Cinematic Poetry (it can happen)

The other evening I had the distinct pleasure of encountering the delights of Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. Since it’s been winging its way around the US festival circuit since April, I shall shunt my lyrical waxings elsewhere, and instead talk about something shiny and new, but nonetheless related.

Winnipeg does what film should aspire to: using the medium to create something personal, distinct and engaging – and, not being a literary expert in any shape or form, I can, in my relative naivety, squash the words ‘cinematic’ and ‘poetry’ together in celebration of what Maddin’s film achieves. Whether the words and phrases used in the film hold much poetic weight on their own matters not, since the overall experience comes from the layering of image, sound and narration.

I’m not the only one throwing around this particular label; the UK’s foremost pithy critic, Mark Kermode, has recently sung the praises of Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City (‘lyrical’ and ‘transcendent’ being the key words). Davies speaks of his love of the small things that reveal ‘the greater truth’ of loss, nostalgia and the city. This rendering of what critics have described as both a love song and a eulogy was achieved through initial mute edits, to ensure that the images ‘speak’ on their own terms; extracts of (very carefully) chosen music and poetry were added later as a counterpoint. Whether this approach renders the end result less of a personal expression than Maddin’s film remains to be seen. I’m not sure how much I can love a snowless snippet of docu-memory, but Kermode assures us all that Davies’ mesmerising tones will more than make up for this oversight. It makes its US debut in January, so if you liked Winnipeg, be sure to track down ‘Liverpool’ - and let me know how the two compare.

Global economic downturn is bad news for women's shelters

I normally think of large corporations as necessary evils (but mostly just evils) of a capitalist society, and although I care about the daily employees, I've felt a bit smug about some of the collapses in a nostalgic Fight Club sense--until seeing that the global economic crisis means less money for charities. And that as the Arlington, VA Doorways women's shelter rep says, "domestic abuse spikes during hard economic times — driving more women and their children to the shelters and safe houses." Doorways is looking at possibly losing only a fifth of its budget, which is bad news, but compare that to the Women's Aid Organization in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which has a shortfall of $200,000 USD, less than the Doorways shortfall, and yet that amount is 2/3 the total budget. The WAO shortfall is also due to the global recession, and if the money can't be raised soon, they will have to close the Child Care Center which allows abused women to bring thier children with them.

It's a commonly held fact that women and children need charity and social services more than men, but lately I felt that such a coversation topic was too divisive, given the broad range of people suffering right now from job loss. But even if men and women were losing jobs at the same rate, women would still be holding the shorter end, because as Susan Faludi so effectively argues in Stiffed, a whole new wave of violence against women is likely to occur, brought about by men who feel emasculated by not being a breadwinner, who can't handle the powerlessness that is intrinsic to suffering consequences of the actions of people more powerful than oneself. And those more powerful in this case are the hedge fund managers, CEOs, deregulationists in congress, and every small investor and motgage holder who attempted to hop onto that bandwagon once it looked unstoppable. And some of those people will also be increasing violence.

So, what the heck is this blog about? I am concerned about how the fall of these major employers will statistically raise incidents of domestic abuse and then concerned that the lack of corporate donations is causing women's shelters to be crippled at the time they are even more in demand. In my naive Fight Club fantasy wherein multinationals crumble because of overexpansion, it never dawned on me that the "extra" of women's well-being would be compromised in such an event. More than this, it never occured to me that of course in a global recession, women in nonwestern countries wherein feminism hasn't nearly made the impact it has in the west will suffer disproportionately; in KL the police are still just as likely to tell a battered wife to go home and cook her husband his favorite meal or ask her "What did you do to make him hit you?" as they are to refer a woman to services like WAO's. In such a climate, clearly the lack of education about violence against women makes fundraising and forming alliances even more challenging for groups like WAO. I'm not saying that charity groups in the U.S. have it easy, except by comparison. And what a sad comparison. Women and children deserve more, and so do men. Men could help by proving the statistics wrong and not increasing violence in the first place.

Roll up your sleeves, friends of women. It's going to be a long winter.

Writing and Open Heart Surgery: Totally the same

Two weeks ago, I was laid off. (And no, it wasn't because I wrote about my job dissatisfaction on this blog.) The organization I worked for lost $1.6 million -- don't you just hate it when that happens? -- and had to cut 30 jobs.

As soon as they announced this tiny deficit, I knew I was a goner. Not only was I a relatively new hire, but my position was also a newly created one. Also? I'm a writer; the work I do is not valued.

I don't say this bitterly (well, maybe a little) or to evoke pity, but rather, simply to state a fact. In the business world, and often in the world at large, writing is not valued.

There are many reasons for this, but the one I want to focus on today is: Everyone's a Writer Syndrome.

We all use words, and most of us know how to read and write them. Because of this, many people -- some of whom I've had the pleasure of working with -- believe that they are good writers. And while I would never walk into an operating room and claim that because I know how to cut things open, I am therefore a qualified surgeon, these people actually believe that they can do what I do, and well.

