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***This is the sixty-third 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.
#63
Backstory of the Poem
“The heron leaves her haunts in the marsh”
by Gail
Wronsky
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?
For the poems in my
newest book, IMPERFECT PASTORALS, I used lines from Virgil (Right Bottom) as titles, so my
process was to find a line I found inspiring, and start from there. I found the line about the heron and it
seemed perfect for a poem I had wanted to write about living in Topanga Canyon
and never wanting to leave it—my lethargy and reluctance—and how that sometimes
breeds some conflict in my marriage. I
remember that the first part of the poem came quite easily. I stopped for a while after that, after
“The/anchoring point of a marriage is mythical.”
When I returned to the poem I was in a
sassier mood, not quite so abstract, and that took me to “comb-over
makeover.” Then I broadened the scope to
take in the beach that’s pretty near me, where I’ve seen herons, and I read a
chapter in a bird book about herons, where I got the quote. As you can see, I stayed with the sassy
attitude right up to the end of the poem
Where were you when you started to actually
write the poem? And please describe the
place in great detail. I have a little detached studio by my house that is
my study. It’s just a shed, basically,
unfinished inside—just bare wood—and a lot of books. I have a long tiled desk top—it used to be
the top of a coffee table—sitting on file cabinets.
I look out a window at Topanga State
Park—very green and hilly. I’m high
above the traffic on my busy street, and can’t be seen by any neighbors. I love the hidden aspect of it. My desk is cluttered with books and drafts of
poems. I’m always reading five or six
books at a time.
What month and year did you start writing
this poem? I think it was February 2015. (Right)
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 keep drafts, so I can’t share any. I make changes to my poems constantly,
though.
There were probably 50 or more
revisions to this poem—from little things to getting rid of whole lines and
stanzas. I do remember changing “motorcycle
jacket” to “leather coat.” I think
leather coat is a little more mysterious, less predictable. Like Bryan Ferry (Left), not Marlon Brando.
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? Don’t have them anymore, unfortunately.
I just tend not to want to revisit all of my stumbling along the way
What do
you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I want them to have a few serious moments about marriages, and getting
stuck in marriages, and how they limit us in some ways, and then just have a
good time with the notion of somebody who doesn’t want to leave home, someone
who’s like a heron in a nest.
Which part
of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Again, it was the line “The/anchoring point of a marriage is
mythical.” This was hard for me to say
because actually I’m in a very good marriage, and do feel anchored, but I
wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t the marriage keeping me house-bound.
Also, it was hard to write disparagingly
about the ocean, which I love, but for the purposes of this poem it, too, had
to feel like a trap.
Has this
poem been published before? And if so
where? It was only published in my book IMPERFECT PASTORALS.
Anything
you would like to add? I think it’s very hard to talk about process—so much of it is intuitive,
after 40 years of writing poetry—so much of it is done unconsciously, without
conscious thinking. You just know when
something is right, even if it’s not logically connected to the previous
line. You know when the poem has done
what it can do on the page. And you move
on to the next one.
The heron leaves her haunts in
the marsh
Let me
go, domestic air, inner conflict and anarchism.
Let me replace
the
thick veil of separation
with a
thinner veil. The
anchoring
point of a marriage is mythical. Catch
me
off-guard
and slip out for some whiskey
why
don’t you--
I’m not
the one in the leather coat and the
comb-over
makeover.
Over me
the wind’s dumb moan, beside
me the
foam and glitter of the Pacific. The
heron
has “one of the most begrudging avian takeoffs.”
Oh
fucking hell I’ll go. Have I had a
tetanus shot? Not
for
years.
Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of many books
of poetry and prose, among them Dying for
Beauty (Copper Canyon Press), Poems
for Infidels (Red Hen Press), and So
Quick Bright Things (What Books Press).
Her translation of Alicia Partnoy’s book Fuegos Florales (Flowering Fires) recently won the American Book
Prize from Settlement House Press. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies
including Poets Against War; A Chorus for
Peace; Wide Awake: the Poetry of Los
Angeles and Beyond; The Black Body; and Coiled
Serpent.
Her poems, translations, and reviews have
appeared in journals including Poetry;
Boston Review; Antioch Review; Colorado Review; Denver Quarterly; Crazyhorse,
Virginia Quarterly Review; Volt; Lana Turner; and Pool.
Gail has been a Resident Playwright at Sundance Institute (http://www.sundance.org/now) and has
had plays produced in Washington, DC; Salt Lake City; and Los Angeles. She is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship
from the California Arts Council. In
2015 she was one of four finalists for the position of Poet Laureate of Los
Angeles.
She is a member of the Glass
Table Arts Collective, has an MFA from the University of Virginia and a PhD
from the University of Utah, and teaches creative writing and women’s
literature at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
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
Name of
fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to
share with us? Pokeweed: An Illustrated Novella
This on is difficult
genre to label. It’s an illustrated,
historical, YA, coming –of-age novella and clocks in at 119 pages. 
Where
did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? Pokeweed began in an odd
format-staring with PowerPoint and adding text as the idea developed. Eventually, the file became too large and I
moved it over to Word and began shuffling the lengths of chapters around. Then, the idea for illustrations brought
appropriate gaps for each scene. I wrote
most of Pokeweed on Saturdays at a great coffee shop in the Red Bank
neighborhood (near downtown Chattanooga) called The Meeting House. 
What is
the summary of this specific fiction work?
Pokeweed
is a post-Civil War story concerning the life of Ezekiel “Z” Snopes as he seeks
to avenge his sister’s death during the bloody spat known as the
French-Eversole Feud of eastern Kentucky
Please
include the excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be as short or as long as you
prefer.
