makalani bandele
It is very difficult for me to talk about revision. I find the process extremely tedious and frustrating in my technical and academic writing because I feel like no matter how many times I go over a text, I misspell, misuse, and invariably butcher the grammar somewhere in the text. Revision in my creative writing practice is a lot less stress inducing and confounding. I still misspell and misuse words, but my grammar is generally less complex in my creative writing, and I read and re-read creative pieces so many times to nail down conception, tone, texture, voice, etc., that is, the sublime aspects of the piece, that I catch more mundane mistakes before it ever sees publication. The three things I can say about revision are unfortunately not very revelatory. First, revision is a process and often quite lengthy, with the few exceptions of those Athena-like pieces that burst from your mind fully formed. Second, the process of revision will likely take on its own unique life for each piece. This is a little challenging for me because I am more comfortable with systems, guidelines, and rubrics. I am a Virgo and my mercury is also in Virgo, so yeah, my friends knowledgeable in astrology tell me it makes sense that I like working in poetic forms. I have discovered that it is easier to implement systems at the beginning of the creative writing project than it is in the revision phase. During my third and final summer at Cave Canem, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon led a poetry seminar that focused on revision and she shared with the seminar a rubric (she calls it a recipe) she created to guide her when revising her poems. In the wake of that germinal teaching moment, I have developed multiple rubrics for “birthing” poems and revising poems, but the revising rubrics never take hold. It’s been my experience that individual poems resist a systematic approach to revision; in other words, one approach to revision does not fit every poem. Every time I want to reduce the revision process to a set of operations, I am forced to confront the idiosyncrasies of the individual work and guided by it to approach revision in a way best suited to its needs. Third, and finally, revision is an open-ended process. I am one of those writers who might settle in on a final draft but is always open to new information and stimuli. A poem is never really done for me, and any poem is subject to being cannibalized and reconfigured or salvaged for a new poem.
This multimedia poem experiment is an outgrowth of several streams of passions that I am currently exploring in my work. For about the past ten years, I have had a deep and abiding fascination with non-representation or abstraction. This prompted me to take up abstract photography as a hobby. My interest in Free Jazz and abstract visual art pushed me to investigate how abstraction can work in language and poetics. These multimedia poems are ekphrastic conversations between music, visual art, and poetry. As the music and the photograph are non-representational, the poetic language similarly reaches toward abstraction. When trying to understand how to think about ekphrastic conversation, Jorie Graham’s maxim holds true: “It is not trying to describe the painting, it is trying to speak from it;” or “a painting run through an imagination.” All this is to say, do not look for clarity or coherence in an ekphrastic piece experimenting with ways to abstract language. This project of abstracting language calls for a different orientation when revising. Instead of trying to make the language clear, comprehensible, something that appeals to the senses in an intelligible way, I am trying to blur image, confound meaning, and balance the needs of the poem to obscure, but still be precise in its language. And what is to be understood as precise relates to tone, connotation/denotation, and elements of sound; many of the same things that poets are working toward in more conventional poems minus the constrictions of semantic specificity.
< pre-writing protocol >
< Rules of poetic form: c joint >
< draft >
< final version >
ofuscated studio with her
multimedia poem based in non-representation
Elana Bell
This poem began, as many of my poems do, as a journal entry, composed the first time I took my mother to the electro-convulsive therapy ward to receive treatments for a massive hormonal depression that had come on as she was entering menopause and I was graduating from college. It was, and continues to be, a tremendously painful rite of passage, and the subject of a lot of my poems. I was home for the summer, living with my parents. My father had work and couldn’t take her to her appointment, so he asked me to do it.
I remember walking into that ward and seeing patients walking around in a zombie-like state that reminded me of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and thinking, “There must be some mistake. My mother doesn’t belong here.” And, I remember the guilt I felt as I had to leave her in the hands of these nurses. I could feel her fear, and there was nothing I wanted more than to run out of there.
I actually began the first “draft” of the poem (which I don’t even consider a poem) that very day, as I was sitting outside, waiting for her to finish her treatment. The poem was not “finished” until more than fifteen years later. For a long time, it was too close to the bone. I couldn’t really get at what I was trying to say without being overly sentimental or too on the nose. In other words, I didn’t have enough distance to trust the imagery to do the work for me.
