Respect, Revise, Repeat

1.

It was the last week of August and a graduate professor read a poem I’d written. My wedding anniversary was the following weekend, and this poem was about my marriage. Professor Laura Hope-Gill pointed to a particular line:

One cup overfloweth, one cup of suffering…

She introduced me to Philip Levine’s poem “They Feed They Lion,” which employs a litany, its driving refrain like pistons churning. Then, my teacher issued a challenge: write another poem repeating “cups” like Levine’s “lion,” thereby expanding the term’s literal and metaphorical meanings.

At a small gathering of friends to celebrate our anniversary, I watched a scene in our backyard with a fellow dad and his young daughter. A few days later, I wrote this:

Cups & Such
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:21

You gulp a cup of lemonade
& resume chasing pinprick lights,
not quite outrunning mosquitoes

telltale red welts on your bare legs.
You’ve just crushed the papery cup
& discarded it near my feet.

Now you roll down the grassy hill,
drop all the way to the bottom
& look up. You take a bow, love.

If you were within gentle reach,
I would cup your chin. Instead thoughts
of fallen cups in childproof past:

green sippies, faded Bugs Bunny,
& the smiley Kool-Aid man with
other lost cups of your cracked glass,

fragile shards, splintered cups of you,
your refracted light, my love, your
contradictions & multitudes.

You continue to bow deeply
& I watch standing coolly, my
red wine in clear plastic tumbler.

But there is in this gaze only
You of your you & grass-stained knees.
Come to me, please? That I may cup

your chin, my cupped palm leaking &
time rolling on where I pray,
all is whole once again & saved.

I was pretty proud of this poem, especially its cadence. I enjoyed reading it out loud, which I did several times for audiences of fellow students in my writing program. I printed and framed a copy for my father for Father’s Day in 2017. This version remains on the wall of his study. And I could have left it at that.

2.

Partly ambitious, partly curious, I wondered if a few more people might want to see these words. So, I reached out to the editors at Bearings Online. I shortened the poem before submitting, cutting the mosquitoes at the opening and adding a little more about the fireflies. I also dropped the “you of your you” near the close, for it now sounded overdone to my ear.

By way of feedback, poetry editor Susan Sink offered several astute observations. In the final line of the third stanza, the direct address “love” caused her reading to stumble, for the approximate age of the subject of the speaker’s attention was unclear until subsequent verses. Susan also felt that the first use of “cup your chin” (fourth stanza) diluted the effect of the image at the end. I’d hadn’t thought of repetition in that way and decided I agreed. I did like the use of “love,” however, because it is a pet name (which I call my own kids) but also used to describe the child’s action, as in the kid loves taking that bow. I was attached to the openness of this word.

Susan noted that such ambiguity is the hallmark of good poetry; yet she felt like “Cups & Such” suffered from a lack of clarity. For instance, in the last stanza, what exactly was leaking? And what specifically needed saving?

A scene from my life can be so clear in my mind that I need someone else’s eyes to point out the gaps in my poetic rendering of it. Good poetry, I think, asks readers to fill certain gaps, making a claim upon the reader’s heart and mind; but confusion is frustrating. Meaning is lost.

A scene from my life can be so clear in my mind that I need someone else’s eyes to point out the gaps in my poetic rendering of it.

Thanks to Susan’s feedback, here’s the version that Bearings Online published on Father’s Day 2018. I made it clear from the opening line the age of the one being addressed by the speaker. I also tried to make plain the adult speaker’s awareness of a loss of innocence. As the child tumbles down the hill, there’s something there about a fall from grace. I still wanted to end on a note of hope.

Cups & Such
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Matthew 6:21

You, child, have just crushed a paper cup
& discarded trash near my feet.
A gulp of lemonade’s a mere

moment’s reprieve from your dancing
with the fireflies, never quite
catching lightning in your hands.

Now you roll down the grassy hill,
drop all the way to the bottom
& look up. You take a bow, love.

If you were within gentle reach,
could I make time stand still? My thoughts
of fallen cups in childproof past:

green sippies, a faded Bugs Bunny,
& the smiley Kool-Aid man with
other lost cups of your cracked glass,

these fragile splintered shards of you,
your refracted light, all your
contradictions & multitudes.

You continue to bow deeply
& I watch from a distance,
red wine in clear plastic tumbler

now forgotten, as I imbibe
flickers of lost light. Grass-stained knees,
come to me please! That I may cup

your chin, my concave palm leaking
time which rolls to where, I pray,
we are both whole again & saved.

3.

