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***This
is #121 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.
“My Mother’s Cookbook”
by
Rachael Ikins
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 had helped my
elderly aunt when my cousins were packing up their house to move my aunt and
uncle to assisted living. Months later my cousins with whom I grew up came back
to have a sale and prep the house to be sold. My younger cousin called me after
that weekend and told me this story as it happened to her during the packing
up. This part of family cycle was much on my mind.
Poems often start for
me with a first line. So “Everyone’s mother had one.” Popped into my head
because my mom had a cookbook like my aunt’s too (Rachael's Uncle and Aunt Eleanor Hubbard). The rest of the poem just
flowed in time sequence.Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. Upstairs in my house (Below) mulling it over mentally. I don’t write with pen and paper. I most likely grabbed my phone and opened the notebook app and typed the rough draft of it.
How many drafts of this poem did you write
before going to the final? I don’t really know because since I use
technology almost exclusively and don’t copy drafts onto a new blank page
before edits. I try to wait a week or so to let it simmer before going to final.
Since I work on
either iPad or iPhone either in Word, Pages or the notebook, I just scroll
through, read and listen. Delete what I don’t want. Or insert what I do. My ear
can usually tell me when something doesn’t belong or should be added. Also I
will do a specific revision to take out as many of the place holder words I can
without it sounding awkward-such as “and, the, a, that” etc. I also revise to
convert adjectives to noun-verb combos. I find those to be more powerful than
to have a string of adjectives and I try to remove adverbs because I feel the
nouns and verbs should tell the reader how the ie. person in the poem is doing
something. I do line breaks intuitively. I always try to read aloud to a human.
Always catch things reading aloud. Hear the issues. I am working right now on
poems from the 1990s. Some are useless but some have potential, and I am
teasing things out and into tighter compositions and submitting. I look at
language as a puzzle. Just consider lines and see if the words can be
rearranged somehow into something more efficient and tight. You want the
biggest bang for the tightest buck. MMCB has been published in both journal and
book. I shortened some of the lists. It can be alluring to have long lists. Imo
this loses the reader. (Above Right: Revisions of Poem)
Since I work on
either iPad or iPhone either in Word, Pages or the notebook, I just scroll
through, read and listen. Delete what I don’t want. Or insert what I do. My ear
can usually tell me when something doesn’t belong or should be added. Also I
will do a specific revision to take out as many of the place holder words I can
without it sounding awkward-such as “and, the, a, that” etc. I also revise to
convert adjectives to noun-verb combos. I find those to be more powerful than
to have a string of adjectives and I try to remove adverbs because I feel the
nouns and verbs should tell the reader how the ie. person in the poem is doing
something. I do line breaks intuitively. I always try to read aloud to a human.
Always catch things reading aloud. Hear the issues. I am working right now on
poems from the 1990s. Some are useless but some have potential, and I am
teasing things out and into tighter compositions and submitting. I look at
language as a puzzle. Just consider lines and see if the words can be
rearranged somehow into something more efficient and tight. You want the
biggest bang for the tightest buck. MMCB has been published in both journal and
book. I shortened some of the lists. It can be alluring to have long lists. Imo
this loses the reader. (Above Right: Revisions of Poem)
What
do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? A universal
feeling of cycles. Our society makes a big ceremony when someone is born.
Elderly are less attractive and yet to me, being present to witness and support
that final passage is equally important. And sense of empathy for their own
experiences. (Right: Aunt Eleanor at Rachael's home)
Has this poem been published
before if so where?
It was first
published in the Pen Woman magazine summer 2018. (Above Left)https://www.nlapw.org/pen-woman-magazine/
This poem appears in my mixed genre memoir Eating the Sun 2019 Clare Songbirds Publishing House.
What matters to me as a poet is resonating with readers, and this is a perfect example of how that works when it works.
My Mother’s Cookbook
Everyone’s
mother had one,
Fanny
Farmer or Irma Rombauer, Julia.
The
original queens of the kitchen.
A
book that was the go-to
even
as more exotic volumes joined the shelf.
Stained
pages, coffee rings on inside covers.
Notes
scribbled, illegible codes.
Recipes
in grandma’s language
nobody is left to translate.
Nuggets
of unknown substances
sticking chapters forever closed.
Broken-backed,
swollen with 50 years
of recipes clipped from Good Housekeeping,
McCalls, Redbook, years before Cooking Light
or Martha Stewart.
Stuffed
like a turkey.
Dinner
parties, birthday bashes,
100s
of weeks of nightly meals
first
for newlyweds, one then two children.
Nieces,
nephews. Grandkids. Holiday feasts.
Dogs
licked roast pans,
cats
thieved morsels from carving boards.
Napkin-wrapped
carrots snuck to the horse.
More
intimate than a diary, this record of the life of a family.
Nobody
touches the book.
Nobody
wants it.
The
woman managing the sale tags it $2.
Our
giggles echo off living-room walls,
who
would pay $2 for that?
Final
day, house sold, movers’ truck growled
down
the drive, we await the trash guy.
We
pull the last books off shelves and
that
cookbook flies lopsided
like
an overweight bird and splats,
spills
on bare hardwood, a liquid sound.
We
try not to laugh, feel like crying.
The
realtor says, “All things end.”
Breaks
the spell. We bump heads as we gather
papers
to our breasts, fingers scrabble scraps,
stuff
a garbage bag. Hear the hauler as we straighten up,
knot
the bag and yes.
All
things end.
She was awarded several fellowships though
the Colgate Writers Conference, Hamilton, NY as well as an honorarium from
Finishing Line Press which allowed her to read at Lismore Castle, Lismore,
Ireland, December 2014.(Left)
Author of 6 chapbooks, a full length
collection, an illustrated fantasy & new mixed genre, illustrated memoir.
Her work appears worldwide in journals and anthologies.
Ikins is also a prize-winning visual
artist. Her multi media art appears on book covers and in illustrations and has
been hung in galleries from CNY to Albany, NY, in Washington, DC as well as in
Brookline and Hollis, NH. She has given readings as far away as Washington,
D.C. and Cape Cod, MA, and in NY featured at historic Caffe Lena, Saratoga
Springs, NY, Nox with Just Poets Presents in Rochester NY, and Aaduna, Auburn,
NY. (Right: Rachael with her dog Sassie and Cat Katie in 2015)
A writing consultant and speaker, Ikins is
a member of NLAPW and Associate Editor of Clare Songbirds Publishing House. She
lives in Baldwinsville, NY near a river where she and her dogs spend time after
gardening. Her cats watch the fish tank and garden among the houseplants.
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”
“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”
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