#439 Backstory of the Poem “Landscape With Icefall” by Marly Youmans.
Has this poem been published? And if so where?
Twice in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. I’d like to say thank you (times two) to the editor, writer Christine Klocek-Lim, who gave my poem her attention nine years ago, and has now given permission to reprint here.
https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/2025/01/01/from-the-archives-landscape-with-ice
https://christinekloceklim.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJ7bxdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFZOVdmMWhmZWVXWGlOMW
5wAR65J0T5lW7fIVPD3y_GYGjP77yigw_KyO82wdaR1S0YPmj1ZmKMBsAdIJ4koQ_
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? The poem you requested is in unrhymed poulter’s measure—back in the 16th century George Gascoigne named the form after the way that poulterers would sometimes give twelve, sometimes fourteen eggs “to the dozen.” It alternates a “fourteener” or iambic heptameter line with iambic hexameter.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/poulters-measure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gascoigne
Every now and then I write something in rhymed or unrhymed poulter’s measure, even though it’s not an English form that has led to many successful poems—it will, for example, never beat out the generative force of the sonnet. But in some moods it appeals, and my lines start to fall in those lengths. I hope that the form then suits and becomes one with the energies it holds, just as a soul and a body are one.
https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/sonnet
I can’t say a lot about some step-by-step process because this is one of those poems that sluiced in quickly and saw little change afterward. I do remember adding “mortal,” but that was right after I drafted the poem. And there might have been a little more tinkering to suit the meter, but I don’t recall.
For a Southerner, snow and icefalls remain magical; I never tire of the loveliness of a Yankee snowfall, especially at twilight, or the look of shattered ice or frozen lake. I have often written wintry poems, and they sometimes feel connected to so-called “winter’s tales,” fireside stories that veer into the fantastic and supernatural (as in Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” with its oracle, dream news, princess-shepherdess, and living statue.)
The Winter’s Tale
https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/the-winters-tale/read/
And there are times when the flat-out beauty of the world feels intense and heartbreaking to a sometimes-melancholy poet and so helps to call the muse and engender the poem—my small praise for Creation. That’s where “Landscape with Icefall” began. Angels, fallen angels (those little demons), and a landscape that allows the narrator to unite with and transform it…so many years after making this one, I still don’t know how poems can feel as if they course from some distant star, their energies passing joyfully through the body and mind.
Click to purchase INGLEDOVE from Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Ingledove-Marly-Youmans/dp/0142407046
Click to purchase CURSE OF THE MOCKER from Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Raven-Mocker-MarlyYoumans/dp/0142406961/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. This one was written in my little writing room, among the shelves and stacks of books and pictures by friends who are artists (and also a picture in colored pencils of a lady centaur with roses for breasts and two small centaurs, made by my daughter Rebecca when she was in kindergarten.) I must have written it on my old library table. The room holds a branch with two carved doves on it that my husband gave me after Ingledove (FSG) appeared—and a carved raven he gave me when The Curse of the Raven Mocker (FSG) launched. There are things made by my three children, a case with old Wade fairy tale figures from Red Rose tea packages, Georgia funeral parlor fans, and much else.
I am often pleased with the distraction of my window. Mine is a room with a view that runs across my backyard and the old stagecoach alley, then past the mansion that takes up two-thirds of our block, and at last on to Fenimore Cooper’s Glimmerglass (BELOW RIGHT)—Otsego Lake—and in winter I can glimpse a frozen or thawed surface, hills, and the tiny-in-distance Kingfisher Tower. We had both snow and the remains of an ice storm when I wrote the poem.
What month and year did you start writing this poem? The poem was written on New Year’s Day, 2016 (BELOW). It appeared in print eleven days later on January 12th. Oddly, it was re-published on New Year’s Day, 2025.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? No, none.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Thanks to the second publishing of the poem and a lot of facebook e-friends and in-the-flesh friends, I’ve seen an unusual number of comments about this poem. And they give me hope that perhaps I don’t need to say what anyone should take from a poem that I’ve made—when I‘ve used my art properly, well, a poem can be received and understood.
Evidently I prefer impossible wishes over practical ones, as with this and any poem, my foremost desire is for perfect expression. Because perfect expression from any maker holds the possibility of perfect reception in a reader.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? At the risk of sounding wild and contrarian, I should probably say that though I have emotions and suppose that they exist at all times, I don’t believe that the writing of a poem depends on my emotions. (Sometimes, however, emotions can wreck a poem. Sentimental ones, particularly.) My focus is not on trying to express “myself” or my personality and feelings but on capturing the skein of words and images pouring through me, turning in me—that is the mysterious thing that must be expressed, and therefore I intend to yield myself to it.
Another way to put this is to say that I was not inspired by the snow or ice or Kingfisher Tower or hills outside my window, or even by a melancholy mood, though they were elements that could be used. Instead, I hew to the ancient idea that inspiration is a divine spiritual force that wakes and stirs within us, and is the best reason to wield a poet’s art.
It’s clear that many poems by me or by others don’t manage to wrestle with the angel of inspiration and win a blessing. And a great many poems come from the very real pleasure found in playing with words, not from inspiration. In our age, many are Narcissus-poems, short lyrics in which the maker is bending to stare into his own face—poems that profess and confess the individual, the personality, the emotions. Your question is entirely fitting for the times.
The stance I wish for myself is a humility before the great works of the past and a readiness to yield to the surprise of inspiration. A poet—this poet—may never fully capture an inspiration in words, but like Yeats’s Aengus, must continue to chase the glimmering shape of what is glimpsed in a rare moment.
Click on the below link to view the website of William Butler Yeats
Click on the below link to read “The Song of Wandering Aengus” by William Butler Yeats.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55687/the-song-of-wandering-aengus
Click on the below link to listen to Judy Collins’ sing “Golden Apples of the Sun”, other wise known as “The Song of Wandering Aengus”
Click on the below link to view Judy Collins’ website
Click on the below link to view Marly’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/marly.youmans
