tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023532883872311822023-11-16T05:48:47.633-05:00The Clever Title: The Creative Writing World Made SmallAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-6742919275144168862013-04-24T15:36:00.001-04:002013-04-24T15:36:27.041-04:00Chase Hollands Inteviews Ron Carlson<br />
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My father has always worked outside. He started his first construction job at twelve, laying out houses with his father during the summer, and after getting hurt playing football his first semester at college, he built docks and bridges and piers. From Pensacola to Alligator Alley, drivers all over Florida traverse his work. I remember him coming home every day exhausted, with bloodshot eyes and raw hands. A workingman’s skin is often described as leathery, but that’s too sickeningly romantic, too patronizing. Leather is strong, durable, and improves with age. My father’s skin, however, is a canvas of pain—gashes that will not heal, bruises that refuse to fade, and the black, tumorous markings of too much sun. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwfL8TdXBKumZAdPqfnmB8TskkOEYxznE0Mr1velCSOmvvM-1O1a2N-4fRM0-RVVoqsbFaEXMYLK4YI6BOMfEdPLqvx_uIWtmprBr7Drc5PFFT52zcf9_D-s0PY8I7I0AsfVM64QwJd2k/s1600/carlson_r.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" lua="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwfL8TdXBKumZAdPqfnmB8TskkOEYxznE0Mr1velCSOmvvM-1O1a2N-4fRM0-RVVoqsbFaEXMYLK4YI6BOMfEdPLqvx_uIWtmprBr7Drc5PFFT52zcf9_D-s0PY8I7I0AsfVM64QwJd2k/s1600/carlson_r.jpg" /></a>While reading Ron Carlson’s short story “Blazo,” I can’t help but think of my father. The story follows Thomas Burns and his attempt to track down the place in Alaska where his son died. Beyond the obvious father/son dynamic, “Blazo” possesses a profound sense of place. Carlson paints Alaska as a brutal, unforgiving land, a visceral purgatory for the story’s main character. It resonated with me because I’ve always imagined my dad as being an extension of Florida itself, the harsh, eclectic landscape, and the raging wildlife, surviving by any means. “Blazo” struck me as something so curious and beautiful that I had to contact the author and ask him about writing, teaching, and life in general. He was gracious enough to respond. </div>
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Chase Holland: In a PUBLISHERS WEEKLY interview, you are quoted as saying: “I believe in teaching as a real job…I don’t think it’s a substitute for anything else. It’s been shown to me that teachers can help, and the writing today is just as good as it was when I started out…” With this quote in mind, what is your response to critics of creative writing workshops who claim that MFA programs actually restrict creativity and experimentation, and water down much of today’s new fiction?<br />
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Ron Carlson: This is an issue that eludes me. I don’t see creativity being restricted—and every good story is an experiment. The best writing I see these days is as good as the best writing I saw twenty five years ago. And it is just as rare as it was then. <br />
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CH: As MFA students, we are constantly being reminded of the bleak job landscape we have to look forward to upon graduating. Do you have any advice for someone who would like to find work as a professor after graduation? What about those students who are not currently Graduate Assistants (and not gaining any teaching experience)?<br />
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RC: Most teaching is fairly good and there is a ton of it. The workshop. It can be interesting to think about leading a workshop or teaching an eager group of undergraduates. The things a person can do is read more than anyone they know, write every day just enough so that when you come out of your room you’re blinking in the light, and devise fresh ways of diagnosing the story before us. The goal isn’t to get a job teaching; the goal is to be the best teacher in the history of the schoolhouse. Meanwhile, every writer should have a viable plan B, a paying job or a supportive partner.<br />
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CH: Do you find it difficult to balance writing, teaching, and the common demands of life? If not, have you ever felt it to be a difficult balance? How did you cope?<br />
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RC: When my two sons were young, we had a house and these two kids and two cars and lawn furniture and a great dog and always a leak in the roof. First things first. There are days writing takes a back seat. Fix the roof. There are weeks when writing doesn’t get any seat. Nor should it. You’ve got birds to feed. A little frustration because you can’t get to your story is not bad. And the real bottom line is: choose projects that you love so you’ll find a way to see them.<br />
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CH: Wells Tower, author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, calls the internet a curse, and says that “it’s toxic to the kind of concentration fiction writing requires.” In the past, you’ve warned of the possible creative dangers of the internet and constantly staying “connected.” Do you find it difficult to avoid the internet? How about when you write? I know some writers have to use a computer that is not connected to the internet, as it is the only way they can avoid the temptation to surf the web.<br />
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RC: The internet undermines the day. The ticket for writing a book is to discover and pursue what you are thinking. As soon as you let the chorus in the room via email, you’re done. Writing is personal; your story doesn’t need a focus group; it needs solitude. Email’s efficiency (which people hail) is of much less value than its utter intrusiveness. I wrote six of my books on typewriters, and a typewriter is a one-way device. Nothing comes from it toward you; you type into the dark.<br />
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CH: What books are currently on your nightstand? Do you typically plan what book(s) you are going to read, or do you decide on a whim? <br />
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RC: I just read Plain Song the older novel by Wright Morris. I read Hammet Rewritten by Gordon MacAlpine and I’m reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s wry novel Offshore. My favorite new old book is Dylan Thomas stories, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog. <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-61816241157448655842013-02-06T01:42:00.000-05:002013-02-06T01:42:32.807-05:00The Church of Poetry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; line-height: 30px;">Reprinted from <i>Apple, Word, Kiss</i> Blog, <a href="http://applewordkiss.blogspot.com/">http://applewordkiss.blogspot.com/</a>, by Katherine Riegel</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">I buy books and don't always read them right away. Sometimes I know the book is likely to be important to me, to speak on the subjects I can never quite put down, the ones I carry with me always like worry stones, seeking to understand by touching them again and again. This was the case with</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><a href="https://www.msu.edu/~aldrich/" style="color: #38501c; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Marcia Aldrich'</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780820343372-0">Companion to an Untold Story</a></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">, a book about the suicide of a friend of hers, a book that I bought partly because I knew some of the author's essays and partly because of a poignant</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhBb3nuiEvU" style="color: #38501c; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">book trailer</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">that included her reading from this book and partly because suicide is one of those subjects for me. The book is a "companion" in an old sense, a sort of reference book, thoughts organized alphabetically, wide-ranging bits and pieces about this particular friend and about the author and about suicide and death and mourning and loss.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">Last week, for reasons having to do with my own inner weather, I knew it was time to read this book, so I sat down on the couch between two of my dogs and opened it up.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">And it's as terrific as I thought it would be, pulling me in various directions, as compelling and hard-to-put-down as a thriller, taking me out of ordinary life in the ways that speak most directly to whatever strange kind of spirituality I practice.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">Here's a quote that puts difficult things so clearly I cannot stop thinking about it, wisdom and insight I must share:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">"In the rituals of mourning, we substitute a final resting place, even one so unmarked as the sea, for the actual place of death. We do so to write over the terrible image of trauma. Substitution of place is our profound device in death and its aftermath. The image of final burial comforts us because we, the survivors, compose it. It is authored rather than thrust upon us, already engraved. Choice of the place and manner of burial gains us composure against the suddenness of tragedy. Those who were lost are no longer lost: they are laid to rest. Meanwhile, the rituals of cremation purify the image of autopsy. The work of mourning is incomplete without a final substitution ('So Lycidus, sunk low, but mounted high')." --Marcia Aldrich, from</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780820343372-0">Companion to an Untold Story</a></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">, "Disposition of the Body," pp. 69-70</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">I cannot say anything as smart as this, but I have been thinking lately about ritual, and how in my life, at least, I don't have enough ritual. I do not have a Christian faith, so the Christian rituals I grew up with aren't fully resonant for me--they resonate with memory and family, but not with that extra dimension of shared humanity and understanding and connection with the mystery. I semi-joke that I am a member of the Church of Poetry, because poetry helps me enter that extra dimension. But the Church of Poetry doesn't have enough rituals, not the kind that involve all the senses, the way ancient churches and organizations know work best to involve us: rituals with music, dance, incense, specific types of food, sacred objects with their complex textures. Words are bodied, but not as richly as High Mass.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 30px;">I think we need to understand and respect the rituals we have, and Aldrich's words above help me do that. And I think we need to create our own rituals, to reinforce our connections to each other and to whatever mysteries we feel. I am open to suggestions.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-60111609606342185492013-01-14T22:47:00.000-05:002013-01-15T08:48:51.295-05:00Champion of Detroit’s Arts Scene<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS1LNSEigKxfagP2IM1nwrkScNdyi7WpYwFDgxhmf8FyHvu-uMev6eP6e-VE9p1QXta6LmJqN-sfsDRuewvvZO-M9-wll3H5i0vUoF4Wig5446fQt07etonsyvV-3AtsSml0b2vSEueFk/s1600/Liebler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS1LNSEigKxfagP2IM1nwrkScNdyi7WpYwFDgxhmf8FyHvu-uMev6eP6e-VE9p1QXta6LmJqN-sfsDRuewvvZO-M9-wll3H5i0vUoF4Wig5446fQt07etonsyvV-3AtsSml0b2vSEueFk/s1600/Liebler.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">M.L. (Michael
Lynn) Liebler is a senior lecturer at Wayne State University in Detroit,
Michigan. His research areas include:
labor literature, Vietnam-era literature, contemporary poetry, performance
poetry and work and criticism of Thomas Merton.
Liebler received his B.A. from Oakland University in 1976 and his M.A.
from the same university in 1980. Since
1973, he has published poetry in several literary magazines, including: <i><a href="http://www.mtmc.edu/paddlefish/">Paddlefish</a></i>, <i>Cottonwood Review</i>, <i><a href="http://www.riverstyx.org/">River Styx</a></i>
and <i>The MacGuffin Review</i>. He has also written and/or edited fifteen
books, the latest of which include <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Working-Words-Punching-Clock-Kicking/dp/B005HKN0Y6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357616534&sr=8-1&keywords=m.l.+liebler">WorkingWords: Punching the Clock</a> and </i><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Awake-Someone-Elses-Michigan-Writers/dp/0814333826/ref=la_B001JSDBBC_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1357616588&sr=1-3">Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream</a></i>.
Liebler is a powerful advocate for the arts in the city of Detroit. He founded the Springfed Arts Metro Detroit
Writers group, with the mission to “educate and inspire folks in the craft of
writing, be it prose or song, the performance of works, spoken or sung.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">While I had
never met Liebler in person, I was familiar with his work in and around Detroit
from my years as an online editor for various broadcasting and print news
organizations. Despite being a
completely stranger, Liebler graciously agreed to answer a few questions over
email.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">*<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">C. Lasek</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: I had a round-about journey back into
academia and am curious about your path.
I know from your online resume that you received your B.A. from OU in
1976 and your M.A. from OU in 1980. Did
you always know you wanted to be a writer and teacher? Also, could you describe
three of the most formative experiences that have shaped your professional
teaching life?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">M.L. Liebler</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: I wanted to be a teacher from a very
early age-maybe 10-11-is[h]. I was raised by my working class grandparents, and
I remember my grandmother coming home from a parent-teacher conference saying
that the teacher told he[r] that she thought I'd "make a great teacher
some day, but not with kids. He'd be better with older people like college
level." My grandmother was baffled
because no one in our family had ever been to college or thought about college
before. I didn't think much about it then either because I didn't think kids
like me grew up to be teachers. We were more factory worker material than
teacher. That seemed awful <i>highfalutin</i>
to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">These
people shaped my teaching life and methodology and who I am:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-indent: -0.25in;">Mr.
Wadke 5th Grade Teacher of superior quali[t]y</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-indent: -0.25in;">The
Beatles</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-indent: -0.25in;">Professor
Lawrence Pike my first creative writing teach at a community college</span></li>
</ul>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lasek</span></b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">: Also according to your online resume, you have been writing
and publishing consistently since 1980.
Which of your writing projects would you consider to be your most
challenging and why? Which did you find to be the most rewarding and why?</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Liebler</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: Actually, I started publishing in magazines and chapbooks
in 1973, but I found my most recent book of poems <i>Wide Awake in Someone Else's [D]ream</i> to be the most difficult to
write and get published by The Wayne State University Press. The book had to go through several rewrites a[n]d
edits to be made ready for publication.
It took the most time of any of my books and projects. However, it won a couple of decent awards, so
it was worth it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Most rewarding
would be finally getting my anthology of working class literature <i>Working Words: Punching the Clock and
Kicking Out the Jams</i> into print. The book had been assembled, put together
and ready to be printed in 2005 when the WSU Press dropped it like a cold
potato. Coffee House Press picked it up,
but couldn't get it out until 2010.
However, 2010 was a perfect time and better than mid 2000's because the
class war erupted in Wisconsin and spread to the Occupy movement, so the world
was more than ready to welcome this collection than in 2005 or 2006. It is
still one of the only collection[s] of its kind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lasek</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">:<b> </b>Of all the
classes you have taught at Wayne State University, which was your favorite and
why?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Liebler</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: I love to teach anything, but some faves over the years
have been “The Vietnam War through Literature” because that war left a huge
scar on me, and I need to figure it out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then there was
"The Beatles & Their Impact on Popular Culture" because my life
was informed almost exclusively by The Beatles. I still lead an annual Study
Abroad trip for WSU to London and Liverpool every Spring Break.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, my
"What’s Going On-The Literature and Music of Motown" a Freshman
Learning Community for Freshman writing classes has become near and dear to me.
We study all things Detroit from 1900-present. I am working with freshman fresh
out of high school to keep them in college. The class is together for the whole
school year. We work with great student peer mentors, have class visits from
the MC5, The Four Tops, The Funk Brothers, Rodriquez, John Sinclair, etc. The students love it, and it is what I know
best-my wonderful city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lasek</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: In a 2010 article published by <i>Detroit Make It Here</i> (an arm of <i>Crain’s
Detroit Business</i>), you stated that your book, <i>Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams</i>, was for
“Anyone and everyone. A reader does not need a college degree to understand,
enjoy and read the stories, poems, songs and essays in this unique collection.
This book is truly for the people: students, workers, business owners, the
community.” This sentiment seems in line
with the mission of the Springfed Arts organization, with which I know you are
heavily involved. It is evident that
making art accessible to everyone, especially poetry, is a cause close to your
heart. It would be great to hear your
reflections on your work in this space thus far. Also, where do you see opportunities for
progress in the future?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Leibler</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: Well, actually-I am the founder of Springfed Arts Metro
Detroit Writers. I turned it over to John Lamb after 5 years. My history goes a
lot deeper in this sense than just Springfed. Anyway, I think poetry is an
empowering and essential to life. It puts people in touch with who they are,
so-for me-it seems quite natural that everyone can do this given an
opportunity. I'm just a vehicle to make that opportunity available to all. Can
everyone be a famous poet? No- but
everyone has the right and talent to express themselves. My job is to help make
this horn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lasek</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">:<b> </b>Between your
work with Wayne State, Springfed Arts, the Made in Michigan series and your
work with the Magic Poetry Band (and I am sure this is not the extent of your
creative endeavors!) how do you find the time to devote to your own writing? What inspires you to continue to put pen to
paper?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Leibler</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: I write most often this past several years on planes, in
hotel rooms and in other countries where I'm teaching and reading. I write
about everything from a tree outside my window to the death of a friend in
hospice. I always keep myself open to endless possibilities. Being a good observer and listener is
important to this art form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As passionate as
M.L. Liebler is about his own writing craft, he is equally, if not more,
passionate about bringing this art to the people of Detroit. As stated in the interview, Leibler is very
much a product of his blue collar upbringing.
