Wednesday, September 4, 2024

Blas Falconer : Process Note #44

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 Blas Falconer is part of her curriculum for Maker, Mentor, Muse and her poetry classes at the University of San Francisco. Thanks for reading.

 


          When I opened the large envelope containing copies of Rara Avis last week and held the book in my hands for the first time, I was overwhelmed to see all the poems bound together at last. I recall how it started. Not the first poem, but the first poem that gave me some insight into what this book might be.

          “Long Gone” renders a moment in the car with my two boys, as they grew more rambunctious, distracting me from the road and the potential dangers that lay ahead. As I revised, I could see that the poem was also hinting at the dangers I had faced to get there. And how those challenges related to a fear that looked like anger rising within me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because the boys   
                    
will not stop
          fighting, I hit

the brakes and
                     turn around,
          staring them

down, the words,
                     loud and cruel,
          rushing from

my mouth, until they
                     cower in
          their seats, and when

I’m done, angrier
                     than even I
          understand,                    

the younger says,
                     He scared me,
          as if I’m not                    

there, the way years
                     from now, driving,
          he might confess—He

scared me      
                    
sometimes
—to his
          brother, the road

ending abruptly
                     at a field of trees
          they can’t see through

and must guess
                     instead what lies
          beyond it.

Reading the poem, I wondered, What was behind those trees? That seemed like a path that I needed to follow.

          This need to explore the subjects of fatherhood, my growing fear for my children, and to question the use (or misuse) of authority was further magnified when I wrote “Strata,” a poem that unfolded in its composition to reveal my son’s own need to distance himself from me.

You don’t understand, he says again,
from the backseat of the car, my son,

who only months ago could not fall
asleep before whispering, first, some

secret in my ear. When I look
in the rearview, he turns toward peaks

in the distance, and when I ask him
to explain, shaking his head, he sighs as if

it isn’t worth the trouble. I had
the same words for my father, and one day,

cursing, pushed him through the doorway
with the full strength of the body I had

grown into. At forty-five, he could
have pinned me to the wall, but at

what cost? It’s a story we don’t like
to tell. My son and I ride in silence

until he asks how long it takes
to get there, an apology in the sound

of his voice if not the words. I do
understand. Not long, I say, as we drive

through desert mountains that have stood
for six million years, and which I once thought

looked like the fallen bodies of giants,
gods grown over with yellow grass.

As the two make their way, the father hopes for the closeness he and his son once shared even as he remembers his own need as an adolescent son years before to insist on his independence.  In that memory, the speaker acknowledges his own father’s restraint, how he must have watched with sadness this common event between parent and child.

          I can’t help, now, but think of a conversation I had recently with a poet who described having a similar experience with her once tender son. One day she could see in his eyes almost a repulsion when he looked at her. She said that this rupture in adolescence is tied to our own evolution. Consider, she went on, how thousands of years ago, in smaller tribes, genetic variation was essential, how the young man might go off in search of other communities. The poet suspected that the teen experienced this compulsion to break out of the smaller family unit on an olfactory level. The poet reassured me that, after a handful of years, the son she once knew returned.

          My understanding of my son’s need to define himself as distinct from me, to define his place in the room were largely informed by a number of particulars, including his adoption—the idea that another, perhaps better or ideal father existed out in the world, one with whom he might better relate, one in whom he might see himself—and my own father’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Some poems, such as “My Son Wants to Know Who His Biological Father Is,” explicitly addresses my own insecurities even as I encouraged my son to express his curiosity about his natural parents. Other poems imagine my father, on the other side of the country, facing a grave and terrifying illness, largely alone—alone because of his stoic nature, alone because of COVID’s global quarantine. These poems revealed, not only my father’s stoicism, but his quiet gentleness, his instincts to protect those he loved. Consider this excerpt from “Son.”

When the car stopped in front of the house that night
          after the long drive, my father lifted me                            

from the back seat. He’s awake, my brother said,
          Asleep, my sister, their small shoes turning stones

on the narrow path. I didn’t open my eyes
          but could smell my father’s breath, warm and sweet.

Is not, Is too—they argued as I floated like
          a dream through the dark above them,

cradled under the great branch. The roots pushed deeper
          into the soft ground. I was neither, of course,

or both. The sound of the key as it entered the lock.
          The sound of the door swinging open. Closed.

The poem acknowledges, I hope, how the loving gesture makes a lifelong impression, an imprint on a cellular level.

          Of course, the book explores other subjects under the themes of evolving relationships and the questions of authority within them. Some poems (i.e., “Forgiven”) address the hold that lovers might have on one another, even after the relationship has ended, even after the beloved has died. Poems question and critique power dynamics that women (“Figura Serpentinata”), people of color (“Fatherland”), and members of the queer community (“Reconciliation”) are often subjected to daily. Poems consider religion, history, myth, and art. One poem (“Conversion”) suggests a suspicion of the command that poetic inspiration might have on the poet. Together, the poems study the roles we take on and relinquish in various relationships.

          When I began years ago writing what would become Rara Avis, I didn’t know where it would lead me, but from the moment I drafted the first poem to the day I finalized the collection’s sequence, it has repeatedly posed the question, What powers shape us into who we become? And together, I hope, the poems answer this question in their own way. The book’s dedication—"For you. For the you before you and the one before that”—addresses all the people who come in and out of our lives. But in my mind, this book is for my father, who in the end survived the brutal disease as well as the extreme treatment he bore to overcome it. He remains, in many ways, an example of the very best among us, someone I can only aspire to be.

 

My Son Wants to Know Who His Biological Father Is

 

My son wants to know
his name. What does he look like? What does
he like? My son swims
four days a week. When my son swims
underwater, he glides
between strokes. When he glides underwater, he is
an arrow aimed
at a wall. Four days a week, his coach says,
Count—1…2…—before
coming up for air.
My father had blue eyes, blonde hair,
though mine are brown.
My father could not speak
Spanish and wondered, How can you love
another man? We rarely touched.
When my son
is counting, I count
with him. I say, I am
your father, too. 1…2…

 

 

The Conversion

 

You picked them this morning from
a tree in the corner of the yard. You liked the way

the stem gave to your pull, how the branch lifted,
the scent of rinds, after, on your hands.

In Caravaggio’s Conversion on the Way
to Damascus, the man, fallen from

his horse onto the road, eyes closed, lifts his hands
into the light, pushing away, grasping—which

is it?—the source of his illumination, which
you cannot see. You place the bowl of lemons

in the middle of the table. Look
how bright they shine. Don’t look.


 

 

 

 

Blas Falconer is the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel and A Question of Gravity and Light as well as the co-editor of two anthologies, Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets and The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity. The recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award from Poets and Writers, he teaches in San Diego State University’s MFA program and is the Editor-in-Chief at Poetry International Online.

 

 

 

 

Maw Shein Win’s most recent poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. Win's previous books include full-length poetry collection Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and her Process Note Series features poets on their process. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary community. Win’s full-length collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in Fall 2024. mawsheinwin.com