At the end of 2018, I had written a collection of essays about fatherhood and faith, specifically my experience of growing up as a pastor’s kid and now being both a pastor and father. I wanted “Cups & Such” to introduce those personal meditations. I gave the poem to an editor, April Williams.

April’s major concern regarded the violence in the language of the poem. Why is this child in my poem so shattered?

This insight caught me by surprise. I had to realize that I used words like “cracked” and “splintered” and “shards” because of the sounds. Philip Levine’s “They Feed The Lion” is such a delight to the ears, the pounding alliteration, as well as its genius internal rhymes. Yet his poem is also violent, speaking about the African-American uprisings in Detroit during the Civil Rights era. April felt that my diction was misleading, that the poet-speaker’s projection of brokenness unto the child was disorienting.

I have come to think that a good edit should put an author off balance. Revision is about reorientation to the work itself, looking again at the piece as a whole, not just individual elements like diction and syntax.

Revision is about reorientation to the work itself, looking again at the piece as a whole, not just individual elements like diction and syntax.

Over the next few days, I tried to take April’s feedback to heart. For this revision, I wanted to really break the poem open; I wanted to experiment.

I started with a new title. I also discarded the three-line stanzas I’d been so dedicated to preserving. I was bracing for parting with a few beloved lines, particularly my internal rhymes. But I was clear that the brokenness in the poem must shift from the child to the speaker, which was, I kept reminding myself, my original intent.

And I tried to forget how clever I thought I had been about how the poem sounded!

Fatherhood

You, child, just crushed your paper cup
& discarded it near my feet.

That gulp of lemonade’s a mere
moment’s reprieve from your dancing
with the fireflies, never quite
catching the light in your hands.

So you roll down the grassy hill,
drop all the way to the bottom
& look up. You take a bow, love.

You cannot know my flood of thoughts,
of innocence lost and cracked glass,
these fragile splintered shards of me.

You continue to bow deeply
& I keep watch from a distance,
my wine in clear plastic tumbler
now forgotten, as I imbibe
flickers of lost light.

Grass-stained knees,
come to me please! That I may cup
your chin, past caught up in presence,
contradictions & multitudes
not discarded but saved in you, love, you.

4.

It’s notable to me that, etymologically, you could translate both “revise” and “respect” as “to look again.” I think that, by considering someone else’s feedback, an author may better understand herself through the piece, whether it is nonfiction or not. That, too, is a form of respect.

It’s notable to me that, etymologically, you could translate both “revise” and “respect” as “to look again.”

A couple of weeks later, I took up this experimental revision. I read it out loud and recorded myself, listening to the playback repeatedly. I found that I missed the ordered stanzas. I also hated that I cut “palm leaking time” because that was my favorite line!

Despite my love of William Blake and how he almost single-handedly saved the ampersand for modern English usage, a look at my third version shows that I actually spelled out the conjunction by mistake … or, was it a mistake? I decided that my “&s” seemed gimmicky and distracting.

For years, I had held onto the opening scene. Only now did I realized that there could be a specific parallel drawn between the child’s attempt to catch fireflies and the speaker’s effort to hold time. Something of Ernest Hemingway and Leonard Cohen lurks here, and I nodded to the bit about the cracks letting in the light. I found I could still keep Whitman’s Do I contradict myself? I am large / I contain multitudes. But the contrast between the poem’s speaker and subject could be further underlined, especially between brokenness and innocence. Aha! That clarity that Susan Sink asked for a year ago! What needs to be saved?

Instead of the “treasure of your heart” that I’d used as an epigram in earlier versions, I thought of the famous, Ye must be born again. But “save” was not quite right. I’d settled on it because it rhymes with “pray.” The word that, like a lightning bug, had previously escaped my clutches now ends the final version.

In that last line, I also decided to include both speaker and subject in the prayer, father and son. I think that my dad will still like this poem. I’ll frame this copy for him as well.

Fatherhood

You, child, just crushed your paper cup,
and discarded it near my feet.
A gulp of lemonade’s a mere

moment’s reprieve from your dancing
with fireflies, never quite
catching lightning in your hands.

Now you roll down the grassy hill,
drop all the way to the bottom
and look up. You take a bow, love.

If you were within gentle reach,
could I make time stand still,
and peer through the cracks

of my own cupped fingers and
broken past, gazing down as
your light illuminates my dark?

I marvel at your glow,
your contradictions and multitudes,
the newness and wholeness of you.

You continue to bow deeply
and I keep watch from a distance,
my wine in clear plastic tumbler

now forgotten, as I imbibe
flickers of lost light. Grass-stained knees,
come to me please! That I may

cup your chin, my palm leaking time,
which rolls to where, I pray,
we can both be whole again and new.

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