#5 Backstory of the Poem "Side Yard" by Ellen Foos

Chris Rice Cooper 

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

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***This is the 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.  Links to other BACKSTORY OF THE POEM features are at the end of this piece.

Backstory of the Poem

“Side Yard”

by Ellen Foos

http://ellenfoos.blogspot.com

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?

The first draft developed in one sitting, then some minor edits as I fine-tuned it and also took it to the critique group to which I belong. Someone actually advised me to take the White House line out of there but I decided to keep it. Maybe it wasn't such bad advice!

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail.

I believe I was at work when I started and finished the poem.

What month and year did you start writing this poem?

I wrote this poem in October of 2014

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?

He built the house we lived in all our lives, my mother and their seven children. He did all the repair work himself so the ladder was a constant presence around the house. The neighborhood did change and get built up over the years but not to the extent that it was ruined. I did move to NYC after college for ten years and never returned to live near my parents. This poem is mostly nostalgia for the carefree aspect of childhood. (Foos's parents above left)

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?

I didn't know when I started writing the poem that it would end in such a feeling of loss for my father. He was a product of his generation and not particularly good at expressing his feelings. (Foos Family the day of Joseph Foos's funeral.  Ellen Foos up front on the left dressed in black).

What is your father’s full name?
Joseph Foos

Birthdate and the day he died?

May 21, 1921 – June 2014

Is this an accurate analysis? The first lines of this poem tell of childhood play and innocent pranks in a family oriented safe neighborhood.  Then commercialization came into the neighborhood which is identified as New York City.  Soon the elite of New York City such as Donald Trump took

over these neighborhoods and created neighborhoods that had no room or space for family intimacy or even neighbors.  Along with the death of what neighbors and family used to be the author of the poem has to deal with the death of her own father.   And the realization that she not

only lost her father but her way of life, her neighborhood or family or own view of America.  There still is hope – even though the side yard no longer exists – there is a ladder that her father left there.  How can she reach it?

Your analysis starts out fine but the mention of the White House didn't have any political message. I always felt sorry when I lived in NYC that the natural world was inaccessible. That probably did enter into the poem.

Has this poem been published before?  And if so where?

The poem was published here: Contemporary American Voices (January 2015) https://contemporary
americanvoices.
wordpress.com/2015/01/01/
januarys-featured-poet-james-keane/

Side Yard

When we tired of the backyard

there was the side yard,

accessory to our crimes,

a hideout, a conduit for racing

full circle around the house.

The best place to backtrack

when being pursued.

Lilac trees on the side

had a shaggy look.

It was easy to peek

into basement windows.

The neighbors were close

but never onto us.

Corner lots expanded blandly,

we had two sharp corridors.

Here’s why I left New York City,

no side yard.

Who speaks of

the White House lawn

and thinks side yard?

When I lost my father,

I thought how it changed me,

the side yard I’ll never visit again,

the ladder he stored there.

From The Remaining Ingredients, copyright 2016 by Ellen Foos. Do not copy or distribute in any form without express permission of the author.

Ellen Foos is a senior production editor for Princeton University Press and the publisher of Ragged Sky Press. She has received fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. 
She coedited Dark as a Hazel Eye: Coffee & Chocolate Poems and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems. Her new poems are gathered in The Remaining Ingredients and have appeared in Mead, The Curator, Edison Literary Review, and Contemporary American Voices.

Ellen Foos

http://ellenfoos.blogspot.com

Contemporary American Voices

http://contemporaryamericanvoices.com

The Remaining Ingredients

https://www.amazon.com/Remaining-Ingredients-Ellen-M-Foos/dp/1933974206/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517239417&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Remaining+Ingredients+book

Princeton University Press

https://press.princeton.edu

Ragged Sky Press

http://www.raggedsky.com

Dark as a Hazel Eye:  Coffee & Chocolate Poems

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Hazel-Eye-Coffee-Chocolate/dp/1933974184

Eating Her Wedding Dress:  A Collection of Clothing Poems

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Eating+Her+Wedding+Dress%3A++A+Collection+of+Clothing+Poems+

001  December 29, 2017

Margo Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-new-crc-blog-series-backstory-of-poem.html

002  January 08, 2018

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake Café”

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-new-crc-blog-series-backstory-of-poem.html

003 January 12, 2018

Barbara Crooker’s “Orange”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/a-new-crc-blog-series-backstory-of-poem_12.html

004 January 22, 2018

Sonia Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-fourth-installment-of-new-crc-blog.html

005 January 29, 2018

Ellen Foos’s “Side Yard”

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/5-backstory-of-poem-sidewalk-by-ellen.html

006 February 03, 2018

Susan Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/02/6-backstory-of-poem-susan-sundwalls.html

007 February 09, 2018

Leslea Newman’s “That Night”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/02/7-backstory-of-poem-that-night-by.html

008 February 17, 2018

Alexis Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/02/8-backstory-of-poem-june-fairchild-isnt.html

009 February 24, 2018

Charles Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/02/9-backstory-of-poem-gift-of-year-with.html