But instead of attending college and then leaving this world behind, he
stayed, determined to bring poetry, writing and music to a city that
desperately needs it. Despite
unflattering media attention (both without and within the city), Detroit is not
dead. This city, and all of southeast
Michigan, has a strong, blood-filled beating heart. We know this to be fact--Liebler writes
poetry to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Christine Lasek interviewed M.L. Liebler. She is ferocious. Like, for real.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-41554963984177257472013-01-07T14:19:00.002-05:002013-01-07T14:26:59.406-05:00Lok Lok Dumpling House<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781439183328-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLTfF9fMpyNLqe9fQzkjXd-QbmT-Tp_jAw-N56HuvJLxHnSZ_wf9-hcyIqXxUaxr5KYuxFRseGQMqvMOF8iLgL2KMzojv66KR8kZ8113d-vGoGpVSah-BGgTGySajOMLsswHtz-i3gO4k/s1600/Bartok.jpg" /></a>I’ve been in Melbourne, Australia, for one hour before I
decide to walk the streets for a late lunch. My head buzzes after the
twenty-hour flight. During the trip, I read <a href="http://www.mirabartok.com/">Mira Bartok</a>’s memoir <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781439183328-0">The Memory Palace</a></i>, a stunning narrative
of a daughter coping with her mother’s mental illness. The book was my sanity
during the long trip; it transported me to places like Chicago, Europe, New
Orleans; places that wasn’t a cramped economy class seat. But it took me to
other places to—the love and guilt a daughter carries, the 80’s ruin of mental
health care, the constant fear and danger of an abusive relationship. Bartok’s
memoir makes me think about the fragility of the brain, of my sister-in-law who
suffers from a brain injury, of my late father-in-law who believed everyone was
after his money, that the electricians across the street where spying in on his
life. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I can’t shake the violent tendrils of <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781439183328-0">The Memory Palace</a></i>. Bartok’s sentences and images linger, her scenes with her mother resonating with a haunting, saddening quality.
Even when Bartok is clear across the world, her mother’s shadow falls over her,
dictates her every action, invading her every thought. But it isn’t a book
about the oppressive nature of a parent. It is a book about love, about family,
about forgiveness, and because of this, Bartok’s memoir avoids the common
pitfalls of memoir and becomes a glorious work of art, much like her mother’s
writing that is sprinkled throughout the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
*<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I walk down Victoria Street. I feel like my legs are tied to
cement blocks. Still, this is what one must do in another country, venture out
and explore, find the secrets of this city. And there is one secret I find
immediately, drawn to it like a magnet to metal: Lok Lok Dumpling House. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Lok Lok Dumpling House is as nondescript as your average
Chinese restaurant. Across the street is the famous Queen Victoria’s Market,
where later I will travel and buy eggs and sausages for morning breakfast,
where I will be put under a grocery shopping spell, allowing the voices of
vendors to bounce around in my brain. It’s a beautiful chaos with the freshest
seafood and meats and veggies. But now, I’m too hungry to think straight, so I
ask for a menu at Lok Lok and because my blood sugar is so low, I decide to ask
the waitress for suggestions. She thinks I need a soup filled dumpling, some
shu mai, and pork pot stickers. I think she’s right. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I’m waiting a large man enters, belly and camera leading
the way. He looks like a tourist, but on closer in inspection there is layer of
dirt over him. He comes in with a lot sound and bravado. “Hey there,” he says.
“How are ya?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look around. There’s no one else in the restaurant.
“Fine,” I say and smile. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He sits across from me and orders one of the waiters for
water. The waiter eyes him. Doesn’t smile. Doesn’t move a muscle. “Please,” the
man says. “A glass of water.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hesitantly, the waiter grabs a glass and fills it with
water, placing it on the table. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Thank you,” the man says and downs the water in a single
gulp. “Another.” But the waiter ignores him. “You,” he says, turning to me.
“You look like you are a nice fella.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I smile. I don’t know what else to do. A stranger has made
himself comfortable across from me and my brain feels like cheese. “That’s kind
of you,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not from here, huh?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I shake my head. “States.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Whereabouts?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Florida,” I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He looks for the waiter again. I take him in, this man. He wears
a heavy photographers vest and around his neck is some form of identification.
He’s heavily bearded and the beard is dirty like the rest of him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You think the food here is good?” he says.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Smells good,” I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The waiter eyes the man again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another water,” the man says. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The waiter doesn’t move. He talks to the waitress who
ordered my dumplings in Chinese. I don’t know what they are saying, but I can
tell he wants this man out. I can tell that not even two hours in Australia, I
might be in the middle of an altercation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Would you like some coffee?” I ask the man.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s mighty kind,” he says. “And water,” he says to the
waiter. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ask for coffee. The waiter shrugs and fills a cup,
steaming and black. The man warms his hands around the cup. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You just elected a president,” the man says.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You like Obama?” he says.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I do,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t trust that Mitt guy, you know. I saw him and I said,
that’s a guy I can’t trust. He has those eyes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Good point,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You think Obama can fix all your problems?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’d be happy if he fixes 50% of them.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nah,” he says, waving his beefy hands. “At least 80. I can
fix 50.” He then laughs, tilting his head into the air. “America has lots of
problems.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Unfortunately,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I try not to stare, but I can’t help myself. There is a
jolliness to this man, like Santa, yet his eyes are a bit distant. He looks out
the restaurant’s windows and for a moment we say little but watch people carry
bags of groceries from the market. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Business or pleasure?” he says. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Both,” I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is a nice country,” he says. “Very friendly people.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Like yourself,” I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He smiles. “What do you do?” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I teach.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Oh yeah? What subject?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“College English.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Me, I’m terrible at language. You’re probably fixing all my
grammar as I speak, yes?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m not,” I say, but I had noticed an accent on the man that
wasn’t Australian, more European, Italian maybe. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you use a red pen?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Any pen I have is what I use. My wife uses green though.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“She teaches too?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I had a teacher who used a red pen. My papers looked like it
was a bleeding animal.” He laughs again, loud.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I try to avoid red.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you have children?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No. Not yet.” I don’t know why I say this. My wife and I
never planned on having kids, and she has scheduled a hysterectomy in December.
But it comes out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s good,” he says. “God wants you to procreate. But
only when you are ready, yes?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I nod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wonderful, wonderful.” He looks around. Shuffles in his
seat. He beckons to the waiter and makes a drinking motion with his hands.
“Water,” he says. “Please.” The waiter stares again. “Please. One more.” The
waiter pours another glass and places it in front of him. The man downs it like
the first. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You are a pleasant person,” he says. “I can tell. I don’t
meet many pleasant people.” He looks around again. “Yes, I can tell. I’m a
paranoid schizophrenic. They tell me that. It’s hard. But I’m coping. But you
are nice. You don’t care, do you?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I try to answer, but he abruptly stands. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You have fun in Australia. Remember to drink water. This
country can suck the moisture out of you.” He offers his hand. I take it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Good-bye,” he says. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nice meeting you,” I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“My name is Fabio,” he says. “In case our paths intersect
again?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Ira,” I say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Ira,” he repeats and leaves. I watch him turn the corner
and disappear from sight. I think the obvious—how strange a meeting to have
with Bartok’s memoir echoing in my brain. But I think of other things, too.
Where is he going? Where does he live? What has led him here? Who
takes care of him? Whether all that water will quench his thirst? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The waitress brings me my dumplings, little works of art,
steaming in bamboo containers. She points to the coffee. It steams on the
table. I tell her to take it away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-73414228329922652742012-12-31T13:31:00.001-05:002012-12-31T13:31:38.619-05:00Chase Holland Interviews George Saunders
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Saunders" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwA1XQ7ouRIK66PjalDc0nXtfXg5nes2l0JuqJfM-YqF2ZfXdxAzetJ54dHkaVxBuAAulLu-b-7PIdFtZsrAhRJNfLRqR5o6-5ug2wwBIJ5o8OQV8WreuFfEc4AWfnvBm6VZdcdpzf_K0/s320/saunderspic.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Maybe I
shouldn’t admit it, but I’ve always struggled to write third-person narratives.
Navigating the distance between narrator and character—up close, far away,
somewhere in the middle—it trips me up; I overthink it, and POV becomes much
more than a way to tell the story, it becomes the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">whole story</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, and </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">writing,</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
and </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">life,</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">I-can’t-do-this-so-why-am-I-even-trying?</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and I hit the
self-destruct button, page one. But something clicked when I first read “Tenth
of December” by George Saunders. Originally published in </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The New Yorker</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, now the eponymous story in his upcoming collection</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, “Tenth
of December” details the fateful collision of a suicidal man and a boy who just
wants to help. Saunders paints a subtle, wrenching portrait of youth,
innocence, death, and despair. What struck me most significantly about the
piece is how close Saunders gets to the characters. He digs deep into their
minds to reveals their fears, hopes, and secret truths. The story is written in
third-person, but reads very much like a first-person narrative. After reading
the story a few times, I emailed Professor Saunders and asked for some insight
into his process, specifically on POV and voice. He was nice enough to respond,
writing: “I call that voice ‘third-person ventriloquist.’ As you
accurately inferred, the point is to get as close as the person as
possible—using his diction, vocabulary, etc. My thinking there is that
our limitations as people (i.e. our character) is all tied in with our
limitations of language—we understand, or fail to, through our thoughts, which
are essentially limited by our diction and syntax. Something like that.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If there
is a typical path to becoming a professor, Saunders did not travel it. He
graduated from Colorado School of Mines with a BS in geophysical engineering
and worked in Sumatra and Indonesia analyzing seismic data before earning his
MA in creative writing from Syracuse University, where he is now a Professor. He
is the winner of multiple literary awards, and received the MacArthur
Fellowship in 2006. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Chase Holland: Creative writing
programs and workshops are often criticized and charged with producing bland
material. Workshops are said to restrict creativity and hinder experimentation.
Do you have a response to these types of criticism?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">George Saunders: I think these are all
real dangers. So my approach is to try
to be aware of these dangers and try to steer around them. I do this through the design of the workshop
and (more importantly) its execution.
Almost any pedagogy can go bad with sloppy application. So I try to be mindful of the inherent risks
of the format (as listed above). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: I've heard some professors talk about
how they do not feel creative writing can be taught. How do you feel about
this? Can it be taught? If so—to what degree?<span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">GS: In a program like ours “teaching
writing” isn’t really the point. We got
520 applications for 6 spots in fiction last year – so these people already
know how to write, and write beautifully.
That’s how they got it in. What
we are doing is mentoring existing talent.
I sometimes say we are trying to encourage a talent for having talent –
how does the young writer learn to work with her own abilities and
challenges? This sort of mentoring can
be done, for sure. It is complex and
sometimes even psychological work. But
you are helped out immensely by the brilliance of the students – they are
already on the right track and moving with good velocity – we are maybe only
clearing small trees off the tracks and shouting encouraging words as they go
past. Or, in some cases (here I will
happily drop the railroad analogy) we are helping them get clear of certain
obstructions they may have self-constructed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: How do you run workshop? Do you ask
the author to remain silent, or ask the students to come in with a written
response to the work beforehand? Have your methods for workshop changed since
you first began working as a professor? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS: Yes, they’re changing all the time,
mostly for reasons related to #1, above.
They also changed based on the particular group of students – I teach
the third of three years of grad workshops and our classes move together – so
these 6 students have been in two previous workshops. They know each other’s work and habits and so
on. So this has to be taken into
account. Sometimes I have the writer
speak and sometimes not – it’s really his/her call. These writers are advanced and mature and
know what they need. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">One change I’ve made recently is to
require them to bring in a list of five specific questions they have about the
text – nothing fancy, just places where the facts aren’t clear. I also ask for a two-sentence “Hollywood”
summary of the basic action (“Girl is sent to grandma’s with food basket,
encounters wolf.”) And also a list of
five places where the text particularly moved them or drew them in. Then, from there, it’s pretty much the normal
workshop. But I’m feeling that doing
this listing at the beginning gets us more quickly to the real meat of the
story and lets us skip over the first (usual) ten-fifteen mins of a workshop,
where people are generalizing and vaguely praising and the discussion sometimes
wanders off into the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I think the main thing is to be aware
of the tendencies of the group, and recognize that these change from year to
year (and even within the semester.) So
this argues for a non-dogmatic approach to the whole deal. Sometimes I think: we are not a workshop, we
are seven people who love fiction, talking about a specific example of it,
trying to be helpful. And "trying
to be helpful" is the most important part.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: We were recently tasked with
writing our teaching philosophies. Looking back, has your teaching philosophy
changed since you first began teaching? If so, can you give an example?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS: Yes. I used to try to do too much – to completely
“fix” a story. Now I feel pretty good if
we can get the writer to do one concrete thing to improve the story. ("Try
to be (genuinely) helpful.") I also
think now that when you are workshopping a story, you’re really helping more
with the next one than with that one – the writer is being made aware of
certain tendencies she has. It may be
hard to go back and fix the existing work, which is already so far down the
track (there I go again with the trains) but the next one might be more
readily/easily informed by the new realizations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: In class, we oftentimes discuss the
job landscape, and it can get pretty bleak. Do you have any advice for students
who want to go on to be professors after graduation?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS: There, as always, a book is
key. But my sense is that there are a
lot of new CW jobs opening up – some of my students have gotten really good
jobs even sans books. But </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">I'd say: separate CRAFT and LIVELIHOOD, at least in your
minds. Do the best work you can, then try and get a job. Don't
think it's necessary, or necessarily best, to "work in the
field." If selling hot dogs makes your work better, and teaching
comp makes it worse, sell the hot dogs. Be an artist first.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: EL Doctorow told me that he does
not read fiction while he is working on a story because he does not want any
influence to sneak its way into his writing. How do you feel about this? Are
you comfortable with reading another author's work while you are in the midst
of writing a story?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS: I get that, sure. And he is such a great writer I’m inclined to
just say: do what he says. But because
of my teaching life I can’t avoid reading fiction while I’m working on
fiction. I have to be reading most of
the time – student work and published work, admissions stuff etc etc. I guess I just have to take comfort in
thinking that (1) my inner voice will be strong enough to prevail and/or (2)
some influence is ok – my inner voice + the influential voice = some third
voice, that is (de facto) “mine.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: What books are "currently on
your nightstand"? Have you read anything recently that you'd care to
