The Best American Poetry

Dean and Jerry on stage again, 20 years later, thanks to Francis Albert

This video clip is even better than the one I posted on Dean Martin 's birthday (June 7) of the famous reconciliation scene during the Jerry Lewis Telethon of 1976 twenty years after he and Dean Martin broke up their world-famous comedy act, with "Jer" playing the out of control overgrown teenager. and "Dino," nine years older, the straight man and Lothario. They had enjoyed a ten-year-run of movies and sold-out appearances at the Copa and other such hot spots when they decided, like many a couple, that they had irreconcilable differences and couldn't endure another day in each other's company. The Telethon encounter, arranged by the Godfather, was the first time they saw or spoke to each other after twenty years of stony silence. Sinatra: "I think it's time, don't you?" [Imagine if you could reconcile two warring nations this way.]. Notice the cigarettes -- not as props but as part of the routine in several senses. The Dean-Jerry exchange is sweet: "So. . . how ya been? . . . There were all these rumors about our break-up and when I came out to do the show and you weren't here I knew they were true. . .So. . .ya workin'?" Dean, on why they broke up: "Because I was a Jew and you were a Dago." The phone number line is good, the duet with Dean and Sinatra is funny ("I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "Too Marvelous for Words"), and though Dean is not in best voice, the sequence helps substantiate Jerry's assertion that he was the greatest straight man of all time.  -- DL

 

Happy Holidays!

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

Singer, Actor, Icon: Celebrating 100 Years Of Frank Sinatra with David Lehman on WABE

The celebrations of Frank Sinatra's birthday continue. You can join in with a copy of Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and his World. Get a taste of the book with this interview that aired recently on WABE.

-- sdh

On Christmas Shopping [by Diane Cameron]

December 19, 2015

This is one of my favorite days of the year. I’m going Christmas shopping. For a long time I was ashamed to admit that I prepared for the holidays with less than a week to go, but the truth is, this is the best part of Christmas.

No, I didn’t procrastinate. I know all the advice about how to make Christmas shopping easier. But there are some things that don’t get better just by being easier. I’ve read those How to Get Organized books, but I’ve also lived through enough tragedy to know that trying to organize one’s life is an illusion.

Those of us who begin now are enjoying the real spirit of Christmas: We get to watch humanity test itself and we’ll see kindness and patience and grace enacted –or honored in the breach-- next to the stack of 30% off cashmere cardigans. We know that we are engaging in a holiday ritual that is very close to the original: It’s cold out, traffic is as slow as a lane of donkeys, there is no room in the parking lot, and we will get to watch a young family with a triple stroller searching the mall for a baby changing area. It makes you want to drop to your knees and pray.

Yes, shopping in August could make Christmas nice and tidy. But real life is anything but that. Consider the Holy Family: There was no plan; Mary was days away from delivering a baby; they had to go on a long trip, and then she had to give birth in a barn. No tidy and not neat. The crux of that first Christmas is that sometimes in the midst of mess and stress and fear, angels show up and miracles happen.

But in order to experience miracles you have to be willing to put yourself where human beings are being human. Yes, it’s a gamble, but relationships are like casinos: You must be present to win.

So this weekend I’ll be where humanity is. I’m heading out to the mall, bundled up, and bracing myself for mixed encounters with my fellow man. I’ll be trekking in from the outer loop of the parking lot, looking for a few gifts and the real spirit of Christmas.

Diane Cameron is a writer, teacher and spiritual director in Albany, NY. This piece is from her book of essays: Looking for Signs. Find out more about Diane here. Follow her on twitter @DianeOCameron .

On Christmas, Barbara Stanwyck and the Singular Life [by Michael O'Keefe]

(ed. note: This post originally appeared on December 21, 2009 and it's a perennial favorite. A lot has happened in Michael's life since 2009 so I asked him to share an update. Life is good:

