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Cat up a Tree was born late in 1991 when my three children and I watched two firemen attempt to rescue a cat from some tall cedars in Golden Gate Park. I was fascinated by the various characters who gathered to watch. What kept them there, despite fog and cold and growing dark? What was going through their minds? My original concept for the book was that of a story in rhyming couplets depicting a series of madcap attempts to catch an uncatchable cat. Something like this: Fiddle-dee-dee; there's a cat up a tree/And I'm going to take him home with me!
When I sat down to write, I was surprised to see The Fireman's Lament appear on the page, followed by The Secret Life of a Cat, then The Cat Reviews His First Four Lives. What was this book up to, I wondered? New characters continued to arrive, each with a unique personality, perspective, interest in the fate of the cat -- and, not surprisingly, a unique meter and rhyme scheme. I made my first discovery: the story would unfold one poem at a time, one point of view at a time, one character at a time. Like a series of chance and memorable meetings, each poem would change our understanding of all that followed or came before.
But what was the cat doing in a tree in the first place? It was evident he didn't need rescue, nor did he intend to eat the robin.
It took some time, in which I assembled poems like so many puzzle pieces, before I made the next discovery: the cat climbed the tree expressly to draw others after him, so they might revel in the May moon. Like moonflowers, open as you climb/Till you grasp both leaves and stars. In spring of 1996 I began work on Night Rising, but made little progress until I began Moon Solitary a year later. I soon found that the only way to write either poem was to write both together.
It seems odd that I was compelled to write the poems in tandem, since together they form a paradox. Why could I not write a paeon to the transcending power of moonlight without first setting down the Moon's rejection of such notions? The answer lies in the character of this moon, but also in the nature of poetic pursuit: the mortal poet uses words in an effort to create something beyond the bounds both of time and thought. I realize now that Night Rising and Moon Solitary form a duality, both of which are necessary to a full understanding of either.
Cat Up a Tree was written almost entirely at night. Nocturnal taskmasters, the poems dictated assignments at an hour when only our resident great horned owls, G.H. and Manyfeathers, were awake to keep me company. I watched many faces of the moon, including two total eclipses and the passage of new comets, which found their way, respectively, into Moon Solitary and Night Rising. I believe that every book contains within it a metaphoric depiction of the process of its own creation. This book is my galactic jig, and not only metaphorically.
There were earthly, personal sources as well. The Robin's Cry was inspired by the illness and death of a close friend while I was working on the book. She left behind a young daughter, too young to fly alone. The only fate more cruel for a mother, I thought, would be that of watching a child die; any mother would throw herself in danger's path to save her child. The Robin's Cry grew from this.
In fourth grade I was changed forever by my first readings of Shakespeare and Coleridge. I was spellbound by their emotional directness, interweaving of thought and feeling, symbolic affinity with nature, and above all, the pure music of their language. For many years I have kept close at hand the work of certain British and American Romantic poets--among them Keats, Yeats, Frost, and Whitman. I often start a writing day by reading their poems aloud.
In its roots and in its form poetry is as much music as literarature. Since ancient times poetry has been recited or chanted by young and old together. Rhythm and rhyme are important musical elements in this oral tradition. In writing Cat up a Tree I have followed these customs, not by design but by instinct and long habit. I hope that readers will enjoy reading my poems aloud and sharing them with friends of all ages.
