Wednesday, July 24, 2019

#117 Backstory of the Poem "NEW YEAR'S EVE 2016" by Michael Meyerhofer



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***This is the #117 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.

#117 Backstory of the Poem
“New Year’s Eve 2016”
By Michael Meyerhofer

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 remember feeling a sense of hopelessness toward the end of 2016—not just for political reasons, but also because of all the deaths that had been in the news throughout the year (Elie Wiesel, Muhammad Ali, Harper Lee, C.D. Wright, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Pat Conroy, Jim Harrison, etc).

     I started imagining an alternate reality in which everything had gone differently. I came up with the title of the poem first, then the opening line (That was the year nobody died) followed almost immediately. From there, the rest of the poem fell into place pretty quickly, I think because it was something I’d already been thinking about for months. I tinkered and polished a bit, but honestly, this was one of the “easiest” poems I’ve ever written, and it ended up being the opening poem in my forthcoming book, Ragged Eden.

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. If memory serves, I was taking a scalding-hot bath when the idea for the poem came to me. I got out, grabbed my phone, and started typing it on the notepad. Once I had the rough draft done, I finished getting dressed, actually went to my computer, and revised it a bit.

What month and year did you start writing this poem? December, 2016. I don’t recall the exact date but I think I wrote it just a few days before New Year’s Eve.
 
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 usually put my poems through quite a punishment, which includes not just changing the language but altering the form (tercets, couplets, a single long stanza, etc), not to mention playing with line breaks. In the case of this poem, though, I knew right away that it needed to be in couplets. I don’t actually have my old drafts of this one. I usually save those, but in this particular case, I think the poem came out “right” pretty quickly, so the editing afterwards was just tinkering with phrasing.
 
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 had a little trouble with that last couplet. Originally, I had of lawns into canvases on which / trees scrawled their warnings in shadow,” which seemed a bit clunky to me. No one else seemed to mind (the journal, FRiGG, (http://friggmagazine.com/) was even kind enough to publish it), but maybe a couple years after I wrote it, I had the idea to edit it down to “of lawns into canvases for trees / to scrawl their warnings in shadow.” It’s a minor change overall, and one many people might not even notice, but I like it better… and, of course, feel embarrassed for not writing it that way the first time.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I think one lesson of poetry is that no matter how sad or sardonic a piece of writing might be, there’s an undercurrent of survival and redemption inherent in the simple act of expression. I think it’s also helpful from time to time to imagine something as its opposite and compare the differences, maybe to help us develop a deeper sense of appreciation for what we have. (Right:  Michael with his mentor Allison Joseph)

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? Even though it was just a simple line without much detail, the reference to the Holocaust survivor and the boxer was pretty tough for me because Elie Wiesel (http://eliewieselfoundation.org/) and Muhammad Ali (http://www.theslot.com/ali/) were two of my heroes. The more I think about it, the feeling of loss prompted by their deaths was probably the seed that planted the idea for the poem in the first place.

Has this poem been published before? And if so where? The fine folks at FRiGG were kind enough to publish it. Also, as I said, it’ll be the opening poem in my next book, forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press (http://www.glasslyrepress.com/).

Anything you would like to add? Just that I appreciate you doing this!


NEW YEAR’S EVE, 2016

That was the year nobody died:
all the musicians and actors,

the boxer, the poets, the Holocaust survivor,
an uncle in a star-spangled top hat,

their illnesses mere rumor
or at worst a reminder of something,

like a shawl thrown past the full moon.
And when, midway through winter,

the time came for reminiscence
and countdowns and champagne,

hardly anyone could think
of a single thing that had gone wrong,

which was itself quite unsettling.
So after a while, we gave up

trying to be sad and simply kissed
as the snows fell, transforming a nation

of lawns into canvases for trees
to scrawl their warnings in shadow

          Michael Meyerhofer’s fifth book of poems, Ragged Eden, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. The recipient of fourteen national poetry awards, he’s also the author of a fantasy series and serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review (https://atticusreview.org/). For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, please visit
Twitter: mrmeyerhofer

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”