[Episode 3] ”Given” by Claire Wahmanholm

Meagan: Hi I’m Meagan and this is the poetry podcast. Would you please state your name and your preferred pronouns?

Wahmanholm: Dr. Claire Wahmanholm, she/her/hers.

Meagan: Awesome, would you please recite your poem for us?

Wahmanholm: I will yes this poem is called given  and it's from my new my brand new collection red mouth um and the poem starts with an epigraph from Euclid's elements book 1 and the epigraph is a point is that which has no part.

 

A given

is always

a Point 

of Departure,

a puncture,

origin of

 a wound,

some newness.

For example,

this given:

that points,

are partless

when really

they're couple-

numbered, binary,

the way,

no matter

how fast

it flies,

a bluebird’s

blue can

never outstrip

its bird,

or butter

drain from

its cup,

rattle shed

Its snake,

what would

it do

that bird-

Unblue, unselved,

blanched on

Winter’s Branch, 

absent against 

its white? 

without you, 

I'm only

the idea 

of flight.

 

Meagan: Wow, that was really gorgeous.

Wahmanholm: Thank you.

Meagan: what do you like best about this poem?

Wahmanholm: I think maybe my favorite thing and I guess, hmm podcast wise it's hard for people to see what this poem looks like, but it's written in, two word lines and then the poem is also written and couplets. So I think what I like about it is kind of the choppiness or artificiality of the line breaks compared to like how you might naturally break a line or how you might otherwise speak and kind of syntactically pause and it adds this kind of, or this overlays kind of an unnatural restriction over the more natural rhythm of speech and I think that unevenness is useful. especially if when you read a line of poetry pause just for a moment at the end of each line vs reading right through it and kind of sets the whole poem a little bit off balance, which I find useful considering how. Meet or kind of even the poem is structurally which I'll talk about in a little bit. You don't want to be too polished or too symmetrical or too neat. So I like this kind of uneven this that runs through it because of the short lines. I think I also like that the poem doesn't take a turn for the Romantic poet until the very end. Right like the I and the U when they come in in the second last stanza without you. I'm only the idea of flight. I think, I mean I find it surprising I mean I know I wrote it so part of that is a pretense, but you know it sets up this poem that might be about kind of math and then might be about the natural world and then ends up being about actually a couple at the very end, and I like putting that information at the very end rather than at than starting with it, which is another option, and the way that that is sort of set up like a mathematical proof in some ways it’s like giving all the statements that are true statements at beginning like given this given that math works this way even if the natural world works this way therefor we to work this way. And I like I like that about it. I think so those are some of my favorite things.

Meagan: Wow that’s super interesting. So did you employ and kind of sonic patterning?

Wahmanholm: I did, not in a Strict way that is not an actual pattern but it starts with the poem is broken into about I think four sentences and the first one has. What I mean, what I tried to do is to have a lot of kind of neat Sonic stuff. That wasn't quite exact rhymes so given An Origin or slant Rhymes, is always is a slant rhyme departure puncture newness partless are all sort of slant rhymes they’re all sort of clusters of sounds that are interesting but not exact rhymes as a way to kind of hook readers in the beginning part of a poem and then the Sonic stuff Falls away a little bit until you get to the very again end in the last couple sentences. What would it do that bird unblue unselved blanched on Winters branch absent against its white without you I'm only the idea of flight. So, do unblue you is a triple exact rhyme, white and flights is an exact rhyme and so it kind of starts with loose Sonic stuff and then steps away from it and then solidifies it into those exact Rhymes at the end and I wanted the final part of the.

Poem to end, I mean I like it when It ends with like a Sonic clenching or like an exact rhyme, so white and flights as kind of his final last thing that you hear and I wanted that to compliment the metaphor of the two people as like an ordered pair like a mathematical point which kind of runs throughout the poem so I wanted two exact rhymes toward the very end, being the last thing you here. 

Meagan: Did you put any restrictions on yourself while writing the poem?

Wahmanholm: Yeah. So this is hard and people can imagine what it looks like on the page so in the poem every line’s only two words long. The whole poem is made up of couplets to rhyme stanzas. Its four sentences and forty Total Lines. There are these compound words that run through it Bluebird, Buttercup, rattlesnake and I wanted because most of the metaphor of the poem is this mathematical like XY ordered pairs on a coordinate plane. I wanted as much of the poem to be kind of symmetrical or coupled or halve-able as possible. And so coming up with two word lines without ending on a weak line break was tricky and having each couplet feel intuitive rather than arbitrary was a little tricky, But Each couplet is between four and seven syllables total I think so, they're all about the same length. And so those were those kinds of restrictions that placed on it and I always like it when the form can kind of speak to content in kind of an interesting way and since the content of the poem is all about couples and Tunis and that sort of thing. I wanted as much of the poem to do that as possible. So that was a fun challenge to set myself which is all ultimately what like Poetic restriction should do you really feel suffocating it should feel kind of like doing a crossword puzzle it should be kind of fun, or like a maze, it should be a productive sort of challenge.

Meagan: For sure. Did you see any sort of line or stanza that was central to the poem?

Wahmanholm: I initially might have thought that like maybe that final that we talked about earlier that final turn to the I and the U at the very end as being Central, but actually I think it's the third sentence which I already read once the what would it do all the way through absent against this white? Because it's a question if the only question is in the poem and it's a question that isn't answered explicitly it sort of implies a rhetorical question. Like what would that what would it do that bird unblue unselved blanched on which of Branch absent against its white the idea is that without the other the blue part of it the part that kind of makes it what it is. It would be annihilated. There be no reason for it to exist in the world and then to move from that too without you. I'm only the idea of flight implies that like without the partner or the couple. That is the speaker would be similarly annihilated from the earth one way or another. And to me the Third sentence kind of raises the stakes of the poem in sort of a scary way, which I think is necessary to prevent the poem from being maybe to cute or too pretty right. Like you always want like a little moment of ugliness in your poems or threats right or tension somewhere in there. Then I think without that third rhetorical question there. There would be like a so what who cares so that's probably the part where if you took it out the poem wouldn’t be successful. I think 

Meagan: Did the poem go under a lot of revision or anything?

Wahmanholm: This one actually didn't go through much revision so this one went through two drafts. So the first one was I wrote in 2013 and a second one, which is how it looks now was 2014 and other poems in the book some of them went through like five or six revisions which is a lot so one or two is not so bad that’s a pretty fast kind of lucky things kind of fell into place with the original was not in couplets. I mean, I knew I wanted to do the two word lines so it was still in two word, but it wasn't broken up into couplets yet it was in regular stanzas. So formally I split it into the two lines to make the coupleness more evident, but it also had a longer epigraph.

So the epigraph it has now is all about points, a point is that which has no part. and then it had a set of the definitions, Euclid’s definition of a line, which is a line is breathless length and so the first third of the poem is pretty much the same and then I added on this conceit on to it where it’s like, okay the couple is a point they’re X and Y coordinates and then I was like well, but maybe each couple is a point and no matter where they are. You can always draw a line between them and it kind of became about like distance and relationships and that sort of thing, but I decided I wanted to pair back to one metaphor to focus the poem a little more so I was like 'nah lets just do the point and just skip the line part' so I took that part out and expanded on the  point metaphor so I added the bluebird, the Buttercup, and the rattlesnake head of the imagery of the natural world because otherwise, I was worried the poem would be to abstract or to rhetorical, to cerebral, and when in doubt always add more natural imagery like more concrete imagery you can't go wrong. It just makes everything a little more tangible, especially when the premise of the poem is math, which is pretty intangible.

So yeah, I simultaneously paired it back and also expanded on the part that I had paired it back to. I think of all the revision that this one went through

Meagan: That’s really cool. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Wahmanholm: No, buy the book. buy the book, everyone! I don’t know if its anyone jam but it's fun. there's a math poem in it. There's a couple there might be another math poem in here too anyways if you like math you might like this book. 

Meagan: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Wahmanholm: Cool, thank you very much for having me.