[R. S. Gwynn]

Suzanne, I suspect you confused Adrienne Rich with Denise Levertov. Good to see you here!

[Suzanne Doyle]

Oh man, Sam, thank you for pointing out that huge error! confusing Levertov with Rich. Major egg on my face! I'll probably be hearing from Levertov's lawyers shortly . . . EVERYBODY PLEASE NOTE: I COMPLETELY MISSPOKE ABOUT LEVERTOV IN MY EARLIER POST.

[Suzanne Doyle]

Mary, many thanks for the warm welcome. I've enjoyed your posts and do hope to stick around to enjoy your poems too. That is, if I'm not booted for posting false information and starting rumors.

The quotation you cited is from an interview I did with _Poets & Writers_ magazine sometime in the 80's. And, yes, I did tape drafts of poems to my car dashboard and worked on them during my commute. I still had things to say back then. Sometimes I think I don't write because poetry is 1) hard work and 2) I have to feel passionate about my subject to even get started. Honestly, there aren't that many things I feel so strongly about any more. Maybe because the pleasure dome has migrated from between my legs to between my ribs? Perhaps I should try writing a few recipes in cinquains?

[Mary Meriam]

Suzanne, yeah, Rich sounds more like what you described. It takes a while to get comfortable semi-publishing posts at the Sphere. Once you get to know people here, you feel less galled by your faux pas. And there's always the "edit" function.

I'd love to read your recipes in cinquains. How soon can you write and post them? I need some ideas for dinner

[Suzanne Doyle]

Originally posted by Tim Murphy:
would you post "Demon Rum," please? [/b]

Tim, I haven't noticed anyone else in this discussion posting their own poems, but I can deny you nothing.

This is the second sonnet in a sequence of four:

Demon Rum

The beachfront bar's an altar built to rum:
Mt. Gay, Bacardi, Pusser's, Appleton.
An acolyte attends on the steel drum
while I drain frosted tumblers one by one.
Novitiate to the beauty of cane punch,
I'm swaying in the demon's sweaty hold
with nothing but an old, reliable hunch
that one more round and I will be out cold.
Who cares? Curled up in rum's warm sugar shack
I think, "If this is love; it's not half bad."
The old thirst snakes my veins: reptilian, black,
sucking the life from every dream I've had,
stranding me here where you can never follow,
and as the cries clot in my throat--I swallow, swallow.

[Suzanne Doyle]

Mary, thanks for the reassuring words about my Rich faux pas. And, I heartily agree that some of the best lines can come to me when jogging, doing the laundry, or gardening. Edgar always said his came when he was washing dishes. The uninterrupted time is really gravy.

I can't believe you called me on the recipe cinquains! :O)

[Tim Murphy]

What a poem! Suzanne and our deckhand Stevie decided to run the Pusser's Triangle, which required that they drink a Painkiller (about six parts rum, one part fruit) in three of the four Pusser's beachfront bars in the British Virgin Islands. For the third leg, they took the dinghy across Gorda Sound, though the EfH had warned them it would be a choppy ride back into the stiff trade wind. Hours later they returned on the water taxi, fairly stiff, nearly drowned, dinghy in tow! Here's to the sunny slopes of Gorda Peak. Suzanne and Stevie had a huge amount of fun winning their Pusser's Triangles (a pink pendant much like a yacht club burgee), and Suzanne turned all that fun into this sonnet.

[Leslie Monsour]

Re. "Suzanne turned all that fun into this sonnet." It sure is grand, what distilling can do. Suzanne, "Demon Rum" was in your 2003 Scienter Press chapbook, CALYPSO, also the title of the sonnet sequence in which "Demon Rum" is #2. In the chapbook, the sequence has three sonnets. You say there are four. Did you add one later? I'm curious about when you wrote "Calypso." Was it very soon after the amazing Caribbean odyssey, or did the distilling take a while?

If I may...(yes)... I'll post #3, which is too breathtaking to miss:

DEADMAN BAY, PETER ISLAND

Deep water running blue, first love of mine,
I kiss the air and sink in the divine:
Gin-clear Caribbean--gemstone crush of
Blood, bone, salt, sand, all that's above
Held in perfect suspension. Not unlike love,
It buoys the heart, until you try to move.
Stroke down to where the lustrous blue tang school
Through coral canyonlands; the weight turns cruel.
Forgive, my distant darling, my weakness--this
All too human lapse, sheer heartless bliss,
The frightening ease with which you slip from mind
As I shrug off the murky ties that bind
To be caressed--faithless and flawed--
By the opalescent mouth of God.

[Catherine Tufariello]

Suzanne, I love what you say about poetry and time: "To step outside of time, to be utterly oblivious to its passage, only happens when you are doing the thing you were born to do." I feel exactly the same way about writing poems. The total absorption it requires gives the illusion of an escape from time. And also from self (though poetry is at the same time an expression of the deepest, truest self—for better and worse). To be immersed in writing a poem is to know the bliss of self-forgetfulness. I share your bafflement about why it can be so hard to sit down and make space for that immersion to happen.

A while ago I couldn’t find the Scienter Press website and was afraid that David Leightty had closed up shop. But now it’s back, and it seems that there are still copies of Calypso available. It’s a book that no Suzanne fan should be without.

[Suzanne Doyle]

Tim, thank you for adding a light note to the dark conclusion of "Demon Rum." During our Caribbean idyll I think it's fair to say that our day and night poetry discussions were fueled in no small part by alcohol.

Leslie, nice pun on "distilling"! It took me about five years to get those three sonnets written. Then another couple of years to write the fourth, which has yet to be published. I hope I live long enough to finish the fifth, which is currently on the drawing board. Sometimes I think I avoid finishing it just so there's SOMETHING on the drawing board. And, thank you for posting the irreverent "Dead Man Bay." It is my personal favorite in the sequence and the chapbook.


Catherine, I love what you have to say about writing too: "( . . . poetry is at the same time an expression of the deepest, truest self—for better and worse)." Ain't that the truth? You have to be so brave to write the good stuff, as every woman in this forum clearly is!