Barbara Leonhard : part five

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins with a trigger. This trigger could be inspiration from something I’ve read, something I’ve seen in nature, an insight that places my problem or theme into a metaphor, a news event, a phrase I heard, anything that represents my interaction with the world. Sometimes I go a long time without writing a poem. I feel it stirring, but I can’t spit it out. Then some confluence of experience with metaphor or spirit creates the impulse to write. Hopefully the first line clearly sets up the theme and promises the form of the poem. The reader should want to keep reading the poem. A good title idea can start a poem, too. For example, to describe my relationship with my mother, I wanted a metaphor that showed my mother’s character. She was fairly strict and overly protective. Also, I helped her a great deal in the kitchen. I though of how her strong character was the wire spine in her cookbook. My title came to me, “Cooking a Life with a Wire Spine”. Then the poem wrote itself. Here are the first two stanzas. The rest of the poem can be found in my forthcoming collection, Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir (EFT, 2022). Also, this poem was nominated for Publication of the Month on Spillwords (August, 2021).

Cooking a Life with a Wire Spine

The recipe book that Mom assembled
in her own hand.
The front cover, missing.
The coffee-stained pages,
some partly dislodged
from the braided wire spine. Recipes 

harvested from lineages
stuck together by spilled batter.
Mistakes. Lessons learned. The hard way.
Trial and error. Until you got it right.
Without burning your hands.
Without blood splatter.  …..

In another poem in my forthcoming collection, “Mom and I Play Lassos with Our Hysterectomy Scars,” I wanted to explore the mother wound we each bore. This wound entangled us with the force of a competition. Here are the opening lines:

I.
Mom’s scar can stretch from any corner of the country
          to Mid Missouri. 

A thick rope of Mother Wound
          reaching for my root. 

Her scar deepens as age swells her skin,
          draping the wound on her lap.

I am tethered to her lesion. The grief
          rubs my neck raw. ….

The approach is to find a “container” for the poem. I learned about this device to from Alison Wearing’s course, Memoir Writing, Ink. Once you can place the theme into a metaphor, it may be easier to begin the poem.  

My poem “Marie Kondo Cleans My Purse at Starbucks” is about letting go of the trauma and grief after Mom dies. Imagine your dirty laundry displayed in public. My purse contains objects that relate to my life with Mom and care for her as the Alzheimer’s progressed. Here are the opening and ending stanzas, which introduce the metaphor of the purse stuffed with life trauma and conclude the poem logically withing the container (Marie Kondo’s practice of letting go of things that are no longer needed combined with the purse containing my life trauma). This poem was voted Publication of the Month on Spillwords (January/February, 2022).

Marie Kondo Cleans My Purse at Starbucks

Konmari sees me at Starbucks,
my purse spilling over at the counter.
“May I help?”

She gathers me up
like I’m antique lace
washed too many times.

Before she begins, she whispers,
“Hello, the House,
I am safe. May I enter?”

She pokes through my purse, ….

…….

Konmari has me
hold each item
one last time, saying,

“Thank you, tiny soul,
for sharing your life. I am
grateful.”

She teaches me
how to fold joy
three times.

How to throw out
what I can
no longer carry.

In brief, a successful memoir poem has unity. The first stanza helps establish the theme and metaphor, which is developed in the body of the poem, and the ending should fulfill the theme.