recommend? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS: Right now I’m re-reading <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780679728757-8">Blood Meridian</a>.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Am just finishing <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781400079742-2">The Keep</a> by Jennifer Egan and am really loving that.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Went back and read or reread a bunch of Henry James this summer.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Speaking of Doctorow – was blown away by “Ragtime,” which I’d somehow missed.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Also just read “A People’s History of the Civil War” – really opened a lot of windows in my head re the Civil War.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780812993806-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_GUeu0jP_LSkpQcBuOzEAiZNyhWLLlKghdRtCeNequBN5zOLiiarD3FTsTcsNqMzOWhATe_4ZFXu7NDupJ7UUjV8FxTNo0zX8dMM0LQIdJSuzEMuvzaBhwWmNXqJVgxzsMCpdvexy7ZE/s1600/Saunders.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">CH: How did you go about choosing what stories to include in <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780812993806-0">Tenthof December</a>? Did you find that it was a collection that assembled
naturally, or did you write toward it with a collective goal in mind?</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">GS:
I work really slowly, usually finishing 1-3 stories a year. About four
years into this book I could feel it start to take shape and knew which stories
would go in. It's sort of an intuitive process, but the main rule is if I
can finish a story, that means it's important to me—my subconscious is using it
to make a move forward. So if a story gets finished to my satisfaction,
it's a serious contender. I don't ever have a master plan—I just trust
that my subconscious will make an interesting pattern that is more interesting
than any I could have figured out in advance. That's the hope anyway...</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-65553064126452719602012-12-31T13:15:00.001-05:002012-12-31T13:15:49.310-05:00Hiatus DONE!It has been a while since the Clever Title posted something new. Life gets that way. It intrudes, sometimes, with the things we love most. Including this blog. And eating cake.<br />
<br />
But I'm here to say, the Clever Title is back. With new features. The Clever Title will expand its contents to creative writing pedagogical matters. We have a new contributing writer, Chase Holland, who will delight us with author interviews. Happy New Year!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-57949411609695843472012-04-19T15:37:00.002-04:002012-04-19T15:37:16.558-04:00My Friend Ben, the Good Soldier<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcM_-0jkKebVwYa_3i0U4TmhMCCdp3L9sDxQK-3ivSOPAqw57lr3fK8bL2BgTdCouPl2eCfy3f6iMMUIwuTlEE8SWmO_oI_biNKYBmGPvFPGV1zRbAM5roYei5jqd79yMQmX0Y-ZK55B4/s1600/good+soldiers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcM_-0jkKebVwYa_3i0U4TmhMCCdp3L9sDxQK-3ivSOPAqw57lr3fK8bL2BgTdCouPl2eCfy3f6iMMUIwuTlEE8SWmO_oI_biNKYBmGPvFPGV1zRbAM5roYei5jqd79yMQmX0Y-ZK55B4/s1600/good+soldiers.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a>Even though I
prefer to read at night, after my girlfriend and the rest of the apartment
building settles into bed, I don’t intend to stay up until two am. I have to
teach the next day, but I’m reading <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780312430023-3">TheGood Soldiers</a></i>. I want to stay up and finish it, pull an all-nighter until I
reach the end. Reading the first lines illustrates what a tremendous amount of
will power is required to turn the light out and finish the book the following
night:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“His
soldiers weren't yet calling him the Lost Kauz behind his back, not when this
began. The soldiers of his who would be injured were still perfectly healthy, and
the soldiers of his who would die were still perfectly alive. A soldier who was
a favorite of his, and who was often described as a younger version of him,
hadn't yet written of the war in a letter to a friend, ‘I've had enough of this
bullshit.’ Another soldier, one of his best, hadn't yet written in the journal
he kept hidden, ‘I've lost all hope. I feel the end is near for me, very, very
near.’ Another hadn't yet gotten angry enough to shoot a thirsty dog that was
lapping up a puddle of human blood.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Unlike the memoir <i>The Forever War</i>, which is the only other
book about Iraq written by a reporter, the author David Finkel is not the main
character of <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780312430023-3">The Good Soldiers</a></i>. He
disappears behind the third-person in order to tell the stories of the soldiers
of the 2<sup>nd</sup> Battalion, 16<sup>th</sup> Infantry Regiment who live in
a forward operating base far from the Green Zone. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
The average age of
the 2-16 Rangers is nineteen, the same age as my friend Ben when he deployed to
Iraq. I’ve known Ben since I was sixteen and he was fifteen. I’m thirty-one
now. Only when I say these numbers out loud am I aware that most of our
friendship has taken place after his experiences in Iraq—after he changed. I
still think of Ben as a loud, goofy guy who rolls his big bobbly head around
the top of his spindly neck as he verbally punctuates sentences with “Ahhh!” which
makes him sound like a pirate. I know the Ben who snuck onto campus dressed in
a ninja suit and vandalized the school. I know the Ben who listened to punk
rock but dressed preppy in order to sleep with the kinds of girls who would
never talk to dirty punk rockers like me. And I know the weak, scared Ben who
arrived crying during the storm New Years Eve to tell me and guys he was being
sent to Iraq. Everyone else knows a huge, muscular man with a commanding voice
and serious expression, an officer, a Green Beret, a professional soldier straight
from central casting.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
No matter who or
what you become as an adult, your family and childhood friends always see you
as the little shit you know you are. I think that is why Ben and I are such
good friends. Even though he enjoys the admiration and respect he now receives,
he’s uncomfortable with the person he has become. His real self is his teenage
self. He needs someone who knows the “real” him and needs it badly. After his
first tour, he got engaged to his high school girlfriend, a selfish, mean
spirited, and spiteful girl who made him visibly uncomfortable and nervous. One
night at the bar—and there were many, many nights at the bar after that first
tour—I pried out of him his reasons for wanting to marry someone who made him
so unhappy. “Because she knew me before the war,” he said. “She’s the only girl
who will ever really know me.” Eventually he broke off the engagement, to the
relief of his family and myself, but occasionally he admits to me at the end of
a long night of drinking that he still calls her.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Like the
nineteen-year-olds in <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780312430023-3">The Good Soldiers</a></i>,
Ben lived on a forward operating base outside the Green Zone. The stories Ben
tells me from that time are the funny, silly stories. His unit brought the
ingredients for pizza to a house they raided because a surveillance photo
showed an oven. I’ve heard about the pizza they made, not about the raid
itself. After an IED hit his Humvee, Ben was airlifted to Germany. I’ve heard
all about the wild times in German strip clubs. I’ve never heard about the
explosion itself. By chronicling the lives of average soldiers, David Finkel
may have told the story Ben can never tell himself. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Mike Ruso wrote this wonderful review. He's a nature boy. Seriously. There are leaves in his hair. </div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-14308891177730127962011-12-12T15:50:00.001-05:002011-12-12T15:51:47.084-05:00What Are You Reading, Sheila Squillante?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781564785138-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_2kC03G1i0nVOPCf6vm0tHoYeNmkiJJWQCBAGZQPdUKoQH1lN1JAj0sFma3tfh_9eTPUHFPaV_w9wknYa38bOKijAbVD3l8l_oMrUesC01lDZm5ep-ohGSx1p4pgLU2lkoiEDAtw4Dn0/s320/CS+GISCOMBE.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Today is my friend C.S. Giscombe’s birthday, and since I can’t treat
him to a pint of lager and a plate of rice & beans or gator sausage with
honey at the dive bar we used to lunch at before he moved to Berkeley, I will
treat you to some of his poetry. I’ve been re-reading his collection, <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781564785138-0">Prairie Style</a></i> (Dalkey Archive, 2008),
and each time I return to it, I find more to admire, more to uncover and
delight in. It’s what I say to my students about how the best poems call you to
return to them again and again, offering something new each time. It’s maybe a
cliché, but it’s also true. And it’s really true of this book. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br />
These are packed (prose) poems that
take up/on much: music, race, geography, topography, histories, jokes, animals,
love. It’s a downright reflective book
with a voice I find intimately deliberate.
What I mean is that as I read, I feel I’m the presence of a deliberating
mind, a whole energy, even, as it works stuff out. It bristles and rings. It
surrounds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Consider the first poem,
“Downstate,” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>To have the same sound, to be called by the
same name.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>Location’s what you come to; it’s the low
point, it usually repeats. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>To me, any value is a location to be
reckoned with; I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge how an event could be
talked about like it was you or me being talked about.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>Or location’s the reply, the obvious
statement about origin; it goes without saying that pleasure’s formidable.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Lots of formidable pleasures dwell
within, and not just of the cerebral sort. This is also a poetics of body, and
one of my favorite moments appears in the poem, “Two Directions:”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>To me love’s an animal, not the feeling of
watching one but the animal itself—blunt, active, equipped…<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes, yes, yes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
To me, (and this construction I
borrow from the book—there are a lot of qualifying “to me” moments. As in, <i>Have your own experience. This is what
matters to me</i>. Oh, I like that.) there are enchanting if dizzying shifts
happening in subject , perspective and voice throughout the collection. In some
poems there is the vast horizon:
“Nothing to the sky but its blank, endless chaos,” (“Day Song”); or a
moment when “The prairie appeared suddenly like it was a miracle or
fortification. (“Prairie Style”).” Then
still others feel, to borrow another excellent phrase, “furiously local” –specific
to the speaker’s desires, the smallness of a lived life, internal: “(I’d bought
a room in Jeanette Life’s hostelry—the Stone Soup—on the north side and could
walk to the archives.)” (“Camp Sites”). Even more so in “Ballad Values,” which
is<i>, to me</i>, a delicious list of
personal predilections, the sort of things you might want to know about a lover
before your first kiss:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<i>I like “short grass” and the way we sang
once—James Hamilton and I sang once—about liking meat that’s close to the bone.
And I prefer going over the junctions to being part of the argument. I like two
buses rocking perilously and metaphor judging you. I’m partial to ugly. I vary
about the point where pleasure’s a train of waves. I see how voice is a joke on
passion and value the smooth as well as the sweet report. I like it once you get past the natural
boundary.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
What I like most about the
collection as a made-thing is actually a formal aspect. It’s the quality of
tangent & repetition that gives the book its satisfying shape: we’re in the
city, we’re in the city, we’re in the city, there’s a fox! Love, love, love, music,
fox again. City. Music, music. Prairie. Love. Giscombe does this with subject
and image, but also—and this, <i>really</i>,
is my favorite part—at the sentence, phrase, and word –level. It’s a thing that makes me squeal with delight
when I come across it in a book or in music. Oh, how I love a braided motif! I
love that moment of recognizing it—<i>hey,
I’ve seen this before!—</i>and then the next moment of understanding it as
something “past the natural boundary.” Something <i>new</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
So happy birthday, dear friend.
Thank you for the gift of this beautiful book in the world!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
____________</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 14px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Sheila Squillante rhymes with Chianti and she quite likes that you can take that two ways. She is the author of the chapbook, <i>A Woman Traces the Shoreline</i>, just released from Dancing Girl Press.</span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-83754512275884149092011-09-18T15:56:00.000-04:002011-09-18T18:32:00.226-04:00Gift by Donna Steiner<br />
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I received a wonderful gift in the mail today: the first book written by my friend, Susan Fox Rogers. It’s called <b><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780801450075-0">My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir</a></b> and is being published by Cornell University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">I remember walking along a little stretch of the Hudson, listening to Susan describe her vision for the book. Over time, I read some of the essays that would become chapters and then, as the manuscript progressed, I read full drafts. As writing friends do, I marked the drafts, trying to make funny or encouraging or helpful comments in the margins. Later I read the galley proofs, and even got to weigh in on a few design elements. The book became a godchild, one I wanted to pay careful attention to and love and protect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780801450075-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbFEA08ejgX3lthWS6Rj54waWb8u7RU0B0l79jeheH9o8PZes-xRpdBh61C1h5bOMJglh9ao8YIv8rh9EmIPxLVWLeDgJ9HsHhzhDoaYaw-GtGGce43oFKHMD2xd5IrGNfrzoXvJ3L3w/s320/susan%2527s+book.jpg" width="206" /></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Susan and I met in graduate school at the University of Arizona. We had a couple of classes together and became friends; eventually we each left Arizona for New York. We stayed friends – writer friends – which means we periodically read each other’s work and cheer each other on, occasionally ponder a rejection, frequently laugh about the weird and wonderful facets of this chosen life. We’ve been close for a dozen years, we’ve had a lot of fun together, we’ve shared some heartbreak. A lot stands out, but there’s been nothing quite like seeing <b><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780801450075-0">My Reach</a></b> come to light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">As any writer knows, many good poems and stories and essays and novels never make it to print. I have friends who are intelligent, graceful, compelling writers but can’t find a publisher. I have manuscripts of my own collecting dust on a shelf. It can be a discouraging process, the years of effort that seem, at times, to come to nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">But this time, with Susan’s project, it was different. All the customary things happened that typically do when a manuscript is under way – the ideas, the slow progress, the revisions, the submissions, the rejections. Sometimes that’s as far as it goes… But after years of hard work, an editor became interested and the funding was found and the project was slated for publication. The ideas I’d heard while walking near the Hudson had been refined. The project had become more complex, more touching and more engaging. It would still be a book about the Hudson, but it was also about the quiet beauties of exploring a territory by kayak. And, perhaps most interesting of all, it was about grieving, and about joy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">It was, in short, a book – a beautiful, tangible, hard-cover book. And that book arrived in the mail today. When I read the Acknowledgments, I cried. I didn’t cry when my name was mentioned, although it makes me proud to see it there. I cried when Susan talked about her family. I won’t give anything away – you should read <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780801450075-0"><b>My Reach</b> </a>– but Susan’s family came to be part of the book in ways that she never anticipated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">That’s the thing about writing, and about families, and about friendship, and about rivers, and even, I think, about something as simple as opening your mailbox. You don’t really know what’s coming. Today came Susan’s book. Today came a reminder of why writing matters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">What a wonderful gift.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt;">Donna Steiner’s writing has been published in literary journals including<i> Fourth Genre, Shenandoah, The</i> <i>Bellingham Review, The Sun</i>, and <i>The</i> <i>Los Angeles Review.</i> She’s a contributing writer for <i>Hippocampus Magazine</i>, teaches at the State University of New York in Oswego and is a 2011 fellow in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Californian FB","serif";">“Animal agriculture ma<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>kes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation combined; it is the number one cause of climate change.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ-mtH2LiFvqptRbo_qS9zp361UKcIgxmC3W34-OKFvfitxXMSiEujnks6NYDhZa1F2srUZLf1QGTmuqf4ohvlizEpOTsJ9VYW9a-7abhslXUAzZmvlqnS0PjiUUqOudJ8Ec5iHo-62O0/s1600/eatinganimalscover.jpeg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i> </i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I am not a raging anything. I am passionate about my own decisions yet I have never felt the need to inform others on how to live, behave or what to eat. Yet reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4"><i>Eating Animals</i></a> has led me to examine my life as an eater, a food lover and a person with a heavy conscious. <span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I was raised in a Colombian household. To my family eating was a shared experience of delight, laughter and indulgence. To put it simply, in our home food was love.<span> </span>My mother cooked dishes that often times caused our upstairs tenants to come knocking on our door to linger in the doorway and get a better whiff of the spice filled aroma that ran through their air vent. Welcomed by my parents, they’d end up sitting at our dinner table eating my mother’s carne assada, ground beef stuffed bell peppers, fajitas, yellow salted potatoes, chicken and rice, meatballs, ceviche,<span> </span>breaded lemon pork chops. The Muñoz residence was a home of extreme foodies. This is why I’m sure my family was stunned when I, who loved all things wrapped in bacon, announced that I was going to become a vegetarian. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I have been a vegetarian for over ten years now. And although I’m still often faced with <i>why in hell would you not eat meat </i>expressions, <i>hmm, interesting</i> whimpers of pity, interrogating questions and pointblank confused glares, nowadays I rarely stop to acces, let alone defend my life choices. Reading <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4">Eating Animals</a> </i>caused me to examine my relationship with food.<span> </span>My reasoning like Foer’s and that of many vegetarians circled around the fact that I did not want to eat animals. It is the grappling of this truth that lies at the core of <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4"><i>Eating Animals</i></a>. Foer’s book is many things including, a self-study, a memoir, a book about food, an activist environmental book, but above all it’s a book that questions and challenges our habits, our comfort, our future and our humanity. <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4">Eating Animals</a> </i>is a call to action for people who may or may not want to know about what eating animals entails. Foer asks readers to put down their forks and ask: What am I eating? How did it get on my plate? Who and what do my eating choices affect? And ultimately, what does it mean to eat animals? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Foer’s clever modernist prose seen that appear in his works of fiction, <i>Everything Is Illuminated</i> and <i>Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</i>, seeps the pages of <i>Eating Animals</i>, his first nonfiction book.