A Vasectomy Sonnet, Fathers in the Birth Room, and a Poetry of Fatherhood Exercise

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Only you’d joke through a vasectomy, / 

Sitting up to view the clamp pinching shut / 

Your vas deferens (of its lobe fished free… / 

—excerpt from Paybacks, by Tania Pryputniewicz, A Year in Ink, San Diego Writer’s Ink Anthology, Volume 8

A Year in Ink,San Diego Writers, Ink Anthology, Volume 8 is now out and available for purchase (prose editor Dean Nelson; poetry editor reg e gaines, cover image by Margaret Larlham). The anthology holds 145 pages of prose and poetry and includes work by Jill G. Hall, Jim Moreno, Judy Reeves, Ron Salisbury, Anitra Carol Smith and 43 more authors. 

In his introduction, poetry editor reg e gaines offers this fabulous reminder regarding the role of a poem’s title: “It must allow the reader freedom to imagine, not serve as a sign leading to an exit ramp.”  What great advice; I’ll be revisiting all of my poem titles with that in mind! 

The anthology also includes the rest of the vasectomy sonnet, Paybacks, for my husband; he’s fond of saying that if I would just write poems about him, the clouds might drop their bounty of dimes upon our roof. We’ll see!

I was going through a “forms” frenzy when I wrote Paybacks. I also loved the challenge of writing about a male process from a female perspective. The sonnet form doesn’t leave leeway for rambling; it forced me to radically distill the memory of witnessing the vasectomy. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was already composing the sonnet back then, but I certainly couldn’t shut off my poet’s mind that day. There I was, sitting at the foot of the operating table, nursing our third child while the doctor snipped and cauterized: “proof of potency”—our baby--colliding with “bye bye potency”—stitched husband. I had the best view in the house, just as my husband had the best seat for the labor, birth, and follow up episiotomies we endured for our three children. I figured I owed him a “witnessing” or two.

Fathers in the Birth Room

Photo by Royn Beattie

I take it a bit for granted my husband could (and did) accompany me in the labor and delivery rooms; I can’t imagine not crushing his hand through contractions, not having him there as each infant crowned. But when I asked my own father about his access a scant fifty or so years ago, he wrote:

When you were about to be born I was allowed in the room during labor, but they kicked me out before the actual birthing.  This was at St. Luke's.  When I took your Mom to the hospital in Rochester for your brother’s debut I expected the same… and was dismayed when I wasn't even allowed to go up to the maternity ward!  I remember standing outside the elevator in shock as the doors closed.  I can only imagine how that felt for your mother.

By the time your little sister came along I was allowed in the delivery room for the entire event.  St. Luke's again.  I remember a very festive atmosphere. Your sister looked luminescent, silvery and pale violet.  Her voice sounded like music.  The doctor quipped, "$250, please!" (the fee for prenatal care and delivery at that time). We all found that hilarious!

What about you? Would love to hear in comments from other mothers and fathers. I also set about to find poems about tubal ligation. Do you know of any? Do tell, in comments, if so.

Poetry of Fatherhood Exercise

Here’s a related writing exercise for you to try from my Poetry of Fatherhood Class:

Consider landing on a parallel metaphor for the experience of circumcision or vasectomy, as Thom Ward does in, “Vasectomy” (May 1996, The Atlantic online). Brainstorm a list of potential metaphors and images before you start writing to jumpstart your process. If neither of these experiences figure for you, your father, or your child, write about any other tangentially related experience located in the male body that has to do with fatherhood (“couvade” syndrome, for example, vicarious pregnancy, a term from the French term “couvee”—to hatch).

I also used a poem by Greg Wrenn, “Circumcision” (I was not able to find it online; it was published in Crazyhorse, 2011). See also a poem by Phillip Appleman, Vasectomy.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

The Moon and The Devil at Tarot for Two

Mary Allen and I continue to co-blog at Tarot For Two. Here are excerpts from our Card of the Month writings. Both of us refer to the Thoth deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris, and the Rider-Waite deck, painted by Pamela Waite Smith:

Tania on the Moon Card:

I think of Frida Kahlo’s bathtub portrait (What I Saw in the Water, also known by the title, What the Water Gave Me) painted from inside pain’s hyper alert state of slowed time. We could say it is Frida’s Moon map, memories bobbing on the surface of the water, stilled for her to see. And for us to witness, looking over her shoulder, blessing vicariously her story and our own buried sorrow wicked to the surface in resonant sympathy.