And that could only happen with time. I worked on it on and off over the years. I would say changing the form to couplets was the first major revision. And then, it was making it more and more sparse, and really letting the images do the work. Trusting them enough that I wasn’t saying to my readers “Do you get it? Do you understand what I am saying about my guilt and failures as a daughter?” When I could let that go and trust the language, that’s when it started to become a poem. I think the biggest revision surprise that really landed the poem for me was the shift in point of view in the very last couplet, from third person, where I am describing the experience with my mother, to direct address, where I make the offering of the truth “Mother, I’ve done what you would never do./Walked you to the edge, then turned away.” For me, that is the heart of the poem.
*
This poem first appeared in the collection Mother Country, BOA Editions 2020.
< draft 1 >
ect morning
6:30 a.m. and the ECT ward is hopping,
nurses with red plastic smiles wait
to undress you, help you pee in a bucket
before strapping you down to a metal framed
cot. They tell me to wait outside, get a cup
of coffee next door.
Last night at the restaurant, flyaway hair & vacant
eyed, you asked me if you looked weird. The other patients
on this ward look like actors from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I tell you: Compared to them, you look
like Miss America. We laugh before I slither out,
leaving you with the silicone Nurse Ratchett, lacquered
talons clutching your limp hand. You look up at me
and suddenly I know how you must have felt
my first day of kindergarten, and how twenty years later,
you still haven’t forgiven yourself.
< draft 2 >
Morning, ECT Ward
Bright fluorescents mimic the sun. Patients
lumped in chairs wheeled here & there.
Our bodies of no consequence
until we trade your name for a backless gown.
Now the nurses come alive for us,
their red plastic smiles in place
as they wait to undress you, hold you
over the bucket, then strap you to your cot.
Do I look strange? you ask.
The other patients with their flyaway hair
& unblinking eyes, wander the floor.
Compared to them you look like Miss America.
The nurses suggest I go out for a coffee, some air.
Your eyes grow wide as I edge toward the door.
O air! O escape!
I’ve done it. Left you in the grip
of those dirty hands, quick for a cure.
I, daughter, the betrayer.
I’ve done what you would never do.
Walked you to the edge, then turned away.
When they wheel you back to me
you’re hard to recognize:
flyaway hair, unblinking eyes,
the smell of urine on your gown.
And though I’ve followed every place
you’ve gone, I dare not to walk too close,
my own face reflected in the glass
sharded at the water’s edge.
< final version >
Dropping My Mother Off at the Electro-Convulsive Therapy Ward
Do I look strange? she asks.
The other patients with their flyaway hair
& unblinking eyes wander the floor.
Compared to them you look like a movie star.
The nurses suggest I get some air.
Her eyes widen as I edge toward the door,
leaving her in gloved hands,
quick for a cure.
I catch my face in the sharp fluorescence
of the bathroom mirror.
Have my dark eyes darkened?
Was that shadow there before?
As a girl I followed her
down any steep or muddied path.
Who will I follow when she is gone?
When they wheel her back to me:
faint bloom of urine on her gown.
What happened in that room
while I drank coffee just outside the door?
Mother, I’ve done what you would never do.
Walked you to the edge, then turned away.
Noor Hindi
This poem is inspired by a 9-1-1 dispatch call partially quoted in an article in Detroit Free Press. When I was writing it, I was thinking about the word frantic, and how that word might capture how I’ve been feeling the last two years. I wanted to disjoint my own emotions with the high stakes emotions of someone in a state of emergency, dialing 9-1-1. On a personal note, I left a job a few months before writing this poem and some weeks after throwing a house party to celebrate my purchasing a house. So, frantic. So, anxiety. Maybe a whole lot of grief. I remember talking to someone who worked as a 9-1-1 dispatcher at the party. I did consider, not seriously, applying for a job like this, which would have been awful in retrospect. Still, bad ideas often feel good when in a state of emergency.