<span> </span>Fatherhood was the catalyst for Foer to research the food industry, visit farms and factories across the nation and write a book about eating animals. In 270 pages <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4"><i>Eating Animals</i></a> examines people’s relationship with animals, identifies Foer’s vegetarian conviction and traces both his hopeful and horrific encounters with American farming and food production.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">What sets Foer’s poignant and informative book apart from other books and documentaries about this country’s food industry is his ability to sympathize with animal eaters. Foer’s sentimentality towards eating animals lies in the fact that neither he nor his vegetarian raised child will ever eat his grandmother’s famous chicken and carrots. I am often times asked if I miss the taste of meat and my answer is always yes. Eating animals is delicious. Yet my missing meat does not mean I long for it. I miss eating animals because it was once a part of who I was.<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">When describing his lack of lust for red meat Foer admits, “…the smell of summer barbeque still makes my mouth water.” Similarly, to this day the smell of fried bacon makes my eyelids flutter. I am able to placate myself with a deep blissful inhale. Stuffed turkey, glazed ham, baked chicken, pickled fish, most major holidays have a super star animal at the center of<span> </span>the table ready to be eaten. Herein lies the paradox, eating animals is a significant part of the American lifestyle yet, as Foer states, American factory farming is the key player in the deterioration of our ecosystem. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Eating Animals</span></i></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> is not simply another pro-vegan and anti-meat book. What is at stake here is not only the animal welfare, health and environmental issues but our ability to stop think and choose to act upon our moral instinct. “Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.” Food production in this country has gone terribly awry. Yet as a population of people who love to eat animals we are writing our own downfall.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“Scientists predict the total collapse of all fished species in less than fifty years.” <span> </span>The destruction of our everyday buying and eating choices are revealed in <i>Eating Animals</i> and although the truths Foer presents are neither pleasing nor easy to act upon they should be seriously considered. <span> </span>Foer teaches his reader that the staggering effects of factory farming impact both the environment and human morals. Reading <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316069885-4"><i>Eating Animals</i></a> has caused me to become a more active vegetarian mainly because I don’t want my children or grandchildren to look back on my generation with anger and disappointment. <span> </span>“More than anything, I want people to come away with the idea that meat matters," Foer says. "I am not asking other people to come to these conclusions. I am asking people to see something that they already know, which is that what we choose to eat when ordering at a restaurant, what we choose to buy at a supermarket, is frankly one of the most important decisions we'll make all day.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">___________</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Californian FB","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Gloria Munoz wrote this amazing essay. When you see her, ask her to sing that Lorca poem. She will swoon you with her voice. </span></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-39732836909284181942011-06-03T13:30:00.006-04:002011-06-03T13:30:02.395-04:00There Is No Easy Answer, Claire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWLCP1PjAIsAdcExVhwpnm2SMBLAqsrlb-U6bvpppogyyhKxtKtx2zB0JZXMFSv2L02mAxkY9NuAHPvB-kREYSyFoAH8oxx2LUZHMhp_rsNQp3Dd6jJWyGF8uM4f9nYBlARaBSzupfejU/s1600/bonkcover.jpeg" /></a></div>I wanted Mary Roach to give me an excuse to stop having sex. I thought I would find myself in a list of symptoms and say – there I am. That incurable disease? That’s me. Got what I came for… and now I can quit. I ordered <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19">Bonk</a> </i>because I read an excerpt of her first book, <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393324822-4">Stiff</a>,</i> which explored the wondrous lives of the recently and very dead, and I liked her approach to the subject of bodies, that of a curious wide-eyed researcher. It followed that <i>Bonk</i> wouldn’t be an account of one woman’s sexual dysfunction (in which I knew I would recognize myself).<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393324822-4"><i>Stiff</i></a> assured me that <i>Bonk</i> was about the science of sex, that Mary Roach would be the trustworthy guide I wanted her to be, that she would be funny and sympathetically human, and that she would provide me with the gentle handholding (dragging may be the better term) I needed to enter the Museum of Human Sexuality and by proxy and long-delayed result, my own psyche. Happily, Mary Roach gave me all of these things. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">As foreign as some of the battery operated sex machines, rubber anuses, and sheep testicle transplants in this book are, Roach treats them with respect, and, as she already knew or finds out as she explores their history and the history of the people that surround these objects, they are testament to the ways we try to find out more about ourselves. To make ourselves happier. Or, as in the case of the penile pricking ring in chapter six, save our souls from the dangers of masturbation. Thank God times have changed, and thank God sex today can be about fun. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Roach also knows that the unbiased, unaffected scientist who denies her own involvement in a project she is unavoidably affected by, is outmoded. She knows that her humanness makes her a better guide, one that we can commiserate with to get through the cringe moments, those moments that strip sex of it’s mythology and it’s emotionality and put it in a petri dish. She reminds us that all of this science is about being happier and having more fun. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Which is why Roach’s sense of humor is important. Sex is so scary, uncomfortable, awkward, and silly that without the jokes, Roach’s exploration would seem more like work and less like fun. I can imagine Roach (the nightingale I take into the coal mine of sexuality) researching, or like in the footnote on page 212, spending half an hour on Merriam-Webster making the dictionary say “CLIT-oris” and “Vagina” and “Penis.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Unlike science’s need to argue something in order to be successful, what makes Roach, and therefore <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19">Bonk</a>,</i> so successful and readable is the fact that she refrains from coming to any conclusions, preaching, or sliding into didacticism. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Roach could have argued that all women should tell their partners what feels good and where, exactly, they ought to be rubbing, and then provided the scientific evidence for said argument. That would have been good advice. Instead, she explains the myriad hilarious ways in which others (scientists) have made that argument and come to that conclusion. As well as a twenty other conflicting conclusions. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">She doesn’t condemn science for its vagaries and lack of sensitivity, either, which would amount to preaching from the other side of the glass. Instead, she is the best kind of guide, one that would like to understand sex, but really just wants to know more about it. Importantly, Mary Roach does what I am afraid to do: find out for herself, through experiment, research, and good humor, what sex, is, does, and will be. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">All thirteen chapters have titles that, like “The Upsuck Chronicles: Does Orgasm Boost Fertility, and What Do Pigs Know About It?” evince the extent to which Roach plumbs sex (ha ha). She explains medieval legislation against masturbation, but also explores contemporary laboratory studies of sex, one of which, having found that gay and lesbian couples have more intense and pleasurable sex than heterosexual couples, still wants to “help” homosexual couples into straight relationships. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">While she is a trustworthy and fallible guide, Roach doesn’t talk about her own sex life, except when she convinces her husband to have sex in an MRI in order to better understand body parts during coitus. It is this emotional stake she puts into this project, and not her story, that make me want to call her Mary and not Roach, give her a hug, and laugh with her about the time when she was observing (through a small window) a woman with multiple sclerosis masturbate. Mary climbed up on a desk to see through the window and lost her balance, starting a Rube-Goldberg of loud crashing noises and undoubtedly distracting the poor woman on the other side of the glass. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It disappoints me that Mary Roach didn’t give me an easy out by lining up my symptoms with some rare but incurable sexual disorder from which I will never be rescued, so that I can just go ahead make plans for a life without sex, romance, and relationships. It disappoints me, because that would have been easy. But Mary Roach is not a stick-your-head-in-the-sand kind of woman. Instead, I feel like she sat me down and said, “There is no one answer, Claire. Your physiology is keeping you from achieving orgasm, but so is your brain, and so is everything else. But now that you know all of this, buck up. Be happy. Do what you can with what you have. And isn’t there a lot of stuff out there that you can do?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Despite this feeling, reading <i>Bonk</i> was difficult. Writing about it has been much harder, because I keep trying to say that <i>Bonk</i> was good because it was frank and funny and interesting. But what I am feeling is anxious, and despite all of Roach’s unstoppable enthusiasm and the extent to which she puts her own emotions on the line, I still want to give up. I am trying to figure out why this is when my eyes fall on the LA Times blurb on <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19"><i>Bonk</i></a>’s cover<i>.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I have finished the book, and am looking at the cover, which has an image of a couple embracing under a magnifying scope. Beside two couples embracing under a magnifying scope are fifteen words that suddenly make me uncomfortable. For your information, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393324822-4"><i>Stiff</i></a> is the title of Roach’s first book, which explored the wondrous lives of the recently and very dead. I thought it was brilliant as well. “If <i>Stiff</i> made me glad I wasn’t dead,” Tara Ison says, “<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19"><i>Bonk</i></a> makes me happy to be alive.” Yes, Tara of the LA Times, I found this book lively and fun to read, but “happy to be alive?” I want to ask you what your sex life is like. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Are you one of the women, who like the woman on page thirty, can “bring herself to orgasm five times in quick succession” without any physical contact? If so, I envy you. Even if you could only do it once, I would envy you. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">That is not the blurb I would have written for the cover of this book. I might have said, “Mary Roach makes good sex sound like more work than I want it to be,” but that is me on a pessimistic day, when I am not remembering how much fun I had when I read <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393334791-19"><i>Bonk</i></a>, and what I took away from it: Enjoy knowing more about yourself. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">On a better day I might say, “Thank you, Mary Roach, for not making a decision about who I am, and for making sex funny.” But that would not go over well with the publishers, so instead, I might say, “<i>Bonk</i> is a great book,” and leave it at that. </div><br />
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Claire Stephens penned this fabulous essay. She's fast on her bike. I dare you to race her.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-54919219763839082722011-05-14T12:08:00.000-04:002011-05-14T12:08:00.142-04:00Fragments (From the F section of Kim’s Encyclopedia)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/> <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> <w:Word11KerningPairs/> <w:CachedColBalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781400080465-2" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoCQUv_wpCTRLv1JoSPaAMsCgrcn_efQ5mCTih4haKtmN2kLJMqWm-L9JGgZiBgpFhS3gY2KyrhR3OU77mlqbTb6sB-NB_WmvfAl931n9j5GUnX8yOHz-Jzd6KOIB8-RfZvThlvy74mKs/s1600/rosenthalcover.jpeg" /></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fragmented things I like:</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. Kaleidoscopes. The struggle to identify actual shapes is both frustrating and endearing. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. Mosaics. Especially the Cinderella one in the castle at Disney World. When my legs are not being run over by strollers, I like to stand up close to the long stretch of wall and find where the peach-colored pieces start to form Cinderella’s cheek. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. The back doorway of the House of Blues, Orlando. Surrounding the door is a halo of concrete and trinkets. There are old toys, coins, pieces of beer bottles and glitter all cemented into the wall. It reminds me of Junk City from Jim Henson’s<i> Labyrinth</i>. Forgotten treasures packed together. I take a picture because my parent’s won’t let me stand there and ponder over it. I’m blocking the doorway, they say. People gotta eat. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Fragments things I hate: </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. Puzzles. I already know the story. It’s on the cover of the box. And I can never seem to finish one anyway.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. Sentence fragments in student papers. Yep.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I like fragments. There’s something enchanting and mysterious about them. Maybe it’s because they function like the antithesis of a novel or perhaps they are just one way I find I can relate to postmodernism. But I’m talking about writing here. Storytelling.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So when I stumbled upon <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781400080465-2"><i>Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life</i></a> by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, the nonfiction equivalent of this kind of fragmented storytelling, I literally gasped loud enough in the bookstore to turn heads. In her forward, Rosenthal boasts of telling the story of her life, one completely absent of shocking clichés like abusive parents, addictions, and past life speculations. This is the story of one regular woman living in the twenty-first century, albeit in the structure of an encyclopedia. No joke. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There are charts, graphs, photos and illustrations. Even the front and back flaps of the books are used to stay in-sync with the quirky humor that is Rosenthal. For instance, the back flap has five sentences, each about what a certain person is doing at the exact moment I’m reading the flap. There’s a hilariously long reader’s agreement, in which, if you sign it, you agree not to reproduce the book and agree that “on any given weekend, there are way too many mattress sales” (v). Rosenthal does a great job grounding the reader in 21<sup>st</sup> century living, from her Orientation Almanac, outlining anything an alien or time-traveler would need to know about this time period, to entries listed about kid’s meals on flights, parking spots, and compliments. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I got to savor each snapshot of life that Rosenthal offered. I remember being stuck on the road for an hour in the backseat and on the way to Disney World for our usual weekend trip. My parents talked quietly and I, being the diligent grad student with no traces left of motion sickness, decided to get some reading done. Be productive. About thirty pages into it, and with more than a half an hour to go before seeing the big ears, I bookmarked my page and put it away. I didn’t want to finish it too soon. I didn’t want to reach the last entry. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In the entry titled “Go,” Rosenthal writes:</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">“I get this weird sort of rush when an ambulance comes racing down the street, and I, along with all the other drivers, quickly pull over to let the more important vehicle pass. It’s as if us little cars on the side of the road are cheering, <i>Go! Go! You can do it! Go, important ambulance, go!</i> The experience invariably leaves me feeling proud and giddy” </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">When reading <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781400080465-2"><i>Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life</i></a>, I felt at times like I was riding in an ambulance. The roads were blurry and I could only focus on one tree or blue car or bike before something entirely different would catch me attention. And yet, as the gears in my head kept turning to put it all together, I watched the story of Rosenthal’s life unfold without confusion. I feel like I’ve seen glimpses of her life that are both intimate and not embarrassing; they are little things, ordinary things. The kinds of things that you’d talk to someone about if you sat down with him or her and had coffee. Reading this book has taught me that the high-octane drama of life does not always compare to a simple story about the weather or what you ate for lunch. Ordinary stories, like pieces of a mosaic or puzzle, can be told in extraordinary ways. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">______</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">As you're reading this, Kimberly Karalius is likely waiting in line at Disney World. There's probably a kid crying behind her, but she's too busy looking for Prince Philip to care. She writes about her magical and mostly mundane adventures in her blog, I Wear Milk Crowns. (<a href="http://kkaralius.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: blue;">http://kkaralius.blogspot.com/</span></a>)</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-65571317785871464882011-05-03T11:52:00.003-04:002011-05-03T12:04:54.232-04:00Lie to Me, Baby: The (very) Brief Adventures of Stalker Girl<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061136672-0"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 120px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAdQPsuvxnBgCSKxLb58PeeJEYE2hcErg5ngLQjrSQIUUsp34hdnUO9mB02lmeiYJGIJdpVqIgkjndYwzX0vbAUicnIef5Vh98XETAkq-PJMfpDIf-wMi9Th3oeLFGRejwU2vQ4c_Il18/s200/boy+alonecover.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602521065659729778" border="0" /></a>Not since Lauren Slater’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780142000069-0"><i>Lying</i></a> has a memoir come along and deliberately lied to readers. And I don’t mean in the way of those infamous fake memoirs we all think about when we hear the words “memoir” and “lying” mentioned in the same breath. I’m talking in a straight-up literary and artful way. But before I get into the details of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s memoir <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061136672-0"><i>Boy Alone</i></a> I have to tell you how I came across his book. Why? Because I’m a narcissist, of course, so I can’t help talking about myself. But seriously, despite all my navel gazing, I’m also a huge believer in coincidence, or fate if you will.<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">It all began when I first encountered Karl Taro Greenfeld’s work in the pages of <i>The Sun</i>, a short story entitled “Death Or Glory.” I was smitten, in the midst of a very serious literary crush. Needless to say, I’ve had other literary crushes. There was Junot Díaz, Kathryn Harrison, Frank McCourt, all of them shamelessly seducing me with their words. By the time I picked up a used copy of <i>The Best American Short Stories 2009</i>, and found “NowTrends,” I was convinced we were meant to be: Karl Taro Greenfeld and me, Stalker Girl. Fate? You bet. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">So, fast forward to January 2011. I’ve been celebrating the publication of my own short story in one of my favorite lit mags of all time—but I won’t elaborate on that since this is not at all about shameless self promotion—and tonight, I’m sitting in front of my computer when I open my email. It’s from someone who’s just read my story, congratulating and thanking me for writing it. And who is the email from? You guessed it. Karl Taro Greenfeld. I almost fall out of my desk, and by “my desk,” I mean the couch. But that’s not all. Tomorrow there will be a shiny new copy of <i>The Missouri Review</i> in my mailbox, and what will I find in its pages? Greenfeld’s “Even the Gargoyle Is Frightened.” I won’t read it right away. I’ll carry it in my messenger bag for weeks. Foreplay. Of the literary kind. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Back to the present. How should I respond to his email? I stop myself from replying with “Wow! I’ve been web-stalking you for months!” and I resist the urge to use various <i>I-heart-you-and-you-complete-me</i> clichés. I know how frightening such a statement might sound to a normal person. Instead, I opt for sanity. I thank him, because I’m grateful, and I tell him that it means a lot, because it does. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it?</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">*</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">It’s not that simple. Of course, every writer needs validation, to know that our essay or memoir or story has touched even one reader is part of the reason we all write. But let’s just say that lately, I’ve been having a crisis of faith— in the state of memoir as a whole, and in myself as a writer—which was triggered in part by the recent slew of celebrity “memoirs” crowding bookstore shelves. (Do we really live in a world where books written, and I use the term loosely, by Snooki and Justin Bieber are bestsellers? Are there no more Frank McCourts or Annie Dillards left in the world? And don’t even get me started on ghostwriters.) But I won’t mislead you. That wasn’t it. Not entirely. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">The conversation that followed David Shields’ <i>Reality Hunger</i> also got me thinking about myself as a writer, about my own memoir, and about why I keep writing the thing if it feels like I’m banging my head against the wall. Then Taylor Antrim reviewed Nick Flynn’s <i>The Ticking is the Bomb</i> for <i>The Daily Beast</i>, insisting that the memoir would be a much better book if it were written as a novel. Antrim wrote, “<span style="color:black;">So, what’s with all the memoirs? Are they somehow… easier? Is the storytelling bar set lower? Too often, memoir seems to me an excuse to be fragmentary, incomplete, narratively non-rigorous.” At the time, because I was without a doubt, one hundred percent, a defender of memoir, my answers to his questions were simple: No, writing a memoir is not easier. </span>This reviewer is wrong. This is a failure on the reader's part. He doesn’t get it. The story arc here is secondary. He doesn’t understand what this memoir is doing because he’s a fiction writer. Only a fiction writer would say that the novel form is greater than the memoir, that fiction is better than nonfiction. (*Disclaimer: I’m also a fiction writer. I don’t have a preference over fiction and creative nonfiction.) </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">But later, as I struggled with my own writing, I wasn’t so sure. First I needed to find out why I was struggling. Maybe it was <i>me</i> who didn’t understand what memoir was supposed to do, or maybe I picked the wrong tense, or the wrong voice, or the wrong structure. Maybe I just wasn’t a good enough writer. I admit I found myself straying, scouring bookshelves like a mad Stalker Girl, looking through all my favorite memoirs for what exactly it was that made them my favorites. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">And then I found it. I didn’t have a name for it then, but I knew what it was. And what did all these books have in common? Story arc? Whatever it was, it was not secondary. I found myself asking, <i>Do I have a secret preference for fiction? Am I being unfaithful to my memoir? Am I sleeping with the enemy? </i> </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">*</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">And so I picked up a copy of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s memoir, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061136672-0"><i>Boy Alone</i></a>. Yes, I’m still in love. Not just because this is a book that sheds light on the effects of autism on children and their entire families, a book that while intentionally lying to readers—how? Sorry, I won’t spoil it for you, but I will tell you that everything is not as it seems—still manages to remain honest and unflinching, a book that at times straddles the line between memoir and lyric essay. Yes it is all those things, but it’s so much more—it’s a book that doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth even when it’s about the narrator’s own flaws or those of his family. <i>Boy Alone</i> will take the memoir conversation in a different direction, will make you question what a memoir is supposed to do, question how you read, and how memoirists write or should write, and what’s acceptable in nonfiction, and why. Maybe we will find ourselves discussing whether the story is determined by the structure or if the structure is determined by the story, instead of having yet another conversation about truth in memoir, or comparing memoir to fiction. </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">Reading Greenfeld’s memoir helped me make up my mind about Antrim’s review. I realize now that it isn’t just a failure on the reader’s part. But it isn’t a writer’s failure either. It’s simply a matter of preference. Some readers prefer poetry, others fiction. Some people like reality TV, others, like me, prefer to watch zombies get their heads blown off on AMC. Not that I’m comparing reality TV—or zombie gore for that matter—to memoir. But you get what I mean.</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">I bet you won’t be shocked to hear that after I finished <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061136672-0">Boy Alone</a></i>, I just had to contact Greenfeld. Had to. Couldn’t contain myself. I also sent him a copy of my now finished memoir, and not only did he read it, but he thought it was “a brilliant coming of age story, especially the Aristotelian Organicism and Essentialism, the alien warfare, and the unique star-crossed lovers storyline.” Yup. His words exactly. And afterward, my agent called to give me the good news: seven figures. Oh, and did I forget to mention that President Obama called to ask if I would have dinner with him and Michelle? Oprah will also be there. I suspect they have a surprise for me. Suck on that, Snooki! </div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">*</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">What really happens:</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing">After I finish <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061136672-0"><i>Boy Alone</i></a>, I turn on my computer, find Greenfeld’s email address, start writing. You already know what I’m going to say, don’t you? When I’m about to hit send, I change my mind. I don’t send it. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it?<br /><br />_______<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This awesome essay was written by Jaquira Diaz. Don't mess with her. She knows 101 ways to take you down. </span><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-7385549318060025852011-04-07T12:09:00.001-04:002011-09-18T15:57:11.175-04:00Life in the 12 x 12, or The Upside of the Downsize<br />
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<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781577318972-1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhMk3ee-OdRcdujy8_hMsb23lKhd0gGgGVvVl8BMKOYYAPzvnQTqLNdvTD56L2CLklgRfooioAs3hMFO-aQaqhQGImZUQc6NfltUdyG5gHERI6EZvndFManWvEpzWI1GXft8ji3-QqMDI/s1600/Twelvebytwelve.jpeg" /></a></div>
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My apartment has granite countertops and cushy carpets. There’s a flat screen TV in the living room, and my two roommates also have TVs in their bedrooms. We have a fridge and a microwave, a washer and dryer. Paintings and posters line the walls, and we recently hung some art deco mirrors from Target. We’ve got two couches and two chairs and a dinner table for four. Vases and scented candles and a martini mix set speckle the coffee table. When it’s cold we turn on the heat and when it’s hot we crank the air conditioning. </div>
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Inside Dr. Jackie Benton’s home is a rocking chair, four-burner gas stove, a bed and a bookshelf. The photographs of her life are tacked to the cedar walls, along with Buddhist and Taoist sayings written on scraps of paper. That’s it. </div>
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My apartment’s 1235 square feet dwarfs her 144 square feet. Beyond Jackie’s 12 x 12 grow Virginia bluebells, persimmon for wine and preserves, cornelian cherry, mint everywhere, spicebush, elderberries, pecan trees and much more flora. Her dozens of gardens lead out to a lush forest and No Name Creek—literally, that’s its name. </div>
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It is here in rural North Carolina that a well educated physician in her sixties lives off the grid without plumbing or electricity—in North Carolina, any structure 12 x 12 feet isn’t considered a house and doesn’t require property taxes. The dirt road leading up to the farm isn’t on Google Maps. In the 12 x 12 she has “the carbon footprint of a Bangladeshi” and thrives off her permaculture farm, one that works in harmony with nature. In short, she makes Thoreau look about as materialistic as Kim Kardashian.</div>
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All this sounds wonderful to me, as I sink deeper into my recliner and shovel a handful of Oreo’s in my mouth. I gaze up from the book <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781577318972-1"><i>Twelve By Twelve</i>,</a> taking stock of all my stuff. I don’t really need most of it, if any of it. But I like my recliner, I like Oreo’s—if only because I’m used to them. Could I shed it all like Jackie? </div>
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William Powers went to find this out for himself. After spending a decade as a relief worker in Africa and South America, he returned to the US astonished by the consumption and total division from nature, and at many times the derision toward it. Jackie invited him to stay at her 12 x 12 while she marched in protests across the country (she took the Greyhound— “Grey-doggin’ it” as she called it —and stayed with friends to reduce her footprint). </div>
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And even though Powers had been accustomed to simplicity from his relief work, at first it wasn’t all rainbows and rapture. The first day he couldn’t stomach the idea of the composting toilet, though he didn’t mind the lack of electricity:</div>
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<i>The only oddity was that I was in the heart of the world’s richest nation—but living a subsistence life. No humming refrigerator, no ringing phones, and none of the ubiquitous “stand-by” lights on appliances—those false promises of life inside the machines. Instead: the whippoorwill’s nocturnal call, branches scraping quiet rhythms in the breeze, and groggy No Name Creek. Looking east from the 12 x 12 toward the creek into the ink black night, without the slightest glimmer of industrial society, I thought, </i><i>could I really be inside the borders of a high-tech superpower?</i></div>
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My air conditioner just kicked on. My Pandora music station sings, and I’m swathed in the laptop’s fluorescence. I take mental inventory of the computers, video game consoles, iPods and various iParaphernalia that fill the apartment. With entertainment streaming in our pores at the speed of light, surely we’d get bored at the 12 x 12. What would we do all day alone in the woods, without even Facebook to update, to show off to all our friends how rustic we are on our little nature retreat?</div>
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When Powers asked Jackie what he was supposed to do during his weeks there, his direction was “Not do, <i>be…</i>I was simply to sit…being was indeed the most difficult part in an era where clutter—in both stuff and activity—eclipses the sweetness of solitude, the aliveness of the present moment.” <i> </i> </div>
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And while reading Powers’ journey in <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781577318972-1">Twelve By Twelve</a> </i>I too became steeped in the present moment. But the book does much more than try to get us to shut off the iPhone and stare at the daffodils. <i>Twelve By Twelve</i> smartly weaves nature writing with literary journalism, philosophy and indigenous wisdom. In a single chapter Powers juxtaposes statistics on carbon parts per million with Mary Oliver’s poem “Mindfulness”; another chapter threads the local history of the KKK with the dialogue of a Bolivian medicine man. This is how both the book and a permaculture farm work: part science, part spirituality, part sheer poetry.</div>
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Powers unpeels a world much larger, and much richer, than the American monoculture of strip malls and fast food joints. <i>Twelve By Twelve</i> takes us to Bolivia’s remote Aynmaran village, a New Mexican organic garlic farm, Brazilian rainforests and the Gold Kist chicken factory, yet always we come home to the 12 x 12. Of course, the 12 x 12 is not <i>my</i> home. My home is on the second floor of a neatly landscaped stucco complex, pretentiously called The Madison at SoHo.</div>
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Though I’ve highlighted and dog-eared nearly every page, I can’t just up and move to a cabin in the woods. Powers knows this, and his final chapters push beyond the walls of the 12 x 12 into practical ways I can let the sap of his experience run into my own life. And even with an appendix of resources for organic farms and nonprofit organizations, Powers still swirls his tender personal narrative with lessons from Thich Nhah Hanh and Nietzsche. </div>
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I close the book and look out my window to the cars rushing below, feeling all sorts of wasteful. But there’s inspiration mixed in there, too. Perhaps because there is my world of metal and glass, and another world of water and persimmons. But these worlds are not entirely separate, and perhaps it is their intermingling that is the most beautiful possibility. </div>
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<b><i>Melissa Carroll wrote this wonderful essay about space and what we cling too. (I shall not depart with my Iphone, ever.) She teaches yoga and writes phenomenal blog entries at: <a href="http://zenontherocks.blogspot.com/">zenontherocks.blogspot.com/</a>. </i></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-49312735195304478092011-03-13T13:03:00.000-04:002011-03-13T13:03:00.552-04:00Fan Letter<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">December 22, 2010</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dear Michael,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve been reading your books—just finished <i>Like Happiness</i>—and trying to decide how to tell you how much I like them. Finally I tried to imagine how I’d like someone to respond to my book; thus this letter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m writing this by the campfire in Collier Seminole State Park, listening (unfortunately) to the teen girls behind our campsite singing loudly and talking even more loudly. I’ve been thinking about how you camp away from people and wishing we were doing that now. It is a big step, though, from never camping to full-out-primitive-pack-it-in-pack-it-out, and this seemed like a necessary intermediate level.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyway I don’t imagine you reading this actual scribbled piece of paper—my handwriting is atrocious (the only subject I got a “C” in during my grade school years), and deciphering it would no doubt be more frustrating than any reward in content.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First off let me tell you that I really did fall for your poems just from hearing you read at the Other Words conference. I knew then that I wanted your books, but an odd shyness (hard to imagine, I’m sure) overcame me and I decided to order them when I got home. I knew I loved your most recent work best, so I ordered <i>Flock and Shadow </i>and pre-ordered <i>Like Happiness</i>, and looked up anything of yours I could find online while I was waiting for my packages to arrive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And what I found just whet my appetite, and confirmed that you share a peculiarity I had suspected was mine alone: the certainty that there are whole worlds inside us, landscapes both natural and fantastic, better and worse, lighter and darker than our outside selves, more mysterious, more real, truer.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Maybe other people feel this. Maybe a lot of other people. But they don’t seem to talk about it, to think about it the way I do—and you do. Well, of course not precisely—these are your poems we’re talking about, your particular wisdom gained (it seems to me) from the kind of mindfulness I’m just taking my first steps towards.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so: <i>Flock and Shadow</i>. I read the new poems first. I mentioned to you already how I had to catch my breath after “Sky Full of White Birds.” Some parts I want to be the speaker: “In the middle of the night large creatures pulled themselves from the ocean and settled down near me.” And some parts I am, even if I’m not sure I want to be: “…would we stand still and inhale, or would we walk on, safe in our smaller selves, free of that feeling that takes us beyond and leaves us abandoned, out of breath and hungry.” And all this building on more <i>ands</i>, more images I know at the heart level (“the guts and groans of horses in glittering fields”) up to the final word, “sing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(I love the surprising ways singing comes up in your work, the mysteries and apt motif: “the world is always singing,/that’s just what the world must do to stay intact.”—but I digress.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So after I read the new poems, I started section 2, your work from the 1980s. And it was instructive to see where you’d come from—I felt like I was peeking into a photo album. As I read through the whole middle of the book, though, I had to sometimes spell myself with a trip into the last section—the second-most-recent poems. Some of the older poems are starker; some of them hurt more to read; they feel not more lost but less content with being lost, more frantic about it, sometimes almost bitter about it. I know I presume too much, but some of them felt less far along the path to enlightenment than your recent work; and so they were closer to my own anxious musings, and therefore a bit unsettling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then I finally received <i>Like Happiness</i>. And yes, I felt happiness reading it, but really because it never gave in to easy definitions—after all, happiness can only be talked about in simile: might this be like it? Might that? What if these things we remember as weird or difficult were, really, more like happiness than like anything else? Counting, for example. Fraught, yes—but also a measure of happiness? A happiness the speaker wouldn’t experience as happiness, but that he wishes to try to understand, even honor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even in the speaker’s wisdom, though, in the closer-to-enlightenment feel of the book, there is still yearning. “…wondering how/they survive, such creatures, hidden in places//where nothing might venture for months, or a year,/and how they prepare themselves, when they hear us in the distance,/finally moving towards them.” How do we survive with all this yearning? How do we prepare ourselves, waiting for whatever will bring us the sustenance we need?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So I don’t know if it’s flattering or offensive to be compared to other poets—if that old critic’s phrasing of “a modern-day _________” is really just lazy and dismissive. I don’t mean it that way when I say your work makes me think of Mark Strand (who said at a conference I attended, “I’m a fantasist, not a surrealist”). And James Wright, whose collected poems would be my “take to a desert island” book, who claimed he was always just trying to be clear, and whose clarity was green and beautiful and grounded in the earth (“I wish to God I had made this world, this scurvy/And disastrous place. I/Didn’t, I can’t bear it/Either…”). And a bit of someone wilder—Gary Snyder, perhaps—in the way you see things about the human animal and our less domesticated counterparts that require us to let go and love what we love.