I wrote this article at Christmastime, 2009 at the age of fifty-five after a love life that might best be described as a 2 & 12 losing season. However, in August of 2010 I met my wife Emily Donahoe, who, displaying great daring, flew to Barcelona, Spain to meet me for our first date.  Staying true to form she waited for me in Paris, France where we met a week later and stayed for five days in La Louisianne, a crummy hotel off Boulevard St. Germain.  At Sacre de Coer she declared her love for me.  We ambled outside and from the hill the cathedral is situated on and became absorbed by  the view over Montmartre.  We married in 2011 and had our son, Aidan in November of 2012.  And to continue the sports analogy, I made it into the playoffs of love as a wild card and ran the table to win the game.  All of which is to say, "Never give up.  Until you have to give up.  And when you do, give up that is, there's room for all the love you ever dreamed of."  Never heard that expression?  Well, you have now.  And to conclude, I still adore Barbara Stanwyck and so does my wife.  Ms. Stanwyck remains my black and white ideal.  - Michael O'Keefe, December 19, 2015.

For some A Christmas Carol, (Alistair Sim’s version please) is the definitive Christmas film.  For others It’s A Wonderful Life holds the honor of best film to watch during the holidays.  “Marry Christmas Bedford Falls!  Marry Christmas, Mr. Potter!” James Stewart bellows returning from a parallel, yet horrible, reality to face charges for bank fraud in “the real world,” whatever the hell that is.  Both have the Christmas spirit for sure.  But for me the films to watch at Christmas all star Barbara Stanwyck.  

First there is the not very well known Remember the Night (left). Fred MacMurray and Stanwyck star in Preston Sturges’ screenplay.  (No, they don’t plot the murder of her husband, though Stanwyck does play a shoplifter.) In the interest of transparency I should mention it’s a romance, the protagonists meet cute, overcome obstacles, fall in love, observe traditional male and female roles (and I mean traditional for 1940) and live in an America that may have only existed in the mind of Preston Sturges and his contemporaries in Black and White Hollywood, USA.  Oh yeah, transparency.  I should reveal that in the singular nature of my love life, I'm not extraordinary nor remarkable.  I’m single and stand alone.  And my proclivity to indulge in sentimental notions around Christmas makes my opinion not only biased but most likely hooey, as they used to say in 1940.

As hokey as some of the sentiment is, and as obvious as the plot line of a shoplifter bailed out and brought home to Wabash, Indiana by a prosecutor for a heartwarming Christmas is, the film knocks me for a loop every time. The key and the heart of the film is Stanwyck.  MacMurray’s family is seen through her eyes, and their homespun values melt her cynicism in moments that pierce what passes for my veneer of sophistication. Perhaps the fact that I’m approaching the age of fifty-five and have little to show from my love life but a collection of snapshots, cards and memories that linger but do not nourish should disqualify me in the holiday movie round up.   Or could it be that that same status should make me Chairman of the Christmas movie board?  For the purposes of this blog let’s hope it’s the latter. The two other films to look for are Christmas in Connecticut and Meet John Doe. Though the latter is not set at Christmas its climax takes place on Christmas Eve and that’s close enough for me. In Christmas in Connecticut (right) Stanwyck plays a columnist that has created a fantasy world of a farm in the country, a loving husband and a handle on domestic details that surpasses anything Martha Stewart ever cooked up.  When asked to take in a wounded Vet for Christmas by her publisher she attempts to con them both but ends up falling for the Vet, played by Dennis Morgan.  The look in her eyes as she gives herself over to her longing is spectacular. But her speech at the end of Meet John Doe, a wonderful Frank Capra film, where she begs Gary Cooper not to jump from roof of the City Hall, is the topper of them all.  She’s suckered Gary Cooper into playing ‘John Doe’ so that her ruse of writing a John Doe column for a powerful paper won’t be uncovered. Cooper plays along at first but when he realizes he’s been a stooge for a power hungry Nazi-like bad guy, Edward Arnold, he tries to reveal the scam but is thwarted in his attempt to do so.  Abandoned by all those he’s touched across the country he decides to keep John Doe’s promise to throw himself from the roof of City Hall on Christmas Eve to protest man’s inhumanity to man.  What he doesn’t know is that Stanwyck, Arnold and his cronies, and some loyal supporters are there waiting for him.  Sick with the flu, and desperate to stop the suicide Stanwyck throws herself into his arms and begs him not do to it.  The depth of her plea is staggering and when she calls him “Darling” I fall to pieces every time. In short: If Barbara Stanwyck’s character from any of these films walked into my life I’d sweep her off her Black and White feet and never give the bright and shiny world a second glance. I’ll be home and alone for Christmas this year but Barbara Stanwyck, with a little help from her friends, will give me hope.  And that’s gift enough for me. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Reflections on the Paris Massacre, 12/15/15 [by Sally Ball]

