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***Ted Morrissey’s “Shroud” is #198 in the 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.
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? I’ll talk about the poem “Shroud,” the first poem I wrote in what I think of as my Laertes Sonnet Sequence, which I began in 2016 and have added poems to in dribs and drabs.
To date, May 2020, I have ten sonnets in the sequence. The sonnets are written in apostrophe to my father, Vince, who passed away suddenly in 2012.
Plus this happened in early September, just as the school year was getting underway (I’m a teacher). So with all that I really didn’t take time to process what his death meant to me. He and I were very close. Every Sunday morning we would talk on the phone for an hour or two. For months after he was gone I would look at my phone at about that time on a Sunday morning and wonder why he hadn’t called yet—then remember, again.
Time went on; this second act of my life proceeded. I dated for a couple of years before meeting the love of my life, Melissa, whom I married in 2014. One or another of my three sons would move home for a while and then leave as they finished college or set off somewhere when they found a job, and so on. Through all that, I really hadn’t fully processed what had happened with my father and his sudden passing.
I’ve always been a writer, though mainly a fiction writer, especially a novelist—but I’d been interested in poetry and had taught poetry, including at the college level. In retrospect, I wanted to write poetry but was hesitant to put it out in the world under my own name, so consequently, characters in my novels were oftentimes poets, and I would write poems via their personas.
Over winter break I recall thinking something like, “I still need to try to wrap my head around my dad’s death, and I’d like to try my hand at writing some sonnets in my own name.” So I began.
One of the books I love is Homer’s Odyssey, and I’d always thought of my father as a Laertes figure (wise, hard-working, dependable, kind), so I started thinking about a sonnet in which I allude to my father as Laertes. I was attracted to the Petrarchan sonnet form, with an octave that establishes some issue and a sestet that responds to that issue in some way.
I write by hand in an old-fashioned composition notebook. When I began composing what became “Shroud,” I tried to write line number-one, followed by line number-two, followed by number-three, etc., all the way to line number-fourteen. And it wasn’t working at all. I felt too tethered to the math, and therefore I was neglecting the language and the feel of the sonnet. I revised my approach, and the new process that I began with “Shroud” has carried me through the other sonnets I’ve written.
I don’t worry about the number of lines or line length. I think about the octave as a separate unit. I know, ultimately, it will have to consist of eight lines, but in the beginning, I focus on the ideas and images.
I search for a workable volta, that point in the sonnet where you pivot from the octave’s issue to the sestet’s response. After I establish a functional volta, I turn my attention to the sestet—again not so much thinking in terms of its being six lines, but rather as a unit in response to the octave.
In the octave of “Shroud,” I focus on the image of my father’s left-behind clothes that my mother couldn’t bring herself to simply give away, so every time we would visit she would try to get us to take a sweater or a jacket or a hat.
As much as I loved my dad, the idea of wearing his clothes was uniquely unsettling (plus, we’re different sizes), so I would always respectfully decline.
Since I was thinking in terms of the Odyssey and of my father representing Laertes, the unwanted clothes evoked Penelope’s famous shroud, which she was making to honor her father-in-law, Laertes, but also unmaking every night to keep at arm’s length the unwanted suitors who desired her hand—in other words, she was doing her best to put off the forces trying to make her move on with her life. She preferred to wait for the return of her husband, even after twenty years.
At this point I began thinking about the poem in terms of lines, along with all the other considerations of poetic language, like alliteration, repetition, assonance, internal rhyme, and so on.
Typically, when I type up a sonnet from my composition book, I discover, once set in lines, that the octave or the sestet may be too long or too short, so I go about cutting, compressing, or adding, expanding as needed to reach the eight-six Petrarchan sonnet structure.
I have the handwritten first draft of “Shroud” and the final version. I know it went through multiple intermediate drafts as I tinkered with lines, syntax, diction, and so on—but I don’t have those intermediate drafts any longer.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And what month and year did you write this poem? My entire adult life I lived in a house that was too small for five people, so I’ve never had an office. Instead, I have a leather chair in the corner of the family room, always surrounded by toppling stacks of books, notebooks, and manuscripts; and that chair is where I’ve done all my writing (first drafting at least), for 23 years now (at a previous house I had a similar chair in a similar corner).
