#39 Backstory of the Poem “Poe” by Gordon Hilgers
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form?
First of all, some background to the longish process in regard to how this poem came into being:
Many people today tend to both venerate and laugh about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”. https://poestories.com/read/raven We have many takes on the poem, some of them sincere, others ranging into parody and even ridicule, and I am certain almost all who have been introduced to the poem have musty and dark images in their minds of a poor, grieving man in his study finding an almost physical manifestation of his grief mocking him from a bookshelf.
But if we look into some of the poem’s symbols, we find all sorts of concepts that point to everything from how love is blackened by death, to how crows are attracted to shiny objects, even to the Native American (homogenized version) of Spirit Crow drowning in a pond where his own image shines—practically a warning against narcissism.
Then there is the word, “rave”, hidden in the name of the bird. Its etymology indicates that, to our best understanding, that “rave” means to “wander”, to “rove”, particularly in madness and delirium. See? The perfect bird for a man going mad with grief.
(ABOVE LEFT: Edgar Allen Poe in 1845 the year he wrote “The Raven.” Attributed to Samuel Stillman Osgood)
I was grieving when I wrote the original draft of the poem June, 2016. I wanted to speak to what I then didnot understand was grief, and as usual, I stumbled through a first draft, much of which embodied multiple emotional confliction; you know, this guy, slapping at goblins with too much time on his hands.
(RIGHT: Gordon Hilgers in June of 2015)
At the time, I had no idea that all this crammed-down “stuff” had much to do with an experience with real homelessness many years ago—the paranoia, the fear, the insecurity, the sense of vulnerability, the feeling people were trying to hurt me, alienation, the feeling of being dislikes. Only naturally, caught-up in all that, I had no way to write a poem with any fairness to it. That first draft was a little angry, and once done, I let it sit. And sit. And then practically rot in a pile of other unsung drafts.
When inspiration isn’t forthcoming, I reach into that pile and get cracking. I enjoy repairing old poems from the position of more knowledge of what was with me when I first wrote them. I have always written and revised as such. I want those first stabs as cold and forgotten as possible. In this case, new knowledge (and a lot of psychotherapy) taught me all about what was happening to so load my then-present life with outrageous static that the new angle made for an easy reconnoiter with an old “friend”.
I’m not much for the now “pop” grief broadcasts I read in many poetry magazines. It’s all like, “I fell down and need to make a documentary about it” or something. So I went just a bit wry here, taking both sincere and mocking stances along the lines of what friends and I used to joke about in college: he went from bed to verse. Back then, we were all expert philosophers, so intense as to embarrass the sunlight, and quite rebellious about all of this, little Chairman Maos partying all over people’s lives simply for the sake of a half-baked idea.
(LEFT: Gordon Hilgers (front) during his college days.)
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.
That was one of the“triggers” of that backed-up PTSD to be honest. I’d recently moved to a neighborhood here in Dallas that was all-too-similar to the nightmare of homelessness I desperately needed to escape. The street life. Prostitutes. Offers for good dope. Muggers. Loud rap music. Hopelessness everywhere. I could not go outside this apartment here in North Dallas without getting a full set of what I’d left behind. Who knows? Maybe situations occur for a reason, right? What we make of what is left to us makes all the difference in who we become.
In fact, I was sitting right here, in a one bedroom apartment lined with books and my CD collection, right next to a big window where I could see pretty trees blooming all that summer long. I play music when I write—that’s odd, right?—because the music relaxes me and keeps me from locking-up. I almost never am blocked anyway. At that time, magical thinking—the idea that everything means “something” about what we are confronting or think we are confronting, nothing but the everywhere noise sometimes too much to bear—pervaded, tainted and tinted my ability to perceive current events. Compounded with my sense of being pitched backwards into scenes I’d left nearly 20 years before, and I was like some Viet vet under the idea that the Cong were outside ready to kill me. I was afraid, afraid and angry about being afraid.
(RIGHT: Gordon Hilgers in his 20s)
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?)
Do I revise? Yes, I revise as I write a draft. I used to suffer paper with enough marks that it was almost impossible to read the original. No longer. I am lazy. I use my word processing program, and now I simply erase the old, then save the outcome. It’s my way of torturing my imaginary posterity.
