(in)fertility m/essay

Inspired by reading all sorts of good things and a recent call for a lyric-hybrid essay, I have begun writing something new.  I'm never sure when a first draft becomes a second or third.  I know it's young, but it's starting to feel awfully solid.  I'd been calling it my (in)fertility m/essay, but I'm thinking about calling it drawing down the moon.  I've got a few places in mind to send it, one in very-particular, but I'll keep that hush-hush so when it does find a home, that home won't get jealous of first crushes.  I've been itching to write something that doesn't slide into genre very neatly and I'd been auditioning projects like some kind of manic monkey (something spiritual and freeing in Alaska! something witchy involving burning in the Appalachians!) (and those projects are still in the works but very much so toe-in-the-water) for a while.  I feel a little heady about it.  Perhaps I did this now because I'm bucking against that month-of-30/30-poems for Tupelo (which was hugely successful and I'll write about that soon and I'm so pleased about it) / (which was exhausting).  I've already had one brilliant mind give it a read and I've since injected it with some goddesses and some celebration and about a thousand more words.  (I'm counting words!  That's not how poets do it!)  All I know is I keep getting drawn back to this humble laptop to adjust some more.  My poetry collective might knee me in the boobs if I don't stop emailing them revised versions.

Right now, I've finished:  The First Flag and am reading:  Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies.  My brain is rattling its cage.

book launch: the first flag by sarah fox

I picked up a copy of The First Flag at the Strand in Manhattan, actually, and had been exploring its strangeness--as object, as word--periodically since.  Not one full plunge, that would come later.  This night was really about giving Meryl and myself a chance for a poetry-date; a practice I vowed we'd do once a month now, to keep ourselves from looking at one another and saying has it really been that long?.  We had Thai.  We came to Honey at Ginger Hop.  She had bourbon.  I took photographs.

(Above:  Chris Fischbach, editor at Coffee House Press, introduces Sarah.)

In fact, the placenta of the pharaoh was placed on a pole and carried into battle.  This is history's first flag.

- Llyod DeMause, "The Fetal Origins of History"

 The book and the event line up:  phantasmagoric.  Is this a word used on the promotion for the event?  Fortune telling, musicians, a lit-up deer plugged into the stage nodding and unnodding along.  A stream-of-consciousness band.  Recordings, visitations from Sao Paolo, photographs, charts.  A book trailer.  An accordion, a tie-dyed flag, choral readers. 

I was a bird brothel.  (2)

My hands work / better than a trowel to feel for the root / tails, snapping them up like a hem seam (9)

rapemines (43)

[my daughter] / whose residence inside me was my favorite of all / the epochs of being an animal body (58)

All the bones yarn up.  (69)

To have an abortion (subtraction) / in Michigan, you must hurl the word VAGINA back and forth / without breaking it (117)

It was strange and wonderful to read these poems, some of which I'd read in early draft form in our thesis seminar.  And there it is, this book that become more of a book as time progressed.  The photographs of the dead deer she found in Wisconsin and I saw on her Facebook page for a time, fascinated.  Thinking of my own deer and the poem I wrote about her. 

There's a kinship in the subjects Sarah possesses:  the woman's body, the spiritual (though I've been shy about this, and growing rapidly less shy), the horrors of a body in trauma, the pleasures of baby-having and fascination at what the body can do (her object of interest is the placenta, whereas mine seems to be that ridiculous production of milkmilkmilk).  Also the roots of the world and the fungus and the woody stems and finding ourselves feral.

Her launch had a kind of ... oh, what's the right word?  There was chaos and many people involved, sometimes not knowing who does what, not that perfect rehearsal but ritual still, and mostly, a way of thanking so many people who helped this book become a book.  (She did a shout-out to the sons of mothers in the room, and the list read like a haphazard version of what was on my name-list when I was pregnant; Finn was the last name read and I blushed.)  And the book itself is that way too:  Sarah doesn't shy from saying thank you to those who influenced her.  There are footnotes abound and after so-and-so and for so-and-so and I think about how much goes into the making of a book, how meager that thank you list can feel.  I think too of E's book and how her dedication page is a sequence of initials--those who are among the initialed know and that's enough too.

Once we reached a certain point in the evening, and it went on as we were leaving, my milk began to let down, maybe when the slide of the woman nursing a wolf (dog?) came up, maybe the images of placenta at birth, maybe a note during the songs, but probably nothing, just a thought of him maybe. 

