I’m in the middle of a packing frenzy at the moment—I leave two days after graduation, spend four days driving across the country, then get on a plane for Europe the very next day—so I don’t have any real insights to offer today. Instead, I have a few fun questions. Think of it as holiday fun.

1.   What fictional character would you be most excited to meet?
2.   What fictional character would you be most terrified to meet?
3.   What literary world would you choose to live in?
4.   What movie was better than the book?
5.   What books are you embarrassed to admit you’ve never read?
6.   What books are you embarrassed to admit you have read?

I wonder what kind of ratings this would get these days: Vladimir Nabokov and critic Lionel Trilling and a Canadian interviewer discuss Lolita, art, sex, love, and the novelist’s intentions.

I’ve watched this interview from the 1950s a few times over the past couple of years, and what interests me most — apart from my simple fanboy interest in Nabokov — are the strange little details of the production. The book-strewn set. The bygone formality of the setting. Nabokov’s accent. The seemingly huge number of lamps. The on-air smoking, the mispronunciations of the author’s name, the fact that the three parties all get up and change seats while continuing their discussion. My favorite nugget is the fact that Nabokov identifies something he calls the “artist-reader,” the kind of reader he’s aiming to affect with his work.

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I hope everyone out there is enjoying their long weekend with barbeques and camping trips.  Unfortunately Washington has had record cold temperatures all week and today finally has some sun.  I am so excited about my favorite activity associated with my lifestyle as a writer: to sit out in the sun with my computer and a glass of ice tea.  After this holiday weekend the market will be flooded with thousands of MFA grads all going for the same few jobs, the few same publishing contracts, and in reality, most of us will end-up waiting tables or answering phones or something like that.  It’s true.  There is no escaping it.  Everywhere I turn its, welcome to the one of the worst job markets ever.  It’s positively soul sucking. I think the only way to avoid a trip to the insane asylum is to focus on the things that make what we are all trying to do worth it.  So in that regards here is my top ten reasons why I love that I’m a writer. Read more »

An interview with Patricia Goedicke

I very often use the word “dream” when I mean “poem,” and “poem” when I mean “dream.” A poet loose enough in a dream sort of state—not really dreaming—allowing the free play of the unconscious will come up with words and images that cause her to say, “Where did that come from?” the same as a dream will. And a poet’s response to that would not be as an interpreter of a dream, analyzing it, at least not right now, but instead to move it forward, to push, to play with it more, to do a kind of waking dreaming with it. At the same time, trying to use that other resource we have, language, to express it. Once you do that, the language begins to tell you other things, because dreams, like poems, are full of puns. But the poem is a far more conscious process, a conscious release of the unconscious. That’s why it’s so hard, because it’s so easy to will a poem. You say, “Ah! I know what that’s about.” And then you’re lost. You give a quick, glib ending, and you set the poem so it won’t move again. Whereas it may have a life that you haven’t discovered yet.



I’ve been teaching third graders through EWU’s Writers in the Community program, and over the course of our year together, I’ve discovered something: kids watch too much TV.

For example: I decided, a few weeks ago, to mix things up and have the kids write jokes instead of poems or short stories.  Most of them preferred the knock-knock variety.  A lot of them I’d heard before (knock-knock!  who’s there?  boo!  boo hoo?  you don’t need to cry about it!) but there was one that seemed new to me, until I saw the TV commercial from which the student had stolen it… Read more »

The other night in Nonfiction Form and Theory class, an interesting conversation got started about the differences between memoir and personal essay.  We were studying Judith Kitchen, a fiction writer, poet, essayist, and memoirist.  Our own Amaris brought up some biographical information from Kitchen’s website, on “To Essay or to Memoir.”  Kitchen defines the difference between memoir and essay thusly (don’t you love using thusly?):  “In other words, the moment of the essay is the present; the moment of the memoir is the past.”  Kitchen says that the essay is aimed at the future; it connects something small and personal to the world at large.  Personal experience works as a vehicle for the larger thing the essay is trying to accomplish.  The memoir is, according to Kitchen, a lazy voyage into the past. 

Our professor Natalie Kusz, upon hearing these “guidelines,” heartily disagreed.  Natalie’s view (in a sloppy and probably inaccurate paraphrase) seems to be that the moment of memoir is not the past, it’s the now.  Because if you’re reading the essay now, that moment of the memoir is now.  Kitchen says “At its best, memoir can give us the feel of another life.  Essays give us the feel of another mind.”  Even though events are accumulating to form a sense of a life in a memoir, it’s more than the sense of a life. It’s a sense of the mind, because the mind, the writer-at-the-desk, is the one writing about the sense of the life.  So it’s rooted in the past, but if it’s a good memoir, it’s going to be, for the reader, in the present.  Natalie also brought up “memoirs” vs. “memoir.”  Memoir carries a certain weight, sort of implying a “literary.”  Memoirs would be something like Celebrity X’s Messed Up Life, or Politician X’s Crazed Views on Controversial Topic Y. 

Before coming to EWU, I had read less than five personal essays—I have excuses.  I really was unaware that the thing existed.  Seriously.  And I know that’s sad, but my degree is in literature and my college didn’t have but two creative writing classes—Poetry and Short Story.  So, I got a book of essays by Barbara Kingsolver, and I read a few.  Then, I got bored.  Nope, the essay isn’t for me, I thought.  I was going to write a memoir.  But since coming to EWU and struggling with what an essay is and what it needs to do, I’ve fallen in love with the form.  But I think memoir and essay aren’t that different.  I’ve read books of essays that read like a memoir, like “Stop-Time” by Frank Conroy, and “Traveling Mercies” by Anne Lammott.   I think of the line between the two forms as very hazy, indeed.  Both forms need to bring something deeper out of an experience, or a list of experiences, right?

