Did I write this way back when? Or did I workshop it with someone?

[shalanna]

After reading about madwriter's finding of an old poem he didn't remember writing and wasn't sure he'd written, I started wondering again about this old poem that I *believe* is mine. But I can't be sure, though I haven't turned it up while Goo-goo-googling.

It's one of those purple dittoed copies from a workshop I took at SMU back in the 1980s (when I was in college there). (Remember the smell of those purple dittoes when they first passed them around the room? Mmmmm. I am sure it caused dain bramage.) This was SO long ago that photocopies were too expensive to use in class, and most teachers had access to a ThermoFax like my dad's or an old ditto machine. Whee! We're old!

I don't know if I really wrote the poem. I mean, there it was folded in half, marking my once-upon-a-time place inside Judson Jerome's book about writing poetry. I was moving books around and discovered it. I remember it, too. I remember rewriting a few lines after getting these notes on it. The notes are handwritten in a fading blue ink. People must have given those comments to me in the roundtable discussion. Didn't they? Or was this somebody else's poem that I coveted to such an extent that I took notes and saved it for all these years?

Actually, madwriter recently spoke of finding a poem in a college notebook last summer and then, after finding out he did write it, I think he sold it to a magazine. He knew whose he suspected it was, so he contacted that person and verified it wasn't by him/her. Then he found other copies with his name and date. Voila! A "new" poem out of his past, which is quite neato. Glad he came across that to share with the world.

The reason I can't quite trace this one back is that when I was sick several years ago, my mother and her friend "cleaned up that awful office of yours" and threw away many, many archived works that might not have been good, but dangit, they had no business doing it to "help me out" while I was incapacitated. I knew what was in all the stacks, dust or no dust, cats or no cats. *wry grin* But it means the original notebooks aren't here, mostly.

Anyway, I was thinking of sending it around after being inspired by madwriter's success. But then I always get crazy ideas like that.

I know the opening lines and closing lines by heart. Didn't remember the middle so well. (The closing was, of course, inspired by the "Footprints" poem where the Lord says that during the time you see only one set of footprints, He was carrying you. That's supposed to resonate with those who know the greeting-card poem. The "lips as shoes" thing I'm not as sure about, but I think that is something the poet James Tate may have written around at some point.) I recall this as being mine, but who can say? It'd be bad to send it around and have it recognized as someone else's, wow. So maybe it stays here in LJ.

After that kind of buildup, how could the poem itself have any impact? But I post it anyway.

* * *
Destinations

It seems you have always
been like this: a life without
gifts or secrets, years trundling by
like empty crates shipped to some unknown destination.

Each night you dream you are lost
in the shadow of something
awesome and unimaginable;
feel your own insignificance,
know the vastness around you, as if
you were the least bit of dust
in God's pocket.

So you imagine the clock's hands
covering a great distance,
a distance which separates you
from shadows, from God,
from destinations that draw you closer,
always closer,
as though there were
something important to be said,
something your lips might
gather gratefully around
as they travel before you like an
old pair of well-matched shoes,
tracking words like footprints
that point your way back
and are filling with sand.

Comments

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

something important to be said,
something your lips might
gather gratefully around

I like this bit. That's a nice image.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I like the poem a lot. I hope it's yours (and I don't recognize it as anyone else's).

Judson Jerome's book about writing poetry

I had that -- have that, I hope. (Not all my books survived the move west.) It's wonderful.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm still boggling about the so-called office cleaning. That'd be a murdering offense in my book--throwing out anything I've written, if I don't have backup copies, certainly worth a good bit of torture first, too. How would they have felt if you went in and "cleaned up" their stuff?

Anyway, before I get all wrothy and vitreolic...

Obviously I can't guarantee anything, but you ought to try this poem on John Benson, the editor of Not One Of Us. He's one of the best editors I've ever sold to (and been rejected by!), and I know he's looking for stuff right now. (NOoU is a small press zine paying 1/4 cent per word, if I remember right, but is highly regarded--read for the Best Of anthologies, even, which is how I wound up with an Honorable Mention in one--and has been around for twenty years, so you can be sure he'll be around awhile longer. And you'd be in good poetic company there...he publishes Sonya Taaffe in every issue, for instance. :) )

Here are the submission guidelines:

http://not-one-of-us.com/guidelines.php

At the very least, if he bounces it, you can expect a short, gentlemanly reason (sometimes in detail) of why the poem didn't work for him.