Finding the Form with Kelsey Andrews
I know flowers can seem overdone and easy to write about, but to me they mean sex and death, and nothing much is easy about that. Sex when they’re bright with pollen and attracting insects, then death when they, you know, die.
The first stanza of my poem “Peony” came from a moment in the garden, amazed by the sheer size of the peony blossoms that were so heavy they bent toward the ground. I wrote several partial poems in my notebook, coming back to that moment again and again from different angles on different days, but there was no feeling of completeness, just an image.
That year (and I’m afraid I forget what year it was, but it was before the pandemic) was a good year for peonies, and we had some in a vase on the dining room table. I wrote that part quickly, thinking about my dad who was dying at the time, and my own death which felt nearer now that I was seeing it up close in someone I loved. It, too, felt incomplete.
Possibly a year later I decided to see if I had a whole poem in all those snippets. I looked back through my notebook for the bits on live peonies, and found the one with ants. It felt shadowed to me (although the ants are actually helpful, keeping away aphids and other insects while they eat the flower’s nectar), and the doll’s head image echoed for me with memory and loss. These two snippets seemed to fit together.
They were still somewhat separate, though, so I numbered them 1 and 2 and gave them each a title. They feel a bit like before and after pictures, though before and after what I’m not sure.
Kelsey Andrews has been published in Prairie Fire, PRISM International, and The Dalhousie Review. Her first collection of poems, Big Sky Falling, was published by Ronsdale Press in 2021.
Header photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash