When Karen Rippstein wrote to me that she wanted my help in shaping a poem from a prose piece she had written about a specific Christmas with her daughter, I was intrigued. Most of the people I’ve worked with bring poems or essays and want to stick with the genre while revising.  But after writing in prose, Karen felt a poem would best convey “the love, admiration, and gratitude” she has for her daughter Nancy.

I was eager to find out what would happen once Karen and I began our work. Here is an excerpt from the prose that Karen sent to me:

My daughter Nancy moved to California shortly before I left her father.  The next Christmas was an adjustment for my family as we went our separate ways.  My son was living in Spain at the time and remained in Salamanca for the holidays.  I flew out to Los Angeles to spend the holidays with Nancy.

Nancy captured the tone for a memorable and yet very different Christmas for us.  We were no longer mother and daughter; we were like two sisters who had mutual love and respect for one another.  I was starting out where my daughter had already begun.  Nancy was used to being on her own for several years.  But, this was the first Christmas for me without the secure nucleus of a family.  Instead Nancy and I were the family.

I loved how Nancy kept the traditional Christmas decorations displayed such as the “Karen” stocking securely fastened to the fireplace next to the “Nancy” stocking.  We were equals, and that’s the way my daughter always treats me.  I’m glad that Nancy doesn’t need to look to me for new reference points any longer because I’m her mother.  The fact that I might have more experience than Nancy does not qualify me to be the one to give my daughter new trail markers.  The many attributes I love about Nancy are her confidence, logic, compassion, and thoughtfulness.  I admire the way Nancy’s independence helps her seek out fresh possibilities along her journey.

 The two of us leisurely had our traditional Christmas breakfast consisting of stollen and tea while we exchanged gifts and talked about everything from work to relationships to clothes to the latest books we read. With Christmas carols echoing throughout Nancy’s condo, we cooked up one of the best turkey dinners I’ve ever had and topped it off with all the trimmings and a good bottle of wine.  Nancy made a perfect pumpkin chiffon pie, using her grandmother’s recipe, a favorite of mine.  The best part was how my daughter surprised me by making our traditional Christmas tree cookies.

Some days Nancy drove me to see the holidays dressed up in California style.  One day, we drove to Santa Monica to tour a dollhouse museum.  The make-believe houses were amply decked out with Christmas trees, wreaths, garland, and gobs of cotton snow.  In the dining room of most of the tiny houses, there were families gathered around a table with an assortment of scrumptious looking food.  I happened to notice that in one of the little kitchens, a mother and daughter were baking cookies and bread together.  It looked like my daughter and me from a long time ago and the way we used to tint the cookie dough green before putting it in the cookie press.  We would admirably punch out the perfectly formed Christmas trees on the baking pan, completely satisfied with our results.

My daughter gave me insight and inspiration at the time I needed it most to not only survive in great turbulence, but to thrive through the chaos I was experiencing as I adjusted to being single again.  That holiday we shared was the beginning of my adjustment.

I read Karen’s account of this Christmas noting the images that I thought rich enough to use for inspiring poetry.  I was taken with the image of the mother and daughter stockings hung in the daughter’s condo and the observation of the mother and daughter baking in the doll museum.  Of course, I was also struck by this being the first Christmas after leaving a marriage.  I advised Karen to extract these resonant images for the poem she wanted to write and then to write in poem form without worrying about describing her trip from beginning to end.  She could describe the dollhouse mother and daughter and let the description lead to one of herself and her daughter.  She could describe those two stockings hanging in the condo.  She could describe what is there and what is missing.

I was following my instincts in informing Karen about places she could develop to leave the prose account behind and tackle poetry.

Karen soon sent me a draft of a poem with a note that read, “I really cut the essay apart and tried to let a poem develop from the images.”

When I read the draft, I noted where I most resonated with Karen’s use of images and her use of sound. I also noted where I felt the words did not help me visualize and participate directly in her experience, and I noted where I couldn’t track things very well.  Take note of the images and sounds in this way as you read the draft:

A Different Christmas

Christmas dolls fill houses of dreams
California freeways whiz by
Wreaths, garlands, gobs of cotton snow
Mother, daughter glisten
Bushels of cookie trees bake.

Like crumbs, days scatter
Father, son, beams of silence
Little kitchens, big hearts, merriment
Grains of dough swivel my mind green
romping to the tune of Jingle Bells.

