Well, I’ve done it again.  I’ve entered another writing contest, which means my bank account is $20 lighter and that I’ll receive a subscription to a journal that I’ll read later and remark while turning the pages, “That’s it!  That’s the winning poem!”

Alas…  One of my M.F.A. colleagues (on staff at Willow Springs) says that if I review a batch of poems that have been submitted and I provide reasons for it not to be accepted (or pursued further by my fellow editors), that must mean that my own verse is better.

Well, I’m not sure that it “must,” but for the time being at least, I am struck with how we rationalize by non sequiturs ad infinitum (and how we lapse into latin).  Nothing follows nothing:  good, better, best…  And the grand prize goes to… Subjectivity!

***

Jorie Graham has loads of fascinating things to offer about the poetics we practice, the poems we write and the poems we judge (ie., compare and contrast with other poems).  In this regard, the Poetess-in-Charge at Harvard U. even has her own rule named after her own controversial evaluation of various works in the University of Georgia’s 1999 contest.   The rule essentially stipulates that a judge must recuse her or himself if the potentially award-winning poems are penned by the aforementioned judge’s students, or her future husband.

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There’s something about a Dean Young poem being recited in public!

Peace–

In mad excitement for my guests, I spilled coffee on my computer. Then in a series of stupid acts, I erased all the pictures of their visit except for this--saved by Facebook.

After a delightful and stressful month or so that included:

• two weeks of teaching Russian students English online
• losing that job due to my sporadic internet connection (I signed my first contract for DSL in early February and am still waiting for it to be connected)
• a two-week training that qualifies me to teach for Berlitz
• an eight-day visit from my parents (which included eating lots of cake, drinking lots of beer, seeing a couple castles, learning European history, visiting several cities, taking lots of walks, and having meaningful conversations over many a delicious meal)

I suddenly found myself alone with several days in a row of unstructured time. You know what that means. I had no excuse not to write. Read more »

Are you mindful of the other driver?

Between home and work, those huge digital matrix signs loom over the interstate, the ones intended to keep you abreast of traffic situations. But, except during snowstorms, there are no real traffic situations between home and work. It’s not that kind of town. So, instead, the signs display helpful messages and driving tips. Usually somewhere between self-righteously bossy (“Texting and Driving Don’t Mix”) and winkingly practical (“DUI Patrols Tonight”), lately the DOT has turned more philosophical. The other day, all over the state, the signs asked, “Are You Mindful of the Other Driver?”

It is the word “mindful” that seems out of place in square letters above the interstate. I am used to the DOT being concerned about my driving habits and even about the more physiological aspects of my mental state (who doesn’t like rest stops with free coffee?), but this seems to enter another kind of territory, a territory that is normally the domain of poets and pastors (and—on a side note—of Dinty W. Moore’s new book). I’m not used to hearing about such existential stuff from the lower levels of state bureaucracy. Not that I mind. In fact, I kind of like the idea that they might have more to say than “Merge Left in 1500 Feet.”

But that “mindful” and the abstract “other.” The word choice suggests authorship in a venue that is normally dominated by anonymity. This is not, I think, language that could be produced by machine or by government committee. This language was created, composed. So, reading it, driving beneath this message, I imagine the DOT copywriter in his cubicle, the perfunctory fabric walls, the smell of canned air. Read more »

I’m nervous about writing, and perhaps I should be.

Growing up I never liked to read.  Neither of my parents went to college.  Neither of them took the time to peruse much more than a copy of Popular Mechanics, or maybe, the Readers Digest abridged version of Alex Haley’s Roots, which they would watch on television anyway… But I can’t blame my anxiety about reading and writing well on them.

All I can say is that I love the capacity of words to inject emotional energy into a Tuesday afternoon with the drive-through traffic at Starbucks swirling around me.  I grew to love novels, short stories and poems, but first and foremost, I was impressed with the miracle of a well-chosen word.  And sometimes, even an poorly-chosen word would suffice and set me off.  Just the sheer effort of an individual to articulate his or her experience–that’s enough to make my hair stand on end.  Hence:  my apprehension!