"The city of light will never fall into darkness." Washington Square Park, NYC December 8, 2015 (c) Stacey Harwood-Lehman

Tuesday morning, December 2, I flew back to Phoenix after six weeks in France. For most of that time, I was in Marnay-sur-Seine, a village an hour southeast of Paris, but I had early on reserved a room in the city for my last night, which as it happens was about a block and a half from the Bataclan. Monday evening, walking back to the hotel from dinner, we saw a crowd of reporters and many many police vans parked in front of the concert hall, and moments later, Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, in town for the opening of the UN Climate Talks, arrived in a small motorcade. He stepped out, made a sort of awkward silent survey of the crowd, and placed a single white rose on the pile of flowers and notes and candles that continues to grow. (Continues: I was also in Paris one week earlier, and had to walk from the Gare de l’Est to the Gare de Lyon, a route that permitted me to visit the Place de la République, and to follow the Rue Voltaire, and to pass the Bataclan—sites where (and very near where) murder had happened and where memorial was happening: it had rained, the candles were mostly out, people were putting their signs and letters in plastic report covers to preserve them (“Long live life!” “We are all the same!” “Everyone against hate!” “Solidarity with refugees!”); the flowers were limp and damp, and between November 21, that first visit, and November 30, my second, the offerings kept growing and spreading higher and deeper.) Tsipras seemed uncomfortable, he looked around helplessly, he got back in the car. Maybe it all took 90 seconds.

Just before I saw him, I’d walked up the alley that I’d seen in a video the day after the attacks: you may’ve seen it too: a Le Monde reporter across the street films the side wall of the Bataclan, where for a while a woman is hanging by her fingertips above the street. One watches it thinking she is going to fall two stories onto bodies lying beneath her in the road. Then someone pulls her back up inside, but you can still hear shots in there. It’s awful. Two weeks later, there was a cardboard sign below the window where that woman had held on with just her hands, a sign reminding passers-by that the French values of liberty, equality, and fraternity had been fought for and forged with acts of terrorism. A small crowd had gathered to read it. The sign was not removed or damaged, as I think it would’ve been in the States. People read, they looked at the flowers, they walked on.

The response to the attacks most everywhere I went over the last weeks was both somber and bracingly, defiantly life-affirming. Also, people seem sure that such attacks will continue. In the posters and letters left at the memorials and in all my conversations, I saw much less anger and xenophobia than I expected. I was struck by the French sense that the only way to reject—or refuse the rejection, the annihilation enacted by the killers—is not by negative but positive means: let’s go out, let’s live, let’s love each other (and ‘each other’ struck me as very broadly defined—I know that the far right has tried to make divisive use of the attacks, and yet what I almost exclusively saw was a resolute and passionate commitment to multicultural—vibrantly cultural—France, reinforced now by the national electoral rejection of the National Front). In Marnay, a tiny town whose residents completely seduced me in their sidestepping of American-style consumerism, in their deliberate collaborations on happiness—embracing the arts, taking care of the community, cooking together, hatching business plans for endeavors that will keep the parties afloat and (also, especially) contribute some loveliness to Marnay itself—they are making their lives with all the emphasis on quality of relationship not quantity of consumption.

On the morning of France’s national memorial, November 27, Marnay’s mayor, Nicole Domec, had invited everyone in town to come to city hall to watch the proceedings together. Just over twenty people came. Nicole wore a sash in the colors of the Republic, as did her vice-mayor, and there was much kissing and handshaking and warmth in the greetings as we (both visitors and long-time town residents) assembled in a semi-circle around a flat-screen television. Nicole welcomed us, explained her belief that in watching the memorial together, we were reaffirming the crucial values of the nation. About ten minutes into the televised ceremony, the door burst open and a black cat pranced in, jumped up on the windowsill, and began to preen. A girl of 10 or 11 looked at her mom, looked at the cat, and went to carry it outside.

