Sunday poetry: "Newborn"

In the story of my life, I have a three-and-a-half-year memory gap. It is not the result of drugs or amnesia, but simple cognitive development; I cannot remember anything that happened until I was nearly four years old. The earliest specific memory that I have is of seeing Return of the Jedi at the Brea Mall theater in the summer of 1983, and before that, there are a few vague random images. I recall a spacious bedroom at my house in Fullerton (clearly, in this case, because I lived there after the age of 3). There was a plastic toy, I think, that I put up to my eyes and scrolled pictures inside. No doubt there were a few Star Wars items as well. Otherwise, I remember nothing: no diapers, no stroller rides, no first words or first steps. I do remember all of those things about my daughter's first three years, but she has forgotten them already.

Of course, I am not alone in pointing out this memory gap; it's a universal phenomenon that psychologists refer to as childhood amnesia. But it does provide a perplexing dilemma for writers when touching on the formative years. In 2013, I published my second full-length book, The First Thing Mastered, which consists of 44 poems that track life in chronological order from birth to early middle age. When Richard Linklater made the film Boyhood, which follows a similar progression, he chose to begin when his protagonist was 7, but I opted to start the story at the very beginning. Eventually, I came up with "Newborn," which appears this week in the Journal of Radical Wonder and depicts what I imagine are the first sensations in a baby's life: a bright room, unfamiliar colors, strangers gathered around, the cut of the umbilical cord. I earmarked it as the opening poem in the book, and there it sat for a while.

Then, I started having second thoughts about that placement. "Newborn" may cover the first moments after birth, but it does it only partly from a baby's point of view; there's also a great deal of perspective that only an adult can apply. It starts with an illumination / the brightest there will ever be -- an infant doesn't know comparison yet. ...the first taste of effortless flight / and the first fleeting touch down -- parents, not infants, keep track of "firsts." Adults have a lot to say about the births of children; we've lived long enough to wax philosophical about them. Every year, my 8th-graders and I listen to Paul Simon's song "Born at the Right Time," in which he regards a new arrival on Earth and sings:

     Never been lonely
     Never been lied to
     Never had to scuffle in fear
     Nothing denied to

We talk about what Simon is leaving out with all those negatives. If we regard a newborn child and note that he or she has never been lonely, lied to, afraid or bereft, we are implicitly stating that all those experiences will come in time. Elsewhere in the song, Simon describes walking through an airport and observing babies who "follow me with open eyes / their uninvited guest." Therein lies the difference. We philosophize about babies, and they stare back at us.

I was immensely proud of "Newborn," but as the manuscript took shape, I realized that it couldn't work as the opening poem. So it became the final one -- the end of the cycle, so to speak, as we encounter early childhood again with the perspective that decades bring. To replace it in the opening slot, I wrote "Waking," which imagines (to the extent possible) what a baby sees through those staring eyes. I'll blog about that one next week.