I love finding the past lives of poems. What I mean by that is when you finally reach a place with a poem where it could be published, and that place might not necessarily be the end, though it looks like the end to you.
Your poem, published in a journal, might not reflect the version that finally makes it into your collection. The ending was not the ending and you just didn't know yet. Finding these artifacts is always interesting to me, as a reader. To see where the poem was at some point in time when the poet left it, and then to see when the poet came back and picked it up again and even more interesting, to suss out why.
I'm fairly certain I've read multiple versions of Andrew Hudgins' "Piss Christ" over the years. I know for a fact that the published version of Danez Smith's "not an elegy for Mike Brown" is different from when they performed it.
Yesterday, I was reading Tomás Q. Morín's collection, Machete, and discovered another one. His poem, "Extraordinary Rendition" was published over ten years ago on The Awl, a now defunct magazine that was very cool before they moved their site to Medium, which was also a very cool website for writing until Silicon Valley ruined it.
As an aside: I remember wanting to work at Medium, the technical abilities of their WYSIWYG editor was on the leading edge of what was possible back in the day, with a plethora of breakthrough ideas not seen before on the Internet. It was truly impressive and I wanted, at one point, to be a part of it. Long story short—bullet dodged.
I'm going to post The Awl's version to start. I don't know how long the original poem will be on Medium, these things have a habit of going away, so instead of merely linking, I'll be creating my own copy of what is there.
Extraordinary Rendition
for Philip Levine
When the CIA said, An extraordinary rendition
has been performed, I knew Lester Young
blowing his saxophone in that way he did
when Billie Holiday was a few feet away
smoking, singing “I Can’t Get Started,”
was not what they had in mind. No, the agent
at the podium talking to reporters
who spends most of his days staring
at computer screens riddled with numbers
and names and maps of places he’s never been
probably thought of a man in a hood
far from home swimming
in a room flooded with questions.
If the agent had children
to pick up from school after work
maybe he thought, in spite of his training,
of the hooded man’s daughter waking
to find her father gone, her mother
in pieces. What might never cross his mind
is how sometimes that same girl
or any one of a hundred others
might be imagining him
an ocean away, standing in a pressroom
in a charcoal suit, one size too big,
stammering to explain the state
of their nameless fathers one day, the wail
a drone makes the next. In her mind
and language “extraordinary rendition”
still means her mother humming
“Somebody Loves Me” with more heart
than anyone she’s ever heard
before or since. If you think the agent
and daughter will meet at the end of this poem
for the first time, then you’re wrong
because they met many years ago
when he closed his eyes
and the trumpet she presses against
her lips when she dreams entered his sleep
like a bird made of metal. Hungry
and not sure of what it saw, it plunged
toward the cut open chest
of our agent (it is always this way
in his dreams) as if diving into a lake
and then soared to a great height
from where it dropped his unbreakable heart
that whistled as it zipped past our windows
just before it hit the sidewalk.
Because this scene will repeat itself
for years, a therapist will one day say guilt,
forgiveness, and pain to our agent
to unsuccessfully explain how death,
when it comes from the sky, makes a music
so hypnotic you will never forget it,
a truth that has always been obvious
to the daughters of Honduras
and Ukraine, Palestine and St. Louis.
Now, compare this version to the one in the printed collection:
Extraordinary Rendition
for Philip Levine
When the CIA said, An extraordinary rendition
has been performed, I knew Lester Young
blowing his saxophone in that way he did
when Billie Holiday was a few feet away
smoking, singing “I Can’t Get Started,”
was not what they had in mind. No, the agent
at the podium talking to reporters
who spends most of his days staring
at computer screens riddled with numbers
and names and maps of places he’s never been
probably thought of a man in a hood
far from home swimming
in a room flooded with questions.
If the agent had children
to pick up from school after work
maybe he thought, in spite of his training,
of the hooded man’s daughter waking
to find her father gone, her mother
in pieces. What might never cross his mind
is how sometimes that same girl
or any one of a hundred others
might be imagining him
an ocean away, standing in a pressroom
in a charcoal suit, one size too big,
stammering to explain the state
of their nameless fathers one day, the wail
a drone makes the next. In her mind
and language “extraordinary rendition”
still means her mother humming
“Somebody Loves Me” with more heart
than anyone she’s ever heard
before or since. If you think the agent
and daughter will meet at the end of this poem
for the first time, then you’re wrong
because they met many years ago
when he closed his eyes
and the trumpet she presses against
her lips when she dreams entered his sleep
like a bird made of metal. Hungry
and not sure of what it saw, it plunged
toward the cut open chest
of our agent (it is always this way
in his dreams) as if diving into a lake
and then soared to a great height
from where it dropped his unbreakable heart
that whistled as it zipped past our windows
just before it hit the sidewalk.
Because this scene will repeat itself
for years, a therapist will one day say guilt,
forgiveness, and pain to our agent
to unsuccessfully explain how death,
when it comes from the sky, makes a music
so hypnotic you will never forget it,
a truth that has always been obvious
to the daughters and sons of Palestine.
You might notice two notable changes. The ending, obviously. And the removal of a full line break earlier in the poem, removing any ambiguity about the monostrophe.
I find that when I spot a poem with a previous life, it's almost always about a change to the ending. The poet gets to an ending, and it might even work, but it's not the ending. Even after a journal takes a poem and puts it out into the world, change can still happen. No decision is irreversible.
In the case of Danez Smith's "not an elegy for Mike Brown", one could argue that the original ending was perfect for a slam poetry performance. And in my humble opinion, it's fine. It's a little too easy, which I think Smith knew and understood. How they came to understand that though, is probably the whole ballgame. The real ending to a poem is not always clear to the poet and sometimes takes years to find. It's often unique to the poem themselves.
But fuck me, did Smith find it.
look at what the lord has made.
above Missouri, sweet smoke.
I can't read that ending without crying. And maybe that's unique to me, every reader being different. Every reader bringing in their own experience and emotion, and baby—no matter how much I try to separate myself from the Ozarks, it won't leave me.
If you read poetry, I'm curious if you've ever noticed the past lives of poems much. Or if I'm just a weirdo. Probably the latter, but I thought I'd ask.
Last weekend, I found a cut of my manuscript "Father, God" that I'm semi-happy with. I've started sending it out to some manuscript contests for a first book, but I'm under no delusion that a press will take it. A poet can go years getting a manuscript into fighting shape.
But I think the bones are there. I'm excited to finally see some version of the thing I'm going to shove out into the world.
Ok. Be good. 🫶
