey Pearson’s
“Memorial Day”
048 December 14, 2018
Frank Paino’s “Laika”
049 December 15, 2018
Jennifer Martelli’s
“Anniversary”
O50 December 19, 2018
Joseph Ross’s “For Gilberto Ramos, 15, Who Died in
the Texas Desert, June 2014”
051 December 23, 2018
“The Persistence of
Music”
by Anatoly Molotkov
052 December 27, 2018
“Under Surveillance”
by Michael Farry
053 December 28, 2018
“Grand Finale”
by Renuka Raghavan
054 December 29, 2018
“Aftermath”
by Gene Barry
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/12/54-backstory-of-poem-aftermath-by-gene.html
055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
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