Like a fairy that leaves other-worldly gifts in unlikely places, someone has been spreading magic in the form of art made from books in Edinburgh, Scotland. If you haven’t seen this, it’s worth a look. Sometimes people can be so cool.

The first of ten sculptures left anonymously in a library or other literary center.

Yesterday, I showed this documentary, Spoil, to my composition class. I like to use documentaries when teaching argumentation because 1) It’s cool for students to see different ways arguments can be presented, aside from just in academic writing and 2) Everyone likes watching videos in class. It was my intention, while Spoil played, to use those 45 minutes to write my Bark post for this week. But then I got totally sucked in by the film and didn’t write anything at all. So I figured I should probably just share it with you guys as well because 1) It’s good and 2) Everyone likes watching videos on the Internet.

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ME: Here’s what the writer is doing.

Student who paid attention in high school English: I disagree.

ME: You’re wrong. Here’s why. [NOTE, in case my tenure committee is reading this: I say this very kindly, taking advantage of a teachable moment, making sure that the student understands that his/her participation is valued and feels both validated and enlightened.]

STUDENT: My HS English teacher said there are no wrong answers about literature as long as you can defend your ideas.

ME: Your HS English teacher was wrong. Read more »

“This is your brain…” Imagine a freshly hatched egg rolling on the kitchen counter.  To the left is a skillet set on a stovetop and there’s butter already simmering on its stick-resistant and concave surface.   Some legendary actor then cracks the egg shell with one hand, allowing the yoke and stuff to spill into the hot skillet.   The egg fries quickly — sunny-side-up — and the voice-over of the commercial continues, “And this is your brain on drugs…  Any questions?”

I’ve seen variations on this themes on everything from astrological horoscopes to bumper-stickers to political buttons (see end of post) to a manual on Zen Buddhism (This is your brain on Buddha!)

And yes, as prevention programs go, this one beats Nancy Reagan’s “Just So No!” hands-down.

Metaphors, 1.

Moralizing Slogan, 0.

And yet, before we, in the creative arts, run up the score, I’d like to consider a book on the brain that has been acclaimed by neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuro-imaging researchers and even by such egg-heads as the editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman.   The book is published by Yale University Press and is written by Johns Hopkins mega-star in the above fields, Iain McGilchrist.  It’s entitled, “The Master and His Emissary,” which is odd, considering it has nothing to do with the despicable institution of slavery, nor with any messengers who might have made special deliveries.  Nothing literal like that at all.

On the contrary, the subtitle saves the day (not to mention the marketing department’s ass):   “The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World.”  And it is here — in that criss-crossing, apple-saucing of the two hemisphere’s of your primary internal organ, your grey matter, that the rubber meets the road… that the kettle becomes black… that the chicken (coming first) traverses the road, lays the egg (coming second), which gets fried in the skillet, next to the kettle on the adjacent back-burner…   The point is, once the author clears his throat, everyone who has ever set a coffee mug down upon a literary journal of any reputation should stand and salute.  Or bow and genuflect.   McGilchrist is brilliant, as the mere progression of chapters in the table of contents can testify:

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Which One Is You?

I went to The Muppets this weekend and it is clever, funny, creative, charming, and entertaining. But on the way to the film, my friends and I were trying to determine which Muppet each of us most resembled, and that is when I realized how few of them are female.

I’ve never been a Muppets fan, though I’ve sometimes wished I were. My favorite actresses and characters are generally women. I’m not proud of this fact. It seems a little superficial. I’ve noticed, however, that many men seem to suffer from a similar affliction, preferring male characters and actors. Books and movies in which women are prominent are often pegged as chic lit and chic flicks.

I suppose it’s a little late to revamp the Muppets characters. But what if you could, who might you add?

Or, what sex changes might you suggest? Would traits need to change along with sex? And what does sex for a Muppet mean, anyway? Is it determined by more than voice?

A few days back, Kristina wrote a nice post about titles in which she says, “There’s a power in naming things.” I like this idea, especially as it pertains to written work (and perhaps it explains why I still struggle to work on my former-thesis manuscript; the title is dead awful). I used to read for Willow Springs and currently read for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and there are times, have been times, when I wished I could read the piece without noticing the title, because bad titles instantly put me in a bad mood toward the piece (for instance, I read a piece yesterday that had a word I didn’t recognize as the title, and when I looked it up in the dictionary and then on Google, I realized that it was a made up word).

So naming things is good. But on the other hand, I think it can sometimes be problematic, if not simply bad.

A few days ago, I met a writer friend of mine in a coffee shop near campus. We had decided to dodge the stress of Black Friday by writing together instead. Only, we didn’t end up doing much writing. It was so nice to be able to talk writing with someone else, that was all we ended up doing. It came out that he, like me, has a soft spot for genre writing—or for certain genres anyway—and has been given grief over the years for such a leaning. We both talked about writing classes where we weren’t allowed to write genre, and we talked about what that means.

