Independence Day and Confessional Poetry

I'm way too tempted to go off on a rant about the relentless celebration of militarism (if there's such a word), that there are other ways to celebrate today rather than talk of "complete victory" (whatever that means), such as reading aloud the Bill of Rights, which Gerri and I will do later this evening.

Modoc Lava Beds--so very not Florida
But I wish to devote today's post to Confessional Poetry, as it is a subject brought up for a prompt for Poetry Thursday. This time, it was suggested by Raven's Nest:

Maureen wrote, “Maybe somehow we could have this be a topic, without getting too much into the ‘confessional’ type of poetry — maybe just putting some thought into how this kind of poem might fall flat, or on the other hand, might be so powerful and universal that it changes someone's life, truly changes someone's response to pain and circumstances.”

This is a terrific idea, and not as simple as it first appears. What often gets in the way of writing a poem that is confessional (and here, I mean it in the way Linda McCarriston describes it as being necessary, personal, unsayable) is that the confessional impulse to disclose overtakes the poetry itself. For Thursday, I'll share a poem I'm working on that has this very problem. But today, I want to share an old poem of mine that I believe honors the confessional necessity and keeps the poetry alive.

In the following poem, I like to think the craft, the voice, the address, the perspective, the disjointed tracks, and the assonance keep the poetry alive in the poem: these qualities prevent the poem from falling flat. And I think it's because of the poem's confessional nature that I found these qualities so very necessary. In a way, the poem's content dictated this kind of presentation. The trick for me was not to get caught up in the melodrama of the content itself, but to follow its poetic qualities, which is a very deep kind of discipline for me. Here is the poem, which appears in my second book of poetry, nearly Florida:


To the coroner who did not have to draw my blood

sixteen years ago, and centrifuge
the alkaline hydrocarbons from my blood,
contributing to the Ada County records
another fact concerning how much gasoline
is too much for the teenaged male
to ingest, who did not have to split
me open, to remove what remained
of the liver, or to cut the lung tissue
to recover the amount of fluid that bled
through the membrane, who did not have
to decide between suffocation or poisoning,
all the while I was pounding the door
of God’s speakeasy, having arrived without
the password for the two eyes that hid
behind the door slit and that rolled oh
brother when I guessed “Rimbaud’s three-legged
cat,” and the eyes’ voice said, “Get lost,
kid,” so I left thinking what a piss-ant
job for an angel, coming back to the world,
my parents’ garage, puking something blue
and thin onto the pavement, I give my thanks
to you, as I know you would have been
tender for this late adolescent, whose torso
had just lengthened to man-size, whose
hands were strengthening, whose skin
stretched young and fluid, for you
would have whispered, “Goddamn it,”
with the incision, remembering your own
son, or yourself, and I give you
thanks, for I may be the one you
blessed when you once cursed over
that old man’s drink, a Manhattan, “If there
would be one suicide who didn’t come
my way,” and I tell you now it was me
who didn’t come your way, cold, blue,
youthful, rotted, who today rose
with his beloved from the Modoc Lava Caves,
whose bearings were lost in the desert
afternoon light haloing silver off
automobiles and asphalt and ash.