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 don’t know how many drafts the poem went through, but many—dozens. I don’t recall exactly with “Shroud,” but the process is always the same. Although, I was surprised when looking back at the original handwritten draft that it was as similar to the final draft as it is.
In my other sonnets the differences between the first and final drafts tend to be even more plentiful. Perhaps, since it was the first sonnet that I wrote, in the sequence, I’d thought about it longer before trying to compose it; perhaps it was more formed in my brain from the start of writing it.
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? In the first draft I had a false start. Initially I didn’t begin the poem as an apostrophe, addressed to my father. Instead, I wrote: “Penelope wove and unwove the shroud / to keep her suitors at bay.” I crossed out those beginning lines and began again: “Your left-behind clothes still / occupy closets and clotheslines / in the basement.” Through all the drafts those lines remained (although they were compressed into two lines when the poem was typed). The lines about Penelope weaving and unweaving were shifted to later in the poem, near the completion of the octave.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? The sonnet is written to my father—all the sonnets in the sequence are—but it’s really about my mother’s pain, my mother’s loss. I suppose I may have shifted my own pain, in the poem, to the persona of my mother. She hung on for several more years, living in their house without him, but she died this past January (2020). More than one editor who has published poems from the sequence has mentioned their almost palpable sadness, and I would agree they are laden with grief.
I’m not a morose person in my day-to-day interactions with people. I think most people would see me as a happy, carefree kind of guy, which I am generally speaking. I release the sadness, the bereavement and so forth from my psyche via my writing. I’ve never visited a therapist, and I think I’ve never felt the need because my writing has always been my therapy.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? In the poem I say that my mother didn’t want to get rid of the clothes because she was trying “to stay the complete- / ness of [my father’s] death, leave the final act unfulfilled,” and those lines bring back the image of my mother in the hospital room after my father passed, begging him, begging him, please, to come back to life and not leave her alone.
She’d sat by his bed holding his hand for two straight days, almost without interruption, not sleeping, barely eating, because she couldn’t stand the thought of his dying without her being right there, holding his hand at the very end.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? “Shroud” was published in Bellevue Literary Review (spring/summer 2019).
Shroud
Your left-behind clothes still occupy closets and
clotheslines in the basement. She refuses to
donate them away, insisting that family may want
them (implying should want them). But it feels like
clothing oneself in Laertes’ shroud, where an un-
finished thread may hang exposed, left incomplete
by clever Penelope, who wove and unwove to
keep the suitors at bay, to halt time, delay the fated.
Just as she is doing now, to stay the complete-
ness of your death, leave the final act unfulfilled,
a thread left unfixed. Clothes hang here, are folded
there, frozen, amplifying your absence more than
the framed photos on the walls, as she awaits your
sail, white on the horizon: gift of beneficent gods.
Ted Morrissey's most recent novels are Mrs Saville (Manhattan Book Award) and Crowsong for the Stricken (International Book Award and American Fiction Award, both Book Fest). He has been writing his Laertes Sonnet Sequence to his late father off and on since 2016. His short stories, novel excerpts, poems, essays and reviews have appeared in approximately 80 journals. He teaches high school English and is a lecturer in Lindenwood University's MFA in Writing program. A new novel, The Artist Spoke, about a pair of poets on the loose in the big city, will be released in 2020 via his own Twelve Winters Press.