Mary on the Devil Card:

The Devil in the Rider-Waite deck has harpy feet, bat wings, and a reversed pentagram on his forehead, and the Devil in the Tarot of Marseille (this was the first tarot deck I ever had, bought on a whim when I saw it at a bookstore, the images turned out to be way too abstract for me to even begin to make heads or tails of) – that Devil has boobs, a face on the belly, eyes on the knees, male genitalia, and its own set of bat wings.  What could all these images possibly be telling me during the last month?

Read rest of our post: The Moon and The Devil.

Saddle Road Press News:

ARCs of RuthThompson’s new poetry chapbook Crazing are here; here is a review by Jendi Reiter; you'll find two poems from the chapbook there as well, "Mary Speaks" and "Losing the Words." I love the cover image and the poems by Ruth Thompson (my editor for November Butterfly at Saddle Road Press). We will be running a poem from Crazing at Mother Writer Mentor shortly and I will share the link with you when it is up.

November Butterfly in Santa Fe

Facing Forward, Looking Back is the title for a reading I’ll be giving with two other poets and dear friends: Barbara Rockman and Robyn Hunt. We will read on Sunday, August 9, 2:00 p.m. at Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia Street, Santa Fe. The event is free and open to the public. I'll be reading from November Butterfly; here's what you can expect in Santa Fe:

Sharing a passion for the journeys of family, marriage and poetry’s power as renewal through myth and story, the poets will read from collections that transform individual quests to make sense of love, grief, trauma, history and an unsettled world. They will read from their recent books as well as from new work.

Here are bios for my fellow readers Robyn Hunt and Barbara Rockman:

Robyn Hunt ran offset printing presses and owned a bookstore in California before returning to her native Santa Fe where she is Development and Communications Director for Las Cumbres Community Services, serving families with social emotional challenges and disabilities. She obtained her degree at California State University at San Francisco and on the streets of that city in the seventies. Her poems resound with the landscape and language, images and rhythms of northern New Mexico.  Robyn blogs at “As Mourning Doves Persist.” Of her debut collection, “The Shape of Caught Water,” Jimmy Santiago Baca said, “These poems strum the lyre strings of the heart to conjure olé music.”

Barbara Rockman has taught poetry and generative writing workshops since 1999 when she earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts after a career as an arts education program developer and theater director. Her widely published work has received numerous prizes and her collection, “Sting and Nest,” received the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. She is workshop director for Wingspan Poetry Project, bringing writing classes to Esperanza Shelter for Battered Women.  A frequent collaborator with artists, her poems have accompanied installations and exhibitions. Of her work, poet, David Wojahn says, “She has the capacity to wrest celebration from our failings, sorrows, and confusions.”

Related links:

To see more of my poetry movie collaborator's photography, visit Robyn Beattie's website.

21 Zs for Lisa: Omen Hunting at Yo El Rey Roasting

Photo by Robyn Beattie
Detail, Marvin Lipofsky mold blown glass

Today’s poem is for Lisa Rizzo. I challenged her to write me a poem using the letter z. Read her response, “Firenze Poem.” Here’s mine. Please add your “z” poem in comments…bring on your “z”…

Omen Hunting at Yo El Rey Roasting

                                    For Lisa Rizzo

Tart brine of a dozen fresh ground coffees

cuts Calistoga’s fog. We sit at salvaged gate

turned table, its slats varnished red and inset

with maze of silver zero rims of a typewriter’s

harvested keys minus striker arms and metal

host. A stanza eleven lines thick zigzags counter’s

horizontal face on a full-length chalkboard we quell

the urge to erase, revise. Lazy regulars stand

obscuring all but opening phrase, Wanted

to work on the poem... straight from some Writers’

Workshop post-reading party. I’m thinking of Hafiz:

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house.” At my elbow,

the letter “z,” and next to it, alongside all my reasons

for not writing today, the “Shift Key.” Surely

I’ll walk out of here with my one “z” name--

my two “z” friend Rizzo with hers--changed,

grey zipped to the sky, all former griefs

unswathed from gazebo of memory like Isadora

Duncan’s silk scarf unspooling from axle, neck,

body moving in reverse back to morning’s dreams,

azalea dye pooling in our upraised palms, long may she

sleep past noon. Here, neither czarinas of dance

nor Jezebels, we remain profoundly ourselves.

Our reflections in a storefront layer a painting

of a scarlet stallion running diagonal as a mirage

or a zither, a hundred violet mares on verge

of bursting past his blazing mane to reach zenith first.