It's an insulting yet all-too-frequent assumption. Case in point: The co-worker who designed and manages the agency's Web site is now additionally the writer/editor for the organization. To him I would say "good luck," but he probably won't need it.

Neither will I when, later this evening, I perform my first open heart surgery.

[Note: I am writing this post from my rightful spot at Panera.]

upcoming challenges to CA's prop 8

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in San Francisco since the November 4th election when a slim majority of Californians voted to overturn queer marriage rights. An
impromptu march, organized primarily through Facebook, Twitter and other internet sites, took place November 7th from SF's City Hall through the Castro to Dolores Park. Just over a week later, Join the Impact unified queer communities and their allies across the nation in concurrent protests.

Navel-gazing, angry San Franciscans examined any and all election results available to see what went wrong. A good 25% of the city's residents voted in support of prop 8; the SF Chronicle recently published a citywide map that allows users to determine the percentage of voters in each neighborhood who supported--or opposed--the proposition. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my neighborhood, where older Asian families rub up against houses packed with twentysomethings, voted 70-90% NO on 8. Some neighborhoods voting YES were obvious, such as Chinatown, but other districts, like SOMA, a semi-affluent loft playground for upwardly mobile suits, were surprising. The Chronicle also has a searchable database of donors to either side of the proposition 8 campaign. While such technology is necessary for any future fight, by allowing us to see where we need to create change, they also raise the prospect of community boycotts or hateful attacks. The community here has already spent a lot of time inaccurately blaming the black, latino and asian communities for passing prop 8, while few of us have been honest about our own efforts prior to the election. Most people I know, gay or straight, assumed 8 would never pass and did no work on the NO campaign. Sure, there is still work to be done within communities of color, but queers need to be mindful of scapegoating tactics.

In many ways, the fight over proposition 8 is the Stonewall of our generation. Over two weeks after the election, opposition to prop 8 is still making daily headlines, and Join the Impact continues to plan nationwide events, such as December 10th, aka Day Without A Gay. Want to follow the debate? The California Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear several challenges to prop 8. One such case examines the status of marriage rights of the 18,000 queer couples legally married in California. Will the state be forced to nullify those marriages? A second case focuses on the manner in which prop 8 was passed, arguing that a measure that strips a minority group of rights held by others needs to be passed in the legislature and not through a ballot initiative. This is the first instance of using the state constitution to rescind minority rights. A third challenge seeks to prove that prop 8 limits the scope of judicial power and violates the separation of powers guaranteed in the Constitution. Equality California has information on the challenges to proposition 8 for readers looking for extensive explanation of the cases going before the court as well as information on how to stay involved.

Savvy Context: Editing with Technology

A few years ago I was pretty sure I knew everything about Microsoft Word. Of course, the day I hit the "Track Changes" button, I realized I'd been missing out on something huge. Those of you in the publishing world might have had a similar revelation, but in my short time in the field, I've realized some people are still missing out. For the sake of my own sanity--not to mention yours--I'm not turning this blog into a Word tutorial. If you're looking for instructions, head over to Microsoft's website.

The benefits are pretty easy to identify. You can

• literally record everything you change while you type
• insert comments and queries just like you would while line editing a manuscript
• and keep track of multiple reviewer' comments.

Of course, Word isn't the only program out there, and track changes is native to most word processing applications (or maybe all? I admit I'm not an expert across platforms). The editing process can be started, tracked, and archived using these programs, and where editorial assistants had to print tens of thousands of pages a week (yes, an accurate estimate), they are now capable of simply managing one soft copy as it progresses through the ranks of editors and proofers.

An individual editor who switches to a strictly electronic review process can only make so much of a dent in the practices of an entire company. Unless entire work-flows shift to make use of technology, the costly inefficiency will continue. While I entirely respect the creative process and some writers' need for paper, I just don't think editors should continue working without electronic editing and work-flows. Undoubtedly the transition will be tough and we'll all have to get better at working with the programs our companies chose to use. The thought that we can do away with time consuming copying, bulky print-outs, and all the energy we currently spend manually tracking changes in a manuscript just outweighs the work we'll do changing our habits.

Next blog, I'll be bringing in some real life examples of how technology has helped the editing process (beyond the copy-paste revolution, of course) and hopefully have thoughts from people getting the most out of their electronic resources. Until then, I'd love to hear what you all have to say: any EA's out there dying to stop copying? Or any that think it'd be impossible to switch?

Teh Internetz (But Not Really): Recycling Someone Else's Blog Post

As I said before, I am deep in the trenches of writing a novel in 30 days or less, or the whole book is free. So this post comes to you from the sort-of distant past. I write this one day before the election, so I am still beautifully in the dark. I can still worry about silly things.

Like grammar.

My nerd and language hero, Stephen Fry, has just written a new blog post about the nature of language which is a must-read for any writer. Especially writers who (whom? no, no, I think it's okay) are freaking out about vomiting up a minimum word count every day, regardless of whether it's grammatically correct or even makes any sense.

It's a beautiful argument against Language Nazism, and a lovely mantra to keep in mind as you attempt to break through your block to get words down on the processor. Here's a snippet:

Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s usage and in which they show off their own superior ‘knowledge’ of how language should be. I hate that, and I particularly hate the fact that so many of these pedants assume that I’m on their side. When asked to join in a “let’s persuade this supermarket chain to get rid of their ‘five items or less’ sign” I never join in. Yes, I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language. Oscar Wilde, and there have been few greater and more complete lords of language in the past thousand years, once included with a manuscript he was delivering to his publishers a compliment slip in which he had scribbled the injunction: “I’ll leave you to tidy up the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, thats and whiches &c.” Which gives us all encouragement to feel less guilty, don’t you think?

It does, sir. It does.

Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams

Last month I met one of my idols. A writer that was introduced to me before I ever thought of myself as one. A woman with a multifaceted voice that comes from a landscape very different from my own but who has an outlook on family and tragedy that brought me in. When I learned that she would be at my local bookstore to read, I screamed and danced around my apartment. I realized I would get to hear her voice, reading her words, and that I might even get to speak with her. I still get sick thinking about the fact that I did.




Terry Tempest Williams came to Porter Square Books, a small but powerhouse independent bookstore in Cambridge, MA, in late October to read from her latest publication Finding Beauty in a Broken World. TTW found her inspiration as she lost her sense of self in a post 9/11 country broken and at war:

We watched the towers collapse. We watched America choose war. The peace in our own hearts shattered. How to pick up the pieces? What to do with the pieces?

It was the “pieces” that inspired Williams to look closer at our fragmentation and the potential to not only rebuild but also for beauty. Her journey takes her to Ravenna, Italy, a town famous for its bejeweled walls, to lean the craft of mosaic and then to Bryce Canyon National Park where she studies endangered prairie dogs for two weeks day and night in what she calls an “ecological mosaic.” Her journey comes full circle when she travels to Rugerero, Rwanda, with a group called the Barefoot Artists to meet with survivors of the 1994 genocide, serving as their scribe and telling the world what many countries, including America, tried to pretend was not happening.

My main concern is that while showcasing the prairie dog for its ecological importance and complex language system (something this blogger admits being completely ignorant of), Williams loses her readers at times discussing political action and detailing her days observing the animals in excess. That is not to say, however, that this section does not hold merit, but it is difficult to get through. (TTW told attendees at the reading that her father claimed he would pay anyone $1 who could get through this portion.)

Finding Beauty in a Broken World finds its voice and journey’s purpose with the tale of the genocide survivors and their ongoing battle to rebuild their country and to find semblance in their everyday lives. There are few words to describe what these people have been through and continue to deal with. Yet there is so much hope and want for progression. Williams captures this essence describing the villagers as they work with the Barefoot Artists—a group experienced with rebuilding and uniting communities through art. Bleak, government-built houses are painted with designs from orphans and a mosaic memorial is built from rubble and overlooked material. Together they create something beautiful out of their destruction and show what humanity is capable of (good and bad).

The Nobel, the Zeitgeist, and the All-American Poem

Dear Lents, dear 82nd avenue, dear 92nd and Foster,
I am your strange son.
--Matthew Dickman, "Lents District"

When the Nobel Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl announced that U.S. literature is "too isolated, too insular," he wasn't so far from the truth as we'd like to believe. Sure, Slate Magazine is right to suggest that the Nobel committee has no clue what's going on in American literature—despite its enormous presence, especially among young writers, on the World Wide Web. But even then, what you find in American poetry, at least, as well as its fiction, is the pervasive influence of PoMo theory, self-referential language deconstruction, and the politics of Identity. Some of it is readable, some dull to the point of tears. I often find myself reading this stuff and saying, "So what?"

I recently finished reading Virgil's Aeneid and found it a kind of hack-job of Homer, nothing new in the world of criticism, but I found it out for myself. What is important is that I arrived at this conclusion only after a careful examination of Virgil's forebears—Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, and the rest of the Greeks—as well as his fellow Romans—Horace, Ovid, et al. Thus, I've learned for myself that the only way to approach literature is through a careful refinement of the sensibility, through being informed of the entire history of literature. Taste is something different, but even within its confines I realize that Virgil is important, but he doesn't suit me.

It is in this state of mind that I recently attended Portland's literary festival, Wordstock, solely to hear Matthew Dickman read from his APR-winning first book, All-American Poem. Dickman has all the elements of the current American zeitgeist: the humor, the French-styled imaginative flourishes, the stream-of-consciousness machine-gunning of images building and building upon one trope or another. Just look at his poems on the Boston Review.

But whereas other contemporary young poets offer detailed maps of their imagination, or contemplate their undependable self and voice, Dickman charges into his poems with an inherent sense of both hope and the human condition, as well as the desire to communicate. Rather than relying on self-referential feelings, Dickman looks outward to the neighborhoods he grew up in, to the people in his life who have suffered, and in this way he resembles Whitman. Still, he does look inward, but to his own faults, cruelties, and blindsides. Even in this self-regard, he rises above it to offer a vision, a kind of unity, no matter how unstable, and he's careful enough to say, as he says in the poem "Trouble", "I want to be good to myself."