(LEFT: Gordon Hilgers doing a poetry reading in November of 2011)
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us?
Here’s a partial two verses from the original draft. Actually pretty good for a beginning here:
Somewhere in vast libraries everywhere is
put aside, gathering dust, love for the books, foolishly
put to use to warn the kids, some mast on which
to hang should oceanic waves
go restless, insatiable, recklessly wrought to wreck
the scene altogether. Something in each at times wills
more laudanum for the mandatory Poe, soon to be
a major motion picture, sex of the raven beforehand
checked….
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?
As far as what I’d like readers to take from this poem, let me say first I know that readers are going to be seeing only a partial view of an entire emotional-mental constellation, and that what symbolism strikes me in a personal way is going to strike each reader in a different way. I hope they find this somewhat amusing, but also with a sense of suspicious ominousness hidden in its many oddities and seemingly ungermane shifts, fragmentary factions that seem wish to detract, etc. I like my readers to take as many liberties as they want when they read a poem I have written. This is the magic of a poem. Its meaning and “sheen” is going to shift through each reading. It’s like tarot but not quite as weird.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?
You know, I did get emotional while writing this final draft. But none of that emotionality was pure in anyway. It’s all confliction again. Sometimes sarcastic, then angry, then almost absurd, again laugh-worthy.
Has this poem been published before? If yes, where?
I have not published this poem before. This is a virgin. Can’t get any more brand new than that, right?
I was born in Denver, Colorado, in ancient times. I actually remember the Cuban Missile Crisis like it was yesterday. My father worked at The Federal Center, a huge government complex just outside of Denver, and when I’d ride along to pick him up from work, in the dusk, out of nowhere and everywhere, jack rabbits. My dad called them, “Josephine the rabbit” as if they were all one rabbit. This certainly kept my young eyes wide open. I saw and heard a big meteor in second grade, and then in third grade, I was certain I’d found it. It was big, metallic, covered with sears and bubbled-up rock. I drug it home with massive effort, a whole three blocks and a long “meteor trail” of scratched concrete followed me there. We moved to Dallas just in time for the Kennedy assassination, and at home I witnessed Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech when it was happening. One of my biggest inspirations into poetry was The Moody Blues. I was at a friend’s, and I remember placing the big headphones over my ears to hear “Question”, and yes, I was set for life. I’d had other experiences that inspired me in that direction such as an encounter with a platinum blonde beatnik girl on Larimer Street in Denver, she and her kitty glasses, black clam-diggers and snap-fingers as she stood on a box and recited in her groove. In college, I managed (somehow) to score higher than 99 percent of all entering students that year in verbal reasoning, and the government sent reps to offer me a full scholarship to “work for the government”. I laughed at them. In early adulthood, I had my first manic attack as what turned out to be Bipolar Disorder ravaged me for years. I didn’t get adequate treatment until the discovery of Prozac, but even so it has taken me years of learning how to deal with what I call “the mung”. I worked as a journalist, as a researcher in a research library where the poetry was (natch!), as an investigator, a paralegal, and as a lackey and a flunky. I’m happy I no longer work and can now devote my time to my poetic pursuit and a few other hobbies. I wait breathlessly for the announcement of my Nobel Prize.
