Writing Problems: First Poems in First Books

Digges, Forché, Valentine, Meyers, Hull, "The Old Record"

First books are a poet’s announcement to the world and first poems in first books are the first statement in those announcements. What can we learn about a poet’s style, ambition, or thinking about craft from them?

I remember the gifts

Deborah Digges’s first book Vesper Sparrows came out in 1986 when she was 36. The first poem is “For The Daughters of Hannah Bible Class of Tipton, Missouri’s Women’s Prison: Mother’s Day, 1959.” Digges grew up in Missouri, the sixth of ten children, so I assume the poem arose from personal childhood experience.

The poem is immediately complex in both its insights and psychological position. There is a first person speaker as well as “we” and “them.” It deals with motherhood, obviously, but also forgiveness associated with giving and taking. “Of the choices revealed to me,” C.D. Wright said, “crime and art were the only ones with any real sex appeal.”