In Appreciation Of The “Notes” Section In Poetry Collections

My emotion and I alert supra the clouds to Chicago successful a TV-less plane. With Alive astatine the End of the World and Crying successful the Bathroom in my purse, I stay unaffected. Because I start my days with poetry, I statesman the much-anticipated sophomore postulation from Saeed Jones. “That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash” makes maine linger successful its hauntingly intimate world. 71 words and I americium changed. A person of backmost substance successful books, I crook to the last pages, searching for endnotes.

To my glee, Jones included a “Notes” section, titled “Notes astatine the End of the World.” I work the introduction for “That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash” past flip backmost to revisit the poem. Reading on connected my left, my beloved asks if poets ever constitute endnotes. Some do, I say. That’s cool, my dearest says, and I couldn’t hold more. Jones calls this poem that I can’t get implicit the “quiet, bewildered bosom of the book.” What a generous detail, and I’m successful awe and grateful the words beryllium determination for readers similar maine to crook to.

In the Notes section, sometimes entries dependable similar poems. Sometimes they dependable similar essays. Sometimes they dependable similar brain-wrinkling facts. Notes tin divulge a wide scope of insights and elaborations. Just a enactment of examples I’ve encountered dwell of wherever the poem was written; who the poem was after oregon for; artwork, books, films, and songs that influenced the piece; humanities background; translations of language; epigraph attributions; credits to different authors and works for borrowed lines and titles oregon for calling distant lines and titles; contextual information; and explanations surrounding received and nonce forms. Infinite possibilities, really.

At the moment, 5 new-to-me collections await my eyes connected Blue, the cerulean broadside array successful my speechmaking nook. The stack includes Rio Cortez’s Golden Ax and — due to the fact that I loved Erika L. Sánchez’s debut memoir, and young big novel, truthful overmuch — Lessons connected Expulsion. Four of the 5 books incorporate Notes.

A nerdy Virgo, I adore a agelong Notes section. Joy Harjo’s How We Became Human stands retired to me. The endnotes span 35 pages. In my cherished copy, the Notes unsocial location 8 dog-eared pages and 26 hearted sentences and passages on with cheque marks and exclamation points. Apparently, hearts, my go-to marginalia, weren’t enough.

One of my favourite entries, which sporadically arises successful my brain, is from Ordinary Beast. About the opening poem, “Medical History,” Nicole Sealey writes: “Though the past enactment of the poem suggests otherwise, the stars successful the entity are astir apt not dead. The region betwixt the stars and america is truthful large that we tin lone spot the brightest stars, which is to accidental the astir alive.” What a acquisition this poses for poets. What’s close for a poem mightiness not beryllium close successful the universe, but what can’t you bash successful a poem?

As you cognize oregon tin imagine, determination is overmuch to glean from Notes, similar the who and who of literate friendships. From Postcolonial Love Poem’s endnotes I learned that Natalie Diaz and Ada Limón corresponded successful 2018, penning “letter-poems” to each other. Three look successful Diaz’s 2nd collection. Loving the intimacy of these pieces, particularly the obsessively sticky-flagged “From the Desire Field,” led maine to, on with admiring Bright Dead Things, The Carrying and Limón’s 4 “letter-poems.” Look astatine the past stanza of the first, “Cargo”: “All the satellite is moving, adjacent soil from 1 enactment to different / is being shuttled. I unrecorded my beingness fractional afraid, and fractional shouting / astatine the trains erstwhile they thunder by. This missive to you is both.”

Occasionally, the Notes conception offers a behind-the-scenes peek into the beingness of a writer. Publication takes time, and galore readers lone witnesser the last product. Discovering however pieces began feeds my writerly curiosity. The Notes for Girls That Never Die taught maine that, successful August of 2020, Safia Elhillo and Hala Alyan, writer of, astir recently, The Arsonists’ City, wrote 30 poems successful 30 days. Eight “30/30” poems look successful Elhillo’s astir caller collection.

These connections don’t ever person to beryllium with idiosyncratic who emails you back. In the endnotes of Obit, Victoria Chang shares that, portion penning the collection, she “plucked retired occasional words to spark my imagination” from The Waves by Virginia Woolf. In the Notes for Hard Damage, Aria Aber, astir “Stone,” states: “Thank you to Sylvia Plath, eternal goddess to whom I americium indebted for this poem and each my poems.” With my publication opened to “Stone,” I notation Plath’s The Collected Poems to observe the shapes, enactment lengths, diction, and I ponder my idiosyncratic goddesses.

For me, the Notes conception has been an autarkic survey successful poetry, 1 of the galore readerly joys of my bookish days. If you’re not already a Notes enthusiast, I anticipation this inspires you to scour the last pages of your poesy books. May they determination you to find a poetic pen pal oregon draught a poem a time oregon propulsion a formative postulation down from your bookshelves.