November 19, 2013

I hope, dear readers, you've all had a good week with your writing.

In my last post I mentioned "that you might enjoy hearing about a couple of my other writing projects. One didn't turn out quite so well. The other did."

Well, that isn't exactly true, since the writing project that "didn't quite turn out so well," actually, I think in the end, did. While the good editors at the Bellingham Review ended up not taking the revision of my poem, "Improvisations of the Middle Time," I definitely think that the revision that I did at their behest is definitely better than the earlier version that I submitted to them. I'm confident that, eventually, the poem will be published. Writers need to be hopeful.

But in this post let me tell you about the "other" project that I mention above, the one that "did" definitely turn out well, both on the writing and on the publishing front.

I submitted two works to an editor of an upcoming anthology of poems on illness and loss. One was a poem that I wrote after my mother passed away after an extended illness. It originally appeared in a an excellent literary magazine called The American Poetry Journal. Here it is:

Towards The End, Your Hands, Sad Feathers

Towards the end
your hands, sad
feathers, fluttered

up from your sides,
pausing inches
above your bed,

then lay still. Into
the dim room night
finished its quiet labor,

eased like a firework’s
slowly umbrellaed
descent, boneless,

calm in its ghostly
jelly fish-like body
against your brow.     

                        *

From the tide-
flooded grottoes
of your lungs, 

tube-siphoned
whispers, words
(yours? mine?)

rose lazily
like cigarette smoke
over machines

that tethered you,
their push, pull, their in-
halations of air, their fear-

dispossessed kisses
of oxygen from our lungs
to yours:                                 

*

Time for the wafer of memory

to melt on  your tongue now.

                        *

A mark, a smudge
like a bruise,
then nothing.

                        *                     

And now, look
here. No,
here:

A thicket,
of light
red dark

scrapped away,
its glistening
skin.


I like the poem, but, perhaps because I wrote it more recently, I liked the other piece that I submitted more. It's called "The Morning of the Sylmar Quake," but it presented a problem, which I outlined in my submission note to the editor: "The last work I'm submitting, 'The Morning of the Sylmar Quake,' you may not find eligible for the anthology, as it dwells in that shadow world between poetry and prose. Is it flash fiction or prose poetry? I'll leave it to your good judgment to decide."

Here's what I submitted to her (It's a short piece, about 725 words. Feel free to tell me what genre you think it is):

The Morning of the Sylmar Quake

            My father died just after 6:00, on the morning of February 9^th, 1971.

Or rather, my father is dying. I seem to be murmuring this in near sleep, as my father and I ride on the backs of fireflies into the darkness of the trees, entering the woods beyond the ravine behind our house where we lived in Ohio.
            We seem more souls than bodies now. They, our bodies that is, seem to have been left behind, suspended like pairs of long johns hanging on a clothesline. Of course I know this is impossible. For one, we live in California now, in the San Fernando Valley, and the present is here, at 6:00 in the morning on February 9^th, 1971.

            It is Tuesday morning, or was, and it is hot, even now at 6:00.  My window is open, and I can feel the air lying heavy and still on its bed of heat.
            I was dozing, wandering in those moments between waking and sleeping, sweating in my bed. For me, a kid from Ohio, such heat in February seems unnerving and a bit frightening.

My father opened my bedroom door. It was a sudden gesture, a thrusting open. I remember the door banging against the door stopper. These moments, I know, lie in the past now. My father staggered to my bed, his faced bleached of color, his hand held to his chest. He stared wide-eyed at me. “Waldo! Waldo! Wake up!” he shouted. This moment, too, lies in the past.

And then I woke to rattling and shaking and a clamor that sounded like a freight train rumbling past my ear.

I thought my father might actually be dying, here, now, right in front of my eyes, even as, stricken as he was, he climbed onto my bed and lay his body on top of me, and I could feel his heart beating against mine, a wild bird struggling, penned up in the cage of his body. These moments lie in the past, too.  

But here is where it gets complicated. There seemed to be a pause in this moment of my father’s death, or, I should say, in what I think of as his death.

There is a pause. It occurs in the moment, I think, between the last diastolic and the last systolic beats of my father’s heart, an opening in that last lub-dub, where the hyphen is: Lub…, and this is where we are now, in this moment, this millisecond that has opened up, like a chasm forming in an earthquake, and we have leapt into it, together, my father and I, holding hands.

            Time has stopped. Time has paused. Time has gestured us closer.

“Look inside this moment,” it said. “There are infinities of tinier moments, and infinities of tinier moments still.” Time winked at us. “But even infinity has its limits.”

Time’s voice sounded like it was speaking from deep in a well, like a shushing of waves rustling ashore when you hold a shell to your ear. For a few moments, gone now, I thought of the Beatles song, “All you need is love,” playing it in my head, except I substituted “All you need is time,” instead.

“But will there be time for more?” I asked when the song was over.

            Time shook its head and laughed. It was a soft laugh, a kindly laugh. “No.”

I looked at my father. His face looked drawn out, his saggy eyes sad and glistening. He said nothing. “But I never want the time with my father to end,” I said.

            Time cocked his head. I could feel it peering closely at me. It looked very much like my father. “But you will. You will, in time,” it said, and we kept on falling through that chasm, my father and I, together.

