I’ve been working flat-out on honing the manuscript of an essay collection, Poetry’s Possible Worlds, due from Tinderbox Editions late this year or early next (I suspect the latter at this point). It’s a blend of memoir and criticism with a good dose of cognitive science and narrative theory, plus thirteen 21st century poems reprinted in full to anchor the short chapters. Recounting the close of my con-man father’s life, it’s also the story of reading poetry through personal crisis AND an analysis of how “literary transportation” works when you enter a poem’s pocket universe (that’s immersive reading or getting lost in a text, for the layperson). I’ve been drafting this book since 2012 so it’s really important to me. Closing in on a final version I’ll submit to an editor, though, always makes me nervous. You’re down in the weeds, seeing ways a sentence here and there could be made more elegant, checking the bibliography, and wondering whom you’ve inadvertently omitted from the acknowledgments. But it’s also the last time you can try for the 30,000 feet perspective, imagining how the book will be received by others and trying to catch those moments of obtuseness or under-explanation that inevitably linger. Hard work in multiple ways.
This book, though, works through challenging personal material. On the good side, there are stories of travel, particularly my 2011 Fulbright in New Zealand; reflections on growth and change; and positive representations of sustaining relationships. The dark stuff involves, of course, tales of my dishonest and narcissistic father but also workplace harassment; a long-ago sexual assault; Chris’ mother’s dementia; and my mother’s first round of lymphoma in 2015. It shook me to spend time with that material again. Worse, since my mother died of the lymphoma’s recurrence in April, I had to put my sentences about her into the past tense. No wonder I was resisting finalizing the ms.
I did the same thing to myself in July, at the Sewanee Writers Workshop. I had to finalize my workshop ms in May, and it was full of poems about my mother’s death and other tough material. Somehow, for the last couple of years, I’ve finally been writing about childhood abuse and mental health. My mother always read my poetry books, but I think at some level I knew she wasn’t likely to read this new stuff. I’m freer to be honest than before, and some of what hurt me long ago was my mother choosing not to protect us from my father. Again, no wonder Sewanee was emotionally intense.
I came to a good pause point on Poetry’s Possible Worlds this morning, and I go to Chris’ play The Zombie Life in Richmond tonight, so next week I’ll be turning my attention to different things: a department retreat, course prep, reference letters, poetry submissions, and as many other smaller writing-related tasks as I can squeeze in. That sounds like a lot, but except for the poetry subs, it isn’t nearly as difficult. Writing, as I tell my students, is a complex task with many factors always in play, which is why even a short, imperfect essay or poem is such an achievement. It’s salutary to be reminded, as I approach another academic year, that it can be hard in other ways, too.
5 responses to “When revisions are even harder”
I’m really looking forward to this book, Lesley! I’m getting quite the Wheeler collection down here… 🙂
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I appreciate it! It’s wonderful to be able to keep up with you and your work from a distance. 20 years ago it would have been WAY harder.
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Tough stuff, indeed, and the bravery required must seem impossibly daunting at times. I, for one, am deeply impressed with your stamina and the quality of the work you get out into the world. Moving your mother to past tense sounds like a poem. You have my empathy, whatever that is worth.
Anyway, here’s to your next publication! 🙂
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Here’s another reader looking forward to that upcoming book, particularly that it talks about what you call “literary transportation.” I think I go there often, and even though I don’t speak the language well or know what was going on before I arrived, it’s an experience worth seeking out. I’m looking forward to another traveler’s tale of that, because I often think I’m a bad tourist.
As to the childhood trauma, nothing I can say in a comment other than to say that there are somethings that a lifetime can figure out partly, and it’s probably good to figure out some things, even partly.
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I don’t think you CAN be a bad tourist in this realm, Frank!–but I find readers’ tales of their travels endlessly interesting. Thank you for your kind words, always.
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