010 March 03, 2018

Scott Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/chris-ricecooper-caccoopaol.html

011 March 10, 2018 
Arya F.  Jenkins “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph, “History Abandoned"  https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/11-backstory-of-poem-after-diane.html

012 March 17, 2018

Angela Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/12-backstory-of-poem-series-angela.html

013 March 24, 2018

Jan Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/13-backstory-of-poem-jan-steckels.html

014 March 31, 2018

Ibrahim Honjo’s “Colors”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/14-backstory-of-poem-ibrahim-honjos.html

015 April 14, 2018

Marilyn Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/04/15-backstory-of-poem-ode-to_14.html

016  April 27, 2018

Beth Copeland’s “Reliquary”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/04/16-backstory-of-poem-reliquary-by-beth.html

017  May 12, 2018

Marlon L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/05/17-backstory-of-poem-swallows-of.html

018  May 25, 2018

Juliet Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/05/18-backstory-of-poem-arterial.html

019  June 09, 2018

Alexis Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/06/19-backstory-of-poem-stiletto-killer.html

020 June 16, 2018

Charles Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/06/20-backstory-of-poem-at-least-i-can.html

021  July 05, 2018

Marla Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/07/21-backstory-of-poem-wind-chimes-by.html

022 July 13, 2018

Julia Gordon-Bramer’s “Studying Ariel”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/07/22-backstory-of-poem-studying-ariel-by.html

023 July 20, 2018

Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus Zombie”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/07/23-backstory-of-poem-jesus-zombie-by.html

024  July 27, 2018

Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag 2016”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/07/24-backstory-of-poem-brag-2016-by.html

025  August 01, 2018

Seth Berg’s (It is only Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/08/25-backstory-of-poem-it-is-only.html

026  August 07, 2018

David Herrle’s “Devil In the Details”

https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/08/26-backstory-of-poem-devil-in-details.html

Andreas Knapp's THE LAST CHRISTIANS: "Christians: The Unlikely Immigrants"

Chris Rice Cooper 

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright privilege by:  Public Domain, CCSAL, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law, or given copyright privilege by the copyright holder which is identified beneath the individual photo.

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

The Last Christians:  Stories of Persecution, Flight, Resilience in the Middle East

by Andreas Knapp

“Christians:  The Unlikely Refugees”

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/witness/the-last-christians

“Jonah sighs, “We have lost everything.  Even our history.  After nearly two thousand years, we have been uprooted.  Can such an old tree ever be transplanted?”  He goes on to relate how IS terrorists cut down and burned all the trees in his family’s garden in Mosul – a symbolic act by those seeking the root-and-branch destruction of the Christian population.

-Excerpt, The Last Christians, page 36

       

Two thousand years ago the Man named Jesus walked the very same soil and spoke the very same language that Christians from Mosul, Iraq walk and speak to this very day; but their numbers are slowly disintegrating due to oppression bought on by the Islamic State.    Most people are not aware of these Aramaic speaking Christians who have existed and strived for centuries and who are presently enduring every form of persecution known to mankind.

       German native and priest Father Andreas Knapp, 60, resides in the housing project of Grunau in Leipzig, Germany, which is a temporary home to these Iraqi and Syrian Christians who have been forced out of their own homeland.

My community, the Little Brothers of Jesus, traces its origins back to this adventurer turned desert monk.  Four of us have shared a house in a prefab housing project on the outskirts of Leipzig for the past ten years, and every year we invite friends and members of our parish to our ceremony on the first Sunday of Advent.  When we were searching for a theme for our social 2014 event, my fellow brother, Gianluca, had a brilliant idea:  “Charles de Foucault (Left)  spent six years living as a monk in Syria.  I have a Syrian colleague who’s lived in Leipzig for years and is a Christian.  He could tell us about the situation of Christians in Syria.”  We liked the idea and Gabriel and his family were duly invited.

       As our little gathering gets under way, we are astonished to see more faces in the room.  Gabriel has interpreted our invitation very freely and brought a number of refugees from Syria and Iraq along with him.

Father Andreas cares for these Christians, counseling them on spiritual matters, as well as the trauma in their past and the trauma of living in a foreign country.  He aids them in adapting to their new environments:  from helping them fill out paper work to teaching them how to adapt to a new culture. They are the immigrants, the strangers in the strange country, seeking asylum wherever they can find it. 

One of these families - is Yousif and his wife Tara and their two children – 12-year-old son Amanuel and 10-year-old daughter Shaba.  The family of four live in the 11-story apartment block in the Militzer Alee on the third floor.  Yousif deals with not only the persecution for being a Christ-centered Christian but the guilt of having to leave behind his sick father in order to save his wife and children.  

       Two years after the family’s forced exodus from Mosul, Iraq Yousif with the help of Father Andreas (Right) is able to get a legal and valid passport and plans to visit his father after the New Year of 2016; but his father dies and the plans for the trip of reunion are turned to a trip of mourning.  Father Andres pledges to accompany Yousif from Germany to Mosul, Iraq and attend his father’s funeral with him.       

