Such a simple little poem. If you wanted a lesson in how to write a poem, you could use this one. You could start with a moment that sticks in the mind, the moment you remember, maybe when your young child stands at the sliding doors of the restaurant, watching them open and close when he moves closer and farther away. What fun children can have, as long as it lasts, before they’re told to stop.
Then you could turn the poem into doors opening and closing. This moment calls forth earlier times. The poem keeps opening backward and backward. He carried his young son piggyback, he kissed his wife for the first time, and then (“wasn’t long ago”) when he lived alone, sitting at the kitchen table, determined to write a love poem.
And here it is! The love poem he was determined to write. All the while, as the years have gone by, he’s been writing it. Notice the title, “Double Doors.” The poems opens the doors to the past, and keeps opening them until it reaches the beginning: the idea of a love poem.
The poem’s made in two stanzas, two doors, connected by “I’m thinking …” That’s the hinge that takes the speaker back, and back two more times. The doors, opening and closing over and over.
One lesson in writing a poem is to let a present moment carry us into the past. The interesting thing about this poem is that the original poem has been so hard to write —nit takes all night, burnt coffee, a hundred cigarettes (this was the old days, wasn’t it?), starting over and over. It’s taken determination. The poet doesn’t say he did it, that he got a good poem out of his work. Only that he was trying.
And surprise! His life has made the poem. Is making the poem. It’s a Valentine.
Poet and editor Richard Jones was born in London, England, and spent his childhood in Nova Scotia, Canada, and small-town North Carolina. He eventually settled in Norfolk, his father’s hometown. He received a master’s degree from the University of Virginia and an MFA from Vermont College. He now teaches at DePaul University in Chicago and lives north of the city with his family.
He has since published more than a dozen books of poems. “The Blessing: New and Selected Poems” (2000) won the Midland Authors Award. For 30 years he has been editor of the literary journal Poetry East. His most recent book is “Stranger on Earth,” from Copper Canyon Press. He’s Illinois’ poet laureate.
And here’s a Valentine’s Day message from another poet, Alan Shapiro: “reading poetry is an act of love.”