Why I added photos, poems and quotes in my memoir

One of the first reviewers of my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, said, “….The poetry and photographs add an extra dimension that is missing from most memoirs like this since as a reader you get much closer to the reality of what is being described on the page….” (Mark Shelmerdine, CEO, Jeffers Press). Another reviewer said my book is “poetically visceral.” Those statements helped validate any misgivings I had in adding other creative works into my manuscript.

First photo in the book

I really hadn’t thought of putting photos in my book until my publisher suggested it. And of course I was delighted. At first she suggested photos interspersed within the chapters, but my book didn’t lend itself to that. So I picked out photos in groups: of my son Paul – the main subject of the book, of him and his brother, family photos, views of my office, garden, and one of the memorials to Paul – a bench dedicated to him on the greenbelt outside our home. At the time I had no idea what an impact these photos would have on the message of the book. However, I was then reading Keith Richard’s memoir, Life. It has two photo sections. And I kept going back to these photos as I got to know more about the characters in his book.

Inserting my poems was another story. I never even considered leaving them out. They were instrumental in my book’s organization. I had journal entries and other writings to draw from and a poetry manuscript, and I arranged my book’s chapters according the order of the poems in my poetry manuscript. However, I still worried about what others would think. So many agents state that they don’t look at poetry. A memoir workshop instructor didn't like the idea. However, one of the people who had read my poems several years ago now says he can relate to them better because of their context in the story. The bottom line is: I was fortunate to find a publisher who not only liked the poems I had in the book, but asked for more.

Because I collect quotes – I usually note them down when I read, and I continually post them on my Facebook author page – I decided to insert three quotes in my book– two from books and one from a song. And that turned out to be the biggest problem in finally getting my book to print. Since I felt they were integral to my story I was adamant, but it took months to get the necessary permissions (see my Red Room blog posts dated September 15, September 29, and November  13, 2010 - http://www.redroom.com/member-blog/madeline40/). The main lesson is: if you want to include other authors’ words in your book, start getting permission early.

All in all I felt it was well worth the extra time it took to include other works in my memoir. My writing is very personal and I feel the photos, poems, and quotes helped deepen the personal message of my words.

A new poem from Esalen

 Looking down from the road

I spent five days last week writing poems at Esalen, a beautiful site high on a cliff in Big Sur CA.

I go to this particular workshop almost every summer. Led by poets Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar, I always learn some lessons about writing poems, I hear excellent poems read by my fellow poets taking the workshop with me, and I never lack for something to write my poems about.

This year I wrote six poems using prompts given at the end of each day’s craft talks on: 1) a coming into consciousness poem, 2) a poem with sentiment and no sentimentality, and 3) a poem using various line break and syntax techniques. We also beg our leaders to give us a list of ten words and an assigned phrase with which to create a poem. Once in a while we’re asked to include our pick of a body part, season of the year, or time of day.

Writing to a list of words is like solving a puzzle. But sometimes the poems turn out just plain silly. This year I wrote a couple of silly poems and a diatribe focusing on the word “junk.” I couldn’t resist writing a rant about how junk food connects to our current childhood obesity epidemic.

Here’s one without any of that silliness. The assigned words were: effluent, cauterize, jowls, flange, egg, phobic, chew, skunk, floor, gels

And the phrase was: “What falls away”

(By the way, it’s always okay to use any form of the given words.)

                                         The bathhouse built into the cliff

Now for the poem:

Progression

I have my mother’s jowls.

Deep furrows from

my lips to the sides of my chin

create flanged sacks

wanting to reach

toward the floor.

I also have her deep lines

just above my eyebrows.

Every time I look up,

she haunts me

years after her death,

leaving me phobic

that the ravage

to my once egg-smooth visage

will go on.

Your face has character

they chide.

But I know it as the first signs

of what falls away,

of what becomes skunk-like effluent.

There is no way

to cauterize the progression.

Only what’s left is

to chew and swallow it down,

to gel with it and accept

what’s yet to come.

Ventura County Book Fair

Paul's Putting A Face On Suicide poster 

will go to the fair with me

I'll be signing books from ten to four tomorrow at the Ventura County Book Fair, and I'll read about ten minutes at 1:30 pm. The fair will be held in Camarillo California at the The Pleasant Valley Community Park Auditorium, 1605 Burnley Street. So I'd love to see my Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara county friends there. 


But just in case you can't make it, here are a couple of the poems I plan to read from my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. You might have read them here before, but for me they are timeless.


My Jazzman

My jazzman                                                              

beat it out

on the mighty eighty-eights,

played those riffs,

tapped his feet

bent his head

down to the keys,

felt those sounds

on his fingertips.

Yeah, he was a hot man

on those eighty-eights.

But all too soon

his bag grew dark.

He went down,

deep down.

My jazzman

played the blues,

lost that spark,

closed the lid.

And, yeah, you got it right,

quit the scene.

laid himself down

in that bone yard

for the big sleep.

Yeah, for the really big sleep.

Buddha
“The dead we can imagine to be anything at all.”  Ann Patchett, Bel Canto, HarperCollins Publishers, (2001)


He sits cross-legged in a tree
deep in concentration,

the way he would sit on the floor of his room,

learning against the bed doing homework,

composing music, talking on the phone.

His closed-mouth grin shows

he is pleased to be where he is.

No longer a skinny rail, his cheeks filled out,

his skin clear, his eyes bright.

His tree has everything – soft jazz sounds

flowing from all directions,

deep vees and pillows for sitting and reclining,

the scent of incense and flowers,

branches of books by Miller, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky,

the music of Davis, Gould, Bach, and Lennon,

and virtual communication to those he loves.

He needs no furniture, no bedding, no clothes, no food.

Those necessities are for worldly beings.

The passing clouds give him comfort,

and the stars light his way.

Heaven takes care of him

as he imagines himself

to be anything at all.