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***This is the twenty-second 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.

#22 Backstory of the Poem

“Studying Ariel”

by Julia Gordon-Bramer

www.juliagordonbramer.com

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 can't really go through a step-by-step process, in part because I wrote the poem ten years ago(!), but it was when I first identified the tarot symbolism across Plath's collection Ariel, and then the title poem "Ariel" was full of Japanese images. When I wrote this poem, I hadn't fully decoded the "Ariel" poem yet. But I was aware of this imagery, and how it all worked together, and I was feeling WWII Japan, if that makes sense, and my poem came from that. (Above Right: Julia at the St. Louis Renaissance Fair in Wentsville Rotary Park in October of 2016. Copyright permission granted by Julia Gordon-Bramer for this CRC Blog Post Only)

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I honestly don't recall where I was when I wrote the poem. Most of my poems are written from home (but not always). Most are written right at my desk in my home office. (Left: Julia Gordon-Bramer in September of 2017. Copyright permission granted by Julia Gordon-Bramer for this CRC Blog Post Only.)

What month and year did you start writing this poem?

I also cannot tell you the month, but it was written about 2007, when I first found myself in graduate school and had just discovered the synchronicity between Plath's Ariel collection and the tarot. (Right: Julia Gordon-Bramer in her office in 2009. Copyright permission granted by Julia Gordon-Bramer for this CRC Blog Post Only)

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'm frustatingly a computer writer, so I don't keep drafts and have old copies with cross-outs and such, as Plath did! I write a poem and sit with it, and return to it and change a word or two here, or cut a line, or add things, and the process can take a day or many days or weeks or even months. But I don't keep old drafts. A little bit of time and distance from my writing helps me to see if it's good, and so my job is to remove what's not working and enhance what is. (Left: Julia Gordon-Bramer in September of 2017. Copyright permission granted by Julia Gordon-Bramer for this CRC Blog Post Only.)

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I want readers to be able to see Plath for her symbolism and understand that she is speaking in metaphor, and that her poem "Ariel" has a lot more going on than just being a poem about riding a horse, which is what most people think it to be. (Right: Sylvia Plath at her Chalcot Square Flat in London in July of 1961. Two months later she would write "Ariel" on her 30th birthday. Public Domain)

*Click on this link to read Syliva Plath’s “Ariel”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49001/ariel

(Left: The painting Ecstasy by Wladyslaw Podkowinski depicting a ride similar to that descried in "Ariel" Public Domain)

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Poetry is such an emotional experience in general that I don't see one part being more than another. I have just reread my own poem, and if I can return to an earlier question, the one about where I wrote it, I can say that I hope that the poem speaks for itself as far as describing the setting of the library and my research (but I did not write the poem there). And my Tokyo Rose reference has a "post" before it, because I am explaining that Plath was born after WWII, even though her poem is full of imagery from this war.

When I wrote it, it was not as if I was casting Plath as Tokyo Rose or anything like that. I was processing the WWII symbols in Plath's "Ariel"--Plath's "red eye" is the Japanese flag, the flakes are peeling skin, etc.I would rather not suggest Tokyo Rose because I never found evidence of her in Plath's work. You're seeing her in MY work.

Has this poem been published before? And if so where?

This was published in the Women Arts Quarterly Journal, Winter 2011 (http://vivacepress.com/waq.html)

Studying Ariel

Bound calm torpor, in this cozy cell.

Drugged, woozy with weight

from twenty sentinels stacked;

their musty smell, bodies’ black

blood and hard spines cracked.

Found notations, little atom bombs

from others fallen; prisoners like me, held

within the magnanimous shifting

of gray library afternoons.

Listening to the seductive multitudes

within you, post-Tokyo Rose.

Twenty-two to my zero

in a system rigged by God

where obstacles are air,

not mushroom clouds;

the body, only thought. Talk

to me of secrets higher than

this sweet grief, Mother Japan.

Your dew tears rise to burn

from their water sign, then turn

toward my arrow. Fixed disintegration.

We fly together, solo kamikazes

the savage, true suicide ride

toward the flagging red eye,

a greater fire.

Julia Gordon-Bramer is the author of Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath (2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and the Decoding Sylvia Plath series on Magi Press. In addition to being a poet, she is a professional tarot card reader and occasional professor at Lindenwood University. Her forthcoming release is Decoding Sylvia Plath's "Cut." Julia’s upcoming projects this year also include The Magician's Girl, a biography of the mysticism of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and the long awaited publication of her memoir, Night Times, about the years she ran an alternative rock zine in St. Louis in the 1990s as a single mom.