As for revisions, some poems fly out of you. Others take months to build. This poem is the former. I wrote a lot of it in my head before sitting down. I could see its form and its tone. It needed sharpening in a second draft, though. I wanted the balloon to show up in the poem. I also needed to cut a few unnecessary words out. And though I was aiming for some level of disjointedness, I needed to add a couple lines in the beginning to really set the poem up, which is why there was ultimately an addition. I’m not sure about the additional two lines in the beginning. I might cut again later. We’ll see.
< draft >
Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Red Balloon
I write you a letter in the parking lot of a grocery store.
At a party
a white boy offers me a job
as a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
My mother slept for the entirety of my life.
Everyone beautiful in slumber.
Sweet sunset, stereo, shame.
I am not afraid anymore.
I am subscribing to the Detroit Free Press
after good sex
and a tongue that tastes like winter.
My father the quiet chirp of a dying
smoke alarm.
I am a good operator.
Is anyone injured?
Does it look like a gun?
Sometimes the music is so loud
my heart aches like a coffin.
I am begging you
to stay alive. I am hoping
the dead still love us
years beyond
their withered bodies.
Bright bones, bright kite.
What’s your emergency?
My stupid face in the mirror.
Daisies sprouting from my lips.
My friends telling me they love me.
< REVISION >
Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Red Balloon
I write you a letter in the parking lot of a grocery store.
At a party
a white boy offers me a job
as a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
Someone is running their hands through my hair
and I like it.
My mother slept for the entirety of my life.
Everyone beautiful in slumber.
Sweet sunset, stereo, shame.
I am not afraid anymore.
I am subscribing to the Detroit Free Press
after good sex
and a tongue that tastes like winter.
My father the quiet chirp of a dying
smoke alarm.
I am a good operator.
Is anyone injured?
Does it look like a gun?
Sometimes the music is so loud
my heart aches like a coffin.
I am begging you
to stay alive. I am hoping
the dead love us
years beyond
their withered bodies.
Bright bones, bright balloon.
What’s your emergency?
My stupid face in the mirror.
Daisies sprouting from my lips.
My friends telling me they love me.
Vi Khi Nao
Editing hasn’t always been my favored tactic to create. The way I prefer to edit is to write, create, or produce an entirely new poem (s). To substitute what has been lacking or absent or unaccounted for in the original poem. I don’t really enjoy reworking an article or garment of text. One of the reasons for this is that I am easily provoked by detachment. I love the release more than the clench. As soon as the work leaps out of me – like a heartbeat – it dies. It doesn’t even defoliate like a leaf on the arboreal négligée of a tree. But I have chosen my poem, “Lamprophyre” for the traditional approach to revision. I cut the poem short by pruning all the unnecessary, wilted, yellowed leaves. I have edited out “into the night” – it feels empty and unremarkable. “Into the night” is also so time-ubiquitous and makes a terrible time marker or destination of ambiance. It goes without saying: I am trying to be more specific. I have removed the preposition “into” because it drags out the third line too long. And, it’s cleaner. It also changes the relationship between love and Fahrenheit, as if the speaker is re-directing its arrow of fervor and ardency towards the scale of temperature instead of its primary subject of interest, which is lamprophyre. This slight omission also tilts the poem a little as if the poem is trying to tell its speaker that his/her/their existence can be replaced or deputized at any time. Even the speaker has very little ownership of the poem’s central voice and it’s important to de-hierarchize the accepted “authoritative” disposition of such voice through diversification of authority. The speaker shifts and changes and it is for the greater good of the lyric community.
< draft >
LAMPROPHYRE
Forget me
The wind has come for us
While trying to change the vacant sheets of night
Into flags of lower Fahrenheit
I loved you once – did I not?
Did I not see you
In the wind
Altering its lightbulb
Electric filament of my love
For your covert
Rounded shape operation
Which you call me
Lamp?
You suck my rasping tongue
Into the night
While I wither away from daylight
I suck the adult
In you which is a parasite
You have horny teeth
You are jawless
With such unlambent-like bone structures
And, I am blind again
After being seen
Of my virtues
Of my destitutions
Of my substitutions
Of my dissolutions
I have no reason to believe
In this garment
Which you call
Groundmass
Which I call
Volcanic
Which everyone thinks
Is the conical fragments
Of me being once
Gas, vapor, or fissure
Of today or tomorrow
You assure me
That you are solid
You are rock
Even when it rains
Suddenly
Even after you alter
The DNA of all your prostitutes
Into homogeneous
Methamphetamine
< revision >
LAMPROPHYRE
Forget me
The wind has come for us
While trying to change the vacant sheets of night
Flags of lower Fahrenheit
I loved you once – did I not?
