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blog by SHUTTA CRUM listed in categories: Writer's Life

A Poem for Writers

I hope you all celebrated National Poetry Month (April) in creative ways. Here I offer a poem of mine for all writers who worry about those adverbs and adjectives. Enjoy!

Orphans of the Edit

by

Shutta Crum

What becomes of these orphans I’ve torn

from story and poem—

these adjectives and adverbs

I’ve ripped from the embrace of verb and noun

and left stranded by the way?

“Baggage,” we are told in no uncertain terms

by the paterfamilias of the arts.

“Cut them,” we are advised by writing luminaries.

And even, “Death to adverbs!” held aloft

beside John 3:16 on signs at baseball games.

In less sure moments I fear my slashes,

looping through innocent descriptors,

will mean that days will no longer uncurl lazily,

or that cats will only be cats. But I have done as advised.

In a tempest I’ve rounded them up,

and pushed them from me like unwanted fledglings

—over the edge of the pile of poems nested on my desk.

In the morning I find a fledgling—bedraggled.

He made it through the storm last night.

And now, his cowl of white feathers spiked,

he waits, unbalanced and disheveled—

teetering on my desk for rescue.

But I turn from him, red pen in hand,

resolved to rage and slash again.

And then I see . . . that here in my poems

you no longer kiss me wonderingly.

And your hand upon mine is no longer warm,

or weathered, kind, or even known. And a panic

I cannot push down rises.

Forgive me! I scrabble through my pile of poems

and rush to lift another fledgling—gentle—back into the nest,

tucking his new and still untested –ly under him.

So lazily you may stay in this poem.

And there’s room for the storm-toughened bedraggled.

Room for spiked, disheveled, gently.

Even for the touch of your hand known well,

and a kiss we can linger over . . . wonderingly.

Ciao!

Shutta

Posted in May, 2008