Saturday, July 25, 2020

Andrea Watson’s “Star pinwheel poem” is #200 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM


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*** The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series.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

***Andrea Watson’s “Star pinwheel poem” is #200 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? I began writing this untitled poem approximately five years ago and continued to work on it periodically. Growing up on the East Coast, I was not familiar with descansos, or resting places, marking those lost violently in accidents, or with the graves of beloved family members decorated with particular items important to them during their lifetimes. Items such as these—star/pinwheel/tin hummingbird/plastic rose/toy truck/flag—open the poem.

In addition, the second influence for my poem was one by W.H. Auden (Right), Musée des Beaux Arts”.
The poet writes, “About suffering they were never wrong,/The Old Masters.” For me, it was the last section of the poem that enabled me to find an ending for my piece. 
          Auden alludes to Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus in which Icarus has not listened to his father’s warning and flies too near to the sun with his wax wings. Although a ploughman is doing his usual work and an “expensive delicate ship” is sailing by, while they notice “Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky”, his “white legs disappearing into the green/Water,…”, they seem untouched and sail away or continue on with their own lives. This imagery enabled me to write the last line of my poem.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I began the poem in Taos, New Mexico, after a visit to a small camposanto (graveyard). Too, I had been studying descansos along the roads throughout New Mexico and the Southwest over several years.  I sat at both my writing table and at the nicho near my fireplace to look at objects that might inspire me. I remember looking back on the lives of my own loved ones who are no longer with me and are sorely missed.

What month and year did you start writing this poem? My records indicate it was in April of 2015.


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 wrote probably five drafts of the poem. I wanted to make sure that the detailing honored the dead and highlighted the theme of loss. I specifically did not want the final line to be disrespectful to mourners or to those they lost.
          But it was important to me to say, as with Auden, that despite suffering and grief, somehow we must go on. For me, this is what it means to be human.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I hope that readers will wish to learn about other cultures and traditions with which they may not be familiar. This was one of the missions of founding our independent publishing house, 3: A Taos Press (https://3taospress.com/), nine years ago. 

          Also, I especially want to commune with readers who have faced personal loss, to let them know that others understand, that others offer empathy and grieve, each in a unique way. Truly, it is a fact of our daily living that we continue on despite tragedy and loss.


Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The phrase of the poem that was the most emotional for me to write is:

        …and that
                      broken-star moment when his soul flew 
                        beyond his body.


Just as Icarus falls into the ocean as his father reaches out to him, I envision that terrible moment when the son of the poem dies in a violent car accident, his soul departing his body, the stars shattering above him.


Has this poem been published before?  And if so where? To celebrate April as Poetry Month, SOMOS (Society of the Muse of the Southwest) and the Taos Arts Council asked eleven poets to respond to a different artwork and eleven artists to respond to a different poem in an ekphrasis event titled, Poetry & Art in Public Places. I was honored to have Rob Wilder Nightingale, owner of Wilder Nightingale Gallery (http://www.
com/), in Taos, and an extraordinarily talented artist, to respond to this poem with his painting, New Morning.

                                                                                              star
                                                                                          pinwheel
                                                                                   tin hummingbird
                                                                                        plastic rose
                                                                                           toy truck
                                                                                               flag


                                                      Such a pale line between packed earth and breath.

                                                      Clouds and cross loom above
                                                      two figures who would lift the sun if only
                                                      they could lift their son.
                                                      The high wind is God’s hand  
                                                      on their backs near road’s curve, bent-
                                                      over sign, splinter cliff, and that   
                                   
                                                      broken-star moment when his soul flew 
                                                                        beyond his body.

                                                      How to array his secret life when they are stripped bitter?                                            

                                                      Hands of the father: to clean words on wood—
                                                                        Eliseo, amado hijo
                                                      clip back fire thorn, shelter votives for flame.

                                                      Hour of the mother: to align labyrinth
                                                      of stone grief, reglaze the boveda,
                                                      straighten orange ribbon bruised by rain.

                                                      Beyond the tomb we hope to hold you once again.