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So anyway—this was rambling and sometimes random, a thread with knots and beads at odd intervals, an attempt to explain how and why your beautifully crafted words mean so much to me. I am grateful your poems are in the world, and I feel lucky to know you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Your friend,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Katie</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-32435857028186392442011-02-27T12:51:00.001-05:002011-02-27T14:33:54.361-05:00The Love of Dogs<style>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061171017-1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyDSSpU6YHLpMUjmBMCyMVEe8gEdKwBIRWDlPugg_sNh-ztubkdDGVUwlIIs6m5GLOhP4MsFnwHtxmNj716URDYkkAE9GSthBzgQp47NGciWuTgImok7RcoQFmZMPC1GQZYtD6DGDYKRk/s1600/Dogyears.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve been in Boise, Idaho, for the last couple of days in a kind of pensive state. Not that I abhor Boise. In fact, I’m charmed by the place, charmed by the surrounding Boise foothills and the snow that has coated everything in a layer of white. During my time here, I finished Mark Doty’s memoir <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061171017-1"><i>Dog Years</i></a> and feel enlightened. After snapping the book shut, I sat in quiet. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the last year, I’ve been on the road, travelling from city to city, spending my days in cold hotel rooms. There is a loneliness that comes with travelling. Our minds travel the miles back to our comfort, back to the warmth of the familiar body, to the routines of our lives. Travelling is a disruption of routine. No longer do I hear the familiar click-clack of my dog’s paws, or the energetic bark for a treat, or the naughty scratching at the pantry door. At night, this is what I miss most: the beating hearts of my pack, their soft, velvety heads under my hand. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I grew up in a Thai household that was wary of any animal, especially dogs. In Thailand, dogs run rampant all over the country, dogs without homes, without love. It is a deep sadness I keep hidden when I visit, an adjustment in culture that tries me to the point of tears. Since meeting my wife, however, and during the ten years of our relationship, I don’t think I can ever be without a dog again. They are as much a part of me as I am a part of them. To describe how integral my dogs are in my life is impossible. When asked what I miss most when I’m away, most people tilt their heads when I say my dogs and not my wife. This is not to say that I do not miss my wife. I do. Immensely. But this yearning for my furry pack transcends language. Doty writes: “Love for a wordless creature, once it takes hold, is an enchantment, and the enchanted speak, famously, in private mutterings, cryptic riddles, or gibberish.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My three dogs—Ginger, Charlie, Savvy—are getting old. One day they scurry across the pool deck for Florida geckos, the next they sleep a little longer in their beds oblivious to our comings and goings. With a dog you witness a whole life—from the exuberant, inquisitive puppy to the slow-paced steps of the old dog. And time, though it is years, descends quickly, and for some, unexpectedly. For the longest time, when asked how old our dogs were, my wife and I always said the wrong age, a younger age. Not because we were liars, but because we were trying to prolong the youth of our dogs as long as possible. We ignore the little things. Chalk it up as the quirkiness of character. But then, the realization hits: the reason our dog is not responding to her name is that she is deaf. The reason she does not hop up on our legs for a treat is because her hips are stiff. And then come the fatty lumps, the white around the muzzle, the crackling joints. Slowly, we begin to prepare ourselves. Slowly, time registers for the dog, too. “Knowledge of limit. A hesitation in the step, a look in the eyes, something tentative.” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This trip to Boise was a difficult one. I left with the knowledge that one of our dogs was ill. The day before I left, she wandered from room to room, her ears back, her blond fur without shine. She’s the oldest, but the naughtiest. My wife Katie and I nickname her, “Naughty.” Because she scrapes at the pantry door. Because she is endless with barks. Because she steals food off our plates. When none this happens, something is not right. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9lNajv8bs6FBycFhAurZYU0vqzq23Qn-cT89YchzzrOfqTw1tVlpzYjO0Gx_2l1gKZ20zhqUEKotlW_qYN8LjpuB-AgIRtTA_5MPEEfDC3O6iwwX3bchgz28LWROdlgz_Do9xQF7_bk/s1600/IMG_0068.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9lNajv8bs6FBycFhAurZYU0vqzq23Qn-cT89YchzzrOfqTw1tVlpzYjO0Gx_2l1gKZ20zhqUEKotlW_qYN8LjpuB-AgIRtTA_5MPEEfDC3O6iwwX3bchgz28LWROdlgz_Do9xQF7_bk/s200/IMG_0068.jpg" width="149" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">On this trip, Katie came too, and we texted our dog sitter, asking if Ginger was better, asking whether she was hopping around like her usual self. He responded promptly, sensing perhaps, the panic in our language, reassuring us that she was a hoppin’ bunny. Which, of course, made us breathe easier, which made us want to see her, which made us forget we have limited time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The thing about love is its power to blind us with the impossible. But I’m OK with this—for now—because what is better than to watch your dog sleep and think she is dreaming of endless days with you. This is a dream I share. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-65417514091440899142011-02-11T14:10:00.002-05:002011-03-03T17:04:10.117-05:00Fever<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780060596996-8"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 120px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzE-aaCJ-e7cwIeUqxx0RZz5VrR4_KWQ5tZ7SDvLjz5rqnIhN6QXXY8DMLu2XYI-2fxSS_YSE1_ozMqXz_tiajhbJu7A2BaL76ZVbV3PNmwEUb2Wmp0WV95TTDYPrWd7nkcX0oom7Xixk/s200/lit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5572511681259761762" border="0" /></a><br /><style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">By the time I see the thin box on my way to the grocery store, the cardboard is sloppy with rainwater. I tear it apart while the engine warms and my daughter coos in the backseat. So new, the spine cracks. It smells a little bit like glue.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At home with <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780060596996-8"><i>Lit</i></a>, I touch a match to the eye of the stove. In a moment, chicken will warm, liquid fat swelling out of the flesh. Standing over the stove, I bend open the book’s spine, and this time, it whines. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I keep reading while my toddler marches in circles around me. I read it while gravy thickens and corn muffins rise. The story lilts and booms through Mary Karr’s young adulthood and her first years as a mother as she recovers from addiction by recovering from her past. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the middle of preparing dinner, I read, “In the next room, my son, stout but saggy-kneed, clings to the crib bars like a prisoner. Menthol steam from the vaporizer has made a ghost of him. His ringlets are plastered to his head, and coughs rack his small frame. The animal suffering that’s rattling him throws ice water on me, and I enjoy a surge of unalloyed love for him, followed by panic, followed by guilt.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Exactly that is motherhood. Pots are boiling and spitting. The oven fan purrs; the burners warble under it. I sit on the floor and read the next few pages out loud, letting the vowels expand through the room like the herbed heat from the stove.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I bring <i>Lit</i> into my bed and read through one eye when the other is too tired to stay open. I wake up in the morning with the book in my hand. Day and night for this fraction of my life, I carry it with me. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At the end, I sit at my computer station – a swivel chair pulled up to a deep freezer. I close <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780060596996-8"><i>Lit</i></a>. The glue smell dissolves into the kitchen air. My daughter is napping a few rooms away, and the kitchen is unusually quiet, a soft appliance hum. I flip through, reading “Without Warren’s hands cupping my own face, I’m almost faceless. I need his body in bed and his books on my shelves anchoring me to the planet.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I know that feeling. I felt it when my daughter first nursed, that my identity had shifted, that I existed through the touch of her skin. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The first time my new daughter caught a cold, I spoke to an older, more experienced mom about home remedies to ease my baby’s cough and congestion. She told me to feed my daughter warming foods – chicken broth and garlic – rather than treat the symptoms. The symptoms, although uncomfortable, are the body’s way of expelling the offending organism, she said. Do not cure a cold, but let the cold cure you.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">She told me that the body invites illness when it is overcome with toxicity. The virus pushes out the toxin, and the body and spirit are cleansed and refreshed. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But these days, she told me, We fight the cold as if to capture to the damage the virus wants to purge from us. We are addicted to damage, to our pasts. We have to let it go.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Mary Karr writes, “As I slow down inside, the world’s metronome seems to speed up, for without keen, self-centered focus on your own inward suffering, clock hands spin. Days get windstormed off the calendar. Rather than thinking about spiritual practices, arguing them out in my head, I almost automatically try them. That, I suppose, is surrender.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Lit</i> exposes the single device running through you and me and Mary Karr: that recovery is surrender.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As a virus wormed through my daughter’s body, as she survived, seeming to have grown up exponentially after the fever broke, I realized that the occasional purging of the body and spirit is necessary. By releasing the illusion of control, I allowed myself and my daughter to grow. In <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780060596996-8"><i>Lit</i></a>, Mary Karr surrenders to her faith.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve surrendered to the body, its incorruptible desire to thrive. I’ve surrendered to the fever: those things that run through us, taking something with them and leaving something new behind.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780060596996-8"><i>Lit</i></a> is a recovery narrative. It contains lessons and truths and a pure, concise story. The story exists in the realm between life and death, poetry and prose. Open it, and in a few words, it’s inside of you. It swells, warming you from the inside out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air, a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody’s head off.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">_____________</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Asha Baisden penned this wonderful essay. Read her wonderful blog at: </i><span id="search" style="visibility: visible;"><a href="http://meta-mom.com/">http://<em>meta</em>-mom.com</a>. </span><i>She recently lost her cell phone. Her daughter Loki hid it. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-53942264923823793442011-01-17T11:30:00.003-05:002011-01-17T12:28:00.728-05:00On Scratching<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> 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locked="false" priority="19" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="21" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}</style> <![endif]--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">I love listening to other artists talk about their work.<span> </span>Comedians discussing how they structure their stand-up acts, origamists on the art of folding, painters on design, actors on preparation for a role, photographers on composition – all of it intrigues me.<span> </span>Shows like “Inside the Actors Studio” and “Iconoclasts” hold my attention, and I’m riveted by movies like <i>The</i> <i>Beaches of Agnes</i>, a documentary by and about the French filmmaker Agnes Varda that delightfully welds autobiography and the documentary form.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Consequently, I’ve read, over the years, a number of books that might rightfully fall into the category often called “writers on writing.”<span> </span>I read these for enjoyment, sometimes for inspiration, other times to glean ideas for my classes.<span> </span>I save those I expect to return to and pass others on to colleagues or students.<span> </span>I have a bedraggled copy of Anne Lamott’s beloved <i>Bird by Bird</i>, which I often excerpt for students, who are both reassured and entertained by chapters like “Shitty First Drafts.” Francine Prose’s <i>Reading Like a Writer</i> and Edward Hirsch’s <i>How to Read a Poem (And Fall in Love with Poetry)</i>, likewise, have been great teaching resources.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Other books have had a direct influence on my own writing.<span> </span>Vivian Gornick’s <i>The Situation and the Story</i> and Mark Doty’s <i>The Art of Description</i>, for example, have been underlined in places because they manage to say, concisely and/or beautifully, what I need to hear and rehear.<span> </span>Gornick: “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.<span> </span>The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”<i><span> </span></i>Doty: “Description is fueled by HUNGER for the world, the need to taste, to name, to claim what’s seen, to bring it, as Rilke would put it (in the ninth of his great elegies, the subject of which is the resurrection of the world within the perceiver), ‘O endlessly into ourselves.’”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s a subcategory of writers on writing which isn’t quite that at all.<span> </span>These are generally narrative nonfiction books wherein the writer does something new or unexpected and so the book becomes, for me, a model of creativity.<span> </span>They aren’t intended as how-to books, in other words, but they become, by virtue of a unique quality, exactly that.<span> </span>Lauren Slater’s <i>Lying </i>is probably the best example.<span> </span>It’s billed as a memoir, and its first chapter reads, in its entirety, “I exaggerate.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">No nonfiction writer I know has quite recovered from the mind-blowing repercussions of that opening.<span> </span>It’s a brilliant move, one that guarantees the reader will question every word that comes after.<span> </span>Chapter 1 is both reinforced and complicated by periodic moments of clarification, denial, hesitancy, contradiction, and retraction.<span> </span>The reader is drawn forward by the elegance of the prose, but all the while we are forced to stop in our tracks over and over again and wonder whether we’re reading fact or fiction and, importantly, to question the legitimacy of that distinction.<span> </span>A stellar how-to model, albeit one I will never attempt to mimic.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While dramatically different in style and content, these books have all helped me in one way or another.<span> </span>Sometimes that help has been immediate and practical – providing an exercise I can adapt for a class, for instance.<span> </span>Other times they’ve been influential in a long-term sense. There’s not much crossover, however.<span> </span>A given book is either useful or influential… but rarely both.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Twyla Tharp’s book, <i>The Creative Habit</i>, may turn out to span that gap.<span> </span>It’s marketed as Self-Help and, although I’m sure I’ve read other self-help books in the past, I have to admit that the genre seems, to the book-snob in me, a bit slight.<span> </span>No doubt I could use all kinds of help, but I’m skeptical – perhaps naively so – that a self-help book could provide anything of substance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Luckily, I didn’t discover the label until later, and so as I browsed on Amazon my snob meter didn’t reject the book.<span> </span>I was looking for ideas for my advanced writing classes and came upon Tharp, whom I know as a dancer and choreographer, but didn’t know she’d written about creativity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My initial reaction to the book upon receipt was disappointment.<span> </span>The print is unusually large, which made me think the publisher was trying to make the book appear more substantial than it is – rather like a student who reduces his margins or increases font size to create the illusion of more pages.<span> </span>And Tharp’s book features rather unimaginative questionnaires; it highlights phrases like “Give Yourself a Little Challenge.”<span> </span>I sighed, figured I’d thrown away ten dollars.<span> </span>And then, partly because we were snowbound, partly because I was bored, and partly because it was right there– a nice new book – I started to read.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here’s where I’m supposed to let you in on a great find, claim that the book was so much more than I imagined, announce that Tharp will join Gornick and Doty on my Shelf of Important Books.<span> </span>But here’s the thing about <i>The Creative Habit:</i> there’s not a single word in its 243 oversized pages that will feel new to anyone who is living as a writer or artist.<span> </span>I repeat: If you’ve been working for years on your own art, you’ve already discovered every single thing this book has to say.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And yet… I found <i>The Creative Habit</i> somehow comforting. It was like Tharp, (with help, I should mention, from Mark Reiter), was saying yes, you’re right.<span> </span>This <i>is</i> how you do it.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here’s her thesis: “I will keep stressing the point about creativity being augmented by routine and habit.<span> </span>Get used to it.<span> </span>In these pages a philosophical tug of war will periodically rear its head.<span> </span>It is the perennial debate, born in the Romantic era, between the beliefs that all creative acts are born of (a) some transcendent, inexplicable Dionysian act of inspiration, a kiss from God on your brow that allows you to give the world <i>The Magic Flute</i>, or (b) hard work…<span> </span>If it isn’t obvious already, I come down on the side of hard work.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This premise reflects my own experience.<span> </span>Inspiration exists, but is, for me, a result of pursuit and cultivation and openness and readiness… It’s mysterious, to be sure, and can be elusive – but I don’t see it as a bequest from the gods or some fickle, fetching muse.<span> </span>I look for it, I track it, I know its hiding spots. I’m willing to cajole it or court it or circle it or wait it out – whatever it takes. These are practices, one can learn and develop them.<span> </span>As far as I can tell, most writers and artists know this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the reasons I liked the book, however, is not just because of the reinforcement value – I actually tend <i>not</i> to appreciate being told what I already know – but because Tharp has written in a concise and accessible manner about things that sometimes feel quite complex to me.<span> </span>Her writing contains no surprising leaps or lifts or spins – it is grounded and straightforward.<span> </span>If you return to a passage, it won’t be for its grace but for its economy.<span> </span><i>Well-said</i>, you might find yourself thinking, but not <i>wow</i>.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Among Tharp’s topics: Failure as an inevitable and valuable part of the creative process.<span> </span>The need to negotiate between involvement and detachment.<span> </span>The difference between planning and over-planning. The benefits of limited resources.<span> </span>The importance of practicing fundamental skills.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Tharp also emphasizes the need to “scratch,” which may sound oddly diagnostic but is her euphemistic way of talking about seeking new material.