Last line of stanza 4 is from the poem, Your Mother and My Mother, "The Gift," by Hafiz, tr. Daniel Ladinsky.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Related Poetry News:

I will be reading from November Butterfly in Santa Fe with poets Barbara Rockman and Robyn Hunt on Sunday, August 9 at 2:00 p.m. at Garcia Books, 376 Garcia Street, Santa Fe.

I will also be attending A Room of Her Own Foundation’s 2015 August Retreat as the Marg Chandler Fellow. In addition to teaching a studio hour, I will be offering poetry feedback in conjunction with Tarot Readings (Tarot as Poet’s Mirror). I will blog more about Tarot Poetry consults shortly. They are tremendously fun and I love generating poetry prompts based on the cards specific to the poet's project.

Photos are by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie with the exception of the "Shift Key." The photo at the top of the post is a detail from a larger work by Marvin Lipofsky and is mold blown glass, cut, sandblasted, acid etched.



And do add your "z", "shift", or "coffee shop" poem to comments if you wish.



Link to post with original "z" poem invitation: June Gloom and the Letter Z

Self-Realization Koi, Extract(s) and Poetry Play

…I have the sensation of eternally falling toward myself. I am looking for myself through the labyrinth of words… From the Meditation, “And if the Hanged One Spoke,” in "The Way of The Tarot:The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards" by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa

I’m eternally falling lately (up, down, you name it), but overjoyed to escape, despite the three children, Husky, two cats, and husband, on small kidless field trips with a friend. This week we made it as far as Encinitas to the Self-Realization Fellowship Retreat and Hermitage Meditation Garden perched on the ocean bluffs, site of the former Golden Lotus Temple designed by Paramahansa Yogananda (author of one of my favorite books, Autobiography of a Yogi). While the temple no longer exists, the garden and koi do.

We tried out a new practice: not talking about the kids in order to give ourselves a BK-like reprieve (Before Kids). So easy to just “be” the moment we stepped into the meditation garden, the one-hundred year old koi—the koi! over two feet long, corn gold, pumpkin orange, sleepy smoke-white and grey, swilling through slim stone-lined ponds, “the silence itself…incense” to quote from "Julian of Norwich, A Contemplative Biography" (by Amy Frykholm).

Much needed, after the ongoing ruckus of misspelling koi in an earlier version of this blog post, house keys skipping into dense shrubbery (Hackey-Sacked “accidentally” by one of the soccer sons), and cats upending full-length mirrors (three foot shards I had to secret into the trash during the school day—can you blame my daughter for thinking like an artist, stashing jagged panels for future mosaics).

Or how about that mix-up on “Crazy Hair Day”—my eighth-grade daughter sprucing my youngest son’s hair into a stiff Mohawk to match hers, spraying it a bright Smurf blue. I’m sipping my coffee, thrilled we got out of the house on time, glancing smugly in rear view mirror, enjoying the way they are enjoying one another.

Until we pull up at school and notice that while my daughter’s friends sport Pippi Longstocking braids and zombie knots, not a single third-grader has a hair out of place. Tears, a quick sink-rinse, and a fierce blow-dry later, we deposit my son at the curb barely in time to catch his fieldtrip bus, rims of his ears still a smoky blue.

On the upside, we took a beautiful trip to Grand Canyon to retrieve a family heirloom—a roll top desk I’m honored the family trusted to my care. A snow flurry at the South Rim cleared just long enough for the sun to break through and for us to descend the three quarter mile or so down to “Ooh Ah Point,” just far enough down for us to gain a healthy respect for the altitude. Back home, the desk’s glass cabinet upper half arrived somehow unscathed despite the tarp tattering itself to threads on the drive through the desert. I’ve pulled out the desk shelf and started to write my morning words on the maroon leather insert, recording the trip’s haiku.

At South Kaibab trail

Condors soar doubling our 

Canyon vertigo.

Anchor of shale trail

We fall--mind's eye--a night's sleep

And hike out changed, good.

Poetry News

On the writing front, I would say by far the only front over which I maintain any degree of potential dignity or control (ok, so maybe the same is true of the teaching front), three of November Butterfly’s poems went up earlier this month thanks to the editors at Extract(s), Daily dose of Lit: Veil, Veil II, and Transport.

Tarot for Two

Mary and I wrote about our respective cards this month at Tarot for Two: Four of Cups and Eight of Cups. 

Mary writes:

My card this month was the four of cups.  The four of cups in the Thoth deck depicts four cups with water pouring out of a lotus fixture at the top, and is, according to Angeles Arrien, supposed to represent emotional luxury and fulfillment -- both internal and external fulfillment. 

