Author Commentary for “The Mask” and “My Only Deftness”

 

These two poems are, curiously, the only ones I’ve written “for” someone—“The Mask” is for Tony Gage, and “My Only Deftness” is for Justin Gerke.

Both poems have undergone useful revisions, as well—“The Mask” once began with the speaker looking out the window of a taxiing plane and seeing a Fire Training Area with “a burned-out shell of a plane,/ nose cone long gone, dark copper from being set on fire/ again and again so firemen can test their skills.” This fire-training plane was then called “dignified,” in an overly explanatory way. Readers of the poem suggested getting to the mask sooner, and they were right.

The opening to “My Only Deftness” hasn’t changed much, but the title has—it was once “Whiskey and Birthday Cake,” a nod to a middle section that has since been removed. That section was a bit muddled, talking about how “all meat comes to us this way;/ we just don’t see it,” and explaining that the addressee of the poem was sick the first time he field-dressed a turkey, so that the readers wouldn’t see him as a cruel person strangling a turkey. As part of the conversation that triggered this poem, the addressee noted that standing on the turkey’s neck sounds cruel but that doing so actually puts it out of its pain quickly; however, such explanation bogs down the poem. Suffice it to say that the poem is not trying to enter any debate about hunting and animal cruelty.

Also, after a “hinge”/transition that talked about farming, the poem used to say: “after one birthday, you and your father, both then single,/ had nothing but whiskey and birthday cake for a few days./ I imagine the sweet burn of the whiskey, the rough sugary icing.” Not only are these lines mediocre, but the added theme of what single men sometimes do when left to their own devices was unnecessary—thank goodness for skilled readers.