As the publisher of
jubilat, I rarely edit the poems we accept. Ninety per cent of the time we
take what we get, as is. In the case of the other 10%, we might ask to change a
word or two, or possibly end the poem a line earlier; but no dramatic
alterations. While I believe the best poems create their own terms — terms
that push our thinking in new and exciting ways — I sometimes envy editors of
fiction and nonfiction, who are expected, even encouraged, to edit the pieces
that end up in the pages of their magazine.
However, once in a great while I have the opportunity to
work with the author on a poem we have accepted. This was the case for Sarah
Gridley's "Acousmatic," which we published in the last issue. We had published
Sarah previously — her poem "Cuckoo's Report" was featured in
jubilat 3. I greatly admired that poem as well as her first collection, Weather Eye Open, which was published in
the University of California
Press New Poetry Series in 2005. After Sarah
read for the Poetry Society of America's third New American Poets Festival in
2007 (in addition to publishing jubilat,
I also work as Programs Director for the PSA), I asked her to send along some
new work to the magazine.
Included in Sarah's batch of submissions was
"Acousmatic." Before we had gotten a chance to respond, she sent
along a much revised second version. It was this that sparked my interest — it
seemed like it was moving in the right direction formally and rhetorically. And
I also found it as powerful as it was mysterious, like acousmatic sound itself:
the notion of hearing something without knowing its cause. Sarah sent in a
third version while we were looking at the second, and I didn't like it as
much. After discussions with my editors, I wrote her back asking her to consider
returning to the earlier version. She sent along another draft in response and told
me the poem had been difficult for her to edit because it dealt with the
experience of witnessing friends bury their child. The questions that
preoccupied her in the poem were "how parents can survive such losses, how
friends can help only so far, how no 'higher power' feels accountable or
responsive to me, how beauty, turned a fraction on its axis, feels
vicious."
This note made me realize anew how poems help us
contend with the most confusing experiences, and how
privileged I was to be able to publish such essentially human work. I was also grateful
to Sarah for being so collaborative in the revision process.
"Acousmatic" went through one more revision, and the result still
makes me marvel at how a poem can be so philosophically, psychically, and
imaginatively engaging.
— Rob Casper
ACOUSMATIC
not a concept, much less a faith—
not quiet
but coming forward from the dust, a white mare
partially bone, primarily fast in the higher field
and was the sound of snow dissolving, glass being blown
where by love I mean a failing,
most feeling the gives of undone
fountain and basin, the water
penned in, the tension to ring where the water
turns down, where the beads are cracking
our sun’s white code
in the courtyard foreign beyond the window
plurally into something else
when I live on the look of muteness, where I lived on the
look
of happiness
rose that was quanta—
I ask after cost—after gouge of grass
and sky, after cause
that hides its cause
in unsustainable shapes of pain
in tempos habituating grass
redbud trees in arriving and splitting
accost, accost, come closer to my ribs
not only the understanding
has a language
be it wind in rings of meanest direction
or deepest remove when bluest in surface
by memory I mean
a skin: a cover for the underworlds
that we might try to breathe
or hear in wind a single
soothing thing
or hear of wind a kindred displacement
in our skins to the added
subtractions we live in, sun over sand, the coppered hem-
wetness, sun in tons of bells, in apples cut open
for eating
yes now I am listening to your fallible sounds
pity for the you
that is stranded, pity for the you
who dazed or faceless
where now I am hearing a mechanical click
to see I had no beautiful shelter
the motioning colors of the trees, the edgewise
pit before beginning
to take up
listening as something harder, to take up
attach me, walking, attach me
— Sarah Gridley