You see, we distinguish different types of writing because bookstores like us to do so. But so many pieces don’t fit squarely into one genre or another. I think most writers agree that you can have literary work with genre elements (say, elements of magical realism, which is itself a problematic label to some), but less often do we recognize genre work with literary elements, which is what my friend feels like he is writing.

I guess I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Matt Bell posted about it on Facebook the other day, too, wondering how we can apply the label of literary fiction to his work as well as to novels like The Help. The label here does us a disservice; it doesn’t actually tell us anything about a writer’s skills or a readers preferences.

My friend and I tried to define literary work, tossing parts of definitions back and forth for a few minutes before remembering that it’s a pointless discussion to have. “Character focused” some might say, but I’ve read genre work that focused on character development just as much as plot. It doesn’t help, not even to say that, like pornography, you know it when you see it, because, as Matt Bell pointed out, it depends on who is doing the looking.

Several years ago I picked up a copy of Michael Chabon’s Summerland at a Goodwill in Northern California. I didn’t open the book for months, but when I did it turned out to be a signed copy.

Several months ago I internet-purchased a cheap, used, hardcover edition of Jim Lovell’s Apollo 13 book Lost Moon. I planned to bring it to Florida for him to sign. When it arrived in the mail, it was already signed by him.

Several weeks ago I ordered a book of poetry for my thesis. The book contained a simple inscription (see photo).  For some reason it broke, and continues to break, my heart. I find myself reading the inscription more than the poetry inside.

I brought this up with two of my writer friends, walked them through some of the books that have found their way into my life (there are more. a lot not signed by authors, but instead by a loved one) and they both were equally upset.
The question we all kept asking, the question I feel sort of haunted by: Why would anyone get rid of these books? Read more »

As you may know, The Rumpus runs a series called “Where I Write,” featuring short posts from various contributors. Alana Noel Voth wrote the latest installment, a fantastic one, in which she states:

“Virginia Woolf said a woman needs money and a room of her own to write. Now I’m an adjunct college professor. I write without health insurance or any financial security at all. I write while my son plays his Xbox. Writing as a single mother is selfish. My son plays his Xbox too much.”

Writing as a single mother is selfish, she says. What she means is that it feels selfish. The act of writing, for a person who others rely on for support, feels selfish sometimes. Maybe all the time. We can understand that, even as we tell each other, You shouldn’t feel that way.

Treat it like a job, they always say. Protect your writing time. Pretend you are punching in and out. But if this is what we’ve chosen as our job, our career, as the only work that matters, then why is it so hard to treat it that way? And really, how can writing be a selfish act for someone like me, a person who has no children or anyone else who relies solely on her for support?

Because it does feel selfish. And I suspect that it is selfish. The question is, how do you find a balance between the selfishness required to get the work done and the knowledge that in reality (and I’m talking BIG PICTURE here), writing isn’t the most important thing. My person is the most important thing. My friends are the most important thing. Being someone who is worthy of respect in the eyes of people I respect is an important thing, to me, at least.

Last year, I felt more selfish than I have ever felt in my life.

Last year, I wrote more than ever before.

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What IS in a name, Shakespeare? And while we're at it, how come you got away with calling your brilliant poems things like "Sonnet 29"?

Well Thanksgiving has come and gone, which means it’s practically Christmas. Which means it’s almost spring and holy poo I have to defend my thesis soon. Which means, of course, that I should start writing it.

Confession #1: I actually picked out the name for my thesis about a year ago because things are less scary to me once you name them. So I was feeling pretty good and not too nervous about my thesis until I was browsing Auntie’s Bookstore the other day and saw my brilliant manuscript title on the cover of a young adult book. I rushed home and googled it and discovered my title idea already belonged to at least two books, an indie band, and possibly a dead magazine.

Well, damn. The little well of panic started to set in after that because Confession #2: I suck at titles and kind of hate them. There’s a power in naming things, and naming them correctly, which makes selecting the correct title for any creative work rather intimidating (at least to me, anyway). How do I strike the right balance of drawing the reader in without giving too much away? Is my title establishing the right tone for the poem? And now, of course, is it original? Read more »

In The Writer’s Chronicle this month I found an article called “The Inner Identity of Immersion Memoir” by Suzanne Farrell Smith.  It’s a good article focused on creating some sort of set of guidelines for the immersion memoir, with some good examples (Andrew Pham’s Catfish and Mandala, Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk, and Lucinda Frank’s My Father’s Secret War, all of which are going on my reading list).  She brings up an interesting point—is there such a thing as genre nonfiction?  Read more »