Everything is Fine: A Craft Essay by Stephanie Pritchard

This summer, I noticed a pile of sawdust at the base of the crabapple tree in the yard. My husband

identified the problem immediately: carpenter ants. When he pushed the trunk with one hand, the whole

tree swayed and threatened to fall. Sure, the tree had been looking a little weird, but most crabapple trees

do, I think—like they should be next to the word gnarly in the dictionary. But half of this tree had

never bloomed, and I saw the tiny holes that had punctured the trunk. Immediately, I thought, this is a

metaphor, and ended up writing a poem that compared the tree to a human. On the outside, we look ok, if

not a little worse for wear. On the inside, we are ground to pieces.

That idea—of barely holding it together—is also what inspired “invasive species,” after I lost the

crown on a root canal tooth while I was eating Sour Patch Kids. I bit down on a blue one and felt my

molar shift and dislodge. The crown (almost as wide and deep as the whole tooth, if you’ve never had this

happen) fell right into my palm. After unsuccessfully trying to pop the thing back into place, I made a

dental appointment while my gums prickled. A few days later, the dentist told me that I grind my teeth so

badly that my root-canalled tooth—already unstable—cracked under the pressure. I had that this is a

metaphor moment again.

I often find myself thinking about the troubles we experience, whether internal or external and how we

can describe that pain in just the right words. Our unique experiences are often varied, and that can make

it difficult for our poems to resonate with another person. Personally, I believe in the power of a shared

story, and often write poems inspired by events in my life or what I’ve observed. That’s why I think

metaphor is such an effective tool for poets to use— - there’s nothing like the weight of a good

comparison, and if we choose something familiar or concrete (like a dying crabapple tree or a cracked

tooth) we have opportunities to experiment with figurative language and word choice. In other words, we

should write what we notice. For example, I’d been spending a lot of my time re-doing the landscaping

around our house. It was a lot of hard work, mostly digging holes through dirt that hadn’t been disturbed

since our house was built fifty years ago. With that in mind, when I wrote “invasive species,”, I thought

about a tooth like a plant in the ground (since they both have roots) and that helped me use verbs like dig

and expose and throb. The intrusive thoughts— – the reason for the cracked tooth— – I thought about like

an invader, like an invasive species coming to destroy everything that’s just trying to survive. 

Around this same time, I’d stumbled across a wonderful poem by Ross Gay called “Throwing Children”;

a prose poem written in one long sentence that reads like breathlessness. I appreciated that formatting

choice and decided to imitate it, since I’d been feeling a bit winded lately. In earlier drafts, “invasive

species” was one long sentence, and I kept it that way for a while until I realized it didn’t quite work the

way Gay’s poem does. For one thing, I wanted there to be a pause after the metaphor is first described. If

you dig in the dirt and discover something unexpected, you pause. Once that initial hesitation is over, the

poem takes off. I wanted readers to feel how the speaker is feeling in this moment, which is

overwhelmed, bothered, and a little out of control (they can’t stop grinding their teeth even though they

need to, and they can’t stop their anxious thoughts and memories even though they want to). This poem, like

my poem about the crabapple tree, is about everything that happens below the surface: on the outside, I

am fine, you are fine, everything is fine. The inside, though – what no one sees but you – can be a

different story. 

Since I wrote “invasive species,” I’ve gotten a special mouth guard to wear at night to protect the rest of

my teeth. Without it, I’ve learned, I will unconsciously destroy the rest of my teeth. So I wear the guard

and I do the things: I go to work, I parent my child, I volunteer at the gym. I do all my laundry, shop for

groceries every Saturday, and crochet handmade Christmas gifts. I look like I have it together. Poetry

gives me a place to be a little more honest. On the inside, I grind and grind and grind.