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Plan B
Veterinary assistant
was just something that came along
at the right time to pay the bills
while she was going back to school.
Her boyfriend at the time told her
about it because his ex had worked there
before her mom got sick
and she had to move back to Boulder
because her dad was still in Ankara
teaching economics at the university
and hoping he might be able
to get his novel published.
It was a book about a geneticist
working in the produce section
of a Miami supermarket
who meets the sort of woman he had always
thought he would marry,
but knows that his wife waiting in Guyana
was left pregnant at 17
by the first great love of her life
and he cannot bear to repeat such cruelty.
And she, working as a typist
to supplement what he can send her,
once a week walks to the city park
in the evening with the child
that she never meant to have
where they watch for the first stars
and like a ritual, as they return home,
she always tells her darling
you can be anything you dream.
was just something that came along
at the right time to pay the bills
while she was going back to school.
Her boyfriend at the time told her
about it because his ex had worked there
before her mom got sick
and she had to move back to Boulder
because her dad was still in Ankara
teaching economics at the university
and hoping he might be able
to get his novel published.
It was a book about a geneticist
working in the produce section
of a Miami supermarket
who meets the sort of woman he had always
thought he would marry,
but knows that his wife waiting in Guyana
was left pregnant at 17
by the first great love of her life
and he cannot bear to repeat such cruelty.
And she, working as a typist
to supplement what he can send her,
once a week walks to the city park
in the evening with the child
that she never meant to have
where they watch for the first stars
and like a ritual, as they return home,
she always tells her darling
you can be anything you dream.
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and I can't even imagine trying to write so much so often.
I'm very curious about your creative process - how you come up with these ideas and form them into what they become. Maybe we can talk sometime?
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Well, I have clues I guess... I can say that the vague things in my head at this point include the idea of a rabbit in a forest, maybe trying another sonnet, and perhaps some element of fantasy or the idea of shape-shifting. Random stuff. No idea at this point if any of it is usable, and I have meetings until Wednesday night which is when I'll actually start work on a poem I have to email out Friday morning.
This one, the seed came from a This American Life episode of the same name, which included the provocative line that "we're all on plan B... or C, or D, or F." But I went through a bunch of ways of approaching it before I hit this one, a sort of densely woven narrative. At one point, for instance, I liked the alphabetic association, and was toying with something like
A: I always wanted to be an astronaut.
B: When I was in 4th grade, I got glasses, and by 6th I had bifocals. I started to think more about writing.
C: ...
Or something like that, you get the idea. I never wrote it, because I tried to imagine where it would end up-- what would be the arc to carry through J, Q, V? And how far to go, and how to end. Would I leave Z blank? There were so many variables to work out. I still think it could be worth trying to write, and have a similar theme with maybe different implications, but I fell back on something that came more naturally, just a bunch of really easy stories (if you think about it) that are mostly just one phrase long.
I'll try to be a little more conscious of it, though. It's a valuable inquiry to make.
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Inspiration puzzles me. Sometimes ideas spring to my head, and all I really have to do is write them down. But I think I would better enjoy crafting something more intentionally, and I don't often know how to go about it.
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And yes to the social commentary; in class we just wound up discussing whether it was justifiable to tell children a literal lie, when they are too young to understand the world's complexity, that life is less what you intend to do but how you respond to what happens to you.
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