The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This process note and poems by Rusty Morrison are part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes at the University of San Francisco. Thanks for reading.
I’ll divide this note into two parts. First, I’ll speak generally about my process in writing RISK, then I’ll share a couple poems as examples.
Syllable-counting constraints
In
writing these poems, I initially was convinced that a limitation in the form
could speak to me about the limitations I inflict upon myself, versus those
that are unavoidable in my life. By using a constraining form, I would not just
write about limitation, I’d live
inside limitation in the work and then see how I handled it. I would experience
limitation as event, not aftermath.
All the poems in RISK that are not titled “Narrow Negotiations”
have 14 syllables in each line with a caesura between the first seven syllables
and the last seven syllables. I wanted this approach to let me experience
formally how challenging it is to create meaningful balance in my life.
Besides these poems, there are also poems scattered through the
manuscript that are titled “Narrow Negotiations.” In these, the form is this:
each has exactly seven couplets (14 lines per poem). Each line in the poem has
seven syllables (as does the title “Narrow Negotiations”).
Ann Lauterbach points out that the “convergence of subject matter with
form releases content.” I found that the forms I created caused a
contentiousness in my use of syntax that forced me to diverge from my more
expected trajectories of thought, and so the forms exposed a content with more
contextual resources than I’d previously had access to.
But contrived structures can obscure as much as they reveal; my
obsessions are powerful. I had to let the poems continue to ask me if I was
writing in support of my intuitions about freedom or if I was sometimes
avoiding them. Once I saw, in the writing, how easily I could delude myself, I
started to see it in my life.
Hélène Cixous tells us “the border makes up the homeland, it prohibits
and gives passage in the same stroke.” My work is to see where the borders, the
framings, I use to contain my understanding are useful, and where they are
borders that I must open and pass beyond, frightening as that might be.
Two poems as examples
First,
I’ll share a poem in the form that I created with 14 syllables in each line
with a caesura between the first seven syllables and the last seven syllables.
Then, I’ll share one of the poems titled “Narrow Negotiation.” Each
having exactly seven couplets (14 lines per poem). Each line in the poem has
seven syllables (as does the title “Narrow Negotiations”). I’ll say a bit about
each.
LINING THE SIDEWALK WHERE YOU WALK
Lining the sidewalk where you walk the block each night at dusk
are trees. Can’t name their species, let alone where their image
in your mind has taken root. Tonight they each seem to let
fall a shadow in your path, more than the sun’s setting could
cause. What is “cause”? How would you really know to what or whom
it belongs? Do you even know what causes might compel
you and from what conditions they might arise? This tree seems
inscrutable, foliaged in its anonymity.
Do you know as little of your neighbors? Is this even
how you live day to day with Ken, your husband? You do know
his given name but what name does he wear within himself?
Does it change annually or is he perennial?
Walk around the block again, you’re not ready to go home.
Are these the same trees they were 45 minutes ago?
Open your front door, does your key fit the lock? Have you
already converted this stranger into whoever
you just believe him to be? Outside is the gloaming hour.
Ask this man you call Ken to go back into it with you,
to listen for the private, plosive anarchies that might
be wind in the branches, or the exhaling of earth that’s
covered in concrete. Here, too, a loud chorus of sighs from
the neighbors’ open windows. Sounds you’ve never tried to
hear
or comprehend, but could you? Is it better to try, fail?
But recognize how something inexplicable comes, as
a sensitivity that’s beyond price? You recall Ken’s
sighing, what you hear each night, but ignore, as if a sigh
could ever be meaningless, be it husband’s, be it wind’s,
be it leaves falling right here that you’ll never see again.
I often begin a poem with the description of
a place where I was, &/or an experience I was in the midst of, that keeps
coming back into my mind. What happens as I write is that images, the details
from the experience shift and draw in other ideas that my logical mind would
never think could be aligned. I find that the images arrive, seemingly of their
own volition. Because of the strict form, it’s often true that the idea I start
a line with will not “fit” in the syllabics I require. I find myself pausing
the writing, sometimes going back to the place that I am writing about, letting
more ideas arise, and then rushing back home to jot them down. If it weren’t
for the requirement of seven syllables then a caesura, I would not have been able
to follow the poem toward ideas I’d never have come to on my own.
This happened early in this poem. I wrote this:
“…Tonight they each seem to let
fall a shadow in your path, more than the sun’s setting could
cause. What is “cause”? How would you really know to what or whom
it belongs? Do you even know what causes might compel
you and from what conditions they might arise?”
Then I was stuck… I went outside and found this come to
my mind:
“This tree seems / inscrutable, foliaged in its anonymity.
Do you know as little of your neighbors?”
I was thrilled to “find” the idea of trees seeming inscrutable, which came out of my sense of how I didn’t know what to write next. And I got the work “foliage” which led me forward to “anonymity.” The idea about the neighbors also came as a way to go forward. I will say that many poems of mine end up as scraps, they won’t coalesce. Those poems remain in my “saved lines” doc files. When I’m stuck, I often visit that set of lines… Surprisingly, what wouldn’t resolve in a poem from weeks ago is ideal for the poem I’m working on now.
NARROW NEGOTIATIONS (4th)
Pine needles dead on the limb
blur as wind shivers them loose
from their outlines for a split
instant then each snaps back. Wind
is a workshop of freedoms
that only intuition
turned kaleidoscopic can
perceive. What is it you’ve been
dead to that’s within yourself?
Your outline is breathing. Look.
See a world of new life forms
the death in you fertilized
to let each instant you live
riot with new frequencies.
Though these are much shorter than the other poems in the book, they were more demanding to write. What made them most strenuous was that they almost all begin with an image, which then must yield to me a surprising idea, perhaps a paradox I want to tease farther open. But I had to keep them grounded in actual images that can arrive, or “bud” from the first image. I also had to find an end as I reached the seventh couplet; an end that didn’t explain the poem, but instead surprised me further. The surprise I wanted needed to have an image’s tenacity and yet be nearly gossamer in appearance. This poem ends:
“let each instant you live
riot with new frequencies.”
I was thrilled with the word “riot,” which suggests
chaos, but then took me to “new frequencies” which suggested to me that, from
out of a seeming riot, and new understanding can be found, a new dimension of
listening. It made me think of having a new radio that had a higher sensitivity
to catch more radio stations.
Of course, every reader will come to this in their own way. I can only
hope that they find something here that is enlivening to them.
Rusty Morrison is co-publisher of Omnidawn (www.omnidawn.com). Her latest book, RISK, will be published by Black Ocean in Spring 2024. Her five books include After Urgency (won Tupelo’s Dorset Prize) & the true keeps calm biding its story (won Ahsahta’s Sawtooth Prize, James Laughlin Award, N. California Book Award, & DiCastagnola Award). Her recent Beyond the Chainlink was a finalist for the NCIB Award & NCB Award). She is a recipient of a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and a recipient of other artist retreat fellowships. She’s one of eight fellows in the inaugural year (2020), awarded by UC Berkeley Art Research Center’s Poetry & the Senses Program. She teaches and she gives writing consultations. Her website: www.rustymorrison.com