The Nobel committee knows nothing about a poet like Dickman, of course. As Marvin Bell has said to students, "I don't care about the poems you're writing now, I care about the poems you'll be writing ten years from now." As Dickman says in his poem, "V": "maybe this is not a giant leap / into the science of compassion, but it's something." And so, it is exciting to think where Dickman will take this all, his sweeping themes, his adherence to tradition. If we're lucky, we may see a writer like Dickman wearing a ribbon in fifty years, rising as all good cream does to the top, singing the "all-American, broken in half and beautiful."

YOU Make the Difference

Fringe loves you. You love Fringe. But that's not all.

Sure, Fringe has a website that looks good, but did you know that each slick issue of Fringe takes more than 20 hours to code and load? We'd like to reduce that time and give you a product that looks even more suave by upgrading our site. But it won't come cheap -- we need $10,000 to get the job professionally done and to get our weekends back from HTML.

We wouldn't ask you to do anything we aren't willing to: In addition to lavishing time on our issues, each Fringe editor donates $10 per month, or $120 per year to keep your favorite online journal afloat.

If everyone on our newslist donated $25, we'd have more than enough to get a new website and pay our extra operating costs. We are a federal nonprofit, so all donations are tax-deductible. You can donate here -- http://www.fringemagazine.org/Donate.html.

And, if you donate $50 or more by the end of the year, we'll send you a Fringe shot glass! Guaranteed to start lots of fringey conversations.

As always, thank you for your generous support of Fringe. Keep indie publishing HOT!

xoxo,
The Editors of Fringe

Fringe Magazine

thenounthatverbsyourworld.blogspot.com

Curious about what we spend our money on? Take a look at our 2008 operations budget:

$ 48 Cost of web space

$ 488 Legal filing fees associated with maintaining nonprofit status.

$ 120 Dirty Water Reading Series
$ 300 Marketing budget
$ 200 Miscellaneous expenses, including web consulting
$ 375 For a table at the American Writing Programs conference. (This year a gracious donor paid our way.)
$ 75 Membership in the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
____________________

$1,231 Total Budget vs $1,180 in 2008 donations ($800 from Fringe editors and $380 from readers)

Struggling would-be writer master class

Lesson one: define yourself

Compulsive - ‘If I don’t scribble down my insightful slices of wit/genius/woe right now my mind will literally implode in a sticky, angst-ridden mess.’

Dreamer – ‘I want to write, but I just don’t know what about...’

One-time wonder – Breaks through with a lifetime’s labour of love. They may only have one novel inside them, but they have the sense to make it a damn good one.

Memoir miserablist - Taints the literary world with details of their (possibly fabricated) abusive/difficult childhood and/or time in rehab. A self-righteous tone is essential. Ditto details of horrific depravity coupled with triumph of the human spirit.

Obsessive - Unlike the compulsive, the obsessive enjoys writing for its own sake. They have clocked up their 10,000 hours of genius-making time before puberty, whilst their peers were still lost in the follies of navel-gazing. Once their genius reaches its inevitable peak, they will be forced to publish under a myriad of jazzy pseudonyms so as not to flood the unsuspecting market.

Good poet – Expresses various elements of the human condition in an array of elegant and quietly affecting musings.

Bad poet – Believes that they are doing the above simply by omitting punctuation and capital letters.

Glory hound– Unavoidable. Gain respect by not pretending that your work is nothing more than a twee hobby for which you partake for your own amusement/therapeutic reasons. You’ve already rehearsed your interviews numerous times already – more reason to get it right whence that hallowed day arrives.

Be clear in your own mind as to which type of writer you are going to become and hope for the best. Your journey is sure to be long, arduous and largely unfulfilling, but that’s pretty much the point. There is absolutely no point in styling yourself as a writer if you can’t bitch about it every step of the way.

Not found your type? The full list can be found here.

Next week: Discover your 'process'...

California Dreamin?

Obama's victory wasn't the only landmark decision in last week's election. Here, guest contributor Kelley Calvert weighs in on the passing of Proposition 8 against gay marriage in California:

Standing before a crowd of thousands in Washington DC, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. told audiences 45 years ago: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

In what seemed to be the completion of Martin Luther King’s dream, Barack Obama was elected president in a landslide victory. Standing before a crowd of over 200,000 people in Chicago, President-Elect Barack Obama told the nation, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

For millions of Californians, his words already rang untrue.

Though Barack Obama’s election has created a sense of euphoria and a belief that all things are possible for all people, the passing of Proposition 8 by a 52%-48% margin has cast a doubtful shadow over our national dream of equality.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. marched on Washington in 1963, his dream had gathered inertia, but it was far from being realized. The Supreme Court had made school segregation illegal nine years prior, but overt and violent racism was still a norm. In a 1958 Gallup poll, 94% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage, a statistic showing the deep entrenchment of American Apartheid.