The cat spent the rest of the hour trying to return to us, pressure at the door, scratching at the wall. As the ceremony concluded, the crowd at Invalides in Paris began to sing the Marseillaise on tv. A few lines in, someone in our little room began to sing too, and then we all did, together, not resoundingly but in quiet, shaken, mournful voices. I learned that song probably in junior high, always found it a little scary, actually—and stirring—and as we sang in the stone council room I thought of a line from the speech Hollande had just delivered: that we would be faithful to the very idea of France, which he then defined as an “art de vivre” and a fierce desire to be together. After we sang, we kissed each other again, and confirmed plans or embraced friends or thanked the officiants (probably all of the above)—See you later. See you soon.

Fed on dreams [poem by Tracy Danison]

place du Châtelet (c) Tracy Danison, 2015

        For Stacey Harwood, there then and here now

I saw you 25, Stace, at place du Châtelet,
This same morning, on my way to work.
Striding along in a skirl of wind,
Like time coursing along its crossed ruts & channels
Like baby in the bath splashing
airborne silky skeins & webs & flashing rainbows
In rays of light.
And dark
-  I was thinking of the coffee in the thermos in my purple nylon
gymbag: how good that can be - But,
I knew on seeing you pass that big café,
with your concentrated air of uncertain determination
so darling at 25, I know
All was well with you now,
along the line where you be when you are not 25 at place du Châtelet, That,
the tendrils that bind and loose
are steeping well in delicious fat dreams,
nourishing plans and projects still.

            -- by Tracy Danison, Paris, 10 November 2015

"Poem for D. L." [by James Cummins]

POEM FOR D. L. ("Then Ingmar Bergman shows up ...")

The answer to every riddle lay inside our bodies:
Life, the continuation of life ...
I wake at three a.m. with the guilt of it,
the guilt of life.  I haven't asked my body the question.

Exactly my age, but a month; and you lie
in a different city, asking yourself over and over,
Why?  The question for all of us is always When?
but instead we ask our bodies Why?

because we are afraid, and afraid to be afraid.
Why? keeps a part of us in the equation,
a part of what we are, in the face of the howling,
that we call "the wind" to frame it;

like a door to a cabin in winter in a play:
the characters take turns opening the door--
to get firewood, to check on the animals,
whatever of myriad reasons they can invent,

some Necessity they're obliged to bow to,
just to check it out, the howling, their bodies strong,
no matter their fear--the check it out, endure it,
then to stomp their way back into the warmth.

Life is a succession of rehearsals
for the closing we call "Opening Night."
We lay all evening in different cities, questioning;
then Ingmar Bergman shows up with a six-pack.

-- James Cummins

Nin Andrews in Conversation with Nicole Santalucia

Nicole Santalucia (L) and Deanna Dorangrichia (photo (c) Cheryl Pawlowski

NA: Tell me about the title. When did it come to you?

NS: At the last minute. First, the title was Looking for Lima Beans then The Idea of Bread then St. Lucy’s Eyes . . . These titles are from poems in the book. They are moments, important moments, but Because I Did Not Die made the most sense since it is every moment. The title poem is near the center of the manuscript, and it binds the thematic threads that intersect in many of the poems.

NA: Many of the poems in the book speak about your experience with addiction, prostitution, shame, recovery. Reading it, I wanted to rush out onto the street and take you into a shelter. How was it, writing the book?

NS: I want to rush out on the street and save that version of me, too. I did rush out on the street and save me, with a lot of help that is.

I needed to write these poems. You know the saying: Write what you know and write what you love. I know destruction and I love(d) drugs and alcohol.

My addiction will always rear its head in my work.

Many of the qualities and symptoms of addiction have become my strengths in sobriety, in my writing. It takes a lot of energy to survive as an active alcoholic/addict and when I finally stopped using and got sober, it was like a speeding train that screeched to a halt when the cargo flies off the overhead shelves.

NA: I love that image. Can you elaborate?

NS: When I stopped poisoning my body, my inner-self hadn’t caught on that this change was happening. But I had to learn and re-learn how to be a civilized, responsible human being.

I was thirteen when I started using drugs and alcohol.

I started writing these poems when I was ten years sober; in sober-time this means I was about twenty-three years old. My addiction stunted my growth (spiritual, emotional, and intellectual).

NA: What was it like—writing about these experiences?

