Tetney Tank Farm: air 2025 (2) by Simon Tomson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
For our Poetry Making series, we asked poets and translators to dissect the poems they contributed to our pages. Millicent Borges Accardi’s “Good Tank Farms” appears in our new Winter issue, no. 254.
How does this poem begin?
A teacher, Gay Talese, once advised me to incorporate my daily work into my writing. At the time, I was working at a dog food factory on Malt Avenue in Commerce, California. I also worked at an oil refinery for ten years or more. I work at ARCO Carson Refinery as a technical writer from 1992 to 1997, as well as for other refineries and oil-related companies such as BP, ampm, and ARCO Marine (oil tanker). From 1997 to 2016, I was a contractor at Chevron, supporting their refineries from El Segundo, California, to Pascagoula, Mississippi. I brought safety glasses, a hard hat (adorned with worn stickers), and a blue flame retardant Nomex shirt with my name taped to the pocket. I am familiar with the unique systems and individuals that make up a turnkey refinery workplace. I wanted to write about the technical job site in a poetic way—about the serious aspects of blue collar work, but also the great moments of reflection.
I’ve always admired Fred Voss, and his poetry about being a machinist in an airplane factory in Long Beach. I wish we had more blue collar writers today. Where is Jack London? And the Steinbecks? Where are the writers working on the dock? Where are the longshoremen, the longshoremen? Plumber? Electrician?
From the Internet Archive
Then, a year ago, writer Jesse Nathan introduced me to the poem “Bad Boats” by Laura Jensen. I was inspired by its structure and sharp imagery, how the poem dives into a topic and inhabits it in every way, turning the topic on its head and allowing the reader to see every angle. I’ve written about oil rigs in a series of narrative poems about an old-school oil rig named Larry James—how he approached, or attacked, life, and his unique philosophy. So, wanting to read Jensen’s poetry, I wrote about “good” tank farms and not about “bad” boats.
What is a tank farm?
Agricultural tanks are large above-ground tanks used as storage to support the oil refining process. They may contain petroleum byproducts for blending, or an overflow of raw gasoline or finished products, waiting to be transported via pipeline or railcar. Tank farms help manage bulk storage and play an important role in blending oil products.
They were peaceful, and apart from the commotion going on in the other refineries, they were in their own territory, which was unusually quiet and uninhabited. Still full. There is a majesty about tank farming. They remind me of Easter Island statues. Everything in the tank farm is bigger than you. It’s like being in a vast desert where everything is still and nothing moves.
No one was allowed into the tank, but there were people gathered around it. In the workplace, being sent to a tank farm is either a blessing or a curse. When two workers fight, someone usually says, “Let’s take this to the farm tank.” Or, when you need a break after working double shifts or a late night, a well-meaning supervisor might say, “Get the truck and put your feet up. I’ll pick you up later if we need you.”
Tank farming is convenient. It was a place to rest or hide. Some people might go there in pairs and talk about the good old days, because tank farms always look the same, whether you started working there two weeks ago or twenty years ago. As sacred as an Indian graveyard, the stories are out there waiting to be told.
Did you have poetry or other works of art in mind when you wrote them?
Another influence was the art of Richard Serra, who created large sculptures with thick, rusty, curved sheets of iron. I saw some at a show in MOCA in Los Angeles, where you can touch the surface of the thick sheet and walk through it. In some places they are far apart, divided, and in others they are soldered together. The museum was noisy, but everything inside the statue was quiet. Very quiet. No echo. Empty as the wind. Being inside this large-scale sculpture made me wonder what it would be like to be inside a tank: everything cylindrical, everything hollow, round, and still. Take the tank and turn it inside out, and you’ve got a piece of Richard Serra art.
What is the challenge of this particular poem?
The hardest part of writing is the first hard press of the key, the first pen mark. It started slow—click, click—and soon it happened click-click And groaned and a series of busy keyboard sounds. Poetry often describes a problem and then offers a solution or resolution. They also held up the mirror for a moment.
