Sparks & Starts: "Joke"

A poem's initial inspiration & handwritten early drafts

Hi, Friend.

Spark & Starts is a series of posts for paid subscribers where I share my process, from initial handwritten notes and drafts to published poem or essay. Because let’s be real: no piece of writing springs from us whole and polished and shining (*ting*). No, it takes shape over days, weeks, months, even years. Slowly, draft after draft, as you experiment and pay attention to where the writing is leading you, the poem becomes itself.

Today I’m sharing the initial notes for what became “Joke,” a poem in my fourth collection, Goldenrod, that was inspired by a strange dream.

I recently cleaned out the filing cabinets in my basement and shredded a bunch of papers I no longer need (hello, bank statements from the mid 1990s), but in that process I came across some old legal pads, too. Flipping through one, I recognized the green Pilot Precise pen I used almost exclusively for many years, and I spotted the beginnings of “Joke,” dated July 31, 2017. (The location “Bex SBX” stands for Bexley Starbucks, a coffee shop in my neighborhood where I also wrote “Good Bones.”) This first page is the initial notes; the next page is the very rough draft pulled together from those notes.