NS: Writing these poems allowed me to let go as well as identify and embrace the pain; in a way, writing these poems allowed me to show up for myself and to not forget what happened. Not forgetting is important, but so is moving on and growing. I have moved on to new subjects, new ideas, new perspectives, new experiences, and new poems since finishing this book.

NA: There’s no blaming or self pity in your poetry. No sentimentality. In poems like “The Things I Want to Believe,” you actually wish you had someone to blame. You possess a kind of brutal honesty, which does not allow you, I am guessing here, to take poetic license with the facts of your life?

NS: I do actually take poetic license when I write about my past. I don’t change the truth about the past, but sometimes I can’t quite remember all the details or facts. I always seem to have a sort of emotional, spiritual, sensual memory. What happened, what it used to be like, and what it’s like now are kind of like three different states of mind that I tend to do a sort of dance with. Revisiting what happened, what actually took place is like reentering a state of mind that doesn’t fully exist anymore—it is like showing up to an empty room (that I’ve been in before) full of shadows, but there’s nothing actually there to cast the shadows now; they exist from a previous life.

What it used to be like is an act of reaching through memory and in this act memories are like flies or gnats swirling around. Sometimes one gets in my mouth or eye, other times they don’t touch me at all. What it is like now is current, it is a state of transformation.

Sometimes the poems capture the emptiness of that metaphorical room, sometimes they enter the shadows; sometimes they try to escape the room; some of the poems revisit the past and can’t quite reach it, and through the act of memory they transform what happened into what is happening in the poem(s).

I do wish I had someone to blame, but the reality is that there is no one to blame. I search for places to put the pain down for a little while. In a way it sits on a chair next to me. It’s there, and it’s mine, but I don’t need to carry it around inside of me anymore. Self-blame would lead to more destruction, and I work to not self-destruct. Blame leads to resentments and I choose, every day, not to take the poison; resentments are poison.

NA: You have this very sweet poem, “Ode to Maria,” about Maria Mazziotti Gilan. I know we’ve talked about how grateful we are to our mentors, including our mutual mentor, David Lehman. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the influence David and Maria have had on your work.

NS: David (my poetry dad) and Maria (my poetry mom) have given me permission to leap, skip, and jump, to say, to tell, to be, to name/identify, to reach. David gave me a prompt back in 2007: write a poem entitled Bitch. If I recall correctly, I was full of fear at the time, and I masked my fear with anger. This bitch prompt helped me confront my anger, and at the time anger was interfering with my writing. The prompt gave me permission to have fun, too. I’ve been writing bitch poems ever since. I love the bitch. Many of us have been accused of bitching, of being a bitch, of bitch moments, of bitch expressions, of bitch actions . . . I stopped thinking about bitch as female, as something that I needed to hide or keep a secret. I have a poem in the book called, “Bitches on the Roof,” that apostrophizes the bitch.

Maria encouraged me to sit with my truth for longer periods of time. On days when I have courage I am capable of channeling the bitch and the truth. In fact, today I just taught a poetry class in the Cumberland County Prison in Pennsylvania, I sat at a table with ten women and we shaped poems into bitches and truths into poems.

Maria and David’s work continues to teach and mentor so many of us; their interactions with their students and the larger literary community reach so many of us and for that I am grateful.

NA: Binghamton or Johnson City (I am assuming Johnson City is a suburb of Binghamton) is like a character in the book. Tell me about your relationship to Binghamton.

NS: Yes, Johnson City is a small town that borders Binghamton in upstate New York. My great grandparents immigrated to this area from Italy; there used to be a shoe factory here called Endicott-Johnson. My great grandparents and my paternal grandfather got off the boat at Ellis Island and said which way to E-J.

Johnson City, Endicott, and Binghamton are part of the Triple Cities in Broome County and the E-J shoe factory sponsored a form of welfare capitalism that provided homes, parks, and social programming to its workers. My great grandparents worked at E-J’s and my mother worked there when she was in high school. The factory thrived in the mid to late 20^th century. By the time I was in high school, there was only a skeleton of the factory.

