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The following is an account of the process of writing the poem “The Front Page of the Purple Sage”:
Day 1 (1:30 on a day late in September, 2011) – While driving into town to eat lunch and make a few other stops, I saw the sage blooming beside the road. We have had three rains in the last three weeks and it bloomed because of the rain. My mind went to work on a poem, and I searched for an appropriate word or metaphor for the sage. “Harbinger” went through my mind, but that refers to something running before the event. What I needed was something that announced an event that had already occurred. That’s the newspaper. On the small yellow pad I keep on the car seat beside me, I wrote, “The front page of the Purple Sage”.
I ate lunch at KFC: a grilled chicken breast, mashed potatoes, green beans, a roll, and drank ice water instead of my coke. This was during the time between my two gallbladder attacks and my gallbladder being taken out. So, I avoided my normal fried potato wedges and the double down which has cheese on it. (see my gallbladder poem here: http://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/the-divorce-is-final-by-dennis-lange/ )
While sitting at my table, I wrote some thoughts. Here’s what I had when I finished eating and walked out of KFC:
The front page of The Purple Sage
In headlines lavender
Declares with blossoms the good news
An editor with greatest flair.
Day 2 – I reread the above lines and had a thought.
Reports (declares) with blossoms the good news.
Reports is a better word, in keeping with my metaphor. I’ve left (declares) in that manner, in case I change my mind. Sometimes I write the choices like this:
Reports with blossoms the good news. (Declares)
An editor with greatest flair
The front page of The Purple Sage,
In headlines lavender,
Reports with blossoms the good news (Declares)
Day 3 – I reread the lines above and decided to make a list of rhymes for lavender. First, I’ll do a search online. As expected, I didn’t find any perfect ones. My choices now are to (1) use a rhyme of one or two syllables, (2) rearrange the wording of the line so that lavender isn’t the last word, (3) find a synonym for lavender, or (4) rework the word lavender into a line that won’t need a rhyme, such as the 1st or 3rd in the stanza. And, as I’m thinking about all that, I’m wondering if there isn’t a better way to start the poem. Aren’t both the first and second above, jumping into the situation too quickly, without explanation. Also, I like the thought of using the 2nd line above as part of the concluding stanza.
And, as I look at the words, I see “editor” and “lavender” as possible rhymes. Lavish popped into my mind from “lavender”. With lavish editor
The front page of The Purple Sage,
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender.
And then, following that (replacing the period above with a comma):
That rain has fallen on the land
That life has sprung anew (bloomed)
I look at the last two and would like to have a simile soon or even replace the second line with a simile. I’m also looking back at the six lines for alliteration.
Day 4 –
The front page of The Purple Sage
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender,
That rain has fallen on the land
That life has bloomed anew (sprung)
As I looked at all that from the perspective that the poem would begin with the first four, I didn’t like what I had written. The first four above need to be the last four.
Another thought:
One traveling thru
what’s new
I’m going to research the gap between rain and the blooming of the sage.
Day 5 – Sage will bloom three days after a rain. I took a picture of my neighbor’s sage.
Day 6 – If the first 4 remain there, more detail needed in the next.
The front page of The Purple Sage,
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender.
A blossom for each drop of rain;
Its beauty for the bow;
Glad earth’s salute for quenched thirst thirst relieved,
For heaven’s gentle flow.
It looks like I’ll abandon two partial lines from day 4. Question: Do I speak of people blooming because of the rain or an individual blooming, just needing a tiny start?
Day 7
The front page of The Purple Sage,
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender.
A flower for each drop of rain;
Its beauty for the bow;
Glad earth’s salute for thirst relieved,
For heaven’s gentle flow.
Day 8 I decided to detail the relation of rain and blooming sage, begin with that, and finish with what I have above.
Three days ago, the falling rain
Gave life to limb and root
And now the sage bursts forth in song,
Enriched by heaven’s loot.
A flower for each drop of rain;
Its beauty for the bow;
Glad earth’s salute for thirst relieved,
For heaven’s gentle flow.
Thus, front page of The Purple Sage,
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender.
I’ve reversed the order of the two original stanzas and I’ve changed one word in the first line of the last stanza to make the transition from the second to the third. I don’t like the repetition of “heaven’s” in stanzas one and two. I need to keep it in stanza two to maintain the contrast between earth and heaven.
Three days ago, the falling rain
Gave life to limb and root.
And now the sage bursts forth in song,
Enriched by liquid loot.
A flower for each drop of rain;
Its beauty for the bow;
Glad earth’s salute for thirst relieved,
For heaven’s gentle flow.
Thus, front page of The Purple Sage,
With lavish editor,
Reports with blossoms the good news,
In headlines lavender.
By changing “heaven’s loot” to “liquid loot”, I’ve not only gotten rid of the repetition but have added alliteration by my choice of “liquid”.
Finis! (The finished product is the last version above and can also be found here, with a picture of sage blooming: http://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/the-front-page-of-the-purple-sage-by-dennis-lange/ )
Summary and afterthoughts: Eight days to write 12 lines?!!! I wrote the 66 line “The Macaw” ( http://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/the-macaw-by-dennis-allen-lange/ ) in three hours one night and some revisions the next. And, I’ve written other poems in a single night. There were two hang-ups with “The Front Page of the Purple Sage”. One was the decision I made to chronicle the writing of the poem. That proved to be a distraction for about half the days until I began to first concentrate on the verses each night and summarize the process afterward. Before I did that, I’d work on the poem a bit, write the process, work on the poem…. That didn’t work. The other snag was my inability to decide where the first lines should go – first or last, and what would build around it. And, my work on most of those eight days was about 15 minutes at the most, often less than even that.
Second, I notice that I didn’t mention any attention to, or struggle with, meter. In most cases where I’m writing a poem with stanzas of four lines, alternating 4 iambic feet and 3 iambic feet, the meter is almost automatic.
I decided months before I actually did it, to write the process of writing a poem, thinking it might be interesting for other poets to compare with. I also thought it might be of benefit to those who haven’t settled on their own methods yet and might find something beneficial in the way I approached the writing of this poem.
Thanks for reading.
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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2011.
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