August 3: Pedagogical Question, New Poem, "What I'd Be," New Cartoon

"Holden . . . One short, faintly stuffy, pedagogical question.  Don't you think there's a time and place for everything?  Don't you think if someone starts out to tell you about his father's farm, he should stick to his guns, then get around to telling you about his uncle's brace?  Or, if his uncle's brace is such a provocative subject, shouldn't he have selected it in the first place as his subject--not the farm?"

Mr. Antolini is asking Holden a completely English teacher question here.  Holden is telling him about a speech class he's taken, and Mr. Antolini is attempting to make him see the benefits of staying focused on one topic in a presentation.  Holden is all about digression, which isn't surprising.  Holden's head is all over the place at this point in the book.

I have to say, as an English professor, I'm with Mr. Antolini on this one.  Nothing is more irritating than pointless digression.  On the other hand, as a listener/reader, I'm going to side with Holden.  Sometimes a writer's/speaker's digression is more interesting than the established topic.  In fact, the digression might actually be the real topic.

For example, when I sit down to work on a new poem, I sometimes have a fairly good idea where I want to start, what I want to write.  Then, when I've finished my draft and go back to revise, I find out that I can often remove the first two or three stanzas.  The "meat" of the poem begins in the middle, with a so-called "digression."  The initial stanzas are simply scaffolding, getting me to where I needed to be.  Then the scaffolding can be taken away.

That's my advice to any would-be poets reading this post.  Don't be afraid of digressions when working on a draft of a poem.  Sometimes, digression is where poetry lives.

I have a new poem and new cartoon for you today.

Saint Marty hopes he's removed all the scaffolding.

What I'd Be

if I weren't a poet.
The question stops me,
makes me think of teenage
summers when I installed
water heaters with my dad,
hauled empty tanks up
cellar steps, sagged wood,
away from canned tomatoes,
screws and nuts sorted
into baby food jars, secret
places where dirty laundry
breathed with spider and mouse.
Midnight shift at a hospital,
I cleaned the morgue
each night until I met
the body of an old woman,
wrapped in white sheets,
left on a table like scraps
from a rained-out picnic,
her face yellow as melted butter.
In a book store,
I organized porn,
paired magazines of foot fetish
with magazines of hairy legs,
girls with serpent stares,
breasts like icebergs
in National Geographic,
boys with shoplifted smirks,
penises, gibbous moons in the black
curl of universe.  I would not
do any of these jobs again,
given the choice.  If words
were taken from me,
maybe I'd turn to some
other sound occupation,
climb to my roof,
sit with mourning doves,
bubble, cluck daybreak to dusk.
Or maybe ransack woods
for skulls of squirrels,
ribs of deer, skunk spines
left behind by hungry owl, wolf,
piece together these scrimshaw
remnants with thread or chain,
hang them on my porch,
let them sing all night
of chase and hunt, dark grass,
fat, ripe blueberries.
Or maybe, just maybe,
I'd eat the silence,
make it part of me.
I'll practice this August
evening for my new career,
go outside, watch my son ride
his bike up and down
the street, not shout at him
about cars, trucks,
curbs and uneven sidewalks.
No, I'll let myself fill ip,
rise like bubbles of yeast in dough,
with the quiet ferment of love.

Confessions of Saint Marty