The President of the Confederacy during the Civil War, Jefferson Davis stated, "[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation.” Fliers distributed by the Yes on 8 Campaign brazenly declare that, “God himself is the author of marriage. Its meaning is written in the very nature of man and woman.”

Just as religion was once used to justify slavery, it is now being used to argue that gay people do not deserve the same rights as everyone else. The New American Apartheid again suggests that one group of people is somehow lesser than another and “Separate but Equal” has found its modern manifestation in Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships.

In an irony capable only in these times, the record minority turnout for elections which put Barack Obama in the White House served to perpetuate the persecution of another minority group. Exit polls show that Proposition 8 was supported by 70% of black voters.

The remnants of yellow ‘Yes on 8’ signs paid for by religious institutions that targeted and manipulated the black vote represent a massive failure of democracy. They represent not the triumph of tradition or God’s will, but the betrayal of the values upon which we Americans have built our country. In California, we realized the dream of Martin Luther King by a staggering percentage: 61.2% for Barack Obama. This historic occasion leads me to a simple question.

California, did you forget about us? Or, are we just not included in the American fairy tale that all men are created equal? Today, my well-meaning liberal friends assure me that, “We still have a long way to go on social issues,” and continue on their way, floating on Obama’s glory. Last night my fellow Californians voted to procure rights for farm animals. Yet, somehow, you have voted to take away rights from human beings?

How is this possible?

Yes, November 4th represents the culmination of a great dream and minorities all over the country are awakening today rightfully reinvigorated by the hope that equality has been realized. Nonetheless, millions of your separate but equal fellow citizens are awakening to a different dream, a nightmare that raises the exact question many Americans asked on the eve of September 11: Why do they hate us so much?

It certainly isn’t our freedom.

The greener grass

As I've expressed before, my job isn't particularly challenging. I don't have a whole lot to do, and the projects I'm assigned to do bore me. I'm writing (marketing materials), but not in the capacity I want to be writing (articles, columns, essays, books). My chief complaint isn't lack of time to write, but rather, lack of inspiration, energy, drive. Boredom breeds lethargy. Cubicles breed hopelessness. And so on.

A friend of mine, however, has the opposite problem. She, too, graduated from a MFA program last December. She found a job that allows her to write, and constantly. She gets paid to craft fun, creative short pieces about pop culture, TV, and politics. Unfortunately, her employers under-appreciate and under-value her work. The results? Long hours, constant criticism, and an environment that she describes as "toxic." Working 12 hours a day in a toxic environment doesn't leave her with much time for her own writing, let alone a social life. She enjoys the work, she says, but wonders if the job is worth it.

When we compare notes at the end of a long week, I can't help but wonder which one of us is worse/better off. Would I rather be too busy in a job that more closely resembles the career I envision for myself, or not busy enough in a job that allows me the time to write (if only I could motivate myself)? Which type of job would better serve my (our) writing?

Thoughts?

Procrastination, Pessimism, and Floral Design

This afternoon as my hands gently clipped the tape that wound around the petals of the bouquet's fifteen gerber daisies, it occurred to me I should have gone to buy the flowers myself. I had ordered a hand-tied bouquet from a Malaysian florist on the web at a bargain and gotten only what I paid for. The tape was not even plant tape but regular scotch, and around the stems the tape held the whole together, but suffocated it as result. After freeing the flowers' faces to open into outward embrace, I wished someone would snip the tape and carefully peel it from around the petals on my head.

I don't know why I spent an hour choosing the flowers to order and then another hour proving my identity since I'd used an American credit card to buy flowers on the other side of the globe. Then I spent a third hour removing the tape from the flowers and arranging them in a large green vase, ignoring the deadline for the Yale Series of Younger Poets only three days away. But no one has taped my laptop shut, nor webbed my fingers together so that I might only bang at the keys. I've got an excellent compilation that really would only require the teensiest bit of shuffling and last minute cuts. At least half the poems have been published in journals and zines, and almost all have been given the editorial eye by at least one poet I trust. They represent ten years of writing and reading and editing, but also represent well over a thousand dollars in previous contest fees and related expenses.

Most of my peers in writing workshops and at conferences have admitted frustration with unrequited appeals to be published. We're in good company if you like Coleridge or Plath, amongst many others. Besides identifying with melancholics, writers in moments of self-doubt console ourselves with stats bordering upon urban legends, such as that most manuscripts circulate for at least two years, some as much as eight, and then greatness is rewarded. We're told by writers who've "made it" and editors that if we keep trying, really good writing will find a home, but of course they would say that. The other option is too dismal for a floral-scented reading or workshop for which participants have paid. Yes, perhaps the writing is good enough, but like Blake or Dickinson we may never live to know it, or even worse, perhaps the work will never go anywhere, period--or worst, maybe despite all our desire and energy the writing just isn't that good.

