[Rick Mullin]

I was so busy not seeing the epigraph that missed the new title.

Why!? Infant is the point of the poem. Perfect title.

[Alexandra Baez]

Julie, I'd like to add my name to the list of those who are transfixed by this poem. I like the new title and, overall, the removal of the epigraph: I, too, had wondered how someone who cannot speak manages to utter a series of “bye-bye”s. For the record, I’ve tilted toward the views of those who believe that it’s not inappropriate for the interpretive voice of the n to speak through the child in this poem in the way that you have. (I wasn’t even thrown off by “assault” and such.) I see the poet’s role in this type of situation as a sort of “transformer,” converting the experience of the baby into something that readers can assimilate and relate to through their own understanding. Your own “translation” didn’t interfere, I don’t think, with my imaginative sympathetic experiencing of the scene at hand--to the contrary, I felt the genuine germ of feeling in it, so much so that I started forming psychic connections back to my own preverbal days and all the maladjustment to the world that comes with them. The poem offers a portal through which I can walk, myself, into that deeper, non-lingual, primal-memory-charged imaginings of that experience; the written words act simply to kick off a larger process for which it nonetheless can claim ultimate responsibility. For realistically, this poem is not just about the baby’s experience, but about adults’ relationship to that experience.

That being said, I’m also fascinated by the idea of trying to articulate things fully in the way that Cameron described. (I think you’ve edged toward that but not gone nearly as far as he would.) But in the end, I think that the result would probably disproportionately satisfy the reader’s emotions over their intellects, whereas the deepest satisfaction for an adult ultimately comes, I believe, from more equal attention to both.

The rhyme scheme of this is really nice and feels so slyly magical that only now am I actually noticing it for itself. Is this an established form? Just curious.

I love the musicality of “Calliope and carousel” (although I hadn’t known the applicable definition of the former), but I do think there is something evocative and incantory about your new list of carnival items: I love all those “b”s and monosyllables, and they really do evoke the mental simplicity, bedazzlement with objects, and exploratory babble of a child (although I don’t know how boiling oil figures into a carnival).

Each time I read S3, I’ve grown slightly impatient with the list of body parts that the contact burns after “skin,” but then I seem to find a comfortable new mental position in the thought that babies do rattle on dramatically like that. As to the “incisors” reference, I love it--it totally brought back childhood memories of similar thoughts!

I personally think the last line works much better spiked with some feature like “I sob” than it would as a simple list of four “bye-bye”s. The latter, I think, would tip over the edge of monotonous and look simply like a lazy way to fill in all the requisite metrical feet. I also think that without something like “I sob,” readers could miss the feeling and motive behind the exclamations.

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Julie,

I'm rereading the rewrite, and I really think you've taken a lot of the magic out of things. I had at first thought that the smells and noises were just the noises of life. Now, the baby is really being carried through a carnival, whereas words (yes the crux in this poem) like carousel and calliope seemed metaphors for all the things in life. Toys, for example.

It may be me who was or is misreading here. But I'd back up and make just a few changes to the original.

Rick

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

The first stanza is much improved with the switch from assault to waves. It de-Julifies the diction and gives it to the kid.

“Assault” didn’t bother me, but I do see the point. The sentence could be further simplified by replacing the three news with thes. The newness is apparent enough to need no emphasis.

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

Too much junk [all with their words....] has replaced the Calliope, which is just a perfect image that encompasses so much visual and aural stimuli.

The new list is more cluttered, but arguably more childlike in its particularity than the elegant umbrella of “calliope and carousel.”

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

And you lose the really crucial "might be, as near as I can tell"

I actually thought this line was redundant, too reflectively self-doubting for our infant and, with the original punctuation, misleading.

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

Oh, and I think it's much improved without the epigraph.

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

I was so busy not seeing the epigraph that missed the new title. Why!? Infant is the point of the poem. Perfect title.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Rick. I agree about the original title, but only Latin scholars will get the point without the epigraph. (I recommended shortening it.) Otherwise, “infant” is just an ordinary word—obvious at best, inaccurate at worst.

[Rick Mullin]

To be clear, I like the original title and have been against the epigraph from the start.

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks for continuing to care about this, Rick, Jim, Alexa, and Carl. Draft Three is posted above.

My second posted draft of any workshopped poem is always a big step in the wrong direction, probably because my left brain is determined to wrest control of the poem away from my messy right brain and "fix" it. Often the later drafts are crap, too. I now just accept this crapification as part of my process. But it can be painful for others to have to watch, I know.

Lexa, it doesn't matter anymore because I've cut it, but "Boiling oil" for deep-frying a wide range of unlikely foodstuffs, often impaled on a stick, is one of the characteristic smells of American "fair food." The rhyme scheme is the same as the Persian astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, or at least Fitzgerald's translation of it. Robert Frost used it for "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Carl, I tried your suggestion of changing the three "new"s in S2LL3-4 to "the", and some other tinkering, but I think I'm happiest with the three "new"s.

[Alexandra Baez]

Julie, oh, okay--of course I'm familiar with fairgrounds fried food, but "boiling oil" carries such a strong association of medieval torture (or war, as you noted).

And ah, yes, I'd forgotten that Glenn right near the beginning identified the rhyme scheme as the rubaiyat.

[Joe Crocker]

Not knowing that a calliope could be a steam organ, I didn't twig that this was describing a tot's first take at a funfair. I wonder, for the slower amongst us, if you could advertise that a little more. eg you might replace "muggy" in L1 one with "fairgound"?

My first reading of "Da-Da" took me to the Dadaist avant-garde art movement whose name was conjectured to come from a child's first attempt to speak and who celebrated the disjuncture between words and meaning. Which seems to fit in rather neatly with the theme.

I recognise that infant confusion and horror. V well painted

[Alexandra Baez]

Like Joe, I wasn't familiar with the intended definition of "calliope," and I found it hard to orient myself to the setting of the poem in this version. At first I considered this a definite problem but then began to wonder if the degree of mystery might be a helpful element, mimicking as it does the child's own experience and also hinting at the broader, nonspecific nature of it. I do like the evocation of "muggy," but can see the case for "fairground" in its place.

I've also mentally toyed with the idea of offering a hint in the title itself, but that degree of specificity does seem at odds with the spirit of the poem.

Great point, Joe, about Dada!

[Rick Mullin]

I think this is really beautiful now, Julie. Removing the epigraph accomplishes more than I thought it would. A dictionary definition is the exact opposite of naive. It now flows from the simple title into the exact tone you want. The reader doesn't even have to know that infant means anything other than baby.

When I get to "I have no words to wrap this in", I believe it, despite the words that were necessary to get it to that point. It hits at the right moment. Something about the incisors is remarkable... a mix of funny and horrifying, also coming from someone who is not only speechless, but also toothless.

Bravo!