I was a hoodlum when I was a kid; I climbed up the sides of the vacant factory buildings and jumped on and off of train cars as they passed the old factory yard. A part of me died on the streets of the Triple Cities, and when I go back to visit now, I see my ghost, I see foot pedal singer sewing machines in antique shops—probably the same machines that my great grandmother used—I see someone else’s reflection in the empty storefront windows on Main Street. To walk on the streets of a place and be in the past and present simultaneously is a surreal experience: the poems breathe this.

In the hills of Endicott, New York, there was a densely populated Italian neighborhood where my great grandparents lived. I remember lush gardens and grape vines when I visited as a little kid. Endicott is the home of IBM, too. Many of my family members worked at IBM; working for IBM was an opportunity not to pass up. Unfortunately, IBM polluted the land, moved out of the area, and there is nothing to replace the jobs it offered. Endicott has emptied out—I emptied out too—and I don’t think the economy can or will ever fully recover. It’s another small rundown factory town like so many towns in our country.

NA: Didn’t you start a poetry project in Binghamton?

NS: Yes, I started The Binghamton Poetry Project in 2010 when I moved back to pursue my PhD at Binghamton University. This was an incredible experience and opportunity to give back to a community in need. It all started with a phone call to the Broome County Public Library. I asked if I could hold poetry workshops in their space, and they said yes. Next thing I knew I was running workshops for little kids one night a week and workshops for adults on another night. I eventually asked my peers at the university to teach workshops and then started applying for grants. One thing led to the next, and I was publishing a bi-annual anthology that showcased the work produced by our participants…

The Binghamton Poetry Project has received funding and support from The Broome County Arts Council United Cultural Fund, the Chenango Arts Council (made possible by NYSCA), Binghamton University, and it is housed under the Binghamton Center for Writers. The Binghamton Poetry Project also brought workshops to the YWCA and underserved teens at the Boys & Girls Club in Endicott, NY. Since moving away from Binghamton in 2014 the project has been passed on to a wonderful poet and friend, Abby Murray. After she moved back to the west coast after completing her degree, the project was put in the hands of another wonderful poet and student at BU, Heather Dorn. Both Abby and Heather have added so much to the community of voices; they’ve continued the bi-annual publication; they’ve extended the workshops into new venues like the Veterans Center. The project is thriving, thanks to everyone’s willingness to make poetry a priority.

 

Deanna and Nicole as Gertrude and Alice and Bucket

NA: I also admire the poems about you and your beautiful wife, Deanna. I especially like “Another Ending,” in which you write:

“A handsome man next to us/ asked if we were sisters. Then, the woman at the café/ asked if we were sisters. This is when I wanted/ to grab you by the neck and kiss you hard.”

How often do you get asked that question? How is it, being a lesbian couple in rural PA?

NS: Constantly. When we lived in NYC we must have been asked if we were sisters at least once a week. My answer was always different. Sometimes the answer was yes, sometimes no, sometimes a blank stare and a grunt, sometimes I’d turn to Deanna and repeat the question, sometimes I’d repeat it back to the person or say something like, you mean, you and me, no, we just met.

On the one hand, rural PA is surprisingly gayer than I expected. In other words, there is a LGBTQ community here. On the other hand, we’ve experienced discrimination here.

I am a white female wearing a wedding band sitting at a Starbucks on a college campus in central Pennsylvania. I am privileged. Right now, at this very moment, I blend into my environment as a married woman in a diverse college community. But, I shouldn’t have to blend in. When I go home later, I worry that my neighbors notice me and my wife. I think they are confused that there is not a man and a woman living next door. I recently shared two stories with the editors over at The Tishman Review about two specific interactions that took place here in PA. The first interaction was when we moved here last year. There were men working on our rental house, and one of them asked me where my husband was—he was flirtatious. It was as if he was trying to find out if I would be living in this big house alone. My response was my husband gets here tomorrow. He is on a business trip. I said this out of fear. I felt like that if he knew my wife was that other woman carrying boxes that he would treat us differently. The second experience happened at a dog boarding facility. The place is wonderful, and the people are kind and generous. It took us a couple of months before we were considered regulars. We’d often drop off and pick up our dog together. Then, our routine shifted. One evening when Deanna was picking up our dog, Luca, the woman asked if the other woman that’s usually with her was her sister. Deanna said, oh, that’s my wife. The woman’s response: oh, well, look at you just saying it like that. People like you make great pet owners. She was sincere and nice and in a way it was a kind sentiment, but, people like you, really?

