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***This is the ninetieth 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.
#90 Backstory of the Poem
“The Pose”
by John Hicks
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? Started writing this in June 2007. Had been taking one of Jude Nutter’s poetry
classes at the Loft in Minneapolis, and a Wilfred Owen poem got me thinking
about an Army buddy who died in Viet Nam. Wanted to contrast it with the experience of my Army retirement ceremony. Did a mind map of bot topics to flesh out the details but, despite the strong emotional pull, after nine drafts it wasn't coming together.
In August 2016 I saw Winslow Homer’s
Trooper
Meditating Beside a Grave at the Joslyn
Museum in Omaha, and saw myself in the trooper.
Restarted the poem using the painting in place of the ceremony, and got
a bit of traction. The next six drafts
were of the soldier in the grave addressing the trooper. It got a tepid response in a workshop.
Tried another draft as a third person
critique of the poem and that led me to realize a parallel between the painting
and The Wall in Washington, D.C. I used
first person for myself in the Wall part of the poem, and after twenty-one more
revisions and two more museum visits it was done.
Where were you when you started to
actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. Probably began on a yellow pad in my apartment in
Minneapolis while looking down at the Mississippi.
The 2016 effort was on notecards as I stood
in front of the painting. (The guard
eventually got me a small folding seat so I could sit and write.) The painting’s very small (8” x 16”). Across the room was a very large John Singer Sargent portrait and a Thomas Moran painting of the Grand Canal Venice. The strong emotional impact of the Homer held up nicely against its neighbors.
What month and year did you start
writing this poem?
The first
effort was June 2007; the second, August 2016.
I finished it in June 2018.
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 do
most editing with a pen but, as you can imagine, writing this over so many
years, plus several moves and one flood, I have no paper drafts now.
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?
“Standing with the ease of comrades,/the
cavalryman, a Union private, his face/vague in thought is aligned with the
name/we assume is on the plain board cross/starting to fall like the crosses
behind him.”
“What was cavalry doing in the
trees,/this young stand of pine/a place that filters a charge/into the teeth of
infantry?”
“Sometimes I hear the sound of our charge; not
the hooves,/but the high sound of confidence.
It lives/in these pines, in the wind, in the dark.”
What do you want readers to take from
this poem? During the Viet Nam War, the public blamed its servicemen
for the war. Draftees do not declare war. They are also victims of public policy. At that time, I want people to see what
happens to their own when they don’t take civic responsibility.
Which part of the poem was the most
emotional of you to write and why? The
hardest part was writing about seeing Doug’s face staring back at me in that
issue of Life Magazine. I’d been his squad leader during training—being
so young, he needed a friend. He’d hoped
we would continue serving together.
Has this poem been published before?
And if so where? Wilderness House Literary Review, October 2018, https://www.whlreview.com/
Anything you would like to add? Very nice of you to ask me Chris. Hope your readers find this interesting.
The Pose
Trooper
Meditating Beside a Grave
Winslow
Homer, ca. 1865, Oil on Canvas
The Joslyn
Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
What
the artist sees: The living and the dead, a portrait
in
gray and brown and black; a Union private in a forest,
the
grave before him a simple prop. The
soldier
wears
a cavalry dress uniform in the casual pose
of
someone who wasn’t there. Holds as if
for
Mister Brady—where you have to stand,
and
wait for the impact, the slow push
of
light into darkness. Cavalry cannot live
among
trees. Caught among these pines,
they
would have been easy targets.
Against
the light, even sound dies.
In
this small frame, board crosses mark
where
three fell. This large one facing the
private,
leans
away from him. His eyes, shaded by his
cap,
are
locked as though on a name that paint denies us.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Washington, DC
I’m
at The Wall in the gray and brown
of
a Washington winter, looking for a name.
Doug
and I were draftees; met in Infantry Basic.
Youngest
in my squad, at first you struggled. I
sometimes
carried
your pack, others your rifle and gear.
But you hung on;
built
up; found your feet; became one of us.
In
March, after four months of training, you were ordered
to
Viet Nam. I went to Virginia for
Engineering School.
“Luck
of the draw,” you said. I saw you
again.
You
stared out from the black and white of Life Magazine.
Hamburger
Hill. 23 May 1969. Still eighteen. Now all this
is
locked in black granite with those who fell with you.
I
kneel to touch your name.
The
pose of someone who wasn’t there.
John
Hicks is an emerging poet: has been published or accepted for publication
by: I-70
Review, Ekphrastic Review, Consequence Magazine, Mohave River Review,
Wilderness House Literary Review, Cold
Creek Review, Glint, and
others. He completed an MFA in Creative
Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha in 2016. He writes in the thin air of northern New
Mexico.
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/john.hicks.184007
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
055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
056 January 7, 2019
“The Seamstress:
by Len Kuntz
057 January 10, 2019
"Natural History"
by Camille T Dungy
058 January 11, 2019
“BLOCKADE”
by Brian Burmeister
059 January 12, 2019
“Lost”
by Clint Margrave
060 January 14, 2019
“Menopause”
by Pat Durmon
061 January 19, 2019
“Neptune’s Choir”
by Linda Imbler
062 January 22, 2019
“Views From the
Driveway”
by Amy Barone
063 January 25, 2019
“The heron leaves her
haunts in the marsh”
by Gail Wronsky
064 January 30, 2019
“Shiprock”
by Terry Lucas
065 February 02, 2019
“Summer 1970, The
University of Virginia Opens to Women in the Fall”
by Alarie Tennille
066 February 05, 2019
“At School They Learn
Nouns”
by Patrick Bizzaro
067 February 06, 2019
“I Must Not Breathe”
by Angela Jackson-Brown
068 February 11, 2019
“Lunch on City Island,
Early June”
by Christine Potter
069 February 12, 2019
“Singing”
by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
070 February 14, 2019
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P. Locke
071 February 18, 2019
“How Silent The Trees”
by Wyn Cooper
072 February 20, 2019
“A New Psalm
of Montreal”
by Sheenagh Pugh
073 February 23, 2019
“Make Me A
Butterfly”
by Amy Barbera
074 February 26, 2019
“Anthem”
by Sandy Coomer
075 March 4, 2019
“Shape of a Violin”
by Kelly Powell
076 March 5, 2019
“Inward Oracle”
by J.P. Dancing Bear
077 March 7, 2019
“I Broke
My Bust Of Jesus”
by Susan Sundwall
078 March 9, 2019
“My Mother
at 19”
by John Guzlowski
079 March 10, 2019
“Paddling”
by Chera Hammons Miller
080 March 12, 2019
“Of Water
and Echo”
by Gillian Cummings
081 082
083 March 14, 2019
“Little
Political Sense” “Crossing Kansas with
Jim
Morrison” “The Land of Sky and Blue Waters”
by Dr. Lindsey
Martin-Bowen
084 March 15, 2019
“A Tune To
Remember”
by Anna Evans
085 March 19, 2019
“At the
End of Time (Wish You Were Here)
by Jeannine Hall Gailey
086 March 20, 2019
“Garden of
Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill
087 March 21, 2019
“Letters
From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman
088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman
089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for
the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois
#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks
