How a Poem Is Written #1: A Playful, Rhyming Feminist Poem, “ways and means”

As a preface, this poem is an anomaly in regards to my usual writing process. I hope this breakdown sheds additional light on my poetic sensibility.

Upon waking, I wrote 3/5 of this poem in my head, in bed, while on retreat at The Whidbey Institute, located on Whidbey Island west of Seattle. Start to finish this poem took perhaps 40 minutes: 20-25 in bed, 10-15 at my laptop. It began with what I thought at first was a 1970s rock song verse. Lying with my eyes closed, pondering what my state was while on retreat with my partner, Shannon Patterson, the first verse tumbled out, “lazy days/and lazy ways/puts me in a lazy haze/with nothing that pays/and thoughts a’ craz—y”. What to do about the end-of-line rhymes? Crazy? My solution was to drop the y to the next line using an em dash, ee cummings style, right? The next verse, definitely a nonsensical one, a playful one, but building on the ‘ee’ sound of the leftover ‘y’ that ended the first verse: me/be/pee/see/knee. This sequence of words also tumbled out in the usual way for me and my inner critic questioned using “pee”: Too coarse, vulgar, not appropriate for sentimental poetry. The critic also questioned “knee”, a noun, ending a sequence of verbs. Although I am only seeing just now that me is a noun/subject. These words are what “came”—so I didn’t edit and kept going, feeling the strength of the words over my “educated self”. The third verse began with the first phrase, then I just followed with word phrases that rhymed with spaces. Now, I really appreciate “thought between spaces” as a twist on the popular “the spaces between thoughts”. Could have been my dyslexia, but either way. By this time, I figured I better get this poem written down; I’d run it through my head multiple times and thought I was at the limits of my memory. I got up and realized I had no paper in our cabin, my regular way of writing poetry. I typed what I had into my laptop knowing it was a good start to a poem. Something about the going nowhere, surreal themes in the first verses triggered the fourth verse, another rhyming tumble I typed as it came, without questioning: the world/swirled/curled/burled/girl’d. After burled I felt a burst of feminine energy and created the word girled for its rhyming match. I added the apostrophe to better highlight girl and reduce confusion. The closing six words were an obvious rhyming progression that came in an instant, however the three-syllable length of feminine gave me a serious pause: feminine/saved/men/caved/all/raved. I explored alternate adjectives. I kept feminine because it ended with an ‘n’, same as men. And although “women” would be an easier read, it isn’t specific to trait.

Strongly felt ideas that come after the initial poem are written (very rare usually; this poem is an exception) I put in paranthesis. The first one was “cans without cases”, thought of about half an hour after the poem was finished. It came first as “stores without cases” but I felt “cans” was more obvious than refrigerator or product cases plus “cans” had alliteration with “cases”. Later that day I felt strongly about adding “twirled” because it fits well with “girl’d”. Sometime during the initial writing, I heard “tee” to follow knee, but I already had five lines so discarded it. The title came shortly after I finished the poem, which is unusual, but I felt it in my bones.

That’s everything. In the end, this poem reminds me of Ogden Nash’s playful rhymes, but the structure is obviously more ee cummings. It begins as a light-hearted seasonal poem but ends with a potent six-word verse about gender. Thematically speaking, it’s been crystallizing a long time for me: women (especially those of color) are the leaders we need going forward, near-term and long-term. (Or men with a very developed feminine side.) I am huge fan of The Squad in Congress and similar others, Katie Porter, Pramila Jayapal, Stacey Abrams, and so many more. Go women!

ways and means


lazy days
and lazy ways
puts me in a lazy haze
with nothing that pays
and thoughts a’ craz—
y

me
be
pee
see
knee (tee)

thought between spaces
losses without races
caught without chases
shoes without laces
brackets without braces
(cans without cases)

the world
swirled
curled
burled
girl’d (twirled)

feminine
saved
men
caved
all
raved.


24 August 2020, 8:14am