                                                      Meanwhile the turquoise globe keeps spinning.

Andrea Watson’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Rhino, Cream City Review, Ekphrasis, International Poetry Review, Memoir, and The Dublin Quarterly, among others. She has designed and curated eighteen ekphrasis events of poetry and art across the United States, commencing with Braided Lives: A Collaboration Between Artists and Poets, sponsored by the Taos Institute of Arts, which traveled to Denver, San Francisco, and Berkeley. 

     Other shows include Interwoven Illuminations, featured in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review; The Sacred Blue; Frida-Fractured; Threaded Lives, with its book, Poems from the Fiber World; and Fragments: Poets and Artists of the South and Southwest
She is co-editor of Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined and of Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, published by FutureCycle Press, the proceeds of which are dedicated to the Malala Fund for Girls’ Education. She is also Founding Publisher/Editor of A Taos Press.


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 DeCharmes

#172 Backstory of the Poem/ May 12, 2020
“Celebrating His Ninety-Second Birthday the Year his Wife Died”
by Michael Mark

#173 Backstory of the Poem/ May 14, 2020
“Night Clouds in the Black Hills”
by Cameron Morse

#174 Backstory of the Poem/ May 18, 2020
“I’ve Been In Heaven For Long”
by Evanesced Dethroned Angel

#175 Backstory of the Poem/ May 20, 2020
“Tutti-Frutti”
by Barbara Crooker

#176 and #177 Backstory of the Poem/ May 25, 2020
“My Small World” and
“My Mistake”
by Tina Barry

#178 Backstory of the Poem/ June 05, 2020
“Against Numbers”
by Andrea Potos

#179 Backstory of the Poem/ June 15, 2020
“Wish”
by Julie Weiss

#180 Backstory of the Poem/ June 20, 2020
“The Tree That Stood Beside Me”
by Carly My Loper

#181 Backstory of the Poem/ June 23, 2020
“Electric Mail”
by Julie E. Bloemeke

#182 Backstory of the Poem
June 24, 2020
“Her First Ten Days”
by Julieta Corpus

#183 Backstory of the Poem
June 26, 2020
“Outside My House Is A Guava Tree”
by Dr. Ampat Varghese Koshy

#184 Backstory of the Poem
July 2, 2020
“Torpor”
by Victor Enns

#185 Backstory of the Poem
July 5, 2020
“A Way of Life”
by Dan Provost

#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna

#186 Backstory of the Poem
July 6, 2020
“The Alabama Wiregrassers”
by Charles Ghigna

#187 Backstory of the Poem
July 7, 2020
“The Seer”
by Kathleen Winter

#188 Backstory of the Poem
July 11, 2020
“Stuck At Home”
by Valerie Frost

#189 Backstory of the Poem
July 13, 2020
“Between the Earth and Sky”
by Eleanor Kedney

#190 Backstory of the Poem
July 14, 2020
ΜΕΡΕΣ  ΥΠΟΜΟΝΗΣ/ Days
of patience” 
by Eftichia Kapardell’

#191 Backstory of the Poem
July 15, 2020
Threnody by the President for Victims of COVID-19, Beginning with a Line from Milosz”
by Ralph Culver

#192 Backstory of the Poem
July 16, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom Hunley

#193 Backstory of the Poem
July 17, 2020
“The Love of Two Trees”
by Hussein Habasch

#194 Backstory of the Poem
July 18, 2020
“June Almeida”
by Lev RI Ardiansyah

#195 Backstory of the Poem
July 19. 2020
“After Grano Maturo”
by Matthew Gavin Frank

#196 Backstory of the Poem
July 20, 2020
“Practice”
by Linda Neal Reising

#197 Backstory of the Poem
July 21, 2020
“Will Be Done”
by Tom C Hunley

#198 Backstory of the Poem
July 22, 2020
“Shroud”
by Ted Morrissey

#199 Backstory of the Poem
July 23, 2020
“Being In Love at Fifty”
by Anne Walsh Donnelly

#200 Backstory of the Poem
July 25, 2020
“Star pinwheel poem”