process

this draft i am going to keep and work on, so i thought i'd post versions of it as i go. word processing makes this process so clean: i can keep opening new versions and never erase anything. my favorite thing about composing on computers is my ability to keep multiple drafts open at once. even though a lot of lines and ideas get scrapped along the way, still i have a record of where i've been.

in this case, i've been to the desert with my family. it's been a long time since my last road trip and this one {like all of them} was worth remembering. the subject of sonnets came up briefly one morning and as i put together some of the thoughts i'd handwritten in the car, the sonnet form remembered itself to me.

a note on form and rhyme in modern poetry: readers' sensibilities have changed over the centuries. rhyme is still pleasing to most people, as song and sound. but many poetry readers find the sing-song rhyme of ye olden tyme kind of cheesy and heavy-handed. slant rhyme {near rhyme} and eye rhyme {the words have a visual kinship} are more common in poems that adhere to classic forms. it's easy to read a modern sonnet without realizing it is a sonnet; the poet will likely carry phrases over the line break so each line doesn't end heavily at the end.

in my last post i talked about the words preceding the thoughts. ideally, the logical sense joins the language after some amount of work. these drafts are almost purely lyric; any sense you can tease out will be from your own effort. it's my job {if i want this to be more than lyric} to keep working to draw out the sense, so you don't have to. as much.

so. the title i stole directly from The Decemberists. you have to start somewhere.

DRAFT 1

July never seemed so strange

Americana I will get to the bottom of you

Your sudden glory : Rubbed by sun, smeared on land

This hand in cloud and stream by the still road

In the city of that water, my hands drowned : My body rose

Bird would take my eyes : I would take its wings

Black tire lizards skid and lie : Full moon a thumb pressed through dark tissue

Fins from earth’s backbone : who invent sea stories at port

A cloud-carried message : an organ beneath that hooked and played me

Red pebble tooth, low red-rattled cage : Chacans gone, pilgrims linger

Purple cab, no-gut no canopy, rusted hood : Head of a swollen traveler

From ancient fire a fork of ash : Who digs in the ground only to look at heaps

A sleeping elephant, furred shoulders : Stone flank

No end to you, Americana : whose nostrils flare with pleasure

All you perceive you will not tell : All that is judged, all who meanly judge

The hate of what you squander : wastrel pinned to the obelisk

The branch that I mistook for a bird : Would be lovelier as a bird

DRAFT #2

July Never Seemed So Strange

Americana I will get to you : my hand
In cloud and stream by the still road's
desert : sudden glory rubbed by sun, smeared on land.
In the city of that water, my hands drowned : my body rose.

Bird, it would take my eye : I would take its wings.
Black tire lizards skid and lie : the full moon is a thumb pressed
through dark tissue. Farmers at night invent sea stories,
till fins from the earth’s backbone. Their cloud-carried messages

like ancient fires become a fork of ash : who digs in the ground
Only to look at heaps. Who lies in the low, red-rattled cage
open-mouth to dust, red pebble tooth to bone. Purple cab, no-gut canopy, rusted hood
the head of a swollen traveler beside the sleeping elephant. Stone flank,

furred shoulders : whose nostrils flare with pleasure?
No end to you, Americana. All you perceive you will not tell nor ask
and all is judged, and all meanly judge. But hate, you squander :
Chacans gone, pilgrims linger. Wastrels you pin to the obelisk.

This our monument. That branch I mistook for a bird
Would be lovelier as a bird.