From Starry Skies to Prickly Pear Fries: An Essay on Craft and Memory by Ben Starr
It’s true, you can go to the “Cowboy Club Bar and Grille” in Sedona, Arizona and order prickly pear cactus fries. If you do, chances are you’ll be served by someone dripping in denim. And if you happen to be amenable to the consumption of animal flesh, I highly recommend the rattlesnake sausage.
This piece, “My Daughter Orders Prickly Pear Cactus Fries at the Cowboy Club Bar and Grille,” arose from a trip I took with my daughter after I decided the two of us needed a father-daughter excursion before she turned thirteen and, I assumed, started to become physically revolted at the thought of me. And what would a young pre-teen enjoy more than eight hours in the car with dad? So, we packed up and headed east to Sedona, Arizona, a petite little burg delicately poured into red rock buttes and spectral landscapes about an hour south of Flagstaff. Do you like mystical energy vortexes? Well then, this is the place for you.
About a year later, when I started to work on “My Daughter Orders Prickly Pear Cactus Fries…,” I thought of Mark Strand’s poem, “From a Litany.” In that poem, Strand uses anaphora to praise various items found in nature—landmarks, ephemeral elements, a multitude of ocean beasts. Included is praise for the whales living under “cold blankets of salt.” That’s such a simple line, right? But something about that particular description, that exact diction, really got inside my marrow. Close your eyes and it’s easy to picture some beluga nuzzled under those savory sheets of sea.
Compared to poetry, other artistic mediums are rather blunt instruments. That’s no knock on them, it takes a village, etc. A big theatrical blockbuster, regardless of quality, is some crudely formed wooden club, bashing you over your head with its artistic merit (or lack thereof). Poetry is like an assassin’s blade slipped softly under the ribs. Or wherever an assassin would stab you. Probably not the ribs, but you get the picture.
I love finding these little lines tucked away in the middle of a poem, like my youngest daughter finding her “gems” (discarded sequins and sparkly sticker portions) at the park near our house. Certain imagistic language that has a way of sneaking up on you, approaching quietly from behind before suddenly changing your mood, your day, your life. I love to play with imagery in my writing, to try and find some way to manifest my words into something you can physically feel crawl through your skin.
When I think back on the trip, it’s obvious that I was hoping to encase some childhood memory for her in carbonite and transport it through time like Vader delivering Han Solo to Jabba. We went swimming in a natural waterslide. Spent a night stargazing up close and personal with all those freckles on the moon. Shared a nice final meal by the river where the waitress pretended to be astonished that my daughter was as young as she claimed.
It’s funny looking back on that trip now. I remember coming home and being slightly disappointed that the trip wasn’t as absolutely postcard-perfect for my daughter as I had hoped it would be. If you’re a parent, or if you ever had a parent, you know the feeling. Trying to hold on to memories is like holding water in your palm. No matter what you do, the images, the sounds, the thoughts, will find a way to slide through the tiny crevasses between your fingers. And it was the same for this trip. Maybe fixing these images in this somewhat tangible form of expression was my way of trying to reform our experience, to cast it in bronze and erect it in some public square to stand the test of time.
It is strange. When I think about that trip now, it’s the imperfect parts that have slipped away. All that’s left behind is the good.
