A seasoned poet and filmmaker, Dave Malone just tickles my fancy! His collection “Seasons of Love” had me swooning over the beautiful trees in my neck of the woods for days, and his newest collection, “Tornado Drill” is his finest collection yet! I love “Mattress” so much, and I’m excited to share his wisdom with the world!
We love “Mattress” from your latest collection “Tornado Drill”. What was your inspiration for the piece?
When I was in my late twenties, I had a tumultuous romantic relationship. If your readers know of John Alan Lee’s love styles, then this affair would be categorized as erotic and manic. Near the end of that relationship, we had separated but remained in contact. After a few months apart, I decided to leave the city we were in. On a fateful rainy day, she helped me throw a mattress into a dumpster. It wasn’t our mattress, but it was a mattress, and that image of carting it to the dumpster hit me one day many years later, and I thought, “There is a poem about loss here.”
What was writing it like? An uninhibited flow state? Or were there many hurdles?’
I am an avid, meticulous, obsessed reviser, but “Mattress” only went through about five or six somewhat minor revisions. Was it an uninhibited flow state? Yes, pretty much. I feel like I got lucky with this one. The first thing I remembered about the experience was how slippery the mattress was in the rain. As we all likely know, it’s tough enough to carry a mattress when it’s dry, and so when wet, it is a slippery fish, and the first line came to me easily enough, “Like a fish, we carried that queen.” And I immediately liked the double meaning of queen for the size of the mattress and also for the notion of royalty being carried by attendants.
Again, I felt fortunate there weren’t a lot of hurdles. A challenge was not to use “fish” a million times, and that’s where a search engine came in handy. I discovered that “Cyprinidae” or cyprinids were a family of fish, so I could use “struggling cyprinid” to describe the mattress.
As you neared a final draft, were you satisfied with the shape it was taking?
I was satisfied. I didn’t like the way all my lines ended, so I lengthened some lines, changed up the line breaks. So the original 20-line version became a taut 14-line poem.
How long did it take to complete the project?
The poem was originally drafted in 2020. I think it took me about six months to go from first draft of this poem to final. I feel fortunate that the literary journal Up North Lit published it, and that it was included in my book Tornado Drill (Aldrich Press, 2022).
How did you arrive at the title? Do you usually handle titles in this way?
This one was a no-brainer, given the power and symbolism of the mattress. I shortened it, ha ha, from its original title, “The Mattress.”
I struggle over titles as many writers do. For poets in particular, Ted Kooser has some great advice on creating titles in his book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual.
If the title isn’t obvious, then I cry (joking). Then I drink (joking). Then I read the poem a gazillion times. Are there any lines or partial lines that make the title obvious and interesting? Another strategy I’ve had lately is to really have fun with the length of my titles, and create the longest titles ever like “How Was I to Know the Skunks Would Dig Bon Jovi.” I may have leaned this way from reading Tony Hoagland whose work I admire. Usually, time away from the poem is the key for me to finding a good title. But I do try for a real gut-punch in the end.
Also, a tip for writers here: Don’t feel compelled to title the thing straightaway. I put TGH – draft 1 at the top when I start a poem (TGH: Title Goes Here). Then, I can add the title later. Sometimes on the fourth draft!
Was there a transformative moment where the piece took on a different light or went a different direction?
Though that often happens when I write poems, it did not in this case. I think it’s because the ending found me with these lines: “How I wished / we’d looked at each other instead. / It might have changed everything.”
If so, how did you navigate this? If not, are set expectations typical of your process?
When it goes a different direction? Pray? (kidding). Patience. Roll with it. That’s why when I write a new poem, it goes into its own Word document. When a new draft is happening, I start it on a new page, and give the poem its appropriate draft number. So I tend to let the poems go in the directions they want to go, within reason I suppose.
I try not to have set expectations. But since most of my poems are narrative, then I do hope to provide a volta (a dramatic shift in turn) and then wrap up the poem in some fashion, and I am fine with a some potential mild ambiguity at the end, which to me is fair to my readers, so they can contemplate and make the poem theirs.
What advice would you offer someone struggling to write with a similar approach?
In addition to buying or getting a copy from your library of Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual, then reading like-minded writers to your own work is helpful. Then, you gotta go the other way: reading writers very much unlike yourself. Spend less time there, but to read what you don’t like gives you perspective on what you do like and on what you make your own.
How much does revision play into your process?
As I said before, a heckuva lot. I read my poems aloud. I take time away from them. I have a wonderful trusted friend/editor (like-minded) who gives me feedback, and I provide feedback on her work. And then I edit again and again, until I abandon the damn thing (if I’m lucky!).
What are you reading currently?
Matthew Brennan’s Dana Gioia a Critical Introduction and
Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score
the water and the gills 