I Love the Nighttime
By Sonia Feldman
for the stars are never sick
nor the sky gone upstairs at 5
in a misery
here I am away from myself
and all my useless loving
This poem was published in V32 of Chicago Quarterly Review. You can buy a copy on Amazon.
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High-End, VIP, Exclusive, Behind the Poem Access
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I wrote this poem in the wake of finding out that my mom had breast cancer for the second time (she is doing well now). I walked up two flights of stairs and was standing in front of a window looking at the night sky. The poem began to assemble itself in my brain, and I wrote down several preliminary versions in my phone before I found the final lines.
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I got to the window. I knew a poem was beginning because a couple of phrases began to loop in my head. That's usually a sign I should pay attention and start writing. The line that jumpstarted the poem was "the stars are never sick," a comparison between my mother and the nighttime. The comparison is a little nonsensical but operates on its own logic, which was kind of what I needed emotionally. To get some distance from myself.
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Here you can see that I'm trying out different ways to extend the premise. How else is a person with cancer different from the nighttime? This draft has too much of the speaker in it. "I smile at the stars" didn't fit. "Because we can't do this / a third time" was too much of a break from the conceit. The poem was falling into my frustration instead of opening a door out of it.
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Now I've got the title (though it's missing the "the"), which was key because it set the rhythm for the rest of the poem. I liked the idea of the night sky having breasts that were undisturbed, but still the poem rambled and fell apart. Also, in this version I find "Here I am away from myself / And all my useless loving," which was really the emotional crux of the poem. That couplet clicked into place and guided me to the final version. You can also see I wrote a bonus line at the bottom. That line occurred to me while working on the poem but didn't actually fit. I just save those for later.
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Okay! We've arrived at the final poem. The ideas that I was developing in the previous versions—the comparison between my mother and nighttime and the emotional crux of distance from the self which is tired with loving—come together. The feeling of cohesion in the poem is the result of repeated sounds. "S:" stars, sick, sky, upstairs, misery, useless. And also "I:" I, nighttime, 5, I and my. The "S" and "I" sounds give the poem an aural coherence, a sense of finality that doesn't have to rely on a complete rhyme. I knew this version of the poem was right because I said it over and over again in my head without stumbling or a feeling of wrongness.
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