Ode to Irregular Verbs + A Request

Goodbye “swum” and “dreamt” and “pled.”  I guess we’ve all heard by now that the half-life of an irregular verb is inversely proportional to the square root of the frequency of its use. Rarely used irregular verbs become regular most quickly, while commonly used irregular verbs change the slowest. When we use a verb all the time, we don’t forget its forms. Be and think are the verbs least likely to change because they’re used the most.I dearly love the irregulars, I’ve been thinking of ways to bring them into the limelight in hopes that they’ll breathe a bit easier, that their lives may be longer and fuller. I’ve started a poem which, in its early incarnation, still carries a heavy weight of facts, hasn’t yet evolved itself into whatever irrationality needs to overcome it, to open it up. I’m thinking of my young (younger) friend Julianna Baggott. When we were both in Newark, Delaware, and working on poems and prose together, she’d say to me in what seemed like utter frustration, waving her hand in the air, “I wish this would go some weird places!” And Gerald  Stern, too. After he had chosen my second book for the Purdue University Press contest, he  generously stopped by my house on his way home from the Outer Banks and helped me revise some of the poems. “Go wild here!” he said more than once. I recognize, sigh, my lifelong penchant for hugging the shoreline.This—as is true of poets and poetry in general, I think—is a quality of character. We can only be as capacious in our work as the height and depth and width of our own inner space will allow. My psychological space, with years of resolute stretching, is more flexible and vaster than it used to be. I’ve found that if I keep writing a lot of words I often end up slipping past the bouncer at the door. (I put that image in the draft I have going here. That’s the way it goes: we use what’s at hand.)So I thought it would be interesting for you to follow me through my work on this poem. It doesn’t yet surprise me.  I’d be happy to hear any prompts and proddings from you.  I’d like to see what comes of that.  I’ll report back. The poem may be dead in the water, in which case I’ll just admit it. This is embarrassing, but obviously I’m willing to be embarrassed . I know what I’d tell a student about it, and I’ll apply some of the same advice to myself, but I’m thinking maybe you have thoughts that would jolt me into another dimension with it. You don’t have to be a poet to help.  Some of my best advice in the past has come from my husband, who is definitely not a poet.   I Growed Old“In this week’s financial markets, lending has grindedto a virtual standstill.” I’d arised, I’d spreaded out the paper,and knowed I had not dreamed it. It was right therein the national news.This is the way it is: old verbs show uplike your second cousins from Bay City—barely recognizable, uninvited, standing at the door,blasphemous in their Goodwill clothes, the bouncer flexinghis tattoo, ready to toss out caught and bred and pledand bought and crept and bent and hung and knew and heard!Really, truly, who wants to show up in the wrong dress?Who wouldn’t squeeze into the little black one?Remember holp? Who does? Who’ll remember swum?  Who has swum lately? Almost no one.  I was outbefore breakfast on the glassy lake, only a lonefishing boat for company, maybe the last swimmer who’sswum. I will have swimmed all my life, to hear it toldby the ones who rev their jet skis! And how did I get inthe water? I dived off the dock, leaving dove for the archivists.Still, on shore, bless their hearts, be and thinkare stretching luxuriously out on chaise loungesin Armani sunglasses.  How I longed to be popular like that,for my name to be on everyone’s lips until it seemedperfect, no reason to change! My name would be a rockthe water flows around. I would shift so subtlyto meet each moment you would hardlynotice enough to care. I would be naught but myself,not so much loved as almost invisible, part of the furniture.I have another stanza that seems to dig me in deeper rather than giving the poem traction. So I’ll stop here and await your thoughts.