(ABOVE LEFT: Gordon Hilgers in October of 2010)
001 Backstory of the Poem
“12 – 2014” from the poetry collection BEFORE THE DROUGHT by Margo Berdeshevsky published by Glass Lyre Press on September 15, 2017
#002 Backstory of the Poem
“82 Miles from the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake Café”
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
#003 Backstory of the Poem
“Orange”
by Barbara Crooker
https://christalcooper.com/003-backstory-of-the-poem-orange-by-barbara-crooker/
#004 Backstory of the Poem
“Modern Matsushima”
by Sonia Saikaley
https://christalcooper.com/004-backstory-of-the-poem-modern-matsushima-by-sonia-saikaley/
#005 Backstory of the Poem
“Side Yard”
By Ellen Foos
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/01/5-backstory-of-poem-sidewalk-by-ellen.html
#006 Backstory of the Poem
“The Ringmaster”
By Susan Sundwall
https://christalcooper.com/006-backstory-of-the-poem-the-ringmaster/
#007 Backstory of the Poem
“That Night”
by Leslea Newman
https://christalcooper.com/007-backstory-of-the-poem-that-night-by-leslea-newman/
#008 Backstory of the Poem
“June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
by Alexis Rhone Fancher
#009 Backstory of the Poem
“The Gift of the Year with Granny”
By Charles Clifford Brooks III
#010 Backstory of the Poem
“The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
by Scott Thomas Outlar
https://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2018/03/chris-ricecooper-caccoopaol.html
#011 Backstory of the Poem
“After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
by Anya Francesca Jenkins
#012 Backstory of the Poem
“What I Learned This Week”
By Angela Narciso Torres
#013 Backstory of the Poem
“Holidays On ICE”
By Jan Steckel
https://christalcooper.com/013-backstory-of-the-poem-holiday-on-ice-by-jan-steckel/
#014 Backstory of the Poem
“Colors”
by Ibrahim Honjo
https://christalcooper.com/014-backstory-of-the-poem-colors-by-ibrahim-honjo/
#015 Backstory of the Poem
“Ode To Disappointment”
By Marilyn Kallett
https://christalcooper.com/015-backstory-of-the-poem-ode-to-disappointment-by-marilyn-kallet/
#016 Backstory of the Poem
“Reliquary”
by Beth Copeland
#017 Backstory of the Poem
‘The Swallows of Barcelona”
by Marlon L. Fick
https://christalcooper.com/17-backstory-of-the-poem-the-swallows-of-barcelona-by-marlon-fick/
#18th Backstory of the Poem
“Arterial Discombobulation”
by Juliet Cook
#19th Backstory of the Poem
“Stiletto Killer . . . A Surmise” from the poetry collection ENTER HERE
By Alexis Rhone Fancher
#20 Backstory of the Poem
“At Last I Can Start Suffering”
By Charles Rammelkamp
#21 Backstory of the Poem
“Wind Chimes”
by Marla Shaw O’Neil
#022 Backstory of the Poem
“Studying Ariel”
by Julia Gordon-Bramer
https://christalcooper.com/22-backstory-of-the-poem-studying-ariel-by-julia-gordon-bramer/
#023 Backstory of Poem
“Jesus Zombie”
by Bill Yarrow
https://christalcooper.com/23-backstory-of-the-poem-jesus-zombie-by-bill-yarrow/
#24 Backstory of the Poem
“Brag 2016:
by Telaina Eriksen
#025 Backstory of the Poem
“It is only Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
by Seth Berg
#26 Backstory of the Poem
“Devil In the Details”
by David Herrle
https://christalcooper.com/26-backstory-of-the-poem-devil-in-the-details-by-david-herrle/
#27 Backstory of the Poem
“Carmen Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
by Gloria Mindock
#28 Backstory of the Poem
“Two Deaths”
by Connie Post
https://christalcooper.com/28-backstory-of-the-poem-two-deaths-by-connie-post/
#029 Backstory of the Poem
“Faces in a Crowd”
by Mary Harwell Sayler
#030 Backstory of the Poem
“The Risking Point”
by Larry Jaffe
#031 Backstory of the Poem
031 September 24, 2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After We Drove”
https://christalcooper.com/31-backstory-of-the-poem-after-we-drove-by-mark-lee-webb/
#032 Backstory of the Poem
“Astral”
by Melissa Studdard
https://christalcooper.com/32-backstory-of-the-poem-astral-by-melissa-studdard/
#033 Backstory of the Poem
“I Have A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
#034 Backstory of the Poem
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache Peaches of Heaven”
https://christalcooper.com/34-backstory-of-the-poem-paper-mache-peaches-of-heaven-by-david-sullivan/
#035 Backstory of the Poem
“Sobriety”
by Timothy Gager
#036 Backstory of the Poem
“The Second Breakfast”
by Gary Glauber
https://christalcooper.com/36-backstory-of-the-poem-the-second-breakfast-by-gary-glauber/
#037 Backstory of the Poem
“Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
By Heather McKeon
https://christalcooper.com/37-backstory-of-the-poem-melanias-tone-deaf-by-heather-forbes-mckeon/
#038 Backstory of the Poem
“Women of the Fields”
by Andrena Azwinski