follow @t_morrissey –
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#192 Backstory of the Poem
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
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by Alarie Tennille
066 February 05, 2019
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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
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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
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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
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by Marletta Hemphill
087 March 21, 2019
“Letters From a War”
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088 March 26, 2019
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089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for the Potter”
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#090 March 30, 2019
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#091 April 2, 2019
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#092 April 4, 2019
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#093 April 5, 2019
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#097 April 17, 2019
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#099 April 20, 2019
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#100 April 21, 2019
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#101 April 23, 2019
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#102 April 26, 2019
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#103 May 01, 2019
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by Jenneth Graser
#104 May 09, 2019
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by Richard Fox
#105 May 17, 2019
“Promises Had Been Made”
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#106 June 01, 2019
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#107 June 02, 2019
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#108 June 05, 2019
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by Julene Tripp Weaver
#109 June 6, 2019
“Bobby’s Story”
by Jimmy Pappas
#110 June 10, 2019
“When You Ask Me to Tell You About My Father”
by Pauletta Hansel
#111 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Cemetery Mailbox”
by Jennifer Horne
#112 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Relics”
by Kate Peper
#113 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Q”
by Jennifer Johnson
#114 Backstory of the Poem’s
“Brushing My Hair”
by Tammika Dorsey Jones
#115 Backstory of the Poem
“Because the Birds Will Survive, Too”
by Katherine Riegel
#116 Backstory of the Poem
“DIVORCE”
“DIVORCE”
by Joan Barasovska
#117 Backstory of the Poem
“NEW YEAR”S EVE 2016”
by Michael Meyerhofer
#118 Backstory of the Poem
“Dear the estranged,”
by Gina Tron
#119 Backstory of the Poem
“In Remembrance of Them”
by Janet Renee Cryer
#120 Backstory of the Poem
“Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn’t Play Well With Others”
by David L. Harrison
#121 Backstory of the Poem
“My Mother’s Cookbook”
by Rachael Ikins
#122 Backstory of the Poem
“Cousins I Never Met”
by Maureen Kadish Sherbondy
#123 Backstory of the Poem
“To Those Who Were Our First Gods”
by Nickole Brown
#124 Backstory of the Poem
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
by Paul Levinson
#125 Backstory of the Poem
“Tracy”
by Tiff Holland
#126 Backstory of the Poem
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman
#127 Backstory of the Poem
“Anathema”
“Anathema”
by Natasha Saje
#128 Backstory of the Poem
“How to Explain Fertility When an Acquaintance Asks Casually”
by Allison Blevins
#129 Backstory of the Poem
“The Art of Meditation In Tennessee”
by Linda Parsons
#130 Backstory of the Poem
“Schooling High, In Beslan”
by Satabdi Saha
#131 Backstory of the Poem
““Baby Jacob survives the Oso Landslide, 2014”
by Amie Zimmerman
#132 Backstory of the Poem
“Our Age of Anxiety”
by Henry Israeli
#133 Backstory of the Poem
“Earth Cries; Heaven Smiles”
by Ken Allan Dronsfield
#134 Backstory of the Poem
“Eons”
by Janine Canan
#135 Backstory of the Poem
“Sworn”
by Catherine Zickgraf
#136 Backstory of the Poem
“Bushwick Blue”
by Susana H. Case
#137 Backstory of the Poem
“Then She Was Forever”
by Paula Persoleo
#138 Backstory of the Poem
“Enough”
by Kris Bigalk
#139 Backstory of the Poem
“From Ghosts of the Upper Floor”
by Tony Trigilio
#140 Backstory of the Poem
“Cloud Audience”
by Wanita Zumbrunnen
#141 Backstory of the Poem
“Condition Center”
