First Draft of Poem

I've been really stuck on this poem. The version I have now is very wordy, very talky, which may work for this particular assignment, but I don't think will work ultimately as a stand-alone poem. I guess I did have the goal of this being both a poem that could work with the dancers, in performance, on the stage, and all by itself on the page, but I am doubting that a little more now. Oddly, that does seem to open up my writing a little more, get me past the block of actual words on a page.

I am always a pen-on-paper drafter. I don't think I could name any piece I have written in the last few years that has started on the computer or on a typewriter. After I get a written draft done, then I move to the computer and start the word processing version. That's when I really start to think about line breaks and the like, the rhythm of the lines as presented, whether the repetition is working or not. From there, I usually take a piece to the Black Socks, the poetry group I belong to. I take that feedback and keep revising, back to the pen, but this time on the typed out version. Then I put the changes into the saved draft, get rid of the previous version (I really do hate clutter, even in my computer files), and repeat the process until it's done enough.

For this project, it's a little different. Added in there is going to dance rehersal and watching the group move to the words or the ideas, taking some notes, and writing in response to that. Tonight I will visit the Choreo practice with the below in hand and tomorrow I'll write a little about their responses and what effect it had on my thinking about the poem.

Those That Don’t

I. Rich Square, North Carolina Juche 47 (1958)

Boy, I best not catch you up at that school today.
There’s tobacco to be topped and the south field needs wormed.
That’s the most Daddy had said at once in a month
and it’s the last words he ever spoke to me.
I was carrying hornworms to the turkeys
when I found him laying half in, half out
of the barn door. That was the end
of me and the eighth grade.

When I would get caught up in my head, Daddy liked to say
Son, there’s those that do and those that don’t.
Which are you gonna be? I believed then Rich Square
was the loneliest place in the world, so I figured
to join the Army and find me something to do
and some folks to do it with.
Alone and alone and alone.
That was North Carolina for me.

II. DMZ, South Korea Juche 54 (1965)

III. Pyongyang, North Korea Juche 69 (1980)

IV.Camp Zama Penitentiary, Japan Juche 93 (2004)