Saturday, May 9, 2020

Mark DuCharme’s “Horribly Dull” is #171 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM


*The images in this specific piece are granted copyright privilege by:  Public Domain, CCSAL, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law, or given copyright privilege by the copyright holder which is identified beneath the individual photo.

**Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly

*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.  Contact CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7


Mark DuCharme’s “Horribly Dull” is #171 in the 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. 


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? The work of any writer is to move through the process that all writing necessarily entails toward a hopefully finished work.  Once you have that, a work that can stand on its own as an event without explication or addition, all of that scaffolding that the poem was built out of necessarily falls away, or at least I think it should.  I hate poets who, when reading, give longer “explanations” of their poems than the poem is itself.  Let the work speak!  If it needs more, it isn’t a poem— at least not yet.

That said, it would be utterly disingenuous of me to accept your kind invitation if I were unwilling to provide a “backstory,” as best I can.  So here I go.

Sometime in 2018, I attended a small reading in a small sandwich shop in downtown Boulder.  There, I met poet Sara Lefsyk, the co-editor of a charmingly handmade print journal called Ethel.  
         
As it happened, she was looking for work for the third issue and gave me a copy of issue 2.  I really liked the handmade aesthetic of that journal, and I wanted my work to appear there.  After reading around in it a little bit later that night, back at home, I wrote “Horribly Dull.”  
     I probably revised the draft slightly the next day, but I more or less had the poem.  And I ended up sending Sara a batch of poems soon afterward, but this was the one she picked. 

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I was in my home, sitting on a couch in my living room amid many books— where I am now, in fact.

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?) Probably there was only one real handwritten draft, though as I say, there may have been some tweaks to it.  
          My process for writing poems is always to write the first draft entirely in longhand (in an unlined sketch notebook, using a gel pen), and then if I like what I have (perhaps after some initial handwritten revision), to turn to the currently “active” Word file on my laptop to which I’m adding poems.  
         
     As I type new poems, invariably I might change things like wording, line- or stanza breaks, etc.  Sometimes I get more creative, adding previously unwritten “improvised” material.  However, with this poem, I don’t think I made any very substantial changes.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? This is a great question, because it presumes an epistemology of sorts—in other words, that there is a meaning (or feeling?) that the readers should take away, and that there is a “method” for “understanding” poems, or in other words, for extracting their “meaning.”  Well, there is, or is there?  One aspect of “Horribly Dull” is certainly satire regarding what I refer to as “‘driveway verse’/ under neon appletrees.”  Yet I feel that a reading of the poem focused solely on that would be reductive, perhaps even beside the point.           
     The poem moves fast— as fast as thought.  The reference at the beginning to Franz Kafka’s great short story “In the Penal Colony” is not a lead-in to a theme, any more than is the dedication to the wonderful poet Jack Spicer; instead, the poem’s form (a list poem, sometimes also called a chant) involves and indeed requires non-discursivity, interruption and repetition.  
Narrative breaks down by poiesis, and the poem’s true meanings intrude.
     What I want readers to take from this poem is an understanding of poetry’s (and thus meaning’s, and thought’s) possibilities.  Sound in language.  Sound as language.  Language as sound.


Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?  The emotion in which I write is a kind of love or elation at being within the “magic circle” of poetry—or else it is an attempt to get into such, which might result in a good poem.  Even if I were filled with other emotions at a certain moment in the writing, what matters is not my own emotions but the readers’.  Williams referred to the poem as a “machine made out of words.”  The evocation of emotion by the poem, if at all, is part of the work of that machine.


Has this poem been published before?  And if so where?
Yes, in Ethel no. 3.  It is also part of a manuscript I am circulating.

Anything you would like to add? Thank you for giving me this opportunity to discuss my work!

The use of the blue font in the poem for the word “here” in the lines “Horribly dull fake poem posted here & called/ a poem” is a kind of joke.  There is no link, either in the original poem or its online iteration.

I wrote a few other poems after I wrote “Horribly Dull” that announced themselves as “collaborations” with ideas or things or categories of people: for example, “a collaboration with the absent” (“We Are Movies”).  I really like that idea, though I haven’t played with it further since then.
 
This poem was recently included in a short “remote” reading I gave.  Many thanks to Orchid Tierney for curating the Distāntia Reading Series!  Here is the link to my reading:


Horribly Dull

                                         a collaboration with no one
                                                 for Jack Spicer



Horribly dull body calligraphy (courtesy
                     Franz Kafka
Horribly dull words processed
                     as if despair were not
                     an answer
Horribly dull bright mint rendez vous
Horribly dull evening post (there are no
                     evening posts
Horribly dull expressive spillage (as if life weren’t
                     full of joy
Horribly dull fake poem posted here & called
                     a poem
Horribly dull suburban epiphany
                     snatch of magazine idleness
                     (can you say ‘driveway verse’
                     under neon appletrees?
Horribly dull entendre play (do you remember
                     Aretha? (do you remember what
                     once was
Horribly dull, the unread
                     or uninspired
Horribly dull lives which don’t
                     accrue in animal form
Horribly dull machine voice syntax
Horribly real, the animal
                     lives
                     which burn us
                     with their throats
Horribly real, all animal life
                     accrued
                     then lost suddenly—
In breath of flight
                     upturned)—