With “Good Tank Farms,” I strove to bring the factory environment to life without it seeming superficial or technical. I wanted to include oil industry terminology and names of specific sites, such as Gate 7, The Slab, and Babikian Way. This is the site of an oil refinery in Carson, California, previously owned by ARCO and now, I believe, run by Marathon. Babikian Way, for example, is a road on the refinery property named after the former ARCO president George Babikian, who worked at the company for some sixty years. As a manager, he was famous for “blowing up” fuel credit cards, setting up ampm convenience stores, and selling fuel five cents cheaper than anyone else. He was well loved in the company.
I interviewed many SMEs, or experts in their fields, in the process of writing technical manuals and training materials. Their stories would roll over the epithets of these hallowed, ancient, and inherited places as if they were describing the cheapest way to get from the Upper West Side to Times Square.
What is your editing process like? Do you have a draft of an earlier version of the poem?
I never save drafts. I’m going crazy comparing and saving different versions. Having a lot of drafts makes me less confident. Not saving drafts helps me be decisive, make the right choices. When I have answers, I make changes. I think of Walt Whitman, who kept rewriting Leaves of Grass long after it was published. That thought alone gives me nightmares. Why return to the crime scene? Why not just move forward?
When I was in graduate school, I lost one of my best poems (at the time), called “Birth.” So I sat down and tried to rewrite it while it was still fresh in my mind. What happened was astonishing—I only remember the good parts. All the problems I had been struggling to solve had mysteriously disappeared.
But I was able to find an early version of “Good Tank Farms” in my email. The changes from this version are mainly in the line breaks and moving parts that derail the plot.
In the first stanza, I broke the second line on a stronger word truckinstead of active close. I removed two lines in the fourth stanza because they are just descriptions that do not continue the action of the poem. In the fifth stanza, I broke the line oil refinery rather than ending it because they. Then I entered “The roof is floating.” In the seventh stanza, the line is changed to a break protect And go. And the eighth stanza also has a new line break, break other rather than weaker final words at will. In the ninth stanza, I deleted the first line and the word theirs. In the eleventh stanza, I deleted the last line, and also a part in the twelfth stanza for clarity. A significant change occurred in the final stanza, where I deleted the last line entirely and ended the poem with
They like to sit in silence for centuries,
like a ship that cannot be moved, like a ship’s hull
ancient ships that never floated or set off.
Where did you write this poem? Can you share a photo of your workspace or work space?
I write in an uncomfortable place. As I write this, my laptop is lying precariously on the edge of the worn sofa armrest, and I’m curled up awkwardly on top of it. My legs folded beneath me. A box of tissues was in my lap because I was sneezing like crazy due to the wind bringing dust into the air, or maybe a rogue bobcat (I’m allergic). When I was given the perfect office, I vacated it. I felt the pressure to produce, and no words came out of my mind. Where I live now, in Topanga Canyon, I have a desk that I never use. Especially since it faces the bookshelves. I’d rather sit on the navy blue sofa, where I can see the river through the side window of my hippie shack, and the black walnut tree next to the wooden deck with its squirrels and wild birds.
I think the uncomfortable nature of my writing locations stems from childhood: As an only child, I was dragged to my parents’ parties and my father’s work at Sears. I had to busy myself in some corner, reading a book or writing in a purple notebook.
So I adapted. At a residency in Spain, I wrote on the veranda with tiger winds swirling around me. I walked into the kitchen and helped the cooks make the bread and then sat with them while the bread baked, writing notes on pieces of paper.
But I get my best ideas when I don’t have paper or pen, when I’m in an uncomfortable place where it’s physically difficult to write. I seem to be able to overcome adversity and chaos. I love the chaos with crumpled pieces of paper and stacks of open books. A clean, bright place with fresh pencils in shiny jars and comfortable leather chairs is my nightmare.
Millicent Borges Accardi is the author of four poetry collections, incl Just More Than That.
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