Revision Questions
Flashlight beam pools and bobs into balance.
A scorpion at chest level announces nothing
to the rocks above the knot that holds
this boat from drifting in Colorado snow melt.
I stand on the edge and arc
piss across night to hear constellations sizzle
on any of their black planes.
Night and water look each into the other.
Where have I left you?
***
Questions I still have as I read this:
Why "balance"? How can a flashlight be balanced? on the fingers? In the hand? On the table? Or is it the light that's balanced? against the dark? against sight? The "b" of balance sounds right, but is there a better word for meaning? Or can the rest of the poem or a title build a context for "balance"? Does the second to the last line suggest a kind of balance--night and water on either side of the river's skin?
How does the scorpion get to chest level in the poem? Is he a flying scorpion? Is she perched on the rocks of a later line? I remember seeing the scorpion sitting on the sand within a circle of light from my flashlight beam. The scorpion was probably three or four inches long, so really not dangerous like the little ones we sometimes found under our sleeping tarps on the Green. The scorpion of this poem was on a rock wall at a camp site called Scorpion Flats on the Colorado R. The river, slow at that point, as I recall, meets the wall and turns and lolls past, as I recall. The boat was tied in an eddy along the wall. The wall was about eight feet from water to the top, to the soil where we built a fire and played guitar and told lies and drank beer, the flat ground that spread into elevation for hundreds and hundreds of yards to meet other sudden rises of rock. In the wall that met the river there were what amounted to three steps or ledges. The drinking and singing was done. It was time to sleep. The scorpion was on the middle step beside a tamarisk plant. The raft's bowline was tied to that tamarisk. We all slept in our boats that night, mostly to avoid setting up camp. The sky was lit with the six thousand stars we can see on a clear, moonless night. Where should this poem go? Should it be spliced into a collage of other phrases? Should it try to figure out what/who the speaker's looking for? Can this poem borrow any of the phrases from this questioning? Why am I revising in public? Is the scorpion a scorpion or does it need to be something else?
What/who is the speaker really looking for? The earlier version suggests he's looking for his wife. In this version it could just as easily be a reader. If he's really searching, why does he stop to piss in the river? It's a relaxed search.
***
Here's another try that doesn't feel so different from what came before:
Flashlight beam pools and bobs from circle to circle.
A scorpion at chest level announces nothing
to the tamarisk and the rocks that hold the knot
that holds this raft from drifting down past Moab.
We have been singing since dusk. Now
six thousand stars say nothing.
I stand on the stern and arc
piss across night to hear these constellations
sizzle on their black planes.
Night and water look each into the other.
Sleep, where have I left you?
A scorpion at chest level announces nothing
to the rocks above the knot that holds
this boat from drifting in Colorado snow melt.
I stand on the edge and arc
piss across night to hear constellations sizzle
on any of their black planes.
Night and water look each into the other.
Where have I left you?
***
Questions I still have as I read this:
Why "balance"? How can a flashlight be balanced? on the fingers? In the hand? On the table? Or is it the light that's balanced? against the dark? against sight? The "b" of balance sounds right, but is there a better word for meaning? Or can the rest of the poem or a title build a context for "balance"? Does the second to the last line suggest a kind of balance--night and water on either side of the river's skin?
How does the scorpion get to chest level in the poem? Is he a flying scorpion? Is she perched on the rocks of a later line? I remember seeing the scorpion sitting on the sand within a circle of light from my flashlight beam. The scorpion was probably three or four inches long, so really not dangerous like the little ones we sometimes found under our sleeping tarps on the Green. The scorpion of this poem was on a rock wall at a camp site called Scorpion Flats on the Colorado R. The river, slow at that point, as I recall, meets the wall and turns and lolls past, as I recall. The boat was tied in an eddy along the wall. The wall was about eight feet from water to the top, to the soil where we built a fire and played guitar and told lies and drank beer, the flat ground that spread into elevation for hundreds and hundreds of yards to meet other sudden rises of rock. In the wall that met the river there were what amounted to three steps or ledges. The drinking and singing was done. It was time to sleep. The scorpion was on the middle step beside a tamarisk plant. The raft's bowline was tied to that tamarisk. We all slept in our boats that night, mostly to avoid setting up camp. The sky was lit with the six thousand stars we can see on a clear, moonless night. Where should this poem go? Should it be spliced into a collage of other phrases? Should it try to figure out what/who the speaker's looking for? Can this poem borrow any of the phrases from this questioning? Why am I revising in public? Is the scorpion a scorpion or does it need to be something else?