I must have been lost in thought, unaware of my surroundings, because the chasm has ended. We have fallen out of it. It is a sticky June evening, and we are riding on the backs of fireflies, more souls than bodies now, my father and I, together, into this pause that has lengthened out and is lengthening still, as we ride fireflies into the darkness of the trees, entering the woods beyond the ravine behind our house, where we lived, once upon a time, in Ohio…

So above are two of the pieces that I submitted to the dear editor. Turns out the accepted them both, well, sort of. She accepted without reservation the poem, "Towards the End...," but she had this to say about "The Morning of the Sylmar Quake": 

While you are correct about “The Morning of the Sylmar Quake” not really being quite eligible for the anthology, I am madly in love with it. It simply belongs in the collection; I can feel it in my bones. Is there any way you might be willing to perhaps break it into lines, reformat to a more classically prose poem-esque layout on the page, or something akin that readily identifies the piece as decidedly verse? The only reason I push the issue so strongly is because I specifically disallowed prose submissions in the call, and obviously I simply must publish your beautiful, haunting piece in this anthology.

 With praise like that, how could I refuse her request to "poem up" the piece? So off to work I went on revising it. In the process I led it more into that "shadow world between poetry and prose."  I described to the editor what I did when I resubmitted "The Morning of the Sylmar Quake" a few weeks later: "In it's 'poemed up' version, it makes a nod towards certain poems by Robert Hass ('My Mother's Nipples' ) and Czeslaw Milosz ('Diary of a Naturalist') in the way that it mixes lineation and margin-to-margin prose." Here is what I came up with (feel free to tell me what you think):

The Morning of the Sylmar Quake

My father died just after 6:00, on the morning of February 9^th, 1971.

*

Or rather,
my father is
dying.

*

I seem to be murmuring this in near sleep, as my father and I ride on the backs of fireflies into the darkness of the trees, entering the woods beyond the ravine behind our house where we lived once in Ohio.

We seem more souls than bodies now. They, our bodies that is, seem to have been left

behind,

                                   suspended

like pairs of
long johns
hanging
on a clothesline.

                                    *

Of course I know this is impossible. For one, we live in California now, in the San Fernando Valley, and the present is here,

at 6:00 in the morning
on February 9^th,
1971.
It is Tuesday,

                                                *

or was, and it is hot, even now at 6:00.  My window is open, and I can feel                                                                                                                                                           

the air lying heavy
and still                              
on its bed of heat.

                                                *

I was dozing, in those moments between waking and sleeping, sweating in my bed. For me, a kid from Ohio, such heat in February seems unnerving and a bit frightening.

My father opened my bedroom door. It was a sudden gesture, a thrusting open. I remember the door banging against the door stopper.

                                                *

These moments, I know, lie
                                                in the past
                                                now.

                                                *

My father staggered to my bed, his faced bleached of color, his hand held to his chest. He stared wide-eyed at me. “Waldo! Waldo! Wake up!” he shouted.

This moment, too, lies
in the past.

And then I woke to rattling and shaking and a clamor that sounded like a freight train rumbling past my ear.

                                                *

I thought my father might actually be dying, here, now, right in front of my eyes, even as, stricken as he was, he climbed onto my bed and lay his body on top of me, and I could feel his heart beating against mine, a wild bird struggling, penned up in the cage of his body.

These moments lie in the past, too.  

                                                *

But here is where it gets complicated.

There seemed to be a pause in this moment of my father’s death, or, I should say, in what I think of as his death.            

There is a

pause.

*

It occurs in the moment, I think, between the last diastolic and the last systolic beats of my father’s heart, an opening in that last lub-dub, where the hyphen is: Lub…,

*

and this is where we are now, in this

moment, this

millisecond

that has opened up, like a chasm forming in an earthquake, and we have leapt into it, together,

my father and I,

holding hands.

                                                *

            Time has

stopped.

                                                *

Time

                                                *

has paused.

*

Time has gestured us closer.

                        *

“Look inside this moment,” it said. “There are infinities of tinier moments, and infinities of tinier moments still.” Time winked at us. “But even infinity has its limits.”                                               

Time’s voice sounded like it was speaking from deep inside a well, like a shushing of waves rustling ashore when you hold a shell to your ear. For a few moments, gone now, I thought of the Beatles song, “All you need is love,” playing it in my head, except I substituted “All you need is time,” instead.

                                                *

“But will there be time for more?” I asked when the song was over.

                                                *

Time shook its head and laughed. It was a soft laugh, a kindly laugh. “No.”

I looked at my father. His face looked drawn out, his saggy eyes sad and glistening. He said nothing.

“But I never want the time with my father to end,” I said.

                                                *

Time cocked his head. I could feel it peering closely at me.

It looked very much like my father.

                                                *

“But you will. You will, in time,” it said,

                                                *

and we kept on falling through that chasm, my father and I, together. 

*

I must have been lost in thought, unaware of my surroundings, because the chasm has ended. We have fallen out of it.

*

It is a sticky June evening, and we are riding on the backs of fireflies, more souls than bodies now, my father and I, together, into this pause that has lengthened out and is lengthening still, as we ride fireflies into the darkness of the trees, entering the woods beyond the ravine behind our house, where we lived, once upon a time, in Ohio…

 

Happily, the editor was pleased. After I resubmitted my revision, she wrote me back, "It's perfect. I absolutely love the revision, and I think the new format really shines a spotlight on your fantastic use of diction and restrained, careful pacing. Brilliant. I simply couldn't be more pleased."

So, this resubmission experience turned out well, I'm pleased to report. Is there a lesson here? If there is, I think it's to be open to re-seeing your work, to be open to the various possibilities in which it can shine. Writers at all levels can stand to be reminded of that lesson, I think. And what do you think, dear reader, are there any more lessons that you see in this tale?

By the way, if you've read other of these blog posts, you might recognize the character, Waldo, in "The Morning of the Sylmar Quake." It's Waldo Prospect, the main character of my novel, Between Us and Spiritland.  The events in this piece occur a few months after the events in the novel, and they're meant as a prelude to the next installment of Waldo's story. But that, dear readers, is another tale from the writer's life for another day.

Be well and write well.

All best,

S.D. Lishan