NA: The cover image for Because I Did Not Die is from a drawing by Deanna. Could you say a few words about her art? Does her artwork ever influence your poetry? Do you ever work together?

NS: Deanna did a study of the Japanese red lantern plant, and she generated a series of charcoal and pastel drawings. This series is comprised of eight drawings and the one on the cover is the sixth in the series; the composition is inspired by Carvaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath. I love all the drawings in the series, but there is something about this one—it pulls me into the center where the two subjects almost touch. The plant’s skeleton, its papery covering, its veins, and the rich orange-red color of the husk illuminate against the black background and the content of the book connects to the associative representation of subjects surrounded darkness, yet the subjects are not consumed or weighed down by this darkness.

When the red lantern plant matures, it turns orange, and when it is young and unripe its green and the fruit is poisonous. Transformation and survival: I get it. The arrangement of the orange husks in the drawing look like they are falling, well, one is falling and the other is reaching. And both expose their fruit. I think I see all of this when I just glance at the drawing, plus I know what it is like to expose my fruit, to reach for survival, to have blackness in the background, to be positioned in a way that represents another world (Caravaggio’s painting) where the heat of conflict is a decapitation of the mind, eyes, and voice, or in Caravaggio’s painting the head of Goliath that is said to be a self-portrait of the artist.

Deanna and I don’t work together; rather, we work side by side. We are in conversation with one another about our work and we probably influence each other more than we realize. Deanna’s process is inspiring. When there is a large piece of paper taped to a wall in our house for a month, I get to see the lines come to life; this gives me permission to create, too. Simply witnessing white space transform is inspiring.

NA: I would be remiss if I didn’t add that you are also a very witty poet. I was thinking we might close the interview with one of your humorous poems. Maybe “Just in Case We Get a Divorce”?

NS: Yes, of course. Here it is:

Just in Case We Ever Get a Divorce

She was a beautiful bride
although her face didn’t look the same
as it did in the advertisement.
When she arrived in the mail,
after I washed the ink off her forehead,
I knew she’d be perfect for the job.

I ordered her with no intentions
of getting a new pair of boots,
but the mail order bride company
threw in a freebee.

I love boots;
there are about twenty pairs
in the back of my closet
covering a pile of mysteries.
I toss them there in the middle of the night
just in case we ever get a divorce.

 

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2015). She is a recipient of the 2014 Ruby Irene Poetry Chapbook Prize from Arcadia Magazine for Driving Yourself to Jail in July and the 2015 Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize from the Tishman Review. She received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the Marion Clayton Link Endowment, a Chancellor’s Award and a Council Foundation Award for Service from Binghamton University. Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such asRadar Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, Paterson Literary Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, 2 Bridges Review, Bayou Magazine, Gertrude, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment,and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. She currently teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and brings poetry workshops into the Cumberland County Prison.

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books, most recently Why God Is a Woman (Boa). Others includeThe Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in A Vacuum? She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Find out more about Nin here. Follow Nin on Twitter @AndrewsNin .

 

Unleash Creativity Part 5: Enter Windows Instead of Doors [by Tess Callahan]

As he explains in his TEDx talk, “Embrace the Shake,” when artist Phil Hansen could no longer do his pointillist drawings due to nerve damage in his hand, he learned countless other ways to create art. But why wait for a disability to open your mind to new possibilities? Whether you are a poet, artist, teacher, novelist or musician, here are five unconventional ways to climb into your creative projects from a fresh entry point.

 Use your non-dominant hand. This is a practice I learned at the Art Students League in New York, where I realized that drawing a model with my left instead of right hand made me see the subject differently. Sure, the drawings were terrible (though they did get better over time) but when I went back to drawing with my dominant hand, it was as if a bit of the left hand perspective had joined in. If you keep a writing journal, try making every other entry with the opposite hand. Yes, it will slow you down; that’s part of the benefit.

Get up and move. In her New York Times essay, “To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet,” Joyce Carol Oates says that running allows her an expanded consciousness in which she can envision what she’s writing as a film or a dream. Back at her typewriter, she recalls that dream and transcribes it. The scenes in my own novels usually unfold during walks in the woods with my dog. In the classroom, I try to get my students up and moving as much as possible. Physical stagnancy can cause the creative juices to stagnate, too.