What/who is the speaker really looking for? The earlier version suggests he's looking for his wife. In this version it could just as easily be a reader. If he's really searching, why does he stop to piss in the river? It's a relaxed search.
***
Here's another try that doesn't feel so different from what came before:
Flashlight beam pools and bobs from circle to circle.
A scorpion at chest level announces nothing
to the tamarisk and the rocks that hold the knot
that holds this raft from drifting down past Moab.
We have been singing since dusk. Now
six thousand stars say nothing.
I stand on the stern and arc
piss across night to hear these constellations
sizzle on their black planes.
Night and water look each into the other.
Sleep, where have I left you?
posted by Anonymous at 9:10 AM
6 Comments:
Revising in public. Brave soul. I used to revise in public on the boards. Used to drive folks batty. Why is it that readers seem to take it personally somehow if you go about chopping up your poem out in the middle of the street where everyone can see you wielding that cleaver? I think it might partially be that some folks fear revision or are a little bit too tentative in revising their own work. Who said: You must kill your darlings. ? Once I shifted from not revising at all (which is unimaginable to me now that I ever was so in love with each word I committed to paper--back then, I wrote everything out in long hand--and was dead certain that each word could not and would not be changed) to this other extremem of almost kamikaze revision in which in some ways, I feel like the poem must die a firey death in order for the real poem to rise from its ashes, I've never looked back and never regretted my obsession with hacking. I think that's why I don't visit any of the boards anymore. Most folks don't want their own work revised/edited in that ruthless manner at someone else's hand.
I like what you've done here, what you've hacked, what you've kept. I like the questions you're asking yourself out loud. Writing is such an intensely private pursuit most of the time. Maybe that's why the various boards are so popular. It's nice to feel some sense of community with other people who are living in their heads.
What I find especially....fascinating for lack of a better word....in this particular draft is that the number of stars in the sky is finite. Six thousand. Exactly. Not one more or less. How did you arrive at that number? Whenever I look up at the sky, the stars seem so countless. I know I've never thought: Oh, definitely nine hundred thousand. I love that you've chosen a number.
If you don't mind my chiming in, and I assume you don't since you're revising in public, I think the only line that I find troublesome in any of the drafts is the first line which I stumble over. The flashlight is bothersome to me. Maybe if the flashlight beam pooled and bobbed into balance then found the scorpion at chest level? Oh, and I miss the tamarisk.
Have you tried rewriting the poem from memory? You've revised it enough times now that it's inside you, alive in your head. Try rewriting it without reading any of the current drafts or original and see what stays, what has stuck in your memory, and what lines are forgotten, or rewritten.
What's really interesting to me as a reader of your poem and revision process is that I never for one moment questioned the scorpion's position at chest level. Too, I read the light as being balanced, the beam of the flashlight, rather than the flashlight itself being balanced.
I'll shut up now.
Why "balance"? How can a flashlight be balanced? on the fingers? In the hand? On the table? Or is it the light that's balanced? against the dark?
In the poem, it is the beam that is balanced, not a difficult image to 'see' at all. Actually, for me, it's a fairly vivid image of the way the light flashes around indiscriminately, until it finds what it's looking for - at which time, it would steady and focus on the subject - the scorpion. I don't think this balance particularly needs any more context than that - but the reflection of water/sky at the end gives the poem balance, as well as the "arc" mentioned in the middle.
from circle to circle feels oversimplified, almost elementary, and far too blatant. It weakens the imagery (imo) by way of too much description.
The scorpion being at chest level was a stumbling block for me personally, but change to the rocks to from the rocks for an easy fix for that problem.
Why are you revising in public? So some unknown stranger can come and give (unwanted) input, of course!
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Well, ok. Thanks for the comments, Laurel and Erin.
Odd, Laurel, this is a poem I'd forgotten about, that I don't really know by heart. On the other hand, I guess I know the events by memory, so yeah I could probably write a version of it without referring to any of the originals. I'll try that. Thanks. And thanks in general for reading and commenting.
Erin, thanks, too. Thanks for the input, thanks for the help seeing the poem through other eyes.
I think I'm going to try revising it next in way that will make it much odder. We'll see what happens.
Best,
Jack
One thing about the last line that might give you a different take on it: I kept reading it as, Where have I left you [the reader], also, Where have I lost you? Where has confusion set in?
Or: leaving the poem, reader, where are you now? Where have I [the poet] left you [the reader]?
Of course, now that the poet addresses Sleep, Reader is no longer an available reading.
I wonder if there's a way to make sleep the reader?
Interesting thought. Thanks, Glenn.
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