What if I fuck it up?

Today I heard on National Public Radio a segment with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.   It dealt with “Roots Envy,” or the inability of some folks to trace their family ancestry back generation after generation like the legendary figure of the 1970′s best-seller.  Gates, around that time, became enamored with the possibility and discovered some things about his mother and father that were remarkable.  For example, evidently one of Gates’ kin had marshaled in and out of a Revolutionary War militia between the years 1777 and 1784.  For an African-American that’s especially intriguing.  Also, during the broadcast, Neil Conan asked the author of the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader to revisit what he had written about his mother’s funeral.   (The audio of this reading, available today at 6 p.m., is worth listening to.)  He actually didn’t appreciate the stale, blue-blood service that they had back in 1997.  And so, with nothing more than a few words, he described the rowdy sermon and the swaying hymn-sings and the falling-down-in-the-aisle catharsis that would have been preferred.  It would have been a funeral like they had had for this uncle or for that aunt.  It would have been hot.  It would have gone on for hours.  It would have included those paper-fans, by which the mourners move the air about in vain…

I tell you, when I heard Gates read about this re-cast episode of his life, I wept like she were my own mother.  While driving through road construction barriers on I-90, I nearly couldn’t see that I’d be losing the left lane.  And I realized, while putting my foot on the brake, that I don’t have to be so nervous, that I’m not so much searching for that perfect word as I am searching for that intuitive trigger or that trap door that allows me to plunge into humanity’s collective subconscious.  Is there such a thing… such an ocean of dreams?
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Non-Fiction’s tether to the facts has always been frayed.  And we’re just now getting nervous about it?

A federal judge in Montana has saved the non-fiction writer’s proverbial ass.  (Not really!)

He has, for the foreseeable-future, allowed the authors of memoirs, essays and sundry ‘aboutnesses’ to ostensibly do what novelists and poets do all the time.  That is, tell little fibs.  That is, craft big ones through which we can see, but the gist of which we want to believe so desperately, we pretend there are no holes.  That is, fabricate the truth.  That is, construct a world in which the center may not hold.  That is, present the narrator as the legendary hero he, or heroine she, always imagined him or herself to be.

Yes, we have Sam Haddon to thank for the barrage of mythic forays to come.  The U.S. District Gavel-Swinger has thrown out the suit filed on behalf of a million (alright, four) non-fiction readers, a suit that may have required author, Greg Mortenson, to pay damages to those who understood his Three Cups of Tea bestseller to be entirely factual (and cough up $15 per disillusioned reader), a suit initially brought to bear by another writer, Jon Krakauer in Three Cups of Deceit… (Boo!  Hiss!  What a party-pooper!).

And so, where do we go from here?

I, for one, am not going to take this lying (down).  To my credit I have an entire half of a graduate course with Natalie Kusz, and the topic of embellishing on the events and adventures of our lives has been raised every Tuesday.  Tonight we’ll do it again.   We’ll say that we can’t make stuff up.  But what puts the Creative in the genre of Creative Non-Fiction is how we beautify the gory details of our fragmented days, weeks, months and years.   Then, of course, someone will wrinkle his brow and it will be assumed that in streamlining the crap of our experience we, as writers, have made everything up.  This is as it should be.

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I’m going to try an exercise today in English 101/Section 10.

In previous classes (for previous courses) I’ve done things like play Jenga (analogies TBA), arm wrestle (to illustrate dialectic), role-play a Greek tragedy (to flesh out the human condition), and lastly I’ve hurled a hard boiled egg into the throng of a crowed lecture hall.   “Poetry differs from prose,” I proclaim with this latter demonstration… “Everything is coming at you — and potentially it’s going to be messy.”

You may, of course, call that a gimmick, or the hobgoblin of an inexperienced college professor’s tortured mind, but I love to see the bodies scatter, while others cover and duck.