This year I let the deadlines for fall contests lapse because I'd rather keep my petals closed than risk opening them once again to nothing, but I hate how whiny that sounds. The self-indulgent melancholy in this post creeps throughout with such thickness you'd have to clip through it with a weed eater. And would there be any point in clipping through it? The red and yellow fall bouquet on my coffee table is calling me a hypocrite to prefer suffocation wherein I hold the scissors, instead of relinquishing them to an editorial team that I'd trust as much as my Malaysian florist. Then again, I am probably less afraid of "putting pearls before swine" than of getting the one-rejection-too-many that makes me think I am just not a blooming poet at all.

Crowd Surfing with Obama

The optimism in the air in Boston this past week has been nearly palpable. What with Obama's victory Tuesday and the unseasonably warm November weather, there's a smile on nearly everyone's faces these days. It's a welcome reprieve from the doom and gloom of the economic crisis and the impending winter chill. Though there was much gleeful shouting, car horn beeping, and giddy bouncing on Tuesday night around 11pm, the most exuberance I've seen was at the Orpheum Theater Thursday night, when I went to see the Decemberists.

It was my second time seeing the Portland band, known for their eccentric stage antics and literary lyrics, live. The first time their set was punctuated with a giant whale puppet and members of the band diving into the audience at the Avalon to crowd surf. Many of their songs are more mythic tales than pop song, with tracks ranging from "O Valencia!" which tells the story of a star-struck romance in the vein of Romeo and Juliet, to "The Mariner's Revenge Song" in which a man finds justice in the belly of a whale. The group has an ode to the writer Myla Goldberg and in fact, lead singer Colin Meloy's sister is an acclaimed author herself.

This time, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Barack Obama stood in for the giant whale. The band sent the 2-D President Elect into the crowd, where he happily crowd surfed for a good part of the set. When the audience returned him to the stage, Meloy sent him back, saying "No, he belongs with the people." If that wasn't clue enough of the band's political stance, Meloy went on to expound how delighted and inspired he was by the election, and lead a call and response "Yes we can! Yes we DID!" chant. The real climax of the evening came during the last song of the night, "Sons and Daughters," the last song on the band's most recent studio album The Crane Wife. As they launched into the chorus "Here all the bombs fade away," they pulled up about 30 members of the audience and, as everyone sang along, I couldn't help but tear up a little bit. It was a fitting reminder of the relevance and resonance music can have in culture, and in our own personal lives.

It's been a great week, and I can only hope that this sense of possibility doesn't fade away.

Professionally Developed

Traditionally, when an administrator “asks” me to attend an outside professional-development training, I groan. Almost invariably, from the moment I walk into the local Howard Johnson/Best Western/Comfort Inn, slap the adhesive name badge on my breast, select from the continental breakfast buffet, and settle into my folding chair, these “workshops” become little more than a 6 –hour infomercial with the sole intention of selling us the latest book, learning kit, or software under the guise of imparting wisdom to a room of overworked, underpaid teachers who are already planning their escape during the “on your own” lunch break.

So, when my boss told me I had been registered for Walter Mayes’ “The Best New Young Adult Literature of The Decade” workshop, my reaction was much the same. But, since it didn’t seem I had much choice in the matter anyway, I figured, if nothing else, I’d get to sleep in, wear jeans, and leave a sub with my roomful of eleven year-olds on Halloween. If I was really lucky, I might even get a good list of new books to use for inspiring my students and my Fringe column. As it turns out, I got all of that, and a whole lot more.

The moment that 6 foot, 7 inch tall, former Jeopardy champion, Walter Mayes took the stage, I knew that this would not be a typical “training” session. As the Librarian and Media Specialist at The Girls' Middle School in Mountain View, California, Mayes is skilled in the art of engaging a dubious audience.

In addition to regaling us with stories of the liberal grandparents who instilled in him the love of all things literary, his experiences as a member of dozens of literary award committees, and anecdotes about trying to keep his library stocked with enough copies of the Twilight series (which he endearingly denounces as a “piece of crap”), Mayes provided exactly what we wanted: a list of the best new YA books, their appropriate audiences, and how to use them most effectively in our classrooms. Among his favorites? Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars, Gordon Kormon's No More Dead Dogs, and Chris Lynch's Inexcusable.

Most importantly, though, he inspired us to turn the sour grapes of teaching literature to the unwilling into a sweet, sweet wine to intoxicate not only our students, but ourselves, with the love of reading.

Yesterday, I made a trip to the local bookstore, lightened my wallet, and weighted my tote-bag with 6 new books--the three mentioned above plus,Nancy Werlin's The Rules of Survival, Shaun Tan's The Arrival that I have only put down long enough to write this post.

So, for now, I’m off to do some reading. Be back next time with a look at Gary Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars. In the meanwhile, listen to Walter read a clip from his book, Walter The Giant Storyteller's Giant Book of Giant Stories

Online Poetry: Observe, Remember, Imagine

Writers should keep their senses open at all times, remember what those sense receive (even and especially when that information is not fully understood), and when in the process of writing they find they have forgotten something, they should make up resplendent lies, details more real than the real. A vague bluff will always be called. Ravi Shankar's Pike Place in Studio Vol. 2, Issue 1. Unfortunately, it does so not by demonstrating the results of such actions but by illustrating the sort of lackluster verse that appears in its absence.

