Originally published in Willow Springs 83
From the author
Notes on “Duck Duck Goose” and “Fish Tank”
“Duck Duck Goose” actually arose from a creative nonfiction piece I was writing at the time. When I sat down to write the poem, I was already concerned with repetition as a way to enact the trickiness of memory. I noticed after a few stanzas that this poem wanted to be a villanelle. “Duck Duck Goose” is fairly true to the villanelle form, besides omitting a few lines and using slant rhyme, which again I did to enact the sense of hazy memory. “Fish Tank” went through a few phases of revision— at first it concerned two separate events, but then I was rightly advised to focus on the fish tank and go ahead and write another poem for the lines I ended up cutting. Workshops are good for something, after all.
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About Caitlyn Curran
Duck Duck Goose:
Fish Tank: