Martha Silano: Notes on Drafting and Revising “Once,”
As I prepared to write this essay, I considered how I would click on my voluminous Unfinished folder and find at least a dozen versions. However, when I searched, I found only three drafts.
Some of my poems take years to write, but this one came relatively quickly, or so it appeared. I wasn’t sure, though – maybe I had written a long-hand draft in a diary I’d tossed into a box with the dozens of others from the past year or two. After some searching, I found a few notes I’d jotted down on April 24, 2022:
From a swirl of gases, hydrogen and helium, mostly – from an exploded supernova –
sulfur
neon
nitrogen
carbon
iron
I need a container for this info – a sonnet???
That a supernova had to explode.
That a star had to coalesce. A fusion reaction.
The bulge in the middle became the sun.
One of the planets was Earth.
And then, just before I presumably switched to my laptop to write the first draft:
(I don’t know how to tell this story in an interesting/fresh/new way. The facts of it are just incredible. Don’t need much doctoring up.)
I remember the place and time. I was in my backyard in my favorite beach chair, sitting under a cherry tree. I had gone out there to commune with the robins and crows, but also with the hope I might write a first draft of a poem about a book I’d read aloud to my partner during the early part of lockdown. I’d checked it out from the library, but since libraries were closed, I didn’t have to return it until June. We finished the book, and I returned it.
My partner and I love to reminisce about how this book helped keep things in perspective as the pandemic raged on, as humans began to die in droves, as we worried when a random passerby stopped to pet our outdoor cat, then snuggled up with us in bed. Was Nacho a vector?
It helped us fall sleep.
Fast forward two years. I was still thinking about The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet, by Robert M. Hazen. Why didn’t I own a copy? A few days later, I did. Soon after, I’d decided to write a poem about the origin of our planet.
Under the cherry tree, I re-read the first two chapters. It was harder reading then I’d recalled, even more incomprehensible. No matter how many times I read about the Big Bang origin story, my head can’t quite wrap itself around the tiny speck that inflated into a cosmos 93 billion light years in diameter.
How do I explain what happened after I dropped my pen and turned to my computer screen? The first draft is not too different from the one I submitted to Split Rock Review. I put the poem aside, and then I returned to sharpen a few images. I brought it to my poetry critique group, and they suggested I play with the ending (I did).
As I re-read this poem today and try to remember how I wrote it, I pretty much can’t, though I do recall having fun with choosing some of the things we have on Earth – mouthwash and lemons, pavement and flukes. I also recall looking up the word stook. Who knew that a hay bale was a stook? I liked the sound of it.
So, yeah, I was in a trance. My friends that day were intuition and the most important thing a teacher ever told me: listen. I pushed hard against my doubts. Then, I was hypnotized. Where the poem wanted me to go, I went.