Employ the power of two. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Atlantic essay, “The Power of Two,” explores how the tense creative collaboration of Lennon and McCartney produced artistic genius that far exceeded the sum of its parts. Hemingway and Fitzgerald would not have been who they were without Maxwell Perkins. I regularly have my students do brief story-generating exercises in pairs or groups of three. Sometimes it devolves into silliness, friction and occasional brilliance. All are worth it. I meet weekly with writer friends to work in silence together, a practice which strikes some as bizarre, but which helps us stay motivated and on task. Even the lonely work of novel writing can benefit from company.

Sleep In. This is a luxury I don’t often enjoy, but when I have the time and courage to lie in bed for awhile after waking in the morning, looking around at the semi-dark room and frail light slipping between blinds, entire scenes from my novel write themselves without my having to do a thing. It’s amazing. All I have to do is be present and watch the scenes unfold. The trick then is to write them down before the obligations of the day surge into motion. This is sacred time. If your day allows it, take it.

Work on more than one thing at a time. Full disclosure: I am terrible at this, but when I do manage to do so, both projects benefit. My painting teacher, Roy Kinzer, always encouraged us to have multiple canvases in motion concurrently, so that if we got stuck with one, we could move to the other. Often that shift allowed obstacles to get sorted out in the back of the brain. Upon returning to the first canvas, voila, the solution was clear. Since I tend to get completely sucked up the fictional dream of whatever novel I’m working on, it’s hard to tear myself away, even when a poem calls. But working on several projects simultaneously keeps the mind malleable.

I invite you to share your own creative insights with me in the comment section below as well as on Facebook and Twitter@TessCallahan. I’m always on the lookout for new locks to crack.

Unleash Creativity Part 4: Limit your Palette [by Tess Callahan]

When artist Xu Bing was asked by the Chinese government to create two phoenix sculptures for the atrium of the new World Financial Center in Beijing, he accepted, but when he visited the site and saw the dismal working conditions of the migrant laborers who were building the luxury towers, he was so disturbed that he decided to create the phoenixes out of the workers’ battered tools. The elegant, gargantuan birds are constructed of shovels, hard hats, jackhammers, pliers, saws, screwdrivers, plastic accordion tubing and drills. The building’s developers worried about the message the sculptures conveyed and asked if Xu would consider covering them with crystals. No dice. They withdrew the commission, but the artist forged ahead with the project and the birds have been exhibited in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and elsewhere. While the limited materials made the sculptures more challenging to construct, they also made them infinitely more compelling both aesthetically and symbolically.

In the introduction to his book WIND/PINBALL: TWO NOVELS, Haruki Murakami explains that he discovered his writing style by first composing in English with limited vocabulary and syntax and then “transplanting” those sentences into his native Japanese. In the process, a new style of Japanese emerged that was entirely his own. He describes the experience as a moment of clarity when the scales fell from his eyes. “Now I get it,” he thought. “This is how I should be doing it.”

“The Ten-Minute Spill,” a Rita Dove poetry exercise found in THE PRACTICE OF POETRY by Chase Twichell and Robin Behn uses a limited palette of words and an inverted cliché to point writers toward a similar eureka experience. After doing this exercise with my creative writing students, we tried it a second time using a palette of words they “found” on a “field trip” (see yesterday’s post) and then exchanged with one another. They complained about the confines of the exercise, but promptly produced great stuff.

Material is one way to exploit constraints. Structure is another. Frank Lloyd Wright would not have created his Fallingwater House if he had seen the waterfall as an obstacle to be overcome rather than an asset to be incorporated. Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” came from an exercise in end stops, and Jennifer Egan’s story “Black Box” would not exist if she hadn’t been trying to figure out a creative way to use the impossible limitations of Twitter.

In my creative writing class, students first groan over and then feverishly tackle the constraints presented to them. They have written villanelles, sestinas, haiku, 6-word stories, Yelp reviews, fictional book blurbs and recently “Contributors’ Notes” in an emulation of Stacey Harwood’s poem by the same name (BEST AMERICAN POETRY 2005). