Gretchen Rockwell
Everybody Remembers Neil and Buzz
a quarto for Mike Collins
but who remembers that solitary orbit
the third man left circling the Moon
without video feed perpetual night
no voices joining his except for when
check-ins come like circling into sunlight
brief coronas winking in and out and
—gone all he can do is wait darkness falls again
he floats weightless through the void of space around
the black with only stars the dark side and a shuttle
for company he doesn't try to describe the sights
talk about the feeling of being the solitary body circling
slowly pulled into darkness without rest or disaster
wobbling slightly before righting course one time—
waking up and radioing in ask about the astronauts
to see if they had landed see if they made history
the third man left circling the Moon
without video feed perpetual night
no voices joining his except for when
check-ins come like circling into sunlight
brief coronas winking in and out and
—gone all he can do is wait darkness falls again
he floats weightless through the void of space around
the black with only stars the dark side and a shuttle
for company he doesn't try to describe the sights
talk about the feeling of being the solitary body circling
slowly pulled into darkness without rest or disaster
wobbling slightly before righting course one time—
waking up and radioing in ask about the astronauts
to see if they had landed see if they made history
Commentary
Gretchen on "Everybody Loves Neil and Buzz":
The seed of this poem came from the wonderful recent documentary about the Apollo 11 mission—a timely release, as the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing is this month. At one point in the documentary, I was struck by some statements about the third man on the mission, Mike Collins, who piloted the command module Columbia around the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Eagle and made history. The narrator mentioned that as Collins orbited, he was unable to communicate with NASA or the lander. As the documentary continued, I couldn't stop thinking about how lonely and intense that solo journey might have been, and knew I wanted to write about it (and him) in some way.
As I sat down to write, I realized the “quarto” form I invented would be the perfect one for the poem. The quarto is named after the old printing style (best known to me from Shakespeare) where four pages were printed on one large sheet of paper, then folded into a pamphlet or book. Thus, in my quarto form, there are four stanzas (ABCD): each standalone, yet part of one unified piece.
There are four ways to read a quarto: A/B/C/D, AB/CD, AC/BD, and ABCD. That is, the AB/CD (horizontal pairs) and AC/BD (vertical pairs) are about separate (but related) topics, and you must ultimately be able to read across each line of the entire poem so the entire text forms one cohesive poem. The final stipulation for the quarto is that it must be "for" someone—the "I" can be a part of the poem, but it must not be the focus. (I've had a few other quartos published; they're on my website if you'd like other examples of the form.) I love both the challenge of quartos and that the point is to write them for other people. Certainly, they're about and for me in some ways, but every quarto is inherently a gift, and I love how that shapes the way I approach both the writing process and the poem.
Given these elements of the quarto—being 'for' someone, the form balancing between isolation and connection, the aspect of each piece fitting into a whole—it seemed like the perfect way to write about Mike Collins, both an integral person to Apollo 11's mission and the person who was so disconnected from the most memorable event of said mission that he is sometimes referred to as "the forgotten astronaut."
The seed of this poem came from the wonderful recent documentary about the Apollo 11 mission—a timely release, as the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing is this month. At one point in the documentary, I was struck by some statements about the third man on the mission, Mike Collins, who piloted the command module Columbia around the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Eagle and made history. The narrator mentioned that as Collins orbited, he was unable to communicate with NASA or the lander. As the documentary continued, I couldn't stop thinking about how lonely and intense that solo journey might have been, and knew I wanted to write about it (and him) in some way.
As I sat down to write, I realized the “quarto” form I invented would be the perfect one for the poem. The quarto is named after the old printing style (best known to me from Shakespeare) where four pages were printed on one large sheet of paper, then folded into a pamphlet or book. Thus, in my quarto form, there are four stanzas (ABCD): each standalone, yet part of one unified piece.
There are four ways to read a quarto: A/B/C/D, AB/CD, AC/BD, and ABCD. That is, the AB/CD (horizontal pairs) and AC/BD (vertical pairs) are about separate (but related) topics, and you must ultimately be able to read across each line of the entire poem so the entire text forms one cohesive poem. The final stipulation for the quarto is that it must be "for" someone—the "I" can be a part of the poem, but it must not be the focus. (I've had a few other quartos published; they're on my website if you'd like other examples of the form.) I love both the challenge of quartos and that the point is to write them for other people. Certainly, they're about and for me in some ways, but every quarto is inherently a gift, and I love how that shapes the way I approach both the writing process and the poem.
Given these elements of the quarto—being 'for' someone, the form balancing between isolation and connection, the aspect of each piece fitting into a whole—it seemed like the perfect way to write about Mike Collins, both an integral person to Apollo 11's mission and the person who was so disconnected from the most memorable event of said mission that he is sometimes referred to as "the forgotten astronaut."
Biography
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Gretchen Rockwell is a queer poet and supplemental instructor of English at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, RI. Xer work has appeared in Glass: Poets Resist, Into the Void, Noble/Gas Qtrly, Crab Fat Review, and the minnesota review, as well as in other publications. Xe enjoys writing poetry about gender and sexuality, history, space, and unusual connections. Find xer on Twitter at @daft_rockwell or at xer website, www.gretchenrockwell.com.
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