Spring Break
Daughter inspires his poetry
Stephanie Dumm
Issue date: 9/24/08 Section: Features
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Kate Washington, Professor Buchanan's wife said she thinks it's very "poignant" to have a record of her daughter's life from the very beginning.
"A kind of completely nontraditional baby book that reminds me of stages or moments that would be easy to forget," she said.
The book is called "Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter," and was released in June of this year.
Buchanan has been writing poems for over 20 years, but the life-changing event of becoming a parent gave him an all new subject to write about.
"I spend a lot of time with Nora, and I've made a lot of time to spend with her," Buchanan said. "I've never really considered it strange to write poetry about her and make it an extension of my creative life. I've never drawn a boundary of what is private and public."
"Through the most masterful of diction, he opens a raw and genuine window into his life in these poems, one that will make even the best poets lean back in their ivory tower recliners and say, 'I wish I had done that…I wish I could say it like that,'" Benjamin Shaw said. Shaw is a student at Sac State who has read "Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter."
Some of the poems were written even before Buchanan knew if his wife was having a girl or a boy.
"A lot of the poems were written when I was first expecting," Washington said. "The experience of becoming parents became central in his creative life and that gave rise to having poems about our daughter."
Washington said that the book is roughly chronological and that the poems coincide with the different stages that Buchanan went through on his journey into parenthood.
"I wrote about getting up in the morning and getting her food," Buchanan said. "I wrote about when she was ill."
Many of the poems in the book are about the normal routines of parenthood, like "Quiet Alert," which talks about why babies cry, and "Spilled Milk," which discusses what middle of the night feedings can do to new parents who are extremely sleep-deprived. Eventually, Buchanan had enough poems to put together a book, which wasn't exactly what he had set out to do when writing the poems.
"I realized I had at least 100 poems, if not 200," Buchanan said. "I picked the best third of them."
Having these poems around has meant a lot to the Buchanan family. Washington said that a lot of the poems are meaningful to Buchanan, and also to herself.
"My husband and I each see her, and our parenting experience, through our own individual lens, so the book also gives me a fresh look at Nora," Washington explained.
For Nora, the book is very meaningful.
"Our daughter is three, and demands them to be read to her before bed time," Washington said.
Washington described their daughter as being inquisitive, busy, talkative and fun.
"She gets more fun and busy all of the time," Washington added.
Nora's parents also say that she "writes" her own poems.
"She's been writing little poems," Washington said. "She can't write, but she'll say something that she says is a poem."
Buchanan added that Nora will say that she's written a poem, grab a book, pretend to read from it and say that what she's reading is the poem.
He said that one of his favorite things to do with Nora is take her out for meals at casual places.
"My wife is a food critic, so she's more choosy," Buchanan said. "I'm not a discerning eater, so I like to take her to burger joints or greasy spoons."
He said this is because these restaurants are more fun to have meals with a 3-year-old, because she can climb around the booth and under the table.
As a family, he said that they like going to the Sacramento Zoo or anything where they can spend time together as a family.
"She enjoys almost everything you propose to her," Buchanan said.
He said that Nora also likes being read to and that she already has about 200 books in her collection at home. She even has a few of her father's poems memorized.
He has hope that Nora's enjoyment of reading and writing her own poetry develops further in the future. The book of poetry that Buchanan released was published by Roan Press, which is a publishing company that Buchanan and his wife co-founded. "Swimming the Mirror" is the first book published by Roan Press.
Buchanan hopes that when Nora gets older, she will take an active role with Roan Press, developing ideas for novels and children's books. He hopes that it will give her the sense that there is something satisfying about writing.
"I imagine her taking a pretty active role in the publishing," Buchanan said.
Both parents realize that Nora's excitement in having poems written about her might not last into her teenage years.
"I'll probably have to stop eventually," Buchanan remarked about writing poems about Nora.
"I'm sure she'll find it totally embarrassing when she is a teenager," Washington said. "Hopefully when she's an adult she will appreciate the sentiments in the book."
Stephanie Dumm can be reached at sdumm@statehornet.com
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