*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
***This is the forty-ninth
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.
#49 Backstory of the Poem
“Anniversary”
by Jennifer Martelli
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? This poem probably pulls together most of the major themes of My Tarantella (http://www.jennmartelli.com/publications.html).
I’d
been writing the book for about a year and a half; in July of 2017, I was
taking part in the Plath Poetry Project (https://allpoetry.com/Poppies-In-July )where
we were prompted to write a poem in response to a Plath poem from Ariel (https://www.
amazon.com/Ariel-Poems-Sylvia-Plath/dp/0060931728
/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid
=1544830542&sr=1-1) written on that day, so “Poppies in July” (https://www.poem
hunter.com/poem
/poppies-in-july/) was the prompt.
amazon.com/Ariel-Poems-Sylvia-Plath/dp/0060931728
/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid
=1544830542&sr=1-1) written on that day, so “Poppies in July” (https://www.poem
hunter.com/poem
/poppies-in-july/) was the prompt.
Also, I had just been
reading about Plath’s relationship with Ted Hughes, (Below Right) and learned that he
probably was physically abusive.
The country was about six
So “Anniversary” was, in a way, a meta-poem, tracking my thought process. I needed to write this in sections—paragraphs—to separate each subject, each object.
Originally, I was
going to remove the sections as structural markers, but I decided to keep them.
I wanted each one to be a little room adding to the narrative
Where were you when you started to actually
write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. Like almost all of the
poems in My Tarantella, “Anniversary” was written at my home. So, there
were pots of basil I moved around my tiny yard; I do have a patio in my
backyard (the flagstones, though, are from my childhood home); I do have a
closet with belt hooks, a laundry room.
Oh, and I had just discovered Queen of Night tulips that
spring. I was walking down my street and noticed about 15 or 20 growing from
this small patch in my neighbor’s front yard. I had never seen black tulips
before!!! Suddenly, Queen of Night tulips were all over my book. They have a
very short life-span. It seemed that suddenly, they were gone. I live on the
ocean, so there are beach stones all over the place and people like to stack them,
which is a spooky thing to me! “Anniversary” is truly a home-grown poem.
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 went
through four drafts prior to the book, and then two more during copy-editing. I
don’t have my hand-written copies!!!
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? Yes, the original “campaign” t-shirt that I used in the poem was “I wish Hillary had married O.J.” I chose to take that out because I didn’t want to insert a racial overtone or tone-deafness. The book, and the intent of the poem, focuses on violence toward women.
I ordered the poem
differently: it began with the Queen of Night tulips (section 5) and it never
mentioned Hillary Clinton by name. When I changed the campaign slogan to “Trump
that Bitch,” I put in Hillary. Prior to that, it was unclear if I meant
Hillary (below: Far right), Plath (below: Far Left), or Kitty Genovese (below: Middle).
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of
you to write and why? I
think that section 3 was the hardest. This section addresses female misogyny.
“I saw a woman wearing a silk-screen t-shirt: Trump that bitch. So I knew it was over.” This was—and still is—the
most painful part of what happened in 2016, that more white women voted for
Trump. I think there was a part of me that knew what was in store for us come
November.
Anniversary
A mouth just bloodied—Sylvia Plath, “Poppies in July”
1.
A year ago this summer,
I grew
Genovese basil in a
fake clay pot I’d move around my home to follow
the arc of direct
sunlight. I’ve thought of Kitty Genovese for a long time: her mouth.
How easy it is to
open a mouth
anywhere, to split
it & split it. I can’t love what I don’t fear.
2.
For my “Plath’s
‘Poppies in July’ Party,” I bought fake rubies shaped like pears,
wore a red skirt,
hung lanterns
from the maples in
my backyard. The skirt=a poppy,
the lanterns=love,
the pear-shape=eyes or a womb. The rubies?
The first time I was
slapped in the mouth.
3.
A year ago this
summer, I saw
a man wearing a
silk-screen t-shirt: Trump that bitch.
Hillary’s mouth was
a red slash.
I saw a woman
wearing a silk-screen t-shirt: Trump that bitch. So I knew it was over.
After the solstice
or before the equinox.
4.
I thought of Kitty
so hard, I was afraid she would manifest, smiling—
in the dark corner
of my laundry room, from my closet hook where belts hang—
I thought of her so
deeply, it was like sex, far up & slow &
violent. And then I
became unafraid.
I knew she was gone.
5.
This is how the
Queen of Night tulips topple: first, their lips
let loose the dark
petals:
they puddled like a
silk gown. Then from the dug-up dirt,
four rock cairns,
high as my knee: beach stones gray
with white veins
stacked.
6.
I still can’t love
what I don’t fear.
Even though I’m
throwing a party, we all know
there’s sadness
underneath the flagstones.
It’s a farewell
party. We’ll leave claw & bite marks.
In the future,
someone might know what we meant.
Her work has appeared or will appear in The Sycamore Review, Sugar House, Superstition Review, Thrush, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Her prose and
artwork have been published in Five-2-One,
The Baltimore Review, and Green
Mountains Review. Jennifer Martelli has been nominated for Pushcart and
Best of
****************
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”