Phillip Lopate made a distinction I like between memoir and personal essay.  “The memoir requires other people.”  The essay can, of course, bring in other characters, but not of necessity.  But the memoir would be remiss (and possibly quite boring) if the narrator was the only character on the page.  Basically, since starting the MFA program, I’ve learned that I don’t know what an essay is, and I also don’t know what a memoir is.  But at least I know that much.  What do you see as the distinctions between memoir and personal essay?

No relation to the post, I just like snowy scenes.

I have friends that absolutely adore the books that started with a spoof on Jane Austen’s classics and the title  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Somehow, I don’t want to read them for reasons that are a strange combinations of a book store employee pushing the book to hard, my love of Austen’s original characters, and jealousy because I didn’t think of doing something like this first.

I don’t have a problem with using classic characters in modern writing; I’m a huge fan of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, and have read some of the Jane Austen fan-fiction sequels that are out there.  Maybe my aversion to the Zombies, Sea Monsters, and Mummies books is mostly because of the jealousy and the pushy book store employee experience.

Here are some humor based on classic works that I am a huge fan of: Second City alumni Brian Gallivan and friends’ alternates of Shakespeare’s stories based the happier endings that would have happened if the heroine had  a “sassy gay friend.”  

Romeo and Juliet:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwnFE_NpMsE

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i know “death of publishing” tirades have been all the rage for longer than i care to remember, but they do seem to be increasing in frequency, even if not in sober assessment.  the latest death rattle has come in the form a garrison keillor op-ed.

he was swiftly and repeatedly shouted down from all corners, perhaps a little too excitedly given keillor’s ever-present folksy grandad tone.  the old writer & radio man wasn’t exactly some apocalyptic preacher talkin’ crazytalk.  true, he did say that book publishing was about to “slip into the sea,” but, really, that’s kinda true, isn’t it?  at least in the sense that we have commonly understood the concept of a book.  and i think he has a good point here:

…and it’s all free, and you read freely, you’re not committed to anything the way you are when you shell out $30 for a book, you’re like a hummingbird in an endless meadow of flowers.

i’ve got all manner of pdfs and mp3s and mpgs that i didn’t pay for—and which are just sitting on my computer, waiting to be read, heard, or watched.  maybe i’ll get to them some day.  or maybe they’ll just “sit” there, easily ignored as just another bunch of data taking up space on my hard drive.  is the future of published writing electronic text that exists more in the ether than in our shared cultural experience?  maybe.

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So I’ve been submitting my work again (it’s been a while), and I’ve been revisiting my publishing rituals. And they are rituals. I may be the world’s most-lapsed Catholic, but that whole superstition thing (this seems like a mean word) sticks with me.

#1

First of all, may I say, thank God for Avery standard address labels. My hand falls off writing my name/addy on so many envelopes otherwise.

#2

Second, I always visit duotrope.com, litlist.net, and newpages.com to check out publication venues, submission windows, whatnot.

#3

After that, I go to the Post Office. I buy a lot of stamps. I keep wanting to buy one of their little postal scale things, (so I can avoid future trips just to have my submissions weighed to assuage my paranoia and make sure they won’t come back return to sender) but the goddamn things cost $37 dollars, and we’re talking about submitting poetry (NO DOLLARS), so no dice.

#3a

Plus, none of the submissions that I’ve sent from my mailbox have actually been accepted for publication. Therefore, postal clerks are apparently integral to publication of my work. This leads me to be concerned about my writing career, given the financial troubles of the USPS.

#3b

Then again, I’ve never sent any submissions from my mailbox. I didn’t want to jeopardize my potential success.

#4

When I send out my work, I immediately plug the submissions (OK, sometimes it takes a while) into an Excel spreadsheet. I use this to calculate my batting average. My batting average isn’t exactly precise. I’ve had a few computers die since I first submitted work, and they took my submission spreadsheets with them. On my current spreadsheet (good for the last two years), I’m doing pretty poorly. I count a letter asking for more work as a half a hit, and a publication as a full hit.  I’ve had 11.5 hits in 70 tries, good for a .164 BA. Not great. In fact, that’s worse than Mario Mendoza, whose last name is the origin of the “Mendoza Line,” the bottom rung of offensive production in the Big Leagues for a player who is good in the field. (Ignore the phrase “good in the field.” Please. It’s a bit gross.)

#5

Then, I wait. I usually do so obliviously, forgetting I sent out work in the first place. Usually I’m reminded when I get an email with a subject line that reads: Your Submission to YEAHWHOAREYOUKIDDING. This is inevitably followed by a form letter that refers to me as “Dear Writer,” which makes me feel a little like I’m in charge of North Korea.

Very rarely, I’ll get an acceptance. When I do, I dance around to this.

They were dead all along.
Hurley was still fat. He liked opening cans. There should’ve been more hunting on the island. More boar hunting with spears. Shirtless men following the beast into the jungle, surrounding it, thrusting their spears, a final killing blow. I would have watched another season if the producers stocked the island with other animals to hunt: panthers, Kodiak bears, Wallace Stevens. If the show was more like Cabela’s Big Game Hunter on Wii. I love that Goddamned game.
There should’ve been more broads too, but on a separate island. I liked the dark-headed one. She was feisty. I wonder what she would look like in jodhpurs, polishing my rifle. The blonde one with the bad hair reminds me of my second wife.
The last episode was sappy, a candy-ass convention, everybody kissing and embracing each other. I almost changed the channel to watch some UFC. Ken Shamrock was a god. Now there was a man. He settled his problems the way a man should, half naked and choking his enemies into submission. LOST should’ve been about courage. Sawyer and Jack drinking aperitifs, and complaining about women. If only Sawyer would cut off that lady hair of his.