It was a bewildering pleasure to witness.  I appreciate the exuberance and the presence.  The book and the event--have I mentioned this? yes, I know--they fit together so well.

weekend seminar with susan power

I've done an awful job transcribing notes from my experiences with the Loft mentorship, so I will start here, with our last meeting with fiction writer Susan Power.  And I must say, before I delve into my notebook, that I highly recommend her work.  We read Roofwalker for our mentorship group and all of us absolutely loved it.

This was a reading weekend, and at the Q&A, she spoke of how there's that saying write what you know, but a writer once told her she ought to write what you need to know instead.  (I love this; it's so critical to what I'm in the thick of Right Now.)

When asked about writing pain, she confessed she's attracted to the juicier parts, so she writes those first, leaving the connective tissue to writing later.

On the business of writing
- In thinking of change or letting a book go:  "I'm not going to give up on my characters.  I'm not going to give up on my stories."
- As a judge, she's concerned about carelessness.
- Never forget what you are serving, first and foremost.  Portrayal of authenticity / clear vision backed with reason.  In creation process, simply follows, doesn't understand reasons at the time, but in revision.  Often stands ground when she feels she is being edited culturally.  Watch when we / our work is being treated as a product.  What we do is sacred.
- Manage expectations.  Aim for the world, but don't expect the world.  Always be on guard for agendas of others--pressures from business or even family members.  Know what is reasonable for you.  Remember that your job is to be as authentic as you can be about your writing.  Don't apologize for your process, your journey.  Each writer, each project is different.  Realize you are called to do different things and each needs something different.  (Be OK with that.)
- One writer, when talking about the way we compare ourselves to other writers (or reviewers do):  "It's like there's no more room at the table."
- Another writer said she "enjoys the ancestry," and that it "causes [her] to feel less alone."
- Somewhere in there, we talked about the conversations we have with books--about how, when we are pushing to do something unique, to think of our work as conversing with what came before, and know that everything on the shelf is speaking to something else on the shelf.

I wrote to myself:  This discussion of Getting A Book exhausts and depresses me, this honesty and wishing.  I think it's because I've been wishing so hard and long for my full-length.  I'm worrying about so many things.

We had two writing exercises:

- Interviewing.  This one can be adapted in many ways, but Susan uses it to help jumpstart a stuck place.  Often she'll set up an interview for one of her characters to get at answers she cannot logically come to on her own.  Sometimes, as in a piece she's worked on recently, another character entirely shows up to answer the questions.  The response was complicated, but good.  It can be a generative exercise:  write ten general questions and see how they get answered by a character, a not-even-a-seed character, no-one in mind.  Just go.  Or, if you are writing nonfiction, a way to imagine how someone might have answered those questions, or someone else, just to get a better understand of the situation.  Another way to do this is to do it in role-playing with a writing partner.  For me, during the exercise, what called me was to really follow the development of the questions themselves; I'd like to interview my mother about her attitudes towards her pregnancy with me and my sister to see what it might do to my current poetry manuscript.

One student suggested writing with a non-dominant hand.  She said she was surprised at some of the results she got.  Another writer spoke of how she would let herself lose complete control in freewriting and once dreamed up a daughter for couple-friends who had no plans for children and were heading into unbearing years and not long after, that friend called with News.

Other exercise suggestions:
- Create a list of characters such as the patron saint of liars (after Ann Patchett) and see what roles come out.
- What if your character walked to the "wrong" end of the rainbow?  Let the character contend with that object.  (Not a "wrong" object--but, say, a baby)
- Another writer suggested the technique of mind-mapping

Each session we've had with Susan, I've come away rethinking my manuscript deeply, and that surprised me.  I thought, perhaps, nonfiction would influence me--after all, this is confessional, very naval-gazing stuff, but fiction certainly isn't a realm I'm comfortable in.  But, as with many things, it does depend on the instructor and her ability to draw in students.  I found her energy inspiring--she looks to opening yourself up to receiving your creative impulses.  Characters arrive and speak to her.  She follows, doesn't question.  Generation is a magical thing.

the central park zoo

In colors of glossy Easter Sunday, banners cropped up around the park, bringing us slips of poetry to the public sphere.  Sea lions and visiting sparrows see these the most.  Flowers are rising even more, I am certain.  My first memory of Central Park was learning about the jogger and the danger.  My first actual visit was lousy with sunshine, my husband, my two kids.  A crow came a took a piece of chicken right from my paper plate, the very one I was touching in protection from his yellowy hungry eye.  Bird by bird.

oliver de la paz visit: reading (with me!)

 

On the Loft's blog, Writer's Block

an email I sent to friends & family

A few weeks ago, I set up a Facebook "event" to let friends and family know about a project I am working on--fundraising for Tupelo Press.  Here is the bulk of that message:

"Some of you have done Polar Bear Plunges, some 3-Day walks. We all have done some form of strange, difficult, empowering, important work to help a project we believe in.

For me, April will be about Tupelo Press, a poetry press with some creative fundraising: each month, they’ve culled volunteers in the poetry world to perform the writing equivalent of these athletic feats--a poetry marathon, in a sense. Every day for the month of April, I will generate a new poem-draft, which will be posted on their website, for all to see, in order to raise money for this press to continuing printing the quality work I’ve come to love. It’s a nice month to do it, National Poetry Month, when many others are participating in NaPoWriMo and variations.

For the record, I’m aiming for a grand total of $500. It’s an amount that intimidates me, but if ten people gave $50, or 50 people gave $10, then I’d be set. In other words, every dollar counts.

To donate:

Please go to: http://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/ and select the Donate button. To give towards my goal, please put my name (Molly Sutton Kiefer) in the Honor field.

If you don’t feel comfortable donating online, you can also send a check with my name in the “memo” field to Tupelo Press at this address:

Tupelo Press
243 Union Street #305
North Adams, MA 01247

And even if you can’t spare anything by way of monetary donations, please do feel free to cheer me on. You can leave comments on each day’s collection of poems, you can email me, or leave a note on Facebook, and I will appreciate it.

Best,

Molly"

I am only $126 away from my goal.  I'm at the point where every $5 and $10 donation counts--and I'm grateful for every bit.  I'm also hugely grateful for everyone who has been keeping up with the poems I've been writing and sent me notes of encouragement.  It's been an overwhelming but ultimately good experience.

I know not everyone can contribute financially, or you already have extra dollars earmarked for other projects--many (most!) on this mass list are artists themselves.

To get a sample, here's a poem I wrote last Wednesday, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, on the flight home from New Jersey / New York:

Gateway / by Molly Sutton Kiefer

Will Ryman’s sculpture Bird is a temporary art installation in front of New York City’s Flatiron building on display in April of 2013.

I am nursing my son; no one meets my eye.
I think of all I could hide beneath this
flannel blanket:  purloined magazines, a kilo
of cocaine, trafficked organs, another woman’s baby.
On the televisions, the reporter gives
her dramatic monologue; the scrim behind her holds
the runners in flight, the flash of finish line.  How few
will want to watch and say, That’s me.  My son
erupts in my lap, his meal is done, definitive,
a morning out of context.  I feel the puff, the cloud
he’d been saving since waking.  It’s the sort
that earns new furniture, only it’s my lap
that’s been blown out.  He arcs like a cat,
and I am on the floor, peeling off his ruined suit.
The televisions fill with white dust.  I slip to search
the airport shops for something to wrap him in.
This is the first time I’ve been alone in days.  Even
my own wasting garners an audience.  All I find
is a onesie adorned with landmarks at a shop called
America!.  The shirt decrees Born in the USA,
which isn’t a lie, but I am not the sort to billboard
my child with a flag.  At the conversion
of concourses, a woman in polyester moves
to the center, sky-lit, puts her hand up, palm out.
At once, the bustle stills, as if she was a warning
shot.  Halt, heart.  Sweaty men in navy jackets
tell those behind them—stop—caught before
they slam into the next, avoid a cluster
of businessmen pileup, all roller bags
and cellular phones.  A held Ferris wheel—no one
even minds swaying on the rim.  She stands
in an invisible box.  Her pleated compatriots
are moving silently, as if on castors, shrouded
in stage mist, expressions blank.  We are locked
down; an alarm tweaks at the gate and I am apart
from my three.  I scurry and watch.  Security searches
chair and floor, a crackle and then I hear something
about a missing bag.  On the televisions, it’s Monday again
and again, and the reporter tells us
of packed nails and ball bearings darning flesh.
On the way out of the city, our children pumped sound:
bleat-bleat-bleat-bleat-bleat.  I slid into the backseat,
leaned into one carseat, my breast funneled
into his mouth, my hand in hers, and my eye
caught the silent bird displaced in front of the Flatiron.
In its mouth, a draped rose, its body made
of five thousand nails painted black.