     Mark DuCharme’s recent books of poetry include We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film (The Operating System, 2018), Counter Fluencies 1-20 (The Lune, 2017), The Unfinished: Books I-VI (BlazeVox, 2013) and Answer (BlazeVox, 2011). 
         His work has appeared in numerous journals, and is recent or forthcoming in Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Futures Trading, New American Writing, Otoliths, Poetics of the More-than-Human World Anthology, Unlikely Stories, Word/ for Word and Noon: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019). A recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, DuCharme lives in Boulder, Colorado.

markducharme@hotmail.com


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”
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”
by Rachael Ikins

#122 Backstory of the Poem
“Cousins I Never Met”
by Maureen Kadish Sherbondy

#123 Backstory of the Poem
“To Those Who Were Our First Gods”
by Nickole Brown

#124 Backstory of the Poem
“Looking For Sunsets (In the Early Morning)”
by Paul Levinson

#125 Backstory of the Poem
“Tracy”
by Tiff Holland

#126 Backstory of the Poem
“Legs”
by Cindy Hochman

#127 Backstory of the Poem
“Anathema”
by Natasha Saje

#128 Backstory of the Poem
“How to Explain Fertility When an Acquaintance Asks Casually”
by Allison Blevins

#129 Backstory of the Poem
“The Art of Meditation In Tennessee”
by Linda Parsons

#130 Backstory of the Poem
“Schooling High, In Beslan”
by Satabdi Saha

#131 Backstory of the Poem
“Baby Jacob survives the Oso Landslide, 2014”
by Amie Zimmerman

#132 Backstory of the Poem
“Our Age of Anxiety”
by Henry Israeli

#133 Backstory of the Poem
“Earth Cries; Heaven Smiles”
by Ken Allan Dronsfield

#134  Backstory of the Poem
“Eons”
by Janine Canan

#135 Backstory of the Poem
“Sworn”
by Catherine Zickgraf

#136 Backstory of the Poem
“Bushwick Blue”
by Susana H. Case

#137 Backstory of the Poem
“Then She Was Forever”
by Paula Persoleo

#138 Backstory of the Poem
“Enough”
by Kris Bigalk

#139 Backstory of the Poem
“From Ghosts of the Upper Floor”
by Tony Trigilio

#140 Backstory of the Poem
“Cloud Audience”
by Wanita Zumbrunnen

#141 Backstory of the Poem
“Condition Center”
by Matthew Freeman

#142 Backstory of the Poem
“Adventuresome Woman”
by Cheryl Suchors

#143 Backstory of the Poem
“The Way Back”
by Robert Walicki

#144 Backstory of the Poem
“If I Had Three Lives”
by Sarah Russell

#145 Backstory of the Poem
“Reservoir”
by Andrea Rexilius

#146 Backstory of the Poem
“The Night Before Our Dog Died”
by Melissa Fite Johnson

#147 Backstory of the Poem
“Pileated”
by David Anthony Sam

#148 Backstory of the Poem
“A Kitchen Argument”
by Matthew Gwathmey

#149 Backstory of the Poem
“Insulation”
by Bruce Kauffman

#150 Backstory of the Poem
“I Will Tell You Where I’ve Been”
by Justin Hamm

#151 Backstory of the Poem
“Comfort”
by Michael A Griffith

#152 Backstory of the Poem
“VAN GOGH TO HIS MISTRESS”
by Margo Taft Stever

#153 Backstory of the Poem
“1. Girl”
by Margaret Manuel

#154 Backstory of the Poem
“Trading Places”
by Maria Chisolm

#155 Backstory of the Poem
“The Reoccurring Woman”
by Debra May

#156 Backstory of the Poem
“Word Falling”
by Sheryl St. Germain

#157 Backstory of the Poem
“Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 7,000 Jews Detained in an
Arena”
by Liz Marlow

#158 Backstory of the Poem
“Why Otters Hold Hands”
by William Walsh

#159 Backstory of the Poem
“The Invisible World”
by Rocco de Giacoma

#160 Backstory of the Poem
“Last Call”
by Ralph Culver

#161 Backstory of the Poem
“ALIVE”
by David Dephy

#162 Backstory of the Poem
“Mare Nostrum”
by Janice D Soderling

#163 Backstory of the Poem
“Winnipeg Noir”
by Carmelo Militano

#164 Backstory of the Poem
“Needlepoint Roses”
by Jason O’Toole

#165 Backstory of the Poem
“Singing, Studying on Whiteness, This Penelope Strings”
by Jeanne Larsen

#166 Backstory of the Poem
“How To Befriend Uncertainty”
by Prartho Sereno

#167 Backstory of the Poem
“Shostakovich: Five Pieces”
by Pamela Uschuk

#168 Backstory of the Poem
“Bouquet for Amy Clampitt”
by Peter Kline

#169 Backstory of the Poem
“Heartbroken”
by Catherine Arra

#170 Backstory of the Poem
“Silence – a lost art”
by Megha Sood

#171 Backstory of the Poem/ May 09, 2020
“Horribly Dull”
by Mark DuCharme