This post originally went out on April 7, 2023, under the title “Let Them Read Poetry.” I was still trying to figure out how to make the best use of Substack. I am now resending this post as the first in series called Poems Found in Notebooks. Each poem in this series will feature a poem found in any one of dozens of archival notebooks, accompanied by some commentary, generally a mixture of autobiographical context and craft-oriented notes on the process of writing the poem. The rest of this post is as it was written and published on April 7, 2023.
Fifteen months past spousal departure, I’ve still got lots of home to reorganize and recalibrate on a number of levels. Today I started moving around files and their cabinets, and found a stack of notebooks from the past couple of decades. The earliest one I found—pictured below—was a gift from an ex of mine in San Juan who got it for me on a tip to Mexico. It used to have a stone or bone or shell of some sort in that putty colored divot.
He gave me the notebook when he visited me in New York in the early weeks of 2000, but the first entry in the book is dated May 23, 2006, and it’s a first draft of a poem. I appear to have drawn a big slash across the page, as if to cancel out the entire poem, all except the last three lines, which I enclosed in a box, my customary way of telling myself, “Keep this part.” I was right. Those last three lines are the best part of the poem. The rest of it is a sort of canned Michael Broder script that I’ve written and re-written a hundred times, some of them keepers, most of them not. But this newsletter is about process as much as it is about perfection, so here’s the whole poem—not exactly as it appears in the notebook: I relineated here and there, and made some other little edits, some of them even suggested to me by myself in 17 year-old marginal notes. But it is largely the unedited original, warts and all.
Untitled, and here she goes…
I have tried to outpace you, to turn off on a poorly marked path and run deep into trackless acres— but without any seeming effort you alter the field of play, switch the scene from imagination to dreams where my grip weakens, where you impose your will and my powers of parody and satire fall away. I am stripped of the ironic jibe, sarcastic quip, I quiver in a pool of longing— contrive to ride in the same car as you, sleep in the same bed. People notice, they smile. The girls gather in their bedroom, whisper about us behind our backs, and giggle.
My favorite part is the last six lines, but the very best are the last three, don’t you think?
Okay, that’s all for now. Time to order a burrito from L.A. Burrito on Underhill Avenue in Clinton Hill. I think I like Xochitl Taqueria on Fulton Street better, but they close in 15 minutes.
More poetry soon.
Take it from Beachcomber Mike: Keep your sneakers on when you walk in the sand, or you might cut your foot on a flip top.
Postscript to this republished edition of this post: Most of the subscribers who sent me notes about this poem chastised me for the line "I quiver in a pool of longing,” and I have no quibble with that criticism. As I note in the commentary above, the poem is presented as I found it in a 20-year old notebook, warts and all. In future posts in the Poems Found in Notebooks series, I will provide more commentary on that sort of thing.
If you liked this post, please consider clicking the ❤️ below. I welcome your comments, too, on the poem itself, or any aspect of this post, or anything you would like to share about the writing or reading of poetry.