I’ve been enjoying/studying Don Domanski’s poems, preparing to work with him at the Banff Centre’s Wired Writing Studio (which is where I’m posting this from).

Don won the 2007 Governor General’s Award for All Our Wonder Unavenged. There is so much that is beautiful in this book, so much technical mastery that is never thrust in our faces. What has really struck me, though, is his ability to take us from the natural to the personal in one breath. Look at this from ‘Walking Down to Acheron’:

today there’s my shadow on the summits of dandelions
on damp weeds    on the figureheads of stumps
there’s the ache that goes before me    wraithing
around turns in the path    that desire for deliverance
the soul’s nudge    that little jinx in the body

Besides catching my breath on so many lines like these, I’ve been learning from them and also finding my writing being sparked by his images. The following, for example, grew out of Don’s poem, ‘Drowning Water.’

First Version:
Watching

It draws my eyes.
each drop having travelled around
the world, each drop holding
starlight, a trace of our dna.
But right now, rain is a mist
around us all. A common pool ponding
on a grey sidewalk, sliding
through gutters thirstily
drowning a city’s exhalation,
drummed on a thousand
backyard tables till we all
sleep. Some hear it
in the night, a conversation
extending centuries but still
I don’t know
its tongue.

Silk is a word that Don has slipped into several of his poems. I didn’t mean to appropriate it when I sat down to edit. But my poem needed a better beginning and this simply was the right image to open with.

Thanks to Don, I learned to look (as his poem does) at where the rain has been. He talks about physical locations but when I wrote mine, I was thinking of my brother whom I miss, so it was natural for me to think of rain as something we have in common, despite the distance that separates us; to remember that the water that circulates through the precipitation cycle (which I learned about in grade 4 and have loved since) has been through us all.

That thought guided my revisions to the end, from the vague abstraction I had in the first draft to a much more concrete image.

Current Version:

Around the World’s Curved Edge

Rain’s silk draws my eyes,
drapes itself across streets
and windows until I have to admire.
I know each drop has circled
the world, each drop holds
starlight, a trace of our dna,
having passed through
us all. A common pool ponding
on a grey sidewalk, sliding
through gutters, thirstily
drowning a city’s exhalation,
having drummed on a thousand
backyard tables while we
sleep. I hear it
in the night, a conversation
extending centuries reaching
to where you sit. It knows you,
after all, has touched
your face a thousand
times and then
returned to me.

I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to add a third version of this poem. A commentator (below) pointed out a flaw that I’m not happy with, the repetition of ‘a thousand’ within a few lines. Now, I liked both usages. I guess that’s why I never saw them in my repeated edits. But Deepa’s right (thank you, Deepa). They weaken the poem and I don’t like that in my work.

So I’ve just spent time considering what to do. Change the first one to a different number? A million is too much, a hundred paltry. I know I’m not deleting the last one–that’s where it’s crucial. So the first is gone. I’ve decided the poem stands without it and that I can make the line break work around its absence. Just like I did with ‘common pool ponding,’ I deliberately leave the ambiguity hanging, even if it’s only for that fraction of a second.

But sorry Deepa. ‘Grey’ stays. I want readers to really picture the sidewalk in the rain.

Revised Version:

Around the World’s Curved Edge

Rain’s silk draws my eyes,
drapes itself across streets
and windows until I have to admire.
I know each drop has circled
the world, each drop holds
starlight, a trace of our dna,
having passed through
us all. A common pool ponding
on a grey sidewalk, sliding
through gutters, thirstily
drowning a city’s exhalation,
having drummed on backyard
tables while we sleep. I hear it
in the night, a conversation
extending centuries reaching
to where you sit. It knows you,
after all, has touched
your face a thousand
times and then
returned to me.

I’m looking forward to working closely with Don and seeing how my poetry grows. Watch this space …