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***This is the eighty-fifth
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.
#85 Backstory of the Poem At the End
of Time (Wish You Were Here)
From
Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Field
Guide to the End of the World
By Jeannine
Hall Gailey
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 was written fairly close to the publication of
the book Field Guide to the End of the World, so I didn't get a lot of
time to ruminate on it - I just sent it in to the publishers. This was around
the time I got a surprise diagnosis after a trip to the hospital for stomach
flu - they ran a CTscan and a hour or two later they told me I had metastasized
cancer in my liver. 
They told me I maybe had six months to live. At the same
time, I was having neurological issues that were giving me memory problems and
limb numbness (I would later be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It was a fun
year!) I was about put out a book, sign a mortgage for a house, buy a new pet.
My little brother was living across the globe in Thailand at the time. The main
character of Field Guide to the End of the World is a young woman alone,
after the apocalypse, looking for her loved ones, family, friends...anyone,
really, to connect with. So this felt like a poem that was truthful for both me
and my character.
I have a desk in my room with
books and my laptop and pens. I do write a lot of poems in doctor's offices,
but this one was a late-at-night poem. 
I think it was the
summer of 2016.
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 never edit except digitally, and I didn't happen to keep
an earlier draft of this one, so this the the final version and pretty close to
the original.
What do you want readers
of this poem to take from this poem? This is a poem about confronting difficulties, missing
people, and apocalypses - you know, the usual.
Has this poem been
published before? And if so where? In my book, Field Guide to the End of the World,
from Moon City Press.
Anything you would like
to add? When I started writing Field Guide to the End of the World,
it started as an examination of the apocalyptic language in pop culture and
things like weather reports, but it ended as a book about looking at the worst
possible possibilities that exist - political, environmental, and
personal.
I did not mean it to be quite as timely as it seems now. I was kind
of making (admittedly dark) jokes - but a lot of the "unthinkable"
things I wrote about in early 2016 actually happened, so it's become a more
serious book than I originally intended.
Also, I have outlived
my six month diagnosis by two years now - luckily, they are still monitoring
the tumors in my liver for growth or spreading, but so far, they've remained
fairly stable.
Now I'm more worried about fighting insurance over MS treatment
and regular life than I am about the immediate risk of death.
Now I'm more worried about fighting insurance over MS treatment
and regular life than I am about the immediate risk of death.
At the End of Time (Wish
You Were Here)
From
Jeannine Hall Gailey’s Field Guide to the End of the World
I tried to call you one night but you were in
Thailand.
I was listening to Tool’s “Opiate” and reading
about the particulate
levels in China and the meteor that had narrowly
missed us yesterday
and realized I’d missed the recent eclipse and
also missed you.
I realized 40 years of learning were leaking
through the lesions in my brain,
names and faces and memories of us and I wanted
to reassure you
that I would still remember you but then maybe I
won’t - like the radioactive
water leaking from Fukushima burning the algae
and sea lions –
nature takes what it wants from us. And what
have we learned
that will do us any good, standing here on the
brink of fire and flame,
of disaster, of zombie movie dystopia and plague
and final girls:
what will we hold onto? At the end all we have
is ourselves
and sometimes not even that. We must be our own
saviors.
We must wield the axe against the assassin that
is death and time,
that is endings and goodbyes, chop down the
difficulties
and the disappointments until the wall is gone,
until we are back
in the sunlit yards of our childhoods, when we
could still cry
without irony and sweet things still tasted
sweet and my limbs
didn’t end in numbness, remember that? If we can
still remember,
then somewhere things must be better than here.
Wish you were here.
She’s also the
author of PR for Poets: A Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her
work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and The Best
Horror of the Year. 
and Instagram/Twitter @webbish6
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
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/03/85-backstory-of-poem-at-end-of-time.html
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/03/85-backstory-of-poem-at-end-of-time.html
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