Did I not see you
In the wind
Altering its lightbulb
Electric filament of my love
For your covert
Rounded shape operation
Which you call me
Lamp?
You suck my rasping tongue
While I wither away from daylight
I suck the adult
In you which is a parasite
You have horny teeth
You are jawless
And, I am blind again
After being seen
Of my virtues
Of my dissolutions
I have no reason to believe
In this garment
Which you call
Groundmass
Which I call
Volcanic
Which everyone thinks
Is the conical fragment
Of me being once
Gas, vapor, or fissure
Even after you alter
The DNA of all your prostitutes
Into homogeneous
Methamphetamine
You are rock
You are solid
L. Lamar Wilson
Identities are at once projections and social imprints made real by our choosing. For 26 of my 43 years, I chose not to identify as “disabled.” I was raised in a home where that word was synonymous with sin, and we refused to be cursed with the invisible devil’s beastly marks. In “Substantia Nigra,” the penultimate poem in Sacrilegion (Carolina Wren Press, 2013), I cemented that rejection with words not unlike those in the preceding sentence. I no longer choose to believe their devil is real and instead own Erb’s palsy, the congenital paralysis of my left hand, as one of at least two physical disabilities that shape my existence on this side of forever, commingled with at least two valences of neurodivergence that emerged from my breached birth; three decades of unrelenting bullying and internalized racism, homophobia, and misogynoir; and a terrible fall down a flight of stairs in 2018 that has led to post-concussion memory issues. I no longer validate the sundry projections on my verse that would pathologize my Black, genderquare, disabled flesh. The journey from “How to Disclose,” published in March 2017 in Crazyhorse 91, to “Dis Closure,” which appears in a forthcoming second collection, aims to redefine my relationship to my disabilities while eschewing the colonizing, white liberal’s “anti-racist” and “woke” supremacist gaze. That gaze requires little of itself outside a passive posture of “listening” and being “educated” by an inordinate number of tales of victimhood. As my people would say, “the devil is a lie.” Never again. I trust your discerning eyes to comprehend the subtleties, including the current poem’s sonic interjections and moments of ellipsis, in “Dis Closure.” Is the title too on the nose? Let me know: llamarwilson.com or llamarwilson@gmail.com.
< early version >
how to disclose
In the states you & I live, I am a criminal, & by morgue,
Cell or sanitarium, they will put me away. It’s all ways
My fault. After Good night, John Boy! I let my selves loose
Like mice scouring a soiled kitchen floor, blind but hungry
Beyond the good sense God gave us all to smell a trap—
Loose booty, you big dummy—& scuttle-butt to an other
Other, a darker corridor, where the last piece
Of Havarti & dill was waiting in the form
Of a man sculpted / like a Magnum
Chocolate bar I had to devour. Pretty teeth &
Nappy hair & accipitral tongue keen to threadbare
My ischioanal fossae. I crawled atop his grotty bed,
Eyes blazing, high on the hype of his profile pic,
Let the heat rend his Magnum sleeve & sunder me.
< FINAL VERSION >
dis closure
In the states you & I love, I am a criminal, & by morgue,
Cell or sanitarium, they will put me away. It’s all ways
My fault. After Good night, John Boy! I let my selves loose
Like mice scouring a soiled kitchen floor, blind but hungry
Beyond the good sense God gave us all to smell a trap—
Loose booty, you big dummy!—& scuttle-butt to an other
Other, a darker corridor, where the last piece
Of Havarti & dill was waiting in the form
Of a waiting man’s flesh, sculpted like a Magnum
chocolate bar I had to devour. Round & round we go …
In the states you & I live, his pretty teeth, ensconced
in golds & his free & nappy hair, also criminal, his
accipitral tongue keen to threadbare my ischioanal
fossa: Where we stop, nobody knows! He crawled atop
this grotty bed, eyes blazing, high on the hype
of his profile pic, let the heat rend his Magnum sleeve &