Poetry Exchange by Thomas Quitzau and Jesse Doiron
August 10, 2021
About the Poets
Thomas Quitzau is a poet and teacher who grew up in the Gulf Coast region and who worked for over 30 years in Houston, Texas. A survivor of Hurricane Harvey, he recently wrote a book entitled Reality Showers, and currently teaches and lives on Long Island, New York with his wife and children.
Jesse Doiron spent 13 years overseas in countries where he often felt as if he were a “thing” that had human qualities but couldn’t communicate them. He teaches college, now, to people a third his age. He still feels, often, as if he is a “thing” that has human qualities but can’t communicate them.
The Exchange
To accomplish the Texas Poetry Assignment 12 – Poetry Exchange, we established a partnership by way of E-mail with the help of Laurence Musgrove. Once we had agreed to work together on the project, we exchanged poems that we were working on for the Texas Poetry Assignment 11 – Time, including“Puzzled: Middle Passage” by Thomas Quitzau and “All Fall Down” by Jesse Doiron. See below the poems as they have been revised. Our various comments follow the poems.
The Poems
Puzzled: Middle Passage by Thomas Quitzau
It was the manner in which you were transported
like cargo, like sardines, with attitude
It was the manner in which you were treated once here,
like animals, with fortitude
Brought to Brazil mostly, the puzzle piece needed
sharing rocks with the Ivory Coast latitude
Holding clay bowls from nations greeted
with enslaved retrograde notions’ lassitude
of tectonic motions
of temporal commotions
of Creole Haitian potions
of burials in gigantic oceans:
missing “pieces” of this corpulent
flattened and expedient
molten and turbulent
moving and fraudulent
unfathomable puzzlement.
All Fall Down by Jesse Doiron
No hero holds us all
in thrall forever,
for never can he be the same –
always.
His name will change,
as will
our willingness
to praise.
It fades in days,
though they be counted by in years,
and years be counted by in decades
– more, in centenaries.
Days will be counted by and by,
and, then, someday,
they will pass by – away.
They will – away.
By then, they will be past.
A hero cannot last in stone.
His monument
is only for the moment.
Reflections on Each Other’s Poems
After the initial exchange of poems, the two of us sent our reflections to each other, offering our comments and concerns. We noted the aspects that we most enjoyed as well as the aspects that called us into confusion. Through these candid exchanges, both of us were able to improve upon our initial drafts, honing what our partner felt most effective or cutting what our partner felt to be ineffective. Some of our comments were clarifications of motivations. Some suggestions focused on technical elements of structure. Diction, of course, became an important part of the conversation.
Comments on Thomas Quitzau’s “Puzzled: Middle Passage” by Jesse Doiron
Working on the Meaning of the Poem –
ORIGINAL DRAFT LINE-BY-LINE EXPLICATION
It was the manner in which you were transported bringing the reader (you) into the moment
Like cargo, like sardines, with attitude large and small
It was the manner in which you were treated calling the reader to a sense of propriety
Once here like animals with fortitude paradoxically demeaning and admiring
Brought to Brazil mostly the puzzle piece needed a place of allusions and illusions
Sharing rocks with the Ivory Coast latitude joining disparate parts
Riding plates holding nations greeted enlarging the conversation
With enslaved retrograde notions’ lassitude remembering the past
Of tectonic motions accepting the unstoppable
Of temporal commotions accepting the ephemeral
Of Creole Haitian potions mixing of magical mysterious power
Of burials in gigantic oceans accepting the insignificance of life
Missing pieces of the corpulent realizing the absence of answers
Flattened and expedient the vastness of necessity
Molten and turbulent the chaos
Moving and fraudulent the allusive
Puzzle the unanswerable
Aspects of the Poem –
SHAPE
You mentioned earlier that the shape of the poem figures highly in the meaning – a separation of the continents and a dwindling of the abducted Africans. This shaping of the lines certainly directs the mind’s eye to see where the mind must travel. And there is a sense of traveling, agonizing journeying, that the lines and spacing connote.
Perhaps this element of “middle passage” can be enhanced. Consider italics to buttress shape.
IMAGE
Cargo puts the reader in motion, and the following comparison with sardines places the reader on board a ship, uncomfortably crowded.
“The manner” of transportation and treatment calls up a cavalier if not brutal handling of the reader, reminding the reader of the awful nature of the trip, the final destination as awful as the travel.
The Middle Passage carries the grim mood. Images exercise their force subtly. Consider eliminating the note about that historical designation. You have enough context to allow the careful reader to intuit what you mean.
What is not to like about magic? Especially the voodoo religion of Haiti. This opens the magical realism that permeates the poem. From the stability of known home shores to the soul-crushing of shores of foreign oppression.
