UPGRADES
—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
__________
Troy Jollimore: “Like many of my poems, ‘Upgrades’ went through a variety of iterations before finally finding its form. I’m not sure that anything from the initial draft is still in the final version, in fact, except that there was something about a therapist in there. At a certain point I found myself writing it line by line, starting in about the middle; I would wait until each line was right, then wait until I got a sense (from wherever one gets these things) of what the next line should be. Then I went back to the start, found the correct first line, and wrote it line by line until the two sections met up. Each poem teaches you how to write it, and it seems like there is a different method for each one. Actually, I guess in its final form the poem preserves one other thing from the initial draft, which is that it was clear from the beginning—as is the case in a lot of my poems—that it was important, for some reason, that many of the poem’s claims be false. There should be a sense that the speaker is unreliable, that he is not living up to the grand spiritual claims he is making, which I hope comes across. Because, you know, I do still want to live forever. And I do still want to write the Great American Novel. And I do still want to own things; I can’t seem to get away from that. And that first line—I mean, I suppose it depends on just who it’s addressed to—but I’m pretty sure that that’s false, too.”
