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***This is the sixty-eighth
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.
“Lunch on City Island, Early June”
by Christine Potter
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 is kind of atypical for me. I often start poems with an observed image and free associate, watching as I write for words that sort of chime together without sounding too obvious about it.
My husband Ken and I moved the kitchen back upstairs to where it was
when the house was built in 1740 (I said it was old), and I took the basement
room because it was quiet and separate from most of the house.
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 rough drafts because I write on a computer. But most of my poems go through at least six or seven revision sessions—sometimes many more.
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 don’t
know. I had the opening and the close of
this poem before the middle stanzas firmed up, I know that. What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? It’s a poem about caring for an elderly mother and being burdened by it but also being bound by love and family. I wanted it to be strongly visual. And I was also playing with the fact that one branch of my family has lived in NYC and in the Hudson Valley since Dutch times. Hawthorne wrote about “the sensuous sympathy of dust for dust,” and I feel that often in places near where family members have or had lived.
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? It was in The Literary Bohemian: http://www.literarybohemian.com/index.php/poetry/poem/four-poems-by-christine-potter/P2/ And, of course, it’s the opening poem in my new book.
Lunch
on City Island, Early June
We
sat outside. Noon leaked through rain a long way off,
grew
quiet and then quieter as light can, even falling
on
vinyl palm trees wired with light-up coconuts. Silver,
white,
a splash of brown—the Sound was the color of gulls
circling
it, and rippled with coming weather. Still wearing
a
graduation gown that puffed around her like a black sail,
a
tall young woman carried a plate piled with fried fish
to
a table beside us. You bought me a too-full plastic glass
of
white wine pale as tap water, which turned out to be
delicious,
or at least made me notice how richly green
the
trees were, how ancient and tangled with each other and
rooted
here as long as my family. I drank and was content,
although
not an hour ago, my mother had refused to see
her
doctor, had narrowed her eyes at me and spat out
her
pills, but looked cheerful if confused when we finally
left
her house. So I told you about my friend Zack, who
opened
the roof of his convertible on a huge blue day to
drive
to his class reunion, when the brilliance or perhaps
weight
of the sky overwhelmed him and he was frightened.
It
was funny in the telling, but now I know the truth of such
burdens,
their unexpected heft. Of course, he kept driving.
What
choice is there? A quick gust snatched my napkin,
which
floated past my hands into the Sound and dissolved.
Calamari and fried shrimp, clouds dull as chain-link
fences.
So
many apartment windows across the water, so many cars
lined
up on the roads and bridges. Red and green lights.
The hush of doctors’offices. And rain coming, coming rain.
The hush of doctors’offices. And rain coming, coming rain.
She has three collections of poems in print,
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Potter/e/B001K7URHS/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1541612842&sr=8-1
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
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