Small, sleepy towns in Frederick County, MD inspired my poem “Country Road.” I love that entering one of these towns is like driving into a time capsule. If not for certain jarring reminders of modernity—the neon lights of a fast food chain, a passing train—you would almost believe you travelled through time. I tried to capture that atmosphere and the feeling of being in such a place. I am still trying. “Country Road” is currently a work in progress.
Here is an earlier draft of the poem, which I showed to Ethelbert, among other writers and friends:
A one lane bridge
connects
“not from around here”
to a place trapped
in time—
sometime between WWI
and the Internet.
Beyond the city lights
and dim suburban street lamps,
the road is dark, and quiet.
There are chickens
whose eggs we use for breakfast.
There are neighborly gestures:
friendly waves, borrowed cups of sugar.
There are no fences.
Time slows to a
southern drawl
cut sharply with the knife
of a passing freight train
like cherry pie,
the insides oozing out and
only old crumbs left
on the table.
The feedback I got from almost everybody is that the last stanza is the strongest, so I considered moving that to the beginning of the poem. I also heard that the line “There are no fences” left a strong impression, so I wanted to move that to the end. From Ethelbert, I also heard that the second stanza did not add much to the poem, with which I had to agree, so I cut that. He also suggested that the lines “sometime between WWI/ and the Internet” were not specific enough, and I considered changing them to “sometime between WWII/ and Vietnam” or even “sometime between WWII/ and Iraq”—but ultimately decided to leave these lines out as well. I also chose to add some white space surrounding the line “not from around here,” since that would complement the significance of the distinction and separation in the quote. After removing some lines, and rearranging the rest, I came up with this draft:
Time slows to a
southern drawl
cut sharply with the knife
of a passing freight train
like cherry pie
insides oozing out
old crumbs left
on the table.
A one lane bridge
connects
“not from around here”
to a place trapped
in time.
There are no fences.
However, this draft felt incomplete to me. I showed it to a writing professor and a few writer friends, and they all seemed to agree that I had cut too much from the original poem, though I didn’t feel strongly about adding back the lines I had removed. My professor felt that I mixed too many metaphors in the first stanza, particularly in the last four lines (like cherry pie/ insides oozing out/ old crumbs left/ on the table.) Even though I knew what I meant in these lines, I realized I wasn’t expressing it in a way that other people could understand. He also suggested that cutting the second stanza from the original may have been better, but that adding a line or two more describing the town would help. After some thought, I drafted this version:
A one-lane bridge
connects
“not from around here”
to a place trapped
in time.
There are still neighborly gestures.
Kids grow and leave town
like cherry pie
insides oozing out
old crumbs left
on the table.
Time slows to a
southern drawl
cut sharply with the knife
of a passing freight train.
There are no fences.
The feedback I got on this draft is that it still needed some work. My professor still had an issue with the cherry pie metaphor. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the new arrangement. A few friends felt the “neighborly gestures” line was vague, unnecessary. A little discouraged, I decided the best thing to do for this poem is to give it a little breathing room and give myself more time to think about exactly what I am trying to convey.
Currently, I am still letting the poem percolate while I think about how I’d like to go about revision. I am torn between going back to an earlier draft and reworking it, or starting over. While it’s still a poem in progress, I have not given up on the idea and am not concerned about how many drafts it will take to get it right. I am still open to suggestions.
Thank you for sharing this. It's interesting to see how talented writers revise and rethink their work; too often, we seem to associate revision with less accomplished writers--and we shouldn't! (The best writers always revise.) I'm not a poet, but I like the brevity and sharpness of the second draft best. In fact, my only qualm with the second draft is that if "Country Road" is the title, then that metaphor is somewhat obscured by placing "one lane bridge" second...Still, how do you know when a work is finished? This poem seems very close to completion to me.
ReplyDeleteHello Karolina:
DeleteI prefer the first version. It has your original feeling. Although it is good and fun sometimes to work on different versions you might want to consider plucking a few lines from the poem to stand along like:
Time slows to a
southern drawl
cut sharply with the knife
of a passing freight train.
This is like a visual abstraction of a larger object.
I think you have a load of material in your poem to work with. Look for abstractions that can stand on their own as well.
JBP