<span> </span>“Scratching is what you do when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you.<span> </span>As Freud said, ‘When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.’”<span> </span>She follows up by suggesting that you never scratch the same place twice.<span> </span>“If you scratch the same way all the time, you’ll end up in the same place with the same old ideas.”<span> </span>I don’t entirely agree with this – there are certain writers I’ve reread for years, particular artists I return to repeatedly, looking for a spark to push me further into a new piece of writing – but it occurs to me that by returning to the same artists I may be returning, always, to my own methods and, by extension, always writing in the same way(s).<span> </span>Time, perhaps, to review my scratching technique.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As a teacher, I’m glad I read this book.<span> </span>I sometimes worry that students see their creative writing classes simply as classes and don’t take advantage of the apprenticeship college offers.<span> </span>It’s as though they think “I’ll start <i>really </i>writing when I graduate,” and defer the work of developing strong skills, for instance, or learning to research, until then.<span> </span>I’m concerned that they also believe that some magic will happen at that point, whereupon not only will they be able to master aspects of grammar and spelling and punctuation that they’ve put off as too tedious to dwell upon, but will miraculously also discover troves of inspiration which will allow them to sit in front of a screen and effortlessly channel their bestsellers.<span> </span>Then a roving literary agent will knock on their parents’ front door and ask if the writer in the basement has any new work; they’ll turn over their manuscripts and wait for that first big contract to set them on their way.<br /><br /> <style>p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m exaggerating, but only a little.<span style=""> </span>At 18 or 22, my own vision of the future wasn’t much less fanciful, but what I had in my favor was the willingness to work and, eventually, the habit of self-discipline.<span style=""> </span>I’m hoping that Tharp’s ability to, in effect, break down the process of a creative life into manageable steps might be meaningful to at least some of these young writers. I’m hoping that their understanding of the artistic process will be refined by Tharp’s explorations of what it means to desire and seek inspiration.<span style=""> </span>It means that you <i style="">create</i> inspiration.<span style=""> </span>She’s not taking the magic and mystery away.<span style=""> </span>She’s saying that the artistic process relies on the active engagement of the artist; you don’t sit and wait for art to find you... You discover and practice ways of finding it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I respect Tharp for putting this project together.<span style=""> </span>The self-help label is, in the end, accurate.<span style=""> </span><i style="">The Creative Habit</i> is a clear and readable source of what is essentially basic training.<span style=""> </span>When my own processes feel stagnant, or when I have worked myself into a rut, there is appeal in reading what another artist has done to counter such occasions.<span style=""> </span>Not every piece of writing is meant to dazzle with grand leaps and spins.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes it all comes down to walking slowly across a bare stage.<span style=""> </span>Sometimes it comes down to scratching.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">__________________________</div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">Donna Steiner penned this marvelous essay. She has an amazing blog: <a href="http://steinerdonna.blogspot.com/">Life in a Northern Town</a> and is mostly drowning in Lake Effect snow as we speak. If you happen to find her, pull her out of the snow drift. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-38328092183406349502010-12-27T22:07:00.001-05:002010-12-28T00:08:31.169-05:00CrushIn the 7th grade, I played flute in the school band. I was slightly above average, certainly not first chair. That’s how our band director organized us; first chair meant you were expected to help out your section-mates, pick up the music fastest (practice more, in other words) and perform solos when your instrument was called for.<br />
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I had a crush on the boy who was first chair trumpet.<br />
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He wasn’t particularly cute, certainly not carrying any more drama or depth than any other 13-year-old boy. He had a bowl-cut head of hair streaked with white blond, silver-rimmed glasses, and an obnoxious laugh.<br />
<br />
But he could play the trumpet.<br />
<br />
When he raised that instrument to his lips, he shone. The light reflected off that polished brass and the sound that came out promised secret rooms inside him, hints of the complex self he himself might never even know about.<br />
<br />
He wasn’t Louis Armstrong, of course. He was just a 13-year-old boy who played trumpet better than anyone else in his class, and knew it. He wasn’t awkward when he played, or conscious of his body or, really, of anyone or anything else. And though I’d never noticed him much before he stood up to play his solo in October of that 7th grade year, I was, suddenly, smitten.<br />
<br />
I crush easily. I sense some hidden angle in a person and I’m gone. But it’s not about appearance—a parade of Brad Pitt and George Clooney look-alikes would entertain me, but produce no crushes. My easily-won, temporary love—for that’s what it is—blossoms under the conditions of performance.<br />
<br />
So imagine you love poetry as I do, that it is the closest to spirituality or transcendence you ever feel, that it drops into your center like a stone into a pond and the ripples trace the most vital patterns you will ever know. And imagine you’ve read someone’s poetry and it makes the patterns you didn’t know you needed. And this, of course, is art, is a performance of words. Wouldn’t you fall in love?<br />
<br />
Then add—oh such a delicate equation—a person whose conversation and body language and expressions remind you of that art you love, like the little whiffs of cologne a body gives off when it moves to put on a coat or wave to a friend. Imagine a poetry reading, and the person responsible for that art performing it even more directly, making it even better than it was when you first met it, solitary, on the page.<br />
<br />
That, for me, is the ultimate crush: the poetry crush. Mark Strand, sexy and witty in person, definitely still the man I can imagine “romp[ing] with joy in the bookish dark.” James Galvin, who wooed me with lines like, “The slender lodgepole pines/Stand so close together/You couldn’t walk through them/In your body,” before I ever met him and became his student. And Jean Valentine, for “Under our radiant sleep they were bearing us all night long,” and the quiet but real magic of her voice when she read her poems in a crowded room in Washington, D.C.<br />
<br />
My poetry crushes are true loves—I really do love them, these poets. And I don’t know how else to feel my love but in my body, too, wanting to both kiss the maker and taste the words, the bells ringing under my sternum and the loosened rubber bands of my leg muscles.<br />
<br />
This is who I am: I get crushes. I fall in love with poets, including those I will never meet (James Wright, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale…). Sometimes those poets’ books watch me while I sleep. That I am happily and faithfully married to the funniest, kindest, most talented writer in the world doesn’t mean I’m lying when I say, “I love this poet.” <br />
<br />
I love you, my poetry crushes. Yes, you.<br />
<br />
________<br />
<br />
This essay was written by <a href="http://www.katherineriegel.com/">Katherine Riegel</a>. Not only is she the best poet I know--I have a wicked crush on her--but she is the author of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Castaway-Katherine-Riegel/dp/0982861257/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293505601&sr=1-1">Castaway</a></i>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-57973668776661186932010-09-24T00:16:00.001-04:002010-09-24T00:20:46.399-04:00My Dog Ginger Reviews Stitches<table class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUjKeZO3vgsPslDJeNYinXSPa07zcWurs3-pwsea5vtnbn5vUDMmyAUEeWBYj5jvrepSqraVkbqSAVxJuyBqbo7uEK_fqBgqolOtp6U4eP8cmodTIssoJdPVPZQTr_w6saaFqqKKDV8o/s200/photo.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" border="0" height="200" width="149" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ginger hugging <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393068573-15"><i>Stitches</i></a></td></tr></tbody></table><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFUjKeZO3vgsPslDJeNYinXSPa07zcWurs3-pwsea5vtnbn5vUDMmyAUEeWBYj5jvrepSqraVkbqSAVxJuyBqbo7uEK_fqBgqolOtp6U4eP8cmodTIssoJdPVPZQTr_w6saaFqqKKDV8o/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>First off, I'd like to say when your two masters are writers, you get to be a bit of a literary snob. Nope, no rhyming poems for me and bad metaphors are like flees; sometimes no matter how hard you scratch, there's always more of them. Every day, I listen to my masters type away on their computers. My mom master is quiet and intense and stares hard into the screen, and sometimes, I have to roll onto my back and show her my tummy, so she returns from whatever poetry world she entered. My dad master, he insists on reading his work out loud to me and sometimes what he reads is good, and sometimes I howl and bark like I do when I see a squirrel on the pool cage.<br /><br />One day, my dad master couldn't sleep so he went into his office and read this book with lots of pictures in it. I think it's called a graphic novel. He read the entire book in one night till it was four in the morning, a few hours before my breakfast. After he read the book, he made this breathy noise with his nose. I do the same after dinner. It means he's satisfied. I'm usually satisfied after dinner, too.<br /><br />He left the book on the floor, and there it stayed for three months.<br /><br />I couldn't help myself. While both my masters were away at work, I read the book. I mean, it was at my level and all, and I kept stepping on it, so I thought, why not? The title of the book was <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393068573-15">Stitches</a></i> and it was drawn and written by David Smalls. There were lots of pictures in it, and some of the pictures were scary, like the crazy lawnmower people that come once a week with the crazy blowing machine. Still, I couldn't stop. I needed to know what happened to the main character; I needed to understand this family that seemed to hold so many secrets.<br /><br />What I found disconcerting, especially for me because I'm a dog and my favorite thing in the world is to bark, were the silences in the book. There would be pages of drawings and no words at all. But those drawings were screaming. Those drawings illustrated devastation. Those silences were what made <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393068573-15">Stitches</a></i> unforgettable, which was a pretty good feat because us dogs have short memories. At the core of this graphic novel was the way Small's family lived in silence and percolating anger and resentment and disquieting rage. At the core of this graphic novel was also a past that continually haunted Smalls.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>In short--Four Paws Up for this book. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy eating Milkbones and barking at the turtle outside the fence. I won't hurt it. I just want to play. <br /><br /><br />__________<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ginger is an eleven-year old cocker spaniel and is responsible for writing this bark-tastic review. Her work often appears in the backyard, and she likes to play hockey with her dog dish. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-78978783535238540882010-09-21T09:21:00.000-04:002010-09-21T09:21:55.107-04:00Bye-Bye, SummerThe Love Sponge here.<br />
<br />
I've had a fantastic reading summer. Not only did I travel the country, but I read all over it. I read in hotel rooms, in parks, in Midwest cornfields, in the Pacific Northwest mountains. I read in my car (not while I was driving), in independent bookstores, in coffee shops, in our nation's capital, and on Florida beaches. I read in doctor offices, in a hammock, in a pool, in a loft, in a cabin. I read while hiking, while playing disc golf, while waiting for the wife at the airport. It seemed every free moment I had this summer--no matter where I was--I read. <br />
<br />
I read fantastic books. Books that have stuck with me for days and weeks and months, even now, when the semester's trucking along.<br />
<br />
I read without a pen. I read without judgment. I read for enjoyment, which has been the Clever Title's mission for the last three years. Read because we want to, because it makes us feel good, because it awakens something within us.<br />
<br />
I'd like to share three books I enjoyed and where I read them.<br />
<br />
1) Cheryl Strayed, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780618772100-3"><i>Torch</i></a><br />
<br />
How does a family keep it together after the loss of a mother? How does this loss effect everything they do? I was swept way by the lushness of Cheryl's prose and how she gets into the brains of her characters' and their vulnerabilities. A fantastic read. <br />
<br />
<b>Where was I when I read this? In Sparta, WI, in a log cabin, where outside, two llamas slept. </b><br />
<br />
2) Sherman Alexie, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780316013697-0"><i>The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian</i></a><br />
<br />
Always a big fan of Alexie's work, I picked this YA novel expecting more of the same brilliance. All I can say is this book exceeded my expectations. The balance of humor and seriousness is what makes this book special. A quick read that will keep you on your toes from page to page.<br />
<i> </i><br />
<b>Where was I when I read this? In Los Angeles, sitting in the Westin Bonaventure lounge, completely absorbed in the book, while everyone else was watching the Chile versus Spain World Cup soccer match. <i> </i></b> <br />
<br />
3) Craig Thompson, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9781891830433-11"><i>Blankets</i></a><br />
<br />
Don't let the size of this graphic memoir fool you. Once you start, you don't ever want to stop reading this story about a boy who is trying to find himself in love, family, and religion. Though expertly drawn, what is compelling is the writing of this book, the minimalistic style that still hits hard on the heart.<br />
<br />
<b>Where was I when I read this book? Most of <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9781891830433-11"><i>Blankets</i></a></i> was read in the car with the a/c on, waiting for the wife to get her allergy shot in Brandon, FL. This little excursion took much longer than anticipated, which I was thankful for because I didn't want to stop reading this book.</b><br />
<br />
Other books read:<br />
<br />
Joe Meno, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780393304565-0"><i>The Great Perhaps</i></a>, Memphis and Atlanta<br />
Paul Guest, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061685170-0"><i>One More Theory About Happiness</i></a>, Carbondale, IL (getting a tattoo)<i> </i><br />
Joan Wickersham, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780151014903-1"><i>The Suicide Index</i></a>, Bellingham and Spokane, WA<i> </i><br />
Haruki Murakami, <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780307278739-1">After Dark</a></i>, Fort DeSoto Beach in Florida<i> </i><br />
Kevin Sampsell, <i><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780061766107-18">A Common Pornography</a></i>, In a plane from Seattle to Tampa<i> </i><br />
<br />
What I find intriguing about reading a good book is not that it takes us somewhere else--which of course it does--but it makes us remember where we read it. This is a reminder that reading can be an experience, just like the big events in our lives. We remember our first kiss, our tragic moments. We recall what we were doing and where we were physically and mentally in our lives. Reading has become like that for me. It cements me to the world. It marks the road I have taken.<br />
<br />
<i><b>We, at the Clever Title, want to know your best summer read and where you read it. Please share!</b></i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-82670931971392806532010-09-03T23:08:00.000-04:002010-09-03T23:08:57.316-04:00What Are You Reading, Wendy Rawlings?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="hhttp://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780375724503-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgebMSiasIIpOgXY1wnfWZoTk0zpZX9q7zOmbfKPzc_gqcbzP25uI9aQmtydjHFIPZWx3abzgNGOwmw8zPAalxhwXzNRL7t_hirrjGakOQ1Nc8S4wZ_l9TdIJwpCxckM2uwHo2_loBJ5J4/s1600/Ghostwritten.jpg" /></a></div>David Mitchell’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780375724503-0"><i>Ghostwritten</i></a> (Vintage, 1999) is a monster of a book, and even more of one when you realize that this is the guy’s first novel (he has since written four more, including the hugely popular Cloud Atlas), and that Mitchell has just barely turned the corner on forty (he was born in 1969). I’ll admit up front that I have a strong (almost malodorously strong) preference for small, lyric novels: my favorites include Evan S. Connell’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781582435688-0"><i>Mrs. Bridge</i></a>, James Salter’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780679740735-0"><i>Light Years</i></a>, and Edna O’Brien’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780618126903-0"><i>A Pagan Place</i></a>. By “small,” I mean that I tend to like novels that are light on action and plot, with closely observed details that often focus on domestic and psychological interiors. I’m really not a big book sort of person, but one of my students gave me <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780375724503-0"><i>Ghostwritten</i></a> as a thank-you gift after he defended his MFA thesis, so I sort of felt obliged to read it. “Uh-oh,” I thought as I scanned the table of contents, which contained ten chapters with titles like “”Okinawa,” “Petersburg,” “London,” and “Mongolia,” “I’m about to be sent all over the freaking world.” Worse, when I perused the novel to see what I was in for, I counted nine first-person narrators, one of whom appeared to be a “noncorpum” entity that transmigrates into a series of human hosts. I remembered how pissed off I’d been years earlier when I’d read Mona Simpson’s terrific novel, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780679737384-1"><i>Anywhere But Here</i></a> and discovered that the point of view switched all of three times. How would I manage to keep engaged through nine narrators, one of whom wasn’t even human?<br />
<br />
I’m happy to report that Mitchell’s risky narrative experiment passed this cranky reader’s test with flying colors. The separate first-person narrative strands in this novel are so utterly distinct and detailed that I found myself immediately immersed in each one, so much so that I often had the strange feeling at the end of a chapter of having myself transmigrated into a kind of fictional host, a narrator whose story inhabited me so completely that I temporarily forgot my own identity as well as all the novel’s preceding narrators. When Mitchell takes me into the mind of a terrorist who belongs to a cult in Okinawa, I fully enter that terrorist’s mind. And when he takes me into the mind of a female Irish physicist on the run from Pentagon officials, I somehow become part of that physicist’s mind. I won’t spoil the ending, which is as intellectually challenging as it is aesthetically pleasing, but I will say I haven’t had such an exhilarating experience reading a novel since my parents gave me a Wizard of Oz series book each time I managed not to cry during a visit to the orthodontist. Maybe I am a “big book” person after all, when it’s a magic carpet ride of a book.<br />
<br />