And yet, with Tuesday’s educational schtick, my hope is to play things a little more close-to-the-vest.   The exercise will consist of a free-writing response to five poems and will hopefully allow the students (ages 18 to 20) the opportunity to resonate with an image.  An image or two…  I’ll let you know how it goes.   My thinking is that many of these first-generation freshmen have never encountered the likes of Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, Sharon Olds, William Stafford and Anne Sexton, and that some of their word-explosions might shower down body-parts into the blend-in style of dormitory prose.

You see, thus far, we’ve muddled through one Essay Exam and assorted supportive gigs in which I’ve asked them to harangue the system in which they’re all clamoring to become a cog.  How to write a thesis statement... How to identify key words, indexical concepts, supportive evidence… This is the standard fare of what every incoming neophyte should learn about academe.   Later in the quarter, we’ll marshall our skills of mimicry in the service of a Persuasive Essay.   Whoopee!   Potential research foci may include The Decline of the Hipster In What Used To Be Pop-Culture, The Resurgence of Dallas and Other ’80′s Nighttime Dramas and Snooki:  The Femme Fatale of A Post 2001 Generation.   And, for all the fantastic insights these papers may elucidate, I’m not expecting that the full-throated ‘second naiveté’ of Paul Ricoeur has caught up with the budding intellects.   That is to say, I trust the wounded hearts of these students more than I do the reductions of rationalism we often require them to make.

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Every once in a while, when I’m wading through the endless shallow sea of student writing that constitutes most of my life during certain times of year, I stumble upon something that surprises me. Something that makes me glad.

Here are some of the remarkable things that I’ve found while wading:

1. An expository essay on how to cook, cut, and sell meth. Among the helpful tips: a paragraph on how to not get caught. The trick, it seems, is never to tell anybody your name, never to sell to anybody you know personally. Also, it helps to own a business in the industrial district that refinishes bathtubs. The smell of the chemicals used to re-enamel the tubs hides the smell of the chemicals used to cook the meth. Read more »

Poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosín will read tonight at Gonzaga University. While she might be more wildly known for her poetry and activism, I recently read and enjoyed Agosín’s nonfiction book Of Earth and Sea: A Chilean Memoir, which I bought from the University of Arizona Press.

I was quickly absorbed by Agosín’s lyrical imagery and her unique relationship with Chile’s stunning landscape. However, what most intrigued me about the book was its unusual structure. Agosín crafts a flowing series of intimate vignettes reminiscent of Sandra Cisnero’s House on Mango Street. Beginning in the south-central city of Osorno, she travels through the country’s narrow geography, using important dates, locations, people, and objects to tell the story of her double exile–daughter of Jewish immigrants and Allende supporter. She skillfully layers her personal history with the political climate of her family’s adopted country and her own search for identity and belonging.

Tonight’s reading will be diverse in content, and its language will be rich and memorable. For more information about the event visit http://news.gonzaga.edu/2012/celebrated-human-rights-activist-gonzaga-u.

Get Lit! was an amazing experience, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help this quiet ennui that’s crept up on me since it ended. I met and heard some spectacular authors, writers who who’ve inspired me, artists that I never dreamt could all inhabit the same 30-mile radius without imploding or summoning the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And it’ll take me at least a fortnight to absorb all of the wisdom I gained during the past few days. I learned so, so much.

It’s like seeing your favorite band for the first time live. Leading up to the event, you’re a manic wreck, sporadically blurting out the band’s name in daily conversation, listening to their records over and over again, making sure that you’ll know all of the words so you can sing along and not miss a beat or a word. You become what Steve Almond calls a Drooling Fanatic. You start to lose your grip on time. The closer the event comes, the faster time goes. And then it’s here. Your favorite authors, the people who inspire you, the books you owe something to, they’re all around you and it’s tough to take in. You don’t realize what’s just hit you. Read more »