At first I couldn’t figure out what in my month had anything to say about me having both internal and external emotional fulfillment.  Maybe the card was just wrong this time? 

Tania Writes:

I initially disliked this month’s card, the Thoth Eight of Cups, balking at the one word caption, Indolence, with its hues of purposeful laziness, petulance and excessive wealth, fearing it meant I was doomed to squander my month stewing in unhealthy emotion.

In the Thoth image we see even rows of storm clouds bordered by moody mossy Neptunian hems of green that gradually subside to a lighter blue, with one brief lemon ray to indicate sky before the plunge into a green you could mistake for the sea or a desert out of which sprout peach cups.

Read the rest of our joint post here: Four of Cups and Eight of Cups.

Photo by Robyn Beattie

Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms

Last spring I taught a two hour workshop touring a handful of poetry forms; I enjoyed it so much I am teaching a full six week course for San Diego Writers, Ink in person this summer. We will try our hand at haiku, haibun, aubades, sestinas, villanelles, and sonnets. For a full course description and to register with San Diego Writers, Ink, visit Poetry Play: A Tour of the Forms. Starts June 25, 2015.

Barbara Rockman and Jayne Benjulian Guest Post at Mother Writer Mentor

We’ve been busy celebrating Mother’s Day all month over at Mother Writer Mentor; if you have post Mother’s Day reflections you’d like to share with us, send us your reverie too. In the meantime, enjoy Mother Thoughts by poet Barbara Rockman and a lovely adoption poem, Winter by poet Jayne Benjulian.

Related Links:

Review of The Way of Tarot by Sherryl E. Smith, Tarot Hermitage 

Photos are mine with the exception of the one above, by Robyn Beattie.

My Bicycle, My Chariot and The Angel Tree: Writing Despite Chaos

Amos Robinson, My Bike, Tidelands Collection
www.portofsandiego.org

Oh my bicycle—

Forgotten Chariot, spin

Me across Earth’s loom…

I got back on my bicycle this month thanks to the misadventures of April. Though I’m blessed to only be bound by one appointment a week (teaching a night blogging class), I’ve been at the mercy of new variations on the chaos the kids typically reserve for outwitting homework and undermining chore schedules. And it has me second guessing pursuing my writing life outside the house.

When the kids were little I could pretty much perfect a day’s trajectory and control outcomes. Strollers give you walking restraining systems. Cars, car-seats. You see, hear, and smell your little people twenty-four-seven, for better or for worse. You just don’t go anywhere without a sticky chubby hand or three holding yours.



Silver Strand Nature Discovery Trail, words by Edith Purer

But now I have a very new teen, a tween, and the youngest long since out of diapers. My teen was set to fly alone on a teaching day when the spiral started with a last minute flight delay, husband working a night shift. I had just enough time to walk my kiddo to the gate and trust her to board within the hour. I popped in to a coffee-shop, scanning the kid-list in my mind for reassurance: one son at soccer practice with instructions to bike to the neighbor after, the other with a friend, and the teen happily Instagramming Selfies and eating Starburst at the airport gate.

As I stirred brown sugar into my coffee, I relaxed into the music coming out over the speakers: gentle guitar, a woman’s voice I couldn’t place, and the refrain, “Don’t pick a fight with a poet”(a song by Madeleine Peyroux I'm in love with now...link takes you to a montage on Youtube).

 

I’m feeling smug, that’s right, don’t get between a poet and her words. It takes the length of the song for me to fully relax into adult land. Two hours later, on an inspiration high from brainstorming with my bloggers, I glance down at my phone to see I’ve missed five calls. My girl mixed up her destination cities, missed her boarding call, could I come pick her up. Followed by one last “Never mind” message--she was boarding a back-up flight.

My mom friends came to my emotional rescue (swiftly as Jagger’s fine Arab chargers) attempting to staunch the hemorrhage of mother guilt. Don’t take it so hard to heart, they said, this experience will give your daughter the opportunity to troubleshoot without you. They’re right--later my girl gleefully recounts the short journey from Lost to VIP. She asked for help, got an escorted tour of secret passageways between gates, and made it to her final destination in one piece.

Every time I think some kind of artificial boundary exists between my family life and my writing life (as if!), I learn again that they are inextricably braided. Earlier that afternoon, rushing to get my son across the school parking lot, so anxious to get on the road to the airport, I’d stopped in my tracks in front of a tree covered in pale grey curled layers of bark furling back on themselves. A writer’s dream of a tree offering its harvest of scrolls to the human eye. Some furls were soft, outer texture that of moth wings or wasp nests. Other furls were hard. That’s my son’s hand in the photo…we both lingered.