In bittersweet armor
cut and split
like petals falling on angry snow.
And, I, as faraway as home
connected to holiday traditions.

Stockings with names caroling
elegant resurrections
Deck the Halls
with boughs of dreams
wisdom, attributes, possibilities

Daughter, mother together
voices of trumpets
sharing epiphanies on life:
love, peace, survival
New references explode on high.

I very much enjoyed the leaps in this draft from crumbs to days, from big hearts to grains of dough, knowing that the more writers allow themselves to make leap through images, the more poetry they find. Moreover, I liked the way the dollhouse figures and the real mom and daughter join up in my mind between the lines, “Christmas dolls fill houses” and “Mother, daughter glisten.”  I liked the “bushels of cookie trees” for their sheer energy. I enjoyed the sound in the phrase “as far away as home” for its melancholia and the length of time it takes to say it, thereby heightening my awareness of distance.

I wasn’t sure what “beams of silence” are or what “swivel my mind green” means.  I didn’t like picturing the dough or the mind “romping to the tune of Jingle Bells.”  In the third stanza that begins, “In bittersweet armor,” I lost track of the subject. It could be the dough or the I. “New references explode on high” sounded Christmassy but I felt left behind and not knowing what references and epiphanies the trumpets brought.

As a poet, I prefer sticking with the literal– the small balls of dough–as a path to a specific memory. I wanted the trumpets to herald something specific. By introducing personification with the phrase “voices of trumpets,” Karen may have hidden rather than offered the images that would best tell her story and evoke emotion.  Similarly, I was curious about “angry snow.” What did it look like?

Phrases like “connected to holiday traditions,” “boughs of dreams” and “wisdom, attributes, possibilities” were very general for me and didn’t supply visuals.

I wanted to more clearly imagine where the speaker of the poem was standing.  From where is she seeing what she sees, remembering what she remembers?

After reading my response, Karen sent another draft and note. “I really wanted to capture…family’s impact on me during that first Christmas after my separation. I also want to honor my daughter because of the wonderful love and support she gave me when I needed it the most. Therefore, I’ve changed the poem around a bit and used some of your recommendations.”

A Different Christmas

I go back to
a Christmas when
the nucleus of a family was
fractured by the delicacies of time.
We traveled separate paths
traversing in tradition
And, I pivoting in the somewhere of winter.

I see a father and son
with beams of silence.
We slip shattered
gently touching each other
like discarded paper wrapping
catching a glimmering light
And, I as faraway as home.

I watch cars whizzing on California freeways
blurring my mind.
We hear dolls filling houses
with Christmas clatter.
And, I remember wreaths, garlands,
gobs of cotton snow
cascading through the beauty of light.

I greet a mother and daughter
molding hope into
a new batch of dreams.
We press cookie dough through
a tapestry of trees of green
glistening with sparkles of red, yellow, blue
And, I hold onto a circle of smiles.

I trace garlands, cut and split
like dreams bruised.
We find stockings fastened to a fireplace
preparing for a new story as
truths on scatter pages of my life.
And, I slide through the edges
seeking the pathway in.

I reach a daughter and mother together
like voices of trumpets.
We give gifts of insight and inspiration
a melody shaped by a familiar road
And, I take first steps once again.

I enjoyed the use of the “I” many times in the poem, because having that “I” coming in more often helps me get my feet situated in the poem’s story. I can look at the speaker’s environment with her and experience her emotions through that environment.

I enjoyed the sounds of many phrases, especially “Christmas clatter,” “cascading,” and “fastened to a fireplace.”

I felt that this poem version had more images that were on target for the poet’s sense of new self and her relationship to her daughter, her family and their traditions.  However, I continued to feel that although I could feel the energy behind many of the words, I couldn’t enter the speaker’s experience directly.  The poem says a nucleus of family is “fractured by the delicacies of time” but I don’t know what those delicacies are.  The speaker says the family “traveled separate paths/traversing in tradition” but I don’t see them traveling or the tradition they used to traverse.  I am happy when I read, “touching each other/like discarded paper wrapping” because I am getting a sensory understanding, a very immediate experience, of what this distance feels like.  I am unsure where I am when the speaker watches cars on a freeway but the we hears dolls filling houses.  The mother and daughter the speaker greets appear quite existential.  I like the poem best when they are real and pressing cookie dough that glistens with colors.  When I read, “We find stockings fastened to a fireplace, ” I miss the stockings being fastened by Nancy, as I learned in the prose.  The “gifts of insight and inspiration” sound true, but I wish to be included in knowing what they are.