by Matthew Freeman
#142 Backstory of the Poem
“Adventuresome Woman”
by Cheryl Suchors
#143 Backstory of the Poem
“The Way Back”
“The Way Back”
by Robert Walicki
#144 Backstory of the Poem
“If I Had Three Lives”
by Sarah Russell
#145 Backstory of the Poem
“Reservoir”
by Andrea Rexilius
#146 Backstory of the Poem
“The Night Before Our Dog Died”
by Melissa Fite Johnson
#147 Backstory of the Poem
“Pileated”
by David Anthony Sam
#148 Backstory of the Poem
“A Kitchen Argument”
by Matthew Gwathmey
#149 Backstory of the Poem
“Insulation”
by Bruce Kauffman
#150 Backstory of the Poem
“I Will Tell You Where I’ve Been”
by Justin Hamm
#151 Backstory of the Poem
“Comfort”
by Michael A Griffith
#152 Backstory of the Poem
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever
#153 Backstory of the Poem
“1. Girl”
by Margaret Manuel
#154 Backstory of the Poem
“Trading Places”
by Maria Chisolm
#155 Backstory of the Poem
“The Reoccurring Woman”
by Debra May
#156 Backstory of the Poem
“Word Falling”
by Sheryl St. Germain
#157 Backstory of the Poem
“Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 7,000 Jews Detained in an
Arena”
by Liz Marlow
#158 Backstory of the Poem
“Why Otters Hold Hands”
by William Walsh
#159 Backstory of the Poem
“The Invisible World”
by Rocco de Giacoma
#160 Backstory of the Poem
“Last Call”
“Last Call”
by Ralph Culver
#161 Backstory of the Poem
“ALIVE”
by David Dephy
#162 Backstory of the Poem
“Mare Nostrum”
“Mare Nostrum”
by Janice D Soderling
#163 Backstory of the Poem
“Winnipeg Noir”
by Carmelo Militano
#164 Backstory of the Poem
“Needlepoint Roses”
“Needlepoint Roses”
by Jason O’Toole
#165 Backstory of the Poem
“Singing, Studying on Whiteness, This Penelope Strings”
by Jeanne Larsen
#166 Backstory of the Poem
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
by Prartho Sereno
#167 Backstory of the Poem
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
by Pamela Uschuk
#168 Backstory of the Poem
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
by Peter Kline
#169 Backstory of the Poem
“Heartbroken”
“Heartbroken”
by Catherine Arra
#170 Backstory of the Poem
“Silence – a lost art”
by Megha Sood
#171 Backstory of the Poem/ May 09, 2020
“Horribly Dull”
by Mark DeCharmes
#172 Backstory of the Poem/ May 12, 2020
“Celebrating His Ninety-Second Birthday the Year his Wife Died”
by Michael Mark
#173 Backstory of the Poem/ May 14, 2020
“Night Clouds in the Black Hills”
by Cameron Morse
#174 Backstory of the Poem/ May 18, 2020
“I’ve Been In Heaven For Long”
by Evanesced Dethroned Angel
#175 Backstory of the Poem/ May 20, 2020
“Tutti-Frutti”
by Barbara Crooker
#176 and #177 Backstory of the Poem/ May 25, 2020
“My Small World” and
“My Mistake”
by Tina Barry
#178 Backstory of the Poem/ June 05, 2020
“Against Numbers”
by Andrea Potos
#179 Backstory of the Poem/ June 15, 2020
“Wish”
by Julie Weiss
#180 Backstory of the Poem/ June 20, 2020
“The Tree That Stood Beside Me”
by Carly My Loper
#181 Backstory of the Poem/ June 23, 2020
“Electric Mail”
by Julie E. Bloemeke
#182 Backstory of the Poem
June 24, 2020
“Her First Ten Days”
by Julieta Corpus
#183 Backstory of the Poem
June 26, 2020
“Outside My House Is A Guava Tree”
by Dr. Ampat Varghese Koshy
#184 Backstory of the Poem
July 2, 2020
“Torpor”
by Victor Enns
#185 Backstory of the Poem
July 5, 2020
“A Way of Life”
by Dan Provost
#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna
#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna
#187 Backstory of the Poem
July 7, 2020
“The Seer”
by Kathleen Winter
#188 Backstory of the Poem
July 11, 2020
“Stuck At Home”
by Valerie Frost
#189 Backstory of the Poem
July 13, 2020
“Between the Earth and Sky”
by Eleanor Kedney
#190 Backstory of the Poem
July 14, 2020
““ΜΕΡΕΣ ΥΠΟΜΟΝΗΣ/ Days
of patience”
by Eftichia Kapardell’
#191 Backstory of the Poem
July 15, 2020
“Threnody by the President for Victims of COVID-19, Beginning with a Line from Milosz”
by Ralph Culver
#192 Backstory of the Poem
July 16, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom Hunley
#193 Backstory of the Poem
July 17, 2020
“The Love of Two Trees”
by Hussein Habasch
#194 Backstory of the Poem
July 18, 2020
“June Almeida”
by Lev RI Ardiansyah
#195 Backstory of the Poem
July 19. 2020
“After Grano Maturo”
by Matthew Gavin Frank
by Matthew Gavin Frank
#196 Backstory of the Poem
July 20, 2020
“Practice”
by Linda Neal Reising
#197 Backstory of the Poem
July 21, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom C Hunley
#198 Backstory of the Poem
July 22, 2020
“Shroud”
by Ted Morrissey