I took one more parting photo on the fly, and love how the tree seems to be dancing.

When I showed the photos to my friend Barbara Rockman (author of the poetry collection Sting and Nest), she tells me a childhood story about climbing her first tree. Which prompts me to ask...What is your tree story? Your tree poem? Which tree do you call home?

When my next teaching day rolls around, I’m thinking no problem—I can do this. No one has a flight to catch, I just need to teach a two hour class. But unfortunately, we find ourselves down a car—the van remains on the aerial jack at the shop awaiting new brakes and my husband has the night shift again. I’m set to hop on my bicycle to ride the five miles to town when my son comes to me clutching his throat. Something about a splinter in his throat…which turns out to be a sunflower seed wedged behind his tonsils.

Nothing my husband can’t eventually handle with a wooden spoon and salad tongs, though I’m not there to witness this practical tweaking of a favorite motto my husband has taught our family (improvise, adapt, overcome).  Next time we’ll just hit Intermediate Care (where we’d taken the youngest several weeks prior after he took an exuberant leap onto, and through, a hard plastic car travelling case. Withdrawing his leg left him with an eye-shaped tear below the knee which the doctor stapled shut for us, no problem).

Silver Strand Nature Discovery Trail, words by Edith Purer

Right or wrong, I rush once again out of the house, this time to the din of a gagging child. My savvy traveler, the teen back from her trip, sees me and says, “You’re teaching in that? You can’t wear that…” as if our roles were reversed, as if I were wearing a bikini to the library instead of modest blue striped sweats. No choice but to roll a dress around a pair of sandals, all the while muttering something about what else could possibly go wrong. In the garage, I discover my bicycle has a flat, so it’s off to ride on my son’s bike, knees skimming what’s left of my chest after breastfeeding those three kids when they were babies.

Then I’m free, loosed out into the elements on my chariot with a burning set of thighs, a fierce headwind, and the open miles of path along the Strand’s Discovery Nature Trail, the promise of bright minds in town on the other end.

I cycle to teach

Dusk and a dress on my back,

Spare shoes. Lessons too.

Related links:

I wrote the two haiku in this post in the Haiku Room, (a Facebook group of poets creating content while they play). Here are a few blogposts  in alphabetical order written by participating poets about various kinds of haiku joy:

Pam Helberg: X is for April Haiku Review
Lisa Rizzo, includes 17 haiku: Can you Haiku?
Ruth Thompson: The Haiku Room
Ellen Tumivacus: Thinking in Haiku

At Transformative Blogging: a guest post by Erica Goss: Fairytales, Facebook and Poetry Prompts about the way her book of poetry Prompts, Vibrant Words, grew out of her regular postings of prompts on Facebook. Also includes a beautiful poem of hers and a way for you to think about fairytales to inspire your writing.

June poetry reading:

I'm heading back to my home roots in Sonoma County this summer, and will be reading with Michelle Wing and Ruth Thompson at Moe's in Berkeley at the invitation of Poetry Flash. Would so love to see you there.

June 19, 2014
7:30 -9:30 p.m.

Link to event information and a map up at Poets and Writers.

In the works:

Ceramic handprint by Orion James, photo Robyn Beattie

Photo poem montage to accompany the poem Mordred’s Dream. The text of the poem is forthcoming online at Poetry Flash in May (and will also appear in my first poetry book, November Butterfly, due out in November 2014 from Saddle Road Press). Robyn and I are busy putting images to the soundtrack we recorded several  years ago (syncing beautiful flute by Lori O’Hara to sound recording of her stepson Ben Greenberg reading the poem for us).

Half-way through the micro-movie draft, our Siberian husky escaped from her bath. Somehow in her mad dash through the house, shaking and flinging water droplets everywhere, she hooked a pair of my daughter’s jeans across her back. When she swirled past me, the jeans snagged the power plug to my laptop and crashed the project.

T with Sisu, crasher of the poetry movie

But we now have a restored full working draft...I’m including one of the opening images here. I adore making these movies and feel so blessed to have Robyn’s eyes…she continues to expand my world by taking photos as she goes about her rich art-walk, camera ever in tow. She gives me the opportunity to congregate visually with artists I've yet to meet. I'll be sure to give you the link to our complete movie. To see the five other micro movies we made for Nefertiti, Lady Diana, Amelia, and Guinevere, visit my Youtube channel. To see more of Robyn's amazing photos: www.robynbeattie.com.

And here's the latest Perhaps, Maybe, written in collaboration with the lovely Liz Brennan:
Attempting the Impossible.