In addition to wanting specifics, I realized I also wanted the all-at-once quality that poems employ. Poems don’t announce and set up a situation in the same way as prose.  When the poem preserves a moment, many moments show up inside of it. A poem’s speaker needs urgency. The urgency of Karen’s speaker seems prompted by the love and honor Karen feels toward her daughter, but is not the same as that desire. The person inside Karen’s poem must convince readers that she is speaking upon a particular emotional occasion, not just because the author wants to write from important feelings.

With these thoughts about specifics, sound, all-at-onceness, and urgency to speech in mind, I selected specific images from Karen’s writing to combine with specific sounds.  As an outsider, it was easier for me to think of a way to tap into Karen’s poem’s speaker’s urgency as a way to bring the poem to the page rather than to keep tapping into Karen’s initial desire to write the poem.

I suggested the poem draft below.  With it, I introduced a title to convey the speaker’s emotional occasion, the reason inside the poem for her urgency to speech. It is not just a different Christmas but one that occurs after great change. I thought about how phrases strung together made a music that cascades down the page like snow, like the speaker’s feelings, like the events of the day.  I believe the images I chose evoke the speaker’s love for her daughter as well as the way making Christmas preparations prompted an exploration of the emotional impact of being with her grown daughter after the separation.

First Christmas After

Pivoting in the cascading snows of winter,
I left the nucleus of family
traveling a separate path.

We touch now like paper wrapping
and as far away as home, I mold cookie
dough with my grown daughter,
tapestries of greening trees.

I trace garlands, split and bruised
like dreams, remember dolls that filled
my house with Christmas clatter.

Beside her single “Nancy” stocking,
my daughter fastens the “Karen”
stocking to her California condo fireplace
and my fingers slide over the smooth
edges of every new cookie tree I cut.

By keeping the language of poems simple and specific and listening for the music and rhythm that replicates the emotions that are central to why the poem on the page is happening right now, words speak volumes and capture life’s depth.

I hope that with this window into where I find the shape and sound of poems, Karen will meet her goal of crafting a strong poem from the prose she wrote about the Christmas she spent in California with her grown daughter.  With the occasion and all-at-onceness of the poem sorted out, there is room between the third and forth stanzas for Karen to add more.  The poem might benefit from additional memories that evoke “bruised dreams.”  In an earlier draft, Karen wrote, “I slide through the edges/seeking the pathway in.”  The sentiment of seeking a pathway is a good direction for this poem.  And since in crisis, the way in and the way out are the same, remembering the past will strengthen the present moment of the poem. The memories might evoke the darker parts of Karen’s feelings and situation, but that will help make the final stanza more resonant and full of the kind of hope we find when those we love return our love despite our life actions.

I don’t believe that finished poems ever do exactly what we intend for them to do when we begin writing.  I think that a poet begins writing a poem from a desire to honor strong connection and then uses that strong connection as a jumping off place for exploring personal truths more deeply.  This is the way poets honor who (and what) inspires them.  The presence of love inspires a feeling of intimacy and gratitude that prompts the poet to write; then, in the act of writing, the poet mines thoughts and feelings to arrive at insight, resolution and acceptance.  A poet’s love, therefore, creates a valued intimacy that fosters deeper knowing.

****

If you set out to write poems from experiences you have described in prose form, remember to keep all relevant drafts of the prose and the poems you work on (notice how I reached back to the early prose for the “Nancy” stocking and the “Karen” stocking).  Some people keep all their writing for a poem in a computer file.  Others use hard copy in a file folder or box.  Some do this work in a journal.  Whatever way you choose, keep in mind that much writing, whether it comes as prose or poetry, goes into creating even a slender poem.  When your poem is finished, however, it will seem as if it came easily, effortlessly, words flowing forth from the mouth of a speaker whose situation is understood.

And as you revise, think of things this way:  Our poems watch us, winking in the wings and waiting for an invitation to come out and choreograph their own content. At first, writing is a matter of working to find the words and sounds that will coax the poems out of the wings (i.e. the sound of “cascading” in Karen’s poem).  Once the poems are on stage, writing becomes a matter of noticing particular choreographies.  And when we see and develop the dance, we honor the intimacy that prompted our writing and makes life meaningful.