__________<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780814250853-1lI/AAAAAAAAAR8/C4DEyEdBBsE/s1600/comebackirsih.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNHZDS6CvxfaqH2jC3F8aeyOvPh8yRQvC36CQx68xV7zsDiOWJmNTu1X3rqFdSwwYx0Zn3PnrIUlXuZ4ywnO_OQUjJua7AgWImeL8tPBvwTSrb6PJ5Mmd9Ia_v454T1OI1qPjWn4_PdU/s1600/comebackirsih.gif" /></a></div><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780472116256-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKShHOpmEg7FNVbm6oEj1ekrRF7L_xJhTkZ9lofB-kouQY53YtOeNYFpPDBZznVGTyZ6SvyR5eQwjoxFTL0CvVSpX9cjkc8AG2RtBapeppAjs5kZed3BQW5BSG5QHZo3dhjxeIGimY13c/s1600/The+agnostics.jpg" /></a>Wendy Rawlings is the author of a collection of short stories, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780814250853-1"><i>Come Back Irish</i></a>, and a novel, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780472116256-0"><i>The Agnostics</i></a>. She teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama and is the hippest person I know. Period. (And she loves dogs and that's super cool.)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-29759541164003634122010-08-18T18:14:00.002-04:002010-08-18T18:14:43.382-04:00The Same Book<meta content="" name="Title"> <meta content="" name="Keywords"> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" equiv="Content-Type"> <meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"> <meta content="Microsoft Word 2008" name="Generator"> <meta content="Microsoft Word 2008" name="Originator"> <link href="file://localhost/Users/sukrungruang/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip/0clip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"> <style><br /><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --><br /></style>
<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><o:p></o:p>We all go there eventually,</div><div></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">taken by the dark god from the green</div><div></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">meadow life must seem as one is departing</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">toward another meadow…</div><div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i>--Alison Townsend, from “The Meadow”<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In February, my father died. He had Parkinson’s and was battling dementia. He fell down on the stairs, hit his head, and never recovered consciousness. </div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780809328963-0" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB7bUl8CswU3ArY9-zGMM7AP79Z0ZfKGrh0t47bzgpIRFQxO3ozudU_cCh-qEsECtWyc4f09V8_ndnWmVRe7btOLVsMUtkTj3AIlT7Y6Idc_MnqZhbehizGR-8_IHzPBd5RgZEsKfqwWY/s200/cover.jpg" border="0" height="200" width="131" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">We had talked on the phone less than two weeks before his death. He had called to tell me that the book of poetry I’d sent him for Christmas, the book he’d saved to read for his vacation, was “magnificent.” He told me how it fed his soul, how wise the speaker was and how vulnerable, how vivid the author’s images. He told me he loved it, and he thanked me for sending it to him.</div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The book was Alison Townsend’s <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780809328963-0"><i>Persephone in America</i></a>, which I’d finally bought after teaching her poem “What I Never Told You About the Abortion” in a coursepack for two semesters. I don’t know why it took me so long to seek out more of her work—perhaps a fear that the other poems wouldn’t stand up to the one I knew?—or why I chose to search for it when I did. But I had read it in the fall, and I loved it.</div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is sometimes difficult to share the books we really love, books that aren’t just well-written and beautiful but that fit into some space in us we didn’t even know was there. I don’t think I could teach the whole book, because I might actually cry in class if a student were to criticize it, flipping through the pages and saying, “Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is about.” Or maybe I would lash out, saying, “The big deal? The big deal is about how these poems show a girl’s life spinning out after a rape, a woman’s sudden hollow despair, a curving desire for familiar landscape and a stranger’s startling affirmation in the crosswalk. The big deal is about how we are the speaker in these poems, and the girl, and the stranger. The big deal is about poetry that matters, that goddamn <i>means</i> something instead of just playing around with its own cleverness and blasé.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But when I sent the book to my father, I did so because I needed to send him a Christmas present, and because he was a poet and a reader of poetry, and because I wanted the gift to help keep alive our connection to each other, tenuous and strained as that connection sometimes was. I sent it to him because he knew about the labyrinths of despair, as I did, as Alison Townsend did, and because when a book can help you take in just one big lungful of air—scented, perhaps, with hay and sunset—you look around for someone to share it with.</div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so I mean this small essay as a thank you, to Alison Townsend, to writers and writing that challenge and define and question and shape us. Because of this book, I had something real to talk about with my father when he called. I had the joy and satisfaction of having chosen just the right gift. And when he died, suddenly, I knew he had been happy, he had been feeling, if not whole, then at least less hollow than he sometimes did; and though never of us were ready for him to leave this green meadow, we had walked together in it for a while, holding the same book in our hands. </div><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>This essay was written by Katherine Riegel. Her debut collection of poetry, </i><i>Castaway, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. </i></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-38801187040714223792010-08-07T23:29:00.000-04:002010-08-07T23:29:05.916-04:00Go Independent!This summer I've been touring the country, doing readings from my new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Talk-Thai-Adventures-Buddhist-Boy/dp/082621889X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281064762&sr=8-1"><i>Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy</i></a>. What I find deathly for a bookaholic like myself are events at independent bookstores. Yesterday, I read at <a href="http://www.magersandquinn.com/">Magers & Quinn</a> in Minneapolis with my friend, <a href="http://www.kaokaliayang.com/home.html">Kao Kalia Yang</a>, author of the marvelous memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Latehomecomer-Hmong-Family-Memoir/dp/1566892082/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281067923&sr=1-1"><i>The Latehomecomer</i></a>. I left Magers & Quinn with a large dent in my wallet. This happened at <a href="http://www.roomofonesown.com/">A Room of One's Own</a> in Madison, WI, a lovely store in a lovely city, where I walked out with a hefty bag of books that nearly tipped me over. And I can't forget <a href="http://www.bookendsonmain.com/">Bookends on Main </a>in Menomonie, home of <a href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/">Neil Gaiman</a>. The truth is I won't get to many of these books for another decade because I have other books I've purchased at independent bookstores, like the ones sitting in my car from my reading at <a href="http://www.bookcellarinc.com/">The Book Cellar</a> in Chicago, or the ones I bought at <a href="http://villagebooks.com/">Village Books </a>in Bellingham, WA, and the ones chilling on the ping-pong table at home in Florida from <a href="http://auntiesbooks.com/">Aunties Bookstore</a> in Spokane, and the ones gathering dust from the <a href="http://www.elliottbaybook.com/">Elliott Bay Book Company</a> in Seattle, and oh, the ones from <a href="http://www.busboysandpoets.com/">Busboys and Poets </a>in DC and the ones from <a href="http://booksoup.com/">Book Soup</a> in West Hollywood.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Z3rllEZaKA9BbVtPqWTSmupxdjOLxj1lTtHE9dRjfpdSWBgwHJkmoW-3pmzWVnKZPgq69BRlTUY-WwfXW43vPEBSCCewxgzB1tHkuKGOd4w0vAUFko0hiTKGW4Yx4RN9528vPOjO0T8/s1600/DSCN2134.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Z3rllEZaKA9BbVtPqWTSmupxdjOLxj1lTtHE9dRjfpdSWBgwHJkmoW-3pmzWVnKZPgq69BRlTUY-WwfXW43vPEBSCCewxgzB1tHkuKGOd4w0vAUFko0hiTKGW4Yx4RN9528vPOjO0T8/s200/DSCN2134.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reading at Busboys and Poets.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Books and books and books. Do I feel guilty about my purchases?<br />
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Answer: Not one damn bit.<br />
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In fact, I make it a point to buy at least one book at any independent bookstore I go to. Independent bookstore exists for the love of books and the love of reading. True love. But more importantly, independent bookstores love people. Bill Reilly, owner of one of my favorite bookstores, <a href="http://www.riversendbookstore.com/">The River's End</a>, in Oswego, NY, said that indies are as much about the books as they are about the community. The River's End bookstore hosts a number of events and book clubs, and many of my students--students who adore reading and the reading life--have worked there.<br />
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This past Wednesday, my niece Jenny and her partner Michael wanted to take my wife and I to an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, <a href="http://www.arisebookstore.org/">Arise!</a> When we got there, we found it closed.<br />
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"Oh no," Jenny said.<br />
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"This sucks," said Michael. He kept peering into the store, as if to see, by some miracle, that the bookstore was open, that this had been a cruel joke on us. We grumbled away. Yet another indie had sadly bitten the dust.<br />
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Like the one in Savoy, IL, Pages for All Ages. When my mother-in-law was alive, before cancer took her away, it was this bookstore she loved most, three blocks from her home. She was a voracious reader, finishing 1 or 2 books a day. The workers knew her by name, Dinny, and she had accrued so many points it seemed she got a perpetual discount. The service, the attention, the care, the community, that's what made Pages for All Ages special, what makes all independent bookstores special.<br />
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What does the closing of independent bookstores say about our culture? If the indie bookstore is about community, as Bill Reilly said, have we begun to isolate ourselves? Have the Kindle, Nook, E-readers, made the indie bookstore obsolete? Have amazon.com, the large chain stores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles, taken away an essential intimacy that buying a book entails?<br />
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Seriously, we, at the Clever Title, don't have an answer. We want to save the independent bookstore. We want to save all of them, cradle them in our arms, because the world needs books, lots and lots of books, books to hold, books to hug and kiss and cuddle like a binky. <br />
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Please tell us what your favorite independent bookstore is, and your last purchase. We urge you to go and spend your hard earned cash on books, books in independent bookstores. Keep them alive. They are an essential part of our reading culture.<br />
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Please.<br />
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Pretty please.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-702353288387231182.post-69567095767210778572010-07-15T03:28:00.001-04:002010-07-15T03:28:00.175-04:00Step Over the Blood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=how+to+cook+a+tapir%3a+a+memoir+of+belize&box=how%20to%20cook%20a%20tapir%3a%20a%20memoir%20of%20belize&pos=-1xWJI/AAAAAAAAAPc/QAi1btAzJJI/s1600/How+to+Cook.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoQRz7G8szpHAJga69jMe8NgplKHhg_Ve4eZqKGQHJapkywn9yVNc0pASzj3jhItVJqUgaYknqROaKKwF2dG_X-Jc2MYkfOluDnYRAYl85XRzCm2Wn-CR81u6ptEfFJa8ivi2pyTiRFHU/s1600/How+to+Cook.JPG" /></a></div>The first time I walked up the hill from the Manshiyet Nasr garbage village to the cave churches carved into Cairo's Muqattam mountains, I had to step over widening streams of blood rushing down the middle of the steep street. When I reached a curve in the road I found the source: a pig, recently poked in the heart with a knife, was draining before being skinned. The knife-wielder, a boy of fifteen or sixteen, smiled at me as I walked by. His smile was so intense that it seemed like he killed pigs in the street every day. Which, of course, he did.<br />
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My friends and I stayed in the visitors' housing at the monastery at the top of the hill for five weeks, learning about the complex cycles of poverty, religion, and health in the lives of the zabaleen, the garbage collectors who traveled through Cairo's metropolis to collect the trash and bring it back to be sorted in the streets and lower levels of their homes for recycling and as food for the pigs. Every day, my group and I hiked the road to the monastery, always turning the tight corner where the pig butcher's family lived. They worked their trade in the wide space of the street corner, always eager to talk but careful not to shake hands when theirs were covered in blood. I was surprised at how quickly this felt unsurprising, a daily occurrence as unnoteworthy as the sweet, rotten smells of garbage.<br />
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Usually we only caught pieces of the show, stepping by quickly, grasping the whole process in a disjointed, out-of-order fashion, like watching a movie out of order throughshort clips caught on late-night cable. Only once did I watch the entire process from beginning to end. T he pig was guided out of its chamber by its ears. It quickly escaped, hiding underneath a car. It was pulled out by its legs, screaming as if there were a person living in its belly. Its heart was stopped by a knife plunging into it. It laid down, as if sleeping, and died. Hooked up to hang and drain, right there in the street. Skinned--the moment when, to me at least, it changed from "animal" to "food." Cut apart swiftly.<br />
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I later learned that roasted, these pigs tasted very, very good. <br />
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When reading Joan Fry's<i><a href="http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=how+to+cook+a+tapir%3a+a+memoir+of+belize&box=how%20to%20cook%20a%20tapir%3a%20a%20memoir%20of%20belize&pos=-1"> How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize</a></i>, I kept thinking of my weeks in Cairo, of what it was like to see animals transition to food more directly than I had ever experienced growing up in the U.S. Fry uses her slowly emboldened adventures with food in a 1960s Mayan village as the symbol of her slow acceptance and love for the people she knew during her year-long stay as a twenty-year-old who taught English to the village children while her husband did whatever grad students in anthropology do. Throughout the book, his heart drifts in the opposite direction from hers, dreaming of his U.S. world of prepackaged meals-in-boxes and a life where he can control his meals, his schedule, and his wife. But Fry's story is one of embracing the unexpected, of accepting the chickens, gibnuts, iguanas, and tapir that her neighbors lovingly deposit at her door, and figuring out whether to fry or boil the suckers, and with chayote, beans, or what.<br />
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Food draws you in like that. Our first meal with the pig-slaughter family in Cairo was simple: lots of ful (a thick hummus made of fava beans) and pita bread, and huge bowls of green molokhiyya soup, its slimy snottiness dripping from the spoons so that we had to hold the bowls close to our faces. But even better, to eat the foodwe had been invited in; we had sat on their rug and seen the dark concrete walls inside their house. When we would later see the blood in the street we thought not, "Death is streaming toward my feet," but, "My friends are home!"<br />
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For Fry (and for me in Cairo), food was a link to the present, lived experience of neighbors--and without embracing it, Fry's anthropologist husband Aaron was unable to really grasp the life of those he was studying. Toward the end of the memoir, she gives an illustrative example of the kinds of discussions they have throughout the book:<br />
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By the time Aaron and I got home, it was two in the morning. "Did you like that bush green?" I asked. "I'll ask Lucia to show me where it grows. What did Evaristo call it again?"<br />
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"We still haven't seen anybody die here," Aaron said, as though replying to my question.<br />
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Aaron's world is a ghost world, where he manages to see everyone and everything in Belize through a distant haze, indistinct as if seen through grocery-store milk. He relied on abstractions: the categories of behavior he learned about in anthropology texts. But Joan's attention to the details, to the bush greens, keeps her grounded in the reality of the village. <br />
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In Cairo, my team's goal was always to avoid "studying" the Zabaleen like Aaron would have--we purposefully only had one camera between the seven adults on the team--and instead to learn from them, to eke out an understanding of what role garbage and policy and relationships and God had in their lives, so that we could join in the flows of the work already being done there, both secular and spiritual. But I can imagine how our memories of the garbage village would be different, abstracted, if we had insisted on keeping our eating habits separate, dining only on the chicken and hard-boiled-eggs served in the monastery dining room or buying dried soup to reconstitute in the separate privacy of our rooms.<br />
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**<br />
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On the main street of the garbage village, Osama had a bread shop. Twice he took me inside to watch the magic: employees tore beanbag-sized clumps of dough from a huge bowl and rapidly dropped them on a conveyor belt through an oven large enough to cook a camel. On the other end, the dough had expanded into canteens, puffer fish, Whoopie cusions--pita bread ready to be swept into baskets with paddles that were big enough to push boats through the Nile. Osama and his family would then manage the arms reaching through the sales windows from the street, fingers and voices calling out the number of loaves needed. "Telehta!" "Arbah!" <br />
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Osama loved it, the wild warmth of the making and the selling. A musician, he was eager to learn any songs I could teach him in English, and he taught me a song by writing it out for me three times: in English and in Arabic script and transliteration. Maybe I'm forcing a coherence that wasn't there, but it seems to me that Osama's music and bread were part of the same impulse, a part of him that wanted to create and share and praise together. <br />
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In Belize, Fry ate tortillas, not pita bread. And instead of being invited to rooms where they were mass-produced, she and Aaron at first had to simply smell them: "Ever since Aaron and I had arrived here," she writes, "I'd been inhaling the fragrant, corn-chip aroma of freshly made tortillas wafting from the women's houses and salivating." Aaron brokered a deal with a neighbor, paying her to make tortillas for them daily. But going back to that early scene in the book is telling: the woman who agrees to make the tortillas seemed early in the book simply to be a random Maya woman who knew how to cook. But after reading the rest of the book, readers get to know Dolores, and she begins feeling real, as concrete as a chewy tortilla between the teeth or a living mass of people eager to buy pita bread.<br />
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That early scene is also a reminder that Fry's transition into village life was difficult, much less smoothed out than I'm describing it here. She often felt stupid,barely knowing how to do basic chores in the U.S. and feeling completely uncertain about what it looked like in a Maya village to wash clothes in a creek, cook over a fire, maintain a dirt floor, and manage a group of students. Her change after a year there, when she doesn't want to return to the U.S., is both expected--we expect books to show a character's development, after all--and, as much as I hate the word, inspirational. It means that the times when I've felt distant, analytical, afraid of the places I've been, there was always hope that I could end up more like Joan than Aaron. That is, as long as I remember to step over the blood in the street, smile, and accept some food.<br />
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<i>Kyle Stedman is responsible for writing this wonderful essay. Don't let his calm and cool exterior fool you. He is mad with the mic on karaoke night. </i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07553587189120178852noreply@blogger.com0