Remembering Almitra David, this May morning

Be brutal people. This is the first draft I've shown anyone for over a year.

   

Remembering Almitra David, this May morning

Sally Jo Sorensen

                                           for CM, who envies writers

Twenty-three years ago I chose my type--
Caslon like Franklin used,
a hint of swash,
the distressed look of revolution
in a common face,
until my hands knew each metal sort
face, shoulder, shank, nick and foot.

I thought I knew something about poetry
a sweet-voiced neighbor gave me.  Delicate
lines tracing
high holy places
her Italian fathers buried and
burned witches on, then sailed to
another land, new
only to them.   All spring I set
those implosive archaeologies.

This morning I found her body
of work online -- that mere slip
of a chapbook offered
to any buyer, a seller asking
more than I put out for paper, ink and time--
bone-folder creasing
pages and the fleck of blood
dropped on a cover
when a needle pierced
my finger,
sewing a spine.

I was always awkward then,
a woman sewing
blood into the snow.
My silent wish white as snow,
lips red as blood,
children who stayed on
pages I printed.  I thought I knew
something about poetry
before I sewed that book
or wrote these lines.

   

Comments

[Franz K. Baskett]

I shall have to think more, but my first impression is that you are being shy. I instictively want the poem to be more direct. The dramatic situations my become more clear with time. Some fine lines here: 'the unpaid bills of history' being my favorite.

[Heather Miller]

Jesus God, Sally Jo! Where've you been all these long years? Sitting on quite a nest while we perished to death for your poems. This one quite stuns, sweeps away, then comes back to echo. How I love your natural resonance and your smooth smooth melody. The allusion to Snow White is fascinating, the necessary spilling of blood before true art, or revolutionary change, can occur. I'm a teeny bit sidetracked by the development around the sweet-voiced son. It's okay for him to come into the poem, but I was just getting used to and really liking the "you" Almitra of the poem. Maybe he's another poem to himself? In any case, I am delighted by such surprises as the reference to Franklin and the vocabulary of printing/type; then it turns at the end to those screens flashing. Wow. First rate, first rate. And many thanks!

[Susan Allen]

Wow, my first reading of this just gave me chills, Sally Jo, especially the last stanza. The music and movement and images of the poem are SO beautiful - I've always loved your syntax style in poetry, it's so surprising. I like the "unpaid bills of history" too - and "All spring I set
those implosive archaeologies." I don't know what "bone-folder creasing pages" means, really, but I can feel what it means and I love it - I will have to wake up better and read it again and again; I have to drive to Boston today, so I'll come back - I'm so happy to read your poem here!

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

Thanks so --this will be helpful. I stole the "unpaid debts of history" from a French anarchist. He won't mind. A bone-folder is a book arts tool; Made of bone, it's used to fold pages for binding. I love my bone-folder, mostly for its name.

[Franz K. Baskett]

Another thing that I appreciate about this poem is that it's made me aware of Almitra David.

[Chris Boese]

Hey Sally Jo, I just want to throw some words at this fine poem before it falls off the front page, also because it takes me back to memories of when we first met, and I remember some of your stories of what it took to get that book together.

The one thing I'm foggy on, did you set metal type? Like from old cases and forms? How in the hell would you dig up that stuff? It's why I especially like these lines, both for my background with Franklin, and with printing. Oh, and Caslon, such tall ascenders.

Caslon like Franklin used,
a hint of swash,
the distressed look of revolution
in a common face,
until my hands knew each metal sort
face, shoulder, shank, nick and foot.

I'm feeling something different in your line breaks, with the wide variations. Maybe you're just shaking the trees a bit. "Delicate" on the end of a line by itself feels startling and neat.

In terms of what Franz said about, about holding something back, being less direct, and him not knowing the story as I do, helps me see it some thru his eyes. It could do a reader good to know a bit more about what those "implosive archeologies" entail before they hit that line, for a bigger payoff.

For some reason, I thought she was in Philly, not Minnesota, but I am easily confused. I guess I just associate your time in Philly with your work with labor unions, and it struck me here most powerfully about the very real labor, your labor, that went directly into the production. Printing is so often cast as a mass media, and your labor here removes some of the Gutenberg from the replication, to labor and art.

The son too is less directly alluded, and there could be a stronger payoff for some of these really lovely lines and images, for instance as Susan notes above, if we had a few more hints about what it was about the son that casts the shadow.

Hope this helps! Come back and post something else!

Chris

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

One of the last hot metal type foundries was operating when I lived in Philly. It was maybe 15 blocks from my apartment at 5th and Girard, and I'd walk through the old industrial area of town to get to it. I loved that walk and that place. I'm still uncertain about this poem and mostly listening to the comments.

Right now, I'm finding that my drafts are totally infected by the rhythms and stylistic devices of El Salvadorian poet Roque Dalton. I suppose I could do worse.

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

And yes, Almitra and her poems were in Philly. The woman the poem is addressed to is here in Minnesota. I suppose I should just be on topic one place or the other, but that sort of singularity does seem to reflect the way I move in language now. So it may just be a lovely fail in the end.

[Chris Boese]

Nah, that's just me knowing more about your personal life than the poem!

But the more I think about it (spinning), the theme of labor is fascinating in terms of this poem and your involvement with labor (and a child, who also comes from labor). But that was just me, associating your work with the labor movement with Philly. Off the page, in other words.

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

My dear, you have nailed it there: I was trying to build a conceit around that different sorts of labor that I went through in 1986 (creating Almitra's chapbook, which has grown immensely in value) and my friend did ( carrying and bearing a child). Of course the words wanted to do their own thing, but that was the jumping off point.

I think so far I'm confusing people with having the woman whose poetry I was setting and the woman to whom the poem is addressed. That difficulty may or may not be something I can overcome.

Oddly, I wasn't much involved in labor issues in Philly, though it had its origins that year with some rank and file Teamster friends in a pop factory who would later be involved in the internal reform movement. But that's a totally different story and some other poems.

[Chris Boese]

But your labor is a factor in the poem, a counter to the mass production side of printing, the sewing of the saddle stitches, the bone-folder to crease the covers. Very time intensive, and in line with the other labors taking place.

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

Yes! Of course--and I was echoing literature that uses weaving/sewing imagery of a childbearing "you knit me together in my mother's womb" as in Psalms, and in variations in Job, Isaiah and so forth.

[Heather Ross Miller]

I am dazzled by this splendid exchange, Chris, Sally Jo. You are writing a call-n-response saga all your own. And this poem is not a fail, but a winner, a keeper, something I will return to.

[Sally Jo Sorensen]

I revisited this draft and radically slashed the ending, because the turn & address to the second person in the poem--a friend to whom it is dedicated--simply wasn't working for me. The close still needs to be futzed with but it's a much tighter piece now. The discussion really helped.