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***This is the seventieth 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.
#70 Backstory of the
Poem
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P Locke
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?
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?
Well, not really; I
wrote it about six years ago. But I can say its genesis came after the ignoble
square dance I shared with the camel spider. Damn freaky creatures--they’re
actually the stuff of nightmares. Before disposing of the thing, I felt a
little bummed, especially as it curled in on itself and went about its slow,
sad dying. I started thinking about God, and the possessed I remember
convulsing about my church when I was a kid. 
We were Pentecostal, but nowhere
near the Jim Jones level that would make Pentecostals synonymous with batshit
crazy. But after I threw the camel spider into some bushes I got to thinking about
the solemnity of the desert we occupied, the wild dogs and scorpions, the
perfumed mornings bursting from our gardens, and those white birds I watched
each day come and go like the wholly indentured.
Where were you when you started to actually write
the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was in my bedroom in our home in Mexico. In bed, late morning, cup of
coffee vibrating next to me on my bed stand. The floor was hard and cold;
terracotta. We were on the second floor and these great French doors opened up
to a balcony pointing south. Colorful paintings hung on the wall; many pictures
of skeletons wreathed in marigolds, a Diego Rivera print. Pretty innocuous and
typical “Oh-look-at-me-I-live-in-Mexico” art. Boring, really.
My daughters were
in the pool, trying not to freeze to death; we disconnected the gas heater
because it was too expensive to heat the water. But we were in the desert, so it wasn’t like anyone was getting
hypothermia anytime soon.
In general, I like to write first drafts longhand.
Usually in pencil. In one of those faux
leather journals they sell by the pound at Barnes & Noble. And that’s what
I was doing that morning.What month and year did you start writing this poem? October, 2012
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?)
Probably wrote
like 20 drafts? Not sure. Because once I get it into a form I can tolerate, I
transfer to a laptop. From there, I keep at it until I feel it is sufficient.
Very Kurt Vonnegut in my process; I move from word to word until it feels
right. I have no idea what I did with the aforementioned faux leather journal.
Lost in the move back to America? Who knows.
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? I’m sure, but again, no clue.
Because once I transfer to a laptop I save and re-save over the previous
drafts, making the last draft the only draft I have remaining in digital form.
I have many other poems in their longhand form still kicking around, but alas,
they are different poems…
What do you want readers of this
poem to take from this poem? The images. The
way the narrative moves from one idea to the next without asking permission.
That the reader is walking through the overgrowth without a compass and has no
fucking idea how to get home but doesn’t care because the scenery is so bloody distracting.
And that small moments can be beautiful in spite of the danger and the
uncertainty. And really, that readers are satisfied, even if they end up
somewhere completely unexpected.
Which
part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? When I described the lone flyer, because sometimes
I feel like him, alone in an indifferent world. Camus would be proud.
Has this poem been published before? And
if so where?
Yes,
first in the online magazine The Nervous Breakdown: http://thenervousbreakdown.com/clocke/2013/09/daily-commute/#more-113922
And
then my book Ordinary Gods: https://salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=417&a=189
Anything you would like to add? Poetry isn’t cute. And it’s not a hobby—save that
for collecting matchbooks. And if you really want to know, sometimes all I’d
rather be doing is planning my next trip to a town in southern Spain where the
plaza is squared off by orange trees and farmers feed their pigs hazelnuts and
I feel immensely happy because those two details are enough for me.
Daily Commute
By Christopher Locke
September
10, 2013
But
before I could remember the name
of these angled white birds, the way
they filled the skies above our rented
house in Mexico, I had to first anoint
a camel spider in great chuffs of poisonous
oils, unfair really, being trapped as he
was in the terraza corner writhing like
the possessed I remember from my child-
hood church, when I believed men could
call God down from the rafters. And there
were also the dogs at night to deal with,
their barbed cries stringing the air
like broken Christmas lights, tuneless
and savage, unnerving in their confident,
dreamless yaps, envious of their brother
coyote running free in the desert, chained
only to his boundlessness, leaping brush
and cacti and the tiny scorpions which glow
under a black light like absinthe, creatures
we fear the most when strolling our garden’s
dahlia or slipping on our unchecked shoes.
But the birds, stork-like and mute, moving
above in clumps like highway traffic: first
four, then three, then the lone flyer I feel
the most for as he has no one to share his day.
They are dependable every 12 hours, a clock
punching numbness glued to their expressions,
if that’s what birds have, expressions.
The common sparrows will go rustling
in the nearby bamboo, gossiping the green
leaves past frenzy, but these white ones,
their wispy legs dragging useless behind
them, glide silently above us, joyless
and sober, forcing our daughters to point
while splashing in the pool, marvel these
bright tufts made brighter by the desert’s
retreating light, all going home, all done
for the day. Yes, that’s right: Snowy Egret.
of these angled white birds, the way
they filled the skies above our rented
house in Mexico, I had to first anoint
a camel spider in great chuffs of poisonous
oils, unfair really, being trapped as he
was in the terraza corner writhing like
the possessed I remember from my child-
hood church, when I believed men could
call God down from the rafters. And there
were also the dogs at night to deal with,
their barbed cries stringing the air
like broken Christmas lights, tuneless
and savage, unnerving in their confident,
dreamless yaps, envious of their brother
coyote running free in the desert, chained
only to his boundlessness, leaping brush
and cacti and the tiny scorpions which glow
under a black light like absinthe, creatures
we fear the most when strolling our garden’s
dahlia or slipping on our unchecked shoes.
But the birds, stork-like and mute, moving
above in clumps like highway traffic: first
four, then three, then the lone flyer I feel
the most for as he has no one to share his day.
They are dependable every 12 hours, a clock
punching numbness glued to their expressions,
if that’s what birds have, expressions.
The common sparrows will go rustling
in the nearby bamboo, gossiping the green
leaves past frenzy, but these white ones,
their wispy legs dragging useless behind
them, glide silently above us, joyless
and sober, forcing our daughters to point
while splashing in the pool, marvel these
bright tufts made brighter by the desert’s
retreating light, all going home, all done
for the day. Yes, that’s right: Snowy Egret.
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
