As we were preparing the galleys for The Erotic Postulate this past spring, I was revisiting poems I had written more than 10 years ago. Most of them still held up–a different style from how I’m writing these days, but I’m excited to have them soon out in the world to expand the conversation I’m having and the evolution of my craft. Aside from a few word choice edits in a handful of poems, there wasn’t much work to be done, save for one poem that just didn’t feel right.
The poem was called “Minor” and it was my attempt at a “found” poem. Looking back, it was the best I could do at the time based on the control I had of my craft back then. But from today’s vantage point I knew I could and had to do better. A big part of my unease was how little of the language was “mine” which might sound like an odd concern for a “found” poem.
But a concern nonetheless. The poem is a dramatic monologue in the voice of the 20th century photographer Minor White. I was obsessed with his work 10+ years ago, and while reading his journal entries and letters stumbled upon a narrative. The texts that spoke to me were divided by 17 years: a letter to Isabel Kane from July-August 1943, and a moment in one of his “Memorable Fancies” journal entries from March 10, 1960. Both spoke about his time on the Pacific during WWII and his conflicted feelings of desire for comradeship and love with his fellow soldiers. The 1960 text clearly (well, clearly to me) spoke back to the story he retold to Isabel in 1943 of encountering a soldier on deck one moonlit evening. So I wove the two together to form a cohesive monologue.
The only problem: my first attempt was predominantly his language and very little of my own. Which just felt…wrong. I didn’t feel present aside from shaping and selecting what of his text to use with an occasional parenthetical to indicate where my voice intruded as his inner voice. So I rewrote it. And what you’ll read at The Good Men Project is very much a new poem–with a new title, “A Minor Dilemma”–from what I wrote all those years ago.
“A Minor Dilemma” has the same premise and narrative at its core, but a new syllabic and stanzaic structure, and the balance of my language to Minor’s has definitely tipped. The soldier he quotes I decided to leave alone for the most part–a quote is a quote–though that “heave heave heaving” is my rhythmic choice. And I had to leave the final lines as Minor wrote them–my line breaks, his language–but you’ll see why when you read The Erotic Postulate. That dog baying at the moon was a flash of lightning when I encountered it as it spoke to another poem I wrote where that dog and moon appear.
So that’s the process story behind this poem. I don’t usually write “found” poems, though many of my poems often engage quotes from other sources–poems, articles, interviews, overheard language. That’s often how my poems start–as conversations with others, with other language out there zipping around us.
You can read “A Minor Dilemma” over at The Good Men Project, here.