Saturday, August 17, 2019

#120 Backstory of the Poem "Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn't Play Well With Others" by David L. Harrison



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***This is #120 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.

#120 Backstory of the Poem
“Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn’t Play Well With Others”
by David L. Harrison

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? My most recent book of poetry was CRAWLY SCHOOL FOR BUGS, published in 2018 by Boyds Mills & Kane Press. It’s a collection of humorous poems about a school for insects, located in a log in the forest. I’ll go with “Horse Fly Grade Card, Doesn’t Play Well With Others” from the book. 
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I was in Florida at the dining room table in the condo we own in Santa Rosa Beach in the Panhandle area between Destin and Panama City. (Below Middle and Below Right) My work day is from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The first hour is taken with responses to the previous night’s messages and writing a post for my daily blog. I probably began thinking about this poem between 8:00 and 10:00, my best writing time when I’m there. I would have been sitting at the table, on my third or fourth cup of coffee by then, and occasionally stealing glances out the sliding glass door at the gulf waters not far away.


What month and year did you start writing this poem? According to my records, it was probably July 10 or 11, 2014. We would have been heading home to Springfield, Missouri shortly after that. This year we returned on July 16.

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?) Everything I write must endure my endless fretting and fixing. I can’t go back to check on this one because the drafts are among the papers I recently placed on loan to the archival collection at Meyer Library on the Missouri State University campus in Springfield.

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? Not much of anything made it from first telling to last. The poem wasn’t even in the original manuscript. I added it later. Here are the three main versions and dates of their completions.
7/11/14
(horsefly)


Older student                       Younger student

Pssst!
Kid . . .
There.
                                           Where?
                                           The one who sleeps
                                           through all her courses?        
In her dreams
she’s biting horses.               
I bet they hate
to hear her humming.
What they hate
is what is coming.
                                           She’s just a fly.
                                           I could take her.
My advice?
Kid, don’t wake her.


11/11/14
Trying to Teach a Horsefly


In her heart
she knows
of course
it’s impolite
to bite
a horse.

They try
to teach her
gentleness,
peace
and love
and kindliness,

But after school
as you might guess,
without regret,
without remorse,
she buzzes off
and bites
a horse.

3/18/15
Horsefly Grade Card:
Doesn’t Play Well with Others


In my heart
I know of course
it isn’t nice
to bite a horse.

They’ve tried to teach me
gentleness
but after school
as you can guess

Even though
I feel remorse
I must go out
and bite a horse.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I want my readers to be amused of course. But beyond that I hope they’ll think about the inevitability of the horse fly’s dilemma. It is destined to bite horses. Some things you can teach at school and some things just come naturally. We are what we are even when we feel remorse about it.

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?  Not sure this applies here, unless you count that the poem makes me smile and I love the artist’s rendition of it.

Has this poem been published before? And if so where? It’s only appearance so far is in the original book, CRAWLY SCHOOL FOR BUGS.

Anything you would like to add? How this book (and therefore the poem) developed might be of interest. I proposed the idea of a collection of school poems for two voices to my editor, Larry Rosler, on September 8, 2013. He liked it but retired before we went far so his replacement, Sarah Zhang, took over on April 29, 2014. We met in New Orleans during that year’s ILA conference and she informed me that she didn’t much like where I was going with the manuscript. She proposed that I drop the traditional school approach and try writing about a school for bugs. I went home, thought about her idea, threw out my manuscript, and started over, this time about a school for bugs. Five months later Sarah left the publisher without telling me. 
          After being an orphan for a couple of months I was reassigned to Mary Colgan (Right). We worked on the various stages of CRAWLY and were getting close when Mary resigned and left the company on January 26, 2018. Brittany Ryan booted us home from there. I didn’t mention Rebecca Davis (Below Left) but she, too, had a hand in the shape and development of the final collection. If you’re counting, that’s five editors.
CRAWLY SCHOOL FOR BUGS was chosen by Missouri Center for the Book to represent Missouri at the National Book Fair in Washington D.C. in 2018 and named by NCTE as a Notable Book of Children’s Poetry for 2019. On November 23 of this year I’ll attend the NCTE conference in Baltimore to sit on the presenting panel: “Inquiry through Poetry: The 2019 Notable Poetry Books and Verse Novels,” and read selections from CRAWLY. Maybe I’ll include my errant horse fly.

David L. Harrison’s 95 books for children and teachers have received dozens of honors, including Society of Midland Authors award for best children’s nonfiction book, 2016; Missouri Pioneer in Education Award; and Missouri Library Association’s Literacy Award. His work has been widely translated and anthologized more than 185 times. His poems have been set to music and sandblasted into a library sidewalk. He has been featured at hundreds of conferences, workshops, literature festivals, schools, and colleges. David holds two science degrees and two honorary doctorates of letters. He’s Drury University’s poet laureate. David Harrison Elementary School is named for him.
http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com


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

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
“Of Water and Echo”
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
“Garden of Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill

087 March 21, 2019
“Letters From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman

088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman

089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois

#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks

#091 April 2, 2019
“Last Night at the Wursthaus”
by Doug Holder

#092 April 4, 2019
“Original Sin”
by Diane Lockward

#093 April 5, 2019
“A Father Calls to his child on liveleak”
by Stephen Byrne

#094 April 8, 2019
“XX”
by Marc Zegans

#095 April 12, 2019
“Landscape and Still Life”
by Marjorie Maddox

#096 April 16, 2019
“Strawberries Have Been Growing Here for Hundreds of
Years”
by Mary Ellen Lough

#097 April 17, 2019
“The New Science of Slippery Surfaces”
by Donna Spruijt-Metz

#098 April 19, 2019
“Tennessee Epithalamium”
by Alyse Knorr

#099 April 20, 2019
“Mermaid, 1969”
by Tameca L. Coleman

#100 April 21, 2019
“How Do You Know?”
by Stephanie

#101 April 23, 2019
“Rare Book and Reader”
by Ned Balbo

#102 April 26, 2019
“THUNDER”
by Jefferson Carter

#103 May 01, 2019
“The sight of a million angels”
by Jenneth Graser

#104 May 09, 2019
“How to tell my dog I’m dying”
by Richard Fox

#105 May 17, 2019
“Promises Had Been Made”
by Sarah Sarai

#106 June 01, 2019
“i sold your car today”
by Pamela Twining

#107 June 02, 2019
“Abandoned Stable”
by Nancy Susanna Breen

#108 June 05, 2019
“Cupcake”
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”
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