With only a knapsack for his luggage, Father Andres (Left) encounters people from the region of Iraq and Syria who are Christ-loving Christians and have for over 2000 years claimed this homeland as their birth.

       Father Andreas Knapp detailed his journey and personal experiences in the book The Last Christians Stories of Persecution, Flight, and Resilience in the Middle East published in September of 2017 by Plough Publishing House with cover photograph by Louai Beshara; and translation by Sharon Howe.

      

These Christians not only have the same language and belief in the gospel as identified by Jesus but also share the same ideology as Jesus Christ:  to love the Lord God with all their heart, love their neighbors and their enemies. The most

controversial ideology held and exemplified by Jesus Christ is that of practicing non-violence,

which these Christians believe is essential to the expression of their faith.   And this essential expression or tenant of their faith is not exemplified begrudgingly but out of love for Christ and their neighbor and enemy– they practice non-violence even in the face of severe persecution to the elderly, men, women, children, and even babies.

       These elderly, men, women, children and babies for simply being Christian were and are persecuted in numerous ways:

-forced to pay protection money in the disguise as special taxes.  If they do not pay the money the individuals are brutally murdered or have limbs cut off.

* From January to June of 2014 Christians were forced to pay protection money to the jihadists in the amount of $15 million dollars per month.

-stripped of money, property and possessions:

       * Christian homes marked scarlet red, a signal that the home was Christian and an invitation for extremists to loot and destroy the home.

-rape and forced prostitution of Christian girls and women

*Christian girls and women were raped for not wearing a veil.

* One woman was raped and beaten repeatedly for days by 12 men.  These rapes can turn to bestial abuse; one woman was so distraught about the abuse that she took rat poison in hopes of a quick death but convulsed for hours before she died.

       *The IS warriors consider the “unbelieving” girls and women to be their own rewards for being warriors.  As a result, these girls and women were raped repeatedly and some sold in slave sex trade market.

-bomb attacks and destruction of Christian businesses.

       *On December 25, 2013, at least 26 Christians were killed and 38 Christians wounded in a car bomb attack in the Christian marketplace of Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood.

-murder

* In 2008, Muslim extremists kidnapped Bishop Pilos Faraj Rahho (Left) Their goal was to force the church to supply them with Christian suicide bombers in exchange for Bishop Pilos Faraj Rahho’s life.   His church exemplified Jesus’s teaching and example of non-violence and he was murdered.

-kidnapping

       *On September 10, 2006 Syrian Orthodox Priest Abuna Paulos Iskandar (Right) of Yousif’s family’s home church Mar Aphrem – was kidnapped by Muslim extremists, who demanded that the church disown a speech given by Pope Benedict XVI in Regensbur, Germany: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman such as his command to spread the sword the faith he preached.”  The relatives of Priest Iskandar disowned the speech and paid the ransom.  Priest Iskandar’s legs and arms were cut off; he was disemboweled; and then beheaded.

-forced conversion to the Muslim faith

       * The Christians were forced out of their homeland of Mosul only to be given a welcome back but then again given a choice on July 18, 2014 by self appointed caliph of the IS the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi  – convert to our form of Muslim or be killed by the sword

-desecration of historical churches, cannons, and relics some thousands of years old.

       *In April of 2015, Mosul’s Cathedral Church of Saint Ephrem was looted by the Islamic religious fighters and is now known as the “Mosque of the Majahideen.”  This desecration from a church to a radical mosque included the severing of the cross at the arms and the body covered by the Islamic State flag and crest.    

-desecration of dead bodies –killing people and blowing up the bodies to tiny shreds in order to prevent proper burial. 

       *On June 3, 2007 Muslim extremists killed Abuna Reghild (also known as Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni) and three deacons and blew up their corpses disintegrating it into tiny shreds.

      

Father Andreas (Right) reveals in his book how appalled and horrified he was of the atrocities these Christians endure but more importantly he questions himself if he has done everything he can to be aware of the atrocities that are happening.

I wonder whether I haven’t been paying enough attention to the persecution of Iraqi Christians in the news.  Or do such stories simply vanish too quickly from the radar of our Western media?  The unfortunate law of habitation dictates that when terror attacks are carried out with such brutal regularity, they become too routine to mention – and I, like anyone else, am a consumer of news.  In that sense, the Mosul Christians share the fate of victims in many of the world’s trouble spots.  Who spares a thought for the murdered of El Salvador, the gang wars in Congo, the torture victims in the prisons of many dictatorships or the attacks still being carried out in Baghdad?

In 1990 there were 1.4 million Christians actively worshiping in five hundred churches in Iraq; 200,000 and 30 churches resided in Mosul alone.  Today it is declared a “Christian free zone.”

      

There is so much more in this book – Father Andres (Below Left)  talks about the misconceptions of Muslims and the danger in grouping all Muslims as radical or extremists; he talks about the Armenian Christian Genocide of 1915; but more importantly he asks two vital questions to himself and to other Christians across the globe:

Whenever I hear stories like this and meet Christians of such courage, I can’t help but wonder:  How much is my faith worth to me?  How high a price would I be prepared to pay?