Crowns, Sonnets, and Emails
Last year, during my poem-a-day September, I wrote a series of poems that I wanted to make into a crown of sonnets, but didn’t out of pure laziness. This afternoon for my lunch break I edited the seven sonnet-ish poems into a crown of sonnets. I know it still needs work (calling them “sonnets” would make form purists puke), but somehow, I’m drawn to the crown. I have three relatively successful crowns–the first two were accepted for publication on the first time I sent them out. Both were primarily composed in my head–I counted syllables on my fingers, memorized lines until I could get to a pen (the first one I did mostly in the sauna on board the Laurence M. Gould in Talcauano, Chile; the second I started while on bedrest, and really finished one year at AWP while I was sitting in panels), and minimally edited. This one was different. I was lazy, and didn’t originally intend it to be a crown of sonnets, so the first lines feel a bit more mechanical. Which is why I’ll come back to it (again) on the next go-round.
In the meantime, I’m still editing the “new” manuscript. I’m cutting poems. It hurts, but since I just put them together in the first place, it’s not too hard. I just don’t want the thread of the manuscript to get too thick–I want a thread, but I don’t want it to be so dependent on subject like my first two manuscripts. I want a thin thread–angle hair, not fettuccine. Not too bad for the first time through. I’m still fighting with the clock for time to submit, and I lose an hour this weekend to the ether.
I have had to both give and receive shocking news in email recently, and it’s hit me hard. I got used to “serious” emails when I was in graduate school and falling in love in email, so somehow it seems its own special medium for me. Not the same as a pen and ink letter, which I’ve wanted to go back to as some sort of invisible confessional, but closer to a phone call without the other voice on the end. I wrote some serious emails from the ice this year, received some back, received some after the Ice, and now, the latest, from my friend in New Zealand with bad news about her health. I just saw her. Sure, for only four days, but I just saw her in December, after years and years of only emails and letters, small Christmas gifts. Our last kids were born on the same day. The same day. If I believed in arranged marriages, Sam and Lucy would already be matched. I hate bad news email. I hate it more than bad news telephone calls. I can keep my composure on bad news telephone calls. I got bad news from home while I was on the Drake Passage on the Gould once. I kept it together, well, much better than if I’d gotten the same bad news in an email. I can be stronger in person than I can when I open my email. I’m unprepared in both instances, but for some reason, I have to keep it together on the phone, because there are other people who are involved in the news, with me, live. Email allows me to hide in a corner and start bawling. It allows me to go back and read, and re-read, and read some more, the same thing, over and over, rather than just getting the news and processing. And I’m a re-reader. I’ve read the Harry Potter series maybe 7 times. I’ve gone back and re-read the emails in which I fell in love. I’ve re-read the same poetry books. Email is bad for me for bad news in this way.
And in this, a broken-down moment, I have Claire, who, when seeing me cry, came up to me, gently put her hand on my cheek, and said, “Don’t cry, mommy. Your friend will be ok. So turn off those tears, ok?”