Frankly, if Pike Place Market weren't such a major tourist attraction, I would assume that he had never been there and had, at best, read that horrible corporate motivation book the fish throwers released. The trouble begins in the first stanza with the lines "Puget Sound sounds astound / no one for the crowd is pressed." The poet needs to describe those sounds for them to be meaningful; if he wanted to dodge that responsibility, he should have called them ocean or sea sounds, since the use of a name instead implies something unique about it. The pun on Sound does not ameliorate this. Had he managed a truly remarkable description, I might have been willing to forgive him for not realizing that, no matter the behavior of the crowd, the Sound would have to be unusually loud for anyone in the market to hear it given the ambient noise of the city and the distance from the water.

From here, Shankar goes on to describe the "fishmongers" in cliché terms as "sinewy" and "young". Even their movements are non-individualized. They cut the fish "with an efficiency of motion". He says they give out "coral nubs of salmon / jerky", though even this vegetarian knows there's a huge difference between hard (let alone coral hard), dry jerky and soft fresh fish. He accuses them of "wisecracking the entire time" but gives the reader none of their words. He tells the reader that they are "minor stars in their own minds." The prepositional phrase implies that they are puffed up, though certainly the "rapt" crowd Shankar has described should support their own estimation. It further suggests that the speaker, not specifically differentiated from the poet, considers himself superior to, or at least more clear-sighted than, these men.

The next two stanzas read as exposition lifted from some book describing "Seattle’s oldest market" Shankar conscientiously lists specific "edibles / . . . treated like art objects" but fails to give any life to these descriptions.

Then the poem jumps into what I assume Shankar believes is the most important part: the description of what happened to Japanese-Americans who owned fish stalls when they were forced into internment during World War II. Unfortunately, this too remains vague. We get the title of the order that led to their incarceration but not the names of the people themselves. Had Shankar earlier given better details, remembered or imagined, of the present-day market, he might be able to connect them much more smoothly and powerfully to the stories of Japanese-Americans (even if he had to make up a family and research the names on baby-name websites) instead of using, for a transition, the line "I wonder how many remember", which oozes with smug superiority.

After that, he gives descriptions of shoppers and ferry boats which carry a fair bit of detail. I suspect, given their place in the structure, that they were supposed to resonate ironically with the words about the internment of Japanese-Americans. As there were no real details to hold onto in those words, however, these later lines fall flat.

Finally, he ends with what has to be the oddest line in the whole poem: "I haven’t seen a single Asian all day." Has this man ever been to Seattle? Had he just been hanging out in Packwood all day before driving in to visit Pike Place? The lie is almost big enough that if it had come at the end of a strong poem, it might have had a formidable effect—that of a metaphor or remembrance of history getting in the way of seeing reality. At the end of a vague weak poem, however, it feels like the last thrash of a drowning victim.

This shows how even a potentially powerful idea cannot thrive unless the poet pays attention and remembers or is willing to risk a dramatic, detailed lie. I did not write this to pick on Shankar. For all I know, this poem may represent a rare lapse on the part of a highly skilled poet. We all write bad poems. I've thrown away more poems in a single year than most of you reading this will compose in a lifetime. I wrote this criticism because I want people to see how damaging failure to observe and remember or imagine precisely and without fear can be.

Savvy Context: Odds and Ends of Writing Media

Alright, some last words on why you write on computers or on paper.

On the whole, I prefer writing on paper. I have to put something down everyday. I keep a journal so that even if I'm not working on something, I have an outlet. For me it's not just the paper that's addictive because I also have a slight addiction to fancy, colorful pens.—Kandi H.

[After considering that others might not understand her process]…that is writing, I guess. The experience is different for everyone..-- Aimee L.

…I type things that enter my mind with great speed, leaving no time to process what I'm writing as I write it and to, thus, create more to continue on….I write briefly and stop for several minutes, watching the blinking text cursor rhythmically taunt and jeer me as I try to think of what comes next. When I write by hand, the process is slower and capable of marinating in its own juices. I recommend both paths--handwriting and typing, especially since the latter has spell-check--for the reasons previously stated.—Lynz M.

I think computers have made it easy for a lot of bad writing to get out there - bigoted blogs, formulaic novels, inaccurate reporting - all rife with punctuation and grammatical errors…Overall I think computers have helped writing - but please don't get me started on e-books.—Tanya P.

As much of a techie as I am (I almost never write on paper), I still can't imagine writers giving up on paper in the foreseeable future. And as content creators, writers are just as valuable in the transition to all electronic formats as the readers are important as content consumers. So we're all in agreement: you can't cut paper out of the writing game just yet. Will we ever be able to?

Teh Internetz: Teeny Tiny Laptops

This post and my next post were written far in advance and set to post automatically. As I shared last time, I am deep in the throes of NaNoWriMo and cannot be bothered by things like blogging and eating.

So as I write to you from the distant past of October 29th, when we still don't know if the election is going to have a "hiccup" or not, if Palin will suddenly grow bat wings and attack elite gay socialists, or if the war in Iraq will ever stop, I bring a sense of charming naivety.

Today I will discuss very small laptops, because I just bought one and I sort of want to gloat about it? In order to maximize my on-the-go writing time, I decided to invest in an ACUS eee PC. Mine is green, like the one pictured, weighs 2 lbs., and runs on Linux. For the ungeeky, Linux is an open-source computing platform. It's like Windows except free and crowd-created and moderated. It doesn't do everything that Windows or a Mac could do, but it is pretty nifty. And since I'll just be using this as my ultraportable, I don't need it to do much besides connect to the internet and type.

But for those writers that need more OOMPH from their mobile writing gadgets, here are some options:

The ultra-thin, ultra-sexy Mac Book Air is pretty, but lacks the usefulness you'd like in your amazingly expensive Apple product.

Looking slightly less hot but a better marriage prospect is the Fujitsu Lifebook.

The Lenovo ThinkPad line consistently gets good reviews on everything from endurance to memory to battery life.

But if you need something cheaper, take a look at what's available in Under $600 Land.

RIP Michael Crichton

The prolific doctor turned author Michael Crichton died yesterday. Though perhaps not the most "literary" of writers, his work was suspenseful and thought-provoking.

VOTE

Be a "real" American. Get out to the polls today.

The Relevance of Rexroth

Walking in Greenwich Village a few years ago, I saw a small historical plaque affixed to the building where Dylan Thomas died, having drank himself into oblivion. What was one poet's reaction? The poem "Thou Shalt Not Kill".

Has anything changed? Today Brooklyn, home to Whitman, is a bastion for writers. Denver, too, is home to writers and the magazines that promote them; no longer does it bear Ginsberg’s “Denver Doldrums.”

Chicago, too, is experiencing a renaissance--at least if one can measure it via the poets circulating through, orbiting poets like Joshua Marie Wilkinson whose Rabbit Light Movies film many of these poets passing through. Aside from Poetry magazine and Carl Sandberg, even beyond the Chicago Review and other presses, who knows the literary history of Chicago?

Read An Autobiographical Novel, a stunning text by Kenneth Rexroth and an invaluable document of the era just before the Depression in Chicago. Rexroth writes about the urban Midwest with so much detail, with such panache, it’s been said his book will make your own life seem morbidly dull.

In its heyday, Chicago was home to anarchists, communists, agitators, artists, and writers. Rexroth throws around names no one would recognize today. Sure, he lived in New York, too, and beneath Hart Crane’s apartment no less, where young “Rex” could hear Crane playing his blues records while writing White Buildings. But Chicago! Who would have known how much had happened there in theater, in painting, and in the response of labor movement crowds to poems read on street corners and soapboxes?

Jacket Magazine features a tribute issue to Rexroth, including an essay by Sam Hamill, a excellent introduction to a profound influence on an entire generation of poets, especially “the Beats” whom he had little patience for. Rexroth’s influence in San Francisco is what we generally attribute to him, especially acting as MC for the Six Gallery Reading, and also for his “basement readings” with Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Aside from a recent issue of Chicago Review devoted to him, and the release of his collected poems by Copper Canyon Press (edited by Hamill and Bradford Morrow), and even a website, the Bureau of Public Secrets, featuring generous portions of his work, is his legacy somewhat neglected? Perhaps not.

Having read nearly all of his books—which include not only poems but his magnanimous essays—I’d like to suggest a return to a deeper study of his formidable intellect, his model of the life well-lived, his astounding recollections of American history, and the deep and compassionate understanding of the human condition.

(See a video of Rexroth reading his poetry here and another blog entry here.)

Fear His Wrath... or don't... maybe

Ah, the power of the media: post an idea in the ‘comment is free’ section of a national newspaper’s website and watch it grow. Or in the case of Ariane Sherine, you can also watch the public falling over each other to pledge their pennies towards your humble cause.

Sherine wanted to raise £11,000 in order put an atheist message on no less than 30 London buses for 4 weeks – the rationale being to counter all the damnation-style religious advertising that plague public transport (something, I must admit, I have been blissfully oblivious to). After enrolling the British Humanist Association, plus everyone’s favourite anti-God spokesman, Richard Dawkins (who promised to match whatever the public throws in – but only up to £5,500) Sherine has already amassed a healthy £115,820.10.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it all. Part of me thinks ‘fair enough’ and another part is left wondering, as you always do with such matters, whether all those lovely pennies (and the formidable power of the public forum) could be put to better use. Much has also been made of the phrasing of the ad, said to make its debut in January. What will it achieve? I can’t imagine a mini-ambush of atheist buses will weald significant influence over commuters, but I suppose in light of all the lovely debate it’s inspired, the ad itself is almost incidental. Interestingly, theologian think-tank Theos has also donated £50, under the reasoning that, hey, at least it gets people talking. It’s all publicity, innit.


A more eloquent (and informed) take on it all.