Looking for Your Blue Spot
by Denise Low
We always heard Asian babies have blue spots,
blue splotches of pigment on their bottoms
so at your first bath we turned you over.
There glowed a blue quarter
at the base of your spine like a scar
where someone yanked off your tail
and higher up your back
floated indigo Madagascar. . ..
(adapted from Dragon Kite, BkMk Press)
I showed Gary Snyder an early draft of this poem, and I remember learning how the word “yanked” was out of place in this sweet portrait of my toddler son. I was proud of the “Madagascar” image, the chewy word “splotches,” and the quarter. I thought I had created a good poem. Gary cocked his head sideways and gently said…
First, some background. In the late 1970s in Lawrence, Kansas, my hometown, Gary Snyder was an avatar, in the original sense of that word. He came to the University of Kansas art museum several times to participate in talks related to the museum’s fine Japanese print collection. He had just won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry a few years before. We writers and Asian art aficionados of Lawrence also understood he was one of the first advocates for Zen Buddhism in the United States. As a poet, a Zen practitioner, and a Beat writer, he was a living legend.
We were in awe of the great man, in a very un-Zenlike manner. Here is a measure of his impact, no exaggeration: So many started having visitation dreams about Snyder that later they were collected into a journal publication.
During one of Gary’s visits, the university English department engaged him to work with graduate students, my status at the time. Robin Tawney, another grad student, and I interviewed him one afternoon. We lingered so long that he finally pulled out a flask and took a long pull of—whiskey? We learned how eager students overstaying their welcome can drive even a Zen master to a drink.
The next day, I had an individual conference with Gary. Numb with anxiety, I unfolded the “Blue Spot” poem and spread it on the desk.
And after reading the poem, Gary Snyder gently said. . .
“‘Yanked off his tail’ sounds so violent.” He went on to explain an essential principle about poetry and all writing: Each word must help create a consistent whole. Tone, in the literary sense, is like the musical key of a song, with minor or major shadings. Wrong notes jar the listener. Harmony pleases.
When Gary pointed out this one word, “yanked,” I suddenly understood his point, in a satori moment. It clearly did not fit the rest of the poem. I changed the word to “snipped,” and the poem was corrected. I learned how to curate words more carefully, and in poetry, every single word counts.
Gary gave me another tip: Use Anglo-Saxon words when possible. What fun English-speaking poets have had since Geoffrey Chaucer began writing in the vernacular English rather than the literary language of Latin. English speakers have a zillion high culture and low culture jargons, dialects, popular culture references, and slangs. So, selecting words, and words consistent with each other, can be a challenge. Their histories matter.
London peasants’ patios provides 83% of the most common thousand words in English, and “yank” is one of them. It is one-syllable, direct, and vivid. It can be said quickly, just like the abrupt action it represents. Other Anglo-Saxon words include similarly colorful and efficient terms like ax, cup, door, gold, bang, marsh, rain, rat, rock, yolk, and snip. “Snip” is Old English, and also it imitates the sound it represents, so it is a double bonus point word for my poem. Also, the music of scissors is less alarming than the whack of an ax. “Snip” fits my tender poem much better than, say, “excise,” a Latin-derived word, or another, “truncate.”
Words ending with “sion” or “tion” come from the Roman invasion of Britain, an imperialist intrusion in many ways. Latinate words include words like “cognition,” “education,” circumlocution,” “deviation,” and “obfuscation.” Latinate words are tongue-twisters and slow down a poem’s momentum. In some cases, this may be the poet’s intent, but the Latin-based vocabulary reads like a manual, not a song.
Gary’s nudge to consider each word carefully led me to look at more word histories, especially from Indigenous American heritages. His college thesis was about Indigenous peoples (The Old Ways), he worked with Indigenous loggers in California, and he had profound respect for the first peoples of the American continents. In the northeastern United States, early European sailors met, mostly, Algonquin speakers, so moccasin, toboggan, moose, terrapin, and other borrow words are now standard English.
To honor my Indigenous relatives and histories, I sometimes use Lenape and Cherokee terms. I was lucky to study Cherokee with Andy Girty, a native speaker, and Maura Garcia. A word or phrase from another language can be important to a poem.
I learned so much after Gary spoke gently about my error. Without lecturing, the sage also helped me understand that a piece of writing should be one unbroken whole. A conscientious writers sands smooth the piece of writing as though they were making a wooden ax handle. Graphic language, obscenities, mild cuss words, exclamations, or euphemisms—these all signal whether the poet locates a poem in the parlor, the tavern, or the toilet. Any irregularity will stick out.
During my meeting with Gary that afternoon so long ago, I hardly spoke, but I hung on his every word. He did not resort to his flask during that afternoon one-on-one, so perhaps our session was not overly tedious. “Mindful” was not a term in those days, but I heard what he said. I thought about it for days—for decades. The invisible connotations of words have importance along with the denotations—and the wise poet listens to the silences among the notes.
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-2009, has published books of memoir and essays, including The Turtle’s Beating Heart (memoir, paperback edition forthcoming, University of Nebraska Press) and Jigsaw Puzzling: Essays (Meadowlark Press). She is a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets and taught at Haskell Indian Nations University. She resides in northern California in Southern Pomo territory, where the Dry Creek Pomo people have a vibrant community.