What's Wrong with this Poem?

The next poem in the ascending mania of Sine Wave:

(There's something wrong with it that I discover below.)


Christ’s Lighthouse

There is a pillar of light
stuck in the rocks like Excalibur
above a harbor of heavy water—
heavy with suffering—a hushed place
where waves swallow their spray
to dampen the mists
that so easily obstruct your view.

I used to lose sight of it, thinking
the ocean’s furious slam dance the thing,
me roped to the mast
through the cold salt walls of death;
or ships would block it,
horns and radios distract me
until only a slip of light in the marbled sky
recalled the jeweled foghorn,
a dog whistle for the deaf.

Do I dare now? Do I dare say
I see it always, through sand storms
and cell bars and self-revulsion
as if the great stone of the world
were rolled away? What terrible
temptations do I then tempt?
What unexpected holy thing might then
morph into evil, baiting my inner eye
with self-congratulation, me a blind man
beating his dog with a white stick?

(published in Mindfire)

Ir wasn't until I got a fresh, clean look at this poem that I noticed what had always been wrong with it. All I have to do to make it worthy is eliminate the entire first stanza and let the title work harder. Observe:


Christ's Lighthouse

I used to lose sight of it, thinking
the ocean’s furious slam dance the thing,
me roped to the mast
through the cold salt walls of death;
or ships would block it,
horns and radios distract me
until only a slip of light in the marbled sky
recalled the jeweled foghorn
like a dog whistle for the deaf.

Do I dare now? Do I dare say
I see it always, through sand storms
and cell bars and self-revulsion
as if the great stone of the world
were rolled away? What terrible
temptations do I then tempt?
What unexpected holy thing might then
morph into evil, baiting my inner eye
with self-congratulation, me a blind man
beating his dog with a white stick?

Tell me it isn't a better poem now.

It's always the same process for me: over a number of years I finally discover the poem within the poem. We really must jettison every irrelevant word in a poetic narrative and choose the right details to convey the spirit of the poem. There is only one method I know to produce such quality: revisions separated by long periods of time, often years. I think my first draft of this poem was in early 2002. Four years it took me to see I didn't need the first stanza. Why? Because my mind wasn't elastic enough to think of jettisoning a whole stanza. One can be much more dispassionate about the editing process in proportion to how old the poem is. If the poem has arrived, all your new revisions will only weaken it. If it hasn't arrived, your revisions (DELETIONS MAINLY!) will pare it down to the essentials and make it a better poem, a poem "with good bones" as my dear wife likes to say.

Here's a brief abstract of the poem for those not used to what poets inflict on the reader:

Precis:

Here the speaker strives to imagine his connection to God as unassailable while doubting himself at the same time, so he ends up punishing himself for the presumption of his own faith--a blind man beating his dog with a stick. He is the blind man and the dog for fear of owning his faith in his faith. Looking back on this poem, it more resembles a mixed state than mania, as the energy is essentially negative.


Holding at 0.5 kilorats,

CE