Guest Post by Caroline Goodwin: List and Litany

I love lists of all kinds. Grocery lists, to-do lists, “catalog
verse,” Wikipedia tables (there is a page that contains a list of
microorganisms tested in outer space). My interest in the form was sparked when
I was an MFA candidate at University of British Columbia in 1992 and I
discovered a book by Robert Kroetsch called Seed
Catalogue. One long autobiographical poem, it begins with a listing from
the catalogue for “Copenhagen Market Cabbage” complete with the catalogue
number. I had never seen anything like it before, and it both irritated and
fascinated me. This was poetry? Why? I have since read that an implicit lesson
in this kind of writing is that “from the apparently innocent, ‘documentary,’
past we may inherit important meaning and ways of seeing” (Russel Brown, “Seeds
and Stones: Unhiding in Kroetsch’s Poetry,” Open
Letter, 1984). It was my introduction to the concept of poem-as-palimpsest,
an ongoing conversation with ourselves, other poets and collectors, science and
history.

Or maybe my fascination began with my initial interest in poetry
itself. It was 1989, I employed as a forklift driver in the warehouse at Alaska
Pulp Corporation in Sitka, and a friend called me from Fairbanks with an urgent
request. “You have to hear this,” she said. She had just attended a Joy Harjo
reading, and she proceeded to read “I Give You Back” to me over the phone. I
was twenty-five years old. I was stunned. You could say these things out loud?
You could list your fears and speak directly to them? The world could receive
your obsessions and anger, and this was poetry? I wanted more. I enrolled in a
creative writing class at University of Alaska Southeast, with Ken
Waldman.  Three short years later I was
living in Vancouver, BC and in a graduate-level poetry workshop with people who
are still my dear and fast friends.

There is a gorgeous 1982 documentary film called Poetry In
Motion, directed by Ron Mann. It features several different poets of different
schools; some of my favorite clips are Amiri Baraka reading “Wailers” and
Toronto experimental poet Christopher Dewdney reading from A Natural History of Southwestern Ontario, Book 2, “Grid Erectile.” In
this clip, Dewdney repeats the word “because” at the beginning of every line.
The effect is hypnotic. The repetition and the detail become a sort of mantra:

            Because it is a
predator.

            Because of its
inky fur. Tunnels twisting around roots.

            Because it is a
southern species migrating northwards.

                        Evidence
for an inter-glacial warming trend.

            Because of their
glowing eyes in the driveway at night.

                        Their
rasping marsupial cries.

            Because of the
caves.

            Because of its
unearthly face.

            Because it is
all of night.

            Because it is a
falcon.

            Because it is
sub-tropical.

            Because it is a
stilted & accurate blue mist.

The poem goes on like this, exactly like this, and my favorite
moment happens much later (and this moment is “favorite” to me because it comes
back to me again and again): — “Because I grew up beside them and they taught
me everything I know.”

Here, the natural world becomes both universe and university. For
me, growing up on Dimond Drive, walking to Tudor Elementary School and playing
in Wickersham Park, skating along Campbell Creek in the winter and watching the
Campbell Creek Classic from my back porch in the summer, the “they” in this
line are the willows, the moving water, the nasturtiums in my neighbor’s yard,
the collie named “Lady” running up and down the chain-link fence next door, the
gooseberry and red currant patch beside the house, every curve of the creek,
the black spruce, a winter sun coming up into St. Mary’s Church in the morning,
Mount Susitna, Russian Jack Springs, and so much more. They are William Carlos
Williams’ “reddish, purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes.” They
are Keats’ autumn sun that would “touch the stubble plain with rosy hue”. All
quite romantic, I know, but what do we have, as writers, but the lists and the
catalogs of those images that obsess and fascinate us, and the early
experiences that taught us everything we know?

The repeated word or words can act like an anchor for the
imagination. Repetition, coming back, anaphora, whatever you’d like to call it
— the obsessive quality of this kind of writing is gorgeous to me. And listing
is not just for poets — I am sure many a fiction writer has pushed through a
stuck place with a list. Here is a link to some of my own list poems:
carolinegoodw.com

Enjoy!

If you are interested in learning more about this technique or working with Caroline Goodwin, she is teaching a class entitled “List and Litany” in Anchorage on December 12, in Juneau on December 17, and in Sitka on December 19. For more information or to register, please go the 49 Writers website.