In fifth grade Beth won first place in a contest with a poem called “Why I Like to Read Good Books.” That early success persuaded her to keep writing. Her poetry has been published online and in print. Her book, C- in Conduct, available at Amazon.
Beth’s poem “Ode to Boys” appears in the Fall 2020 issue of Carve, available here.
The details of the past make “Ode to Boys” so relatable for anyone who’s had a young crush. While writing this piece, how did you access that time of life?
The past is often quite clearly detailed to me once I can find and begin to pull the thread that unravels it all. I often begin with a prompt and then follow the images that appear as I free-write as rapidly as I can. Shaping the poem usually occurs as I go from the journal free-write to the computer. A lot changes in that process. For me, this is still in the realm of writing a first draft. Many, many revisions…some only small changes in words and word order, added details and often, new ideas come in at this time too. In this case, those people and those incidents were alive in my mind despite occurring very long ago. They seem timeless to me and I feel present in them again.
Every word of this poem feels absolutely precise. What does your revision process look like?
I actually love to revise. Getting it down in the first place is usually more difficult. The inner critic seems to arrive with the prompt! So free-writing is essential for me and I am always surprised by how much the material changes from free-write to first draft. Later revisions are about making the sounds and the syllables just right, line length, finding good comparisons. I also pay attention to how the poem looks on the page. The thesaurus is a wonderful tool and it helps me find the exact word meaning and/or sound that I am looking for. I like to write, revise, let sit a few days, revise, then workshop the poem. Then wait and do it again! A teacher once told me that the process of writing is the source of greatest joy, even better than publishing, and I agree. I love getting lost in it.
Fictionalized or not, it’s intriguing when a poem gives the full names of people. What is your approach to writing truth?
This poem is unusually “out there” for me regarding real events and real people. I guess that in this case it feels safe for me to do so as these events were all so long ago. Several of these “boys” are now dead and I don’t believe that any of the others would be offended on the very off chance that they would come upon this poem. I am happy that you think it still talks to young people today. In other instances, I might camouflage someone closer to me, but still be writing the truth as I see it. At other times I’ve written poems that blatantly lie just for the fun of it. One poem I am thinking of now is supposedly about one of my sisters but is really describing myself. I will sometimes change details if one word sounds better in the line than the truth does. I think there is great power in the truth, writing from my core. I have a background in counseling and have pursued going deeper into myself via dreams, psychology, and in the words of writer, Natalie Goldberg, “going for the jugular.”
What’s a song/poem/line you can’t get out of your head right now?
One poem that is always with me is the second stanza of Machado’s “Last Night as I was Sleeping” which reads as
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
As an older person who has made plenty of mistakes, I like to think that redemption is not only possible, but that sweet things can come from failures.
Another one I love, is Lucille Clifton’s “The truth is furiously knocking,” which also reflects on your third question about truth in writing. I try to answer that knock, although it can be scary.