The clash of civilizations and civility comes crashing down upon the reader at the end of the poem.
DICTION
The nice blending of geography and geology also can be enhanced by taking away rather than adding. Before you use the word “tectonic,” you say “plates.” Before you say “plates” you say “rocks.” You might try working out a segue in diction here. Perhaps “clay bowls” instead of “plates.” That will bring the rocks into the tectonic movement and remind the reader of the vessels – for cargo and potions.
Rather than use the word ”puzzle” twice, change the ending word/line to “unfathomable puzzlement.” Such a change can move the physical commotion back into the mind of the reader. It can also steer the reader back into the cruel and confusing waters of the Middle Passage.
Comments on Developing “Puzzled: Middle Passage” by Thomas Quitzau
The original title of mine was “Puzzled,” but I changed it to “Middle Passage” after remembering the name of that section of the Atlantic. Also, I distorted the middle section of the poem to create a pseudo-concrete poem. I intentionally made the first “stanza” proportionally bigger than the last signifying the number of enslaved Africans that actually survived the “journey” and the first couple of years of life. So many died in such horrific ways.
I tend to obsess over titles sometimes, but especially for such a heavy subject as the centuries of African enslavement.
Comments and Questions on “All Fall Down” by Thomas Quitzau
What great variety in shape and content; very interesting. My immediate sense on All Fall was that you have struck a treasure, that quintessential solid sound as the shovel through fresh earth strikes wood? Metal? Something different and we know there may be treasure there. All Fall leaves me waiting for someone (you?) to lift the lid after brushing away the dust to see what “we” may have uncovered, not discovered because someone buried the idea, the futile attempt to freeze time, to live forever via something material. But only observers in close proximity could appreciate “the moment,” however long. How effective a placeholder is a statue? A mummy? How informative of the moment?
Did you have a particular thought or collection of ideas in your mind entering into that poem?
The poem derives from the politics of the day and memories of past days.
In the mid-1980s, I moved to Madrid, Spain. My first year there coincided with the nation’s celebration of Diez Anos Despues De – Ten Years After. The “after” referred to Francisco Franco’s death. The longest surviving fascist dictator left a country intoxicated with socialist liberties. Plaza Malasana had tables on the wide terrazas where young men cut slices of hash for cut-rate prices. I worked down the way from the dope dealers at La Escuela Mayor – High Command School for the Spanish Military. My boss was a colonel in the Army. His office had 20-foot ceilings and a portrait of El Caudillo that easily ran half that height hanging behind his desk. The Plaza de Colon was a magnificent tribute to Columbus. Quevedo stood above the underground garage where I kept my car that I won at a MacDonald’s restaurant on Fuencarral. The most popular film director was Pedro Almodovar – a proudly uncloseted homosexual with a cult of cultivated fans. Madrid was in flux.
In 1991, I lived in Kyiv, Ukraine. From the moment it declared independence from the Soviet Union, every day peeled away its past – symbol after symbol, statue after statue, hero after hero.
I remember well the day I arrived home from an exhausting end-of-work journey aboard the rusting metro. I walked the several blocks from the train station to my neighborhood, practicing my Cyrillic by reading aloud the various signs along the way. I was taken aback when I noticed the familiar Karl Marx street sign had been changed to pay tribute to some Ukrainian hero whose name meant nothing to me.
On Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the magnificent statue of Lenin was unceremoniously removed – bit by bit – after being defaced with illiberal slogans scrawled across the base by the liberated proletariat. It took weeks to send their first Communist leader to the trash heap of history.
I lived another six years in the Former Soviet Union, traveling throughout the nations of the former Eastern bloc. Every month, I saw a bit more of the Russian Empire falling into ruin -- worthless rubles, wanton oligarchs, worried faces.
Nowadays, I see the same irreverent destruction of the old monuments I had grown up reverencing. Heroes for the moment.
Do you like the way the poem was birthed? And if not, I am curious about how you wrote it (quickly and in a burst? Or over time?)
Poems come fitfully to me. Scintillating rather than bursting. Everyone is a breech birth.
And finally, and only if you wish to share, I am curious what your feelings are about the subject(s) of the poem and/or my comments written at 39000 feet.
I was surprised you selected “All Fall Down” for our conversation. Then I studied your offering – “Middle Passage.” Seems we are both sailing the same winds.
Quitzau’s Responses to Doiron’s Answers
The life experiences you shared make the poem even richer for me. I wondered about the dashes (punctuation which can be very effective in poetry, and I would leave them all right where they are. They are like "rests" in music, to pause just the right amount at just the right times. As I may have already said, I love the structure and conciseness of the poem as well.
