When I’m stuck in my writing, searching for what to do next, I force myself to map-out someone else’s poem on a sheet of paper (line length, punctuation, parts of speech, etc.) and I write into the spaces left. It’s not my favorite mode of composition, but it helps me learn about another poet’s movement in a particular poem. “The Forest” and “The Pond” took shape using this “writing into” method I discovered about ten years ago, and they’re both based on a Darwish poem I found in collaborative book of photography/poetry of Palestine. I’m sure other poets use it, (or have used it—or will use it), but at the time it felt like a newly invented technique. What thrilled me about Darwish’s poem—which I do not have at hand—was his sudden movement from wonder, to joy, to statement at the end of the poem. I tried to mimic that movement, adjusting the constraints along the way.

“Searching for the Oilbirds at Icononzco” formed in a completely different way. Von Humboldt was an 18th-19th century Berlin-born naturalist and geographic explorer who traveled in Latin America for five years, establishing the first credible geographic and meteorological data of Latin America. Many international scholars think he’s more important than our Lewis and Clark.

I’d read a very small book of selected writings by von Humboldt called Jaguars and Electric Eels, and found a great passage about a hot spring in which he briefly referred to the oilbird, which is a kind of mid-sized nightjar in the Colombian and Ecuadorian high jungle that uses echo-location for nocturnal flight, can hover in mid-air, feeds on oil palms, and nests during the day on tiny ledges in crevasses and caves. Local people used the fat from the bird for oil lamps. I wondered if von Humboldt had written more about the bird, and searched through his volumes of work. The passage about the Oilbird was really brief, and I filled-in the gaps by imagining what it must have been like to be there at that moment. Then I wrote the poem.

 

 

Birds are important to these poems, but to me they are like brief flashes of human consciousness. I don’t think I can explain what the vulture, crows, heron, and oilbird mean in the poems out of context—they don’t have a totemic personal meaning. I like birds plenty, but I’m not exactly an Audubon-type birder. I know I impose meaning on their appearance when I see them or write about them, but I just can’t pin down that meaning. I suppose in the “The Forest” and “The Pond” there’s a bit of transference and identification going on, but in “Oilbirds” it’s more of a fascination with the act of discovery—which I guess relates to writing a poem. For me, the line “I would like to become another, brighter in this forest, / transfigured”, implies ascension, though I can’t say what form that ascension would take.

 

The short answer is that it hasn’t. I was a poetry co-editor at Third Coast many years ago, and I spent three years as the managing editor of Gulf Coast in Houston—the titles are mere coincidence. I don’t think at all about editorial preference while writing, but I do think about it based on what they’ve already published. I’ve noticed that many editors prefer a poem that noticeably turns or uses epiphany as a culminating tool, and these three poems certainly do that consciously, although a lot of my poems don’t. My editing work helped me realize that you can find wonderfully written poems come in over the transom if you are patient and read everything with care, but that many editors don’t care to do that work or feel too overwhelmed to do it well. So, I try to be patient as I send out a poem ten, fifteen, or twenty times before it’s published.

 

 

I’ve got some unconventional classic favorites: George Meredith for his tortured sonnet sequence Modern Love; Charles Swinburne for his ecstasy; John Donne for his precision; Elizabeth Bishop for the same reason; and Robert Browning for the dramatic lyric.

If forced at a loud party, I’ll automatically say that my favorite poets are W.S. Merwin and Derek Walcott. But my ultra-current favorites span a huge range: Dean Young, Mary Ruefle, John Gallaher, Adam Zagajewski, Wayne Miller, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Yusef Komumnyakaa, Major Jackson, Thalias Moss, G.C. Waldrep, Jorie Graham, Terrance Hayes, Anne Carson, Sean Hill, Elizabeth Bradfield, Rachel Zucker, Chris Dombrowski, Noelle Kocot, Oliver de La Paz, and many, many more. Although most of anything produced in a year is usually not good, I always find several books I’m attracted to.

 

 

– after Mahmoud Darwish

 

 

In the forest—and I mean within the ark of twilight—

I walk from one copse to another without a path

 

to guide me. The vultures cruising above share

a vision of the future… we rise into revelation

 

and return with love and peace—which are holy—

as melancholy and reluctance and rot seep

 

down through the decaying leaves, sweet with mold.

I walk the cleft of a gully and think: How

 

do storytellers disagree about what wind says about water?

Is it from a ripple that heartbreak blooms

 

on the river’s bank? I dream in the twilight. I weave

in the twilight. I am no one’s companion in sleep.

 

All the twilight is mine. I walk while the dusk

grows within me. I am pierced with slivers

 

of the holy. Song sprouts like grass from Francis’ fingers.

It sings: “ If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”

 

The stands sway with each other. I walk in the shadows

of our wounds. A crow crosses another crow,

 

and the two peck at my feet, which disappear.

I would like to become another, brighter in this forest,

 

transfigured. But the forest pulls upon me,

pulls upon me. I am the I between revelation

 

and earth. In the garden, alone, Christ prayed

in Aramaic: “Father, what is next?

 

What is next?” The arresting soldier

overheard and said: “There is nothing

 

next—you die like we all die.” And I say:

“You, soldier, will never again deceive me.”

 

 

 

– after Mahmoud Darwish

 

 

I walk in a field of black waters (and I mean

within the bowl of God’s right hand)

 

from one rock to the next without a dollar

to guide me. The heron over there is sharing

 

the secrets of the hunt, descending in a silent glide

to the shallows, and settling like a breeze,

 

because the air moves for the heron’s purpose,

with the deliberation of a devoted servant.

 

I move, wet, with a line extended and waiting,

thinking to myself: how do dancers trace the shape

 

of the world so that we can see it all at once?

Is it from the movement of the body that love

 

flares up? I wade as if sleeping. In the water

I see no one above me. I still the ripples—

 

I see no one below me. If I walk, I will become

heavy like the soaked elm. Heavy like a vial

 

of blood emptied into the water. The parasites

will transfigure me. I will become

 

the bubbles that lift the sunken elm

to float like a whispered curse

 

just below the surface. All the tension

in the world will hold me below

 

in the darkness. You will never know I am there,

waiting, when the heron lands on my slick back,

 

and opens his beak to say: “this is a sign.

Of what you may never know.”

 

 

 

– after Alexander von Humboldt

 

 

At Icononzo the oilbirds

sleep. Here the valley

 

walls reach down

until they cup an invisible

 

river, and two bridges,

natural as blown seeds,

 

span the gorge

on tumbled knees

 

grown thick

with pangola grass

 

to shade the birds

on their ledges.

 

Their feathers brown

and gray in the depth.

 

At Icononzo—

before the birds

 

flow out at dusk

to feed on the palm

 

and hover, fat as hens,

among the fruit trees—

 

a man inclines

above a dark too profound,

 

and with companions

drops a burning rocket down

 

into the rushing murk.

To his blue eyes, it seems

 

to float in the dank air,

and patiently strobe

 

the crevices in a sweep

of tar-smoked, guttering light.

 

He sees the tender, fleshy

hatchlings in the nests,

 

and the black, reflective,

escudo-wide eyes beam

 

a startled, wakeful sight

in the moment of the lantern’s passing

 

as it falls down the twilit crevasse.

The man thinks of bats and nighthawks,

 

he thinks of Manólo, this moment’s true

beloved, left behind in Cumaná,

 

as fevers squeeze the sweat

out of that young body again.

 

The birds rustle, slap the air

with great wings and voices

 

to find, in the echoes,

the new dusk’s brilliant secrets.

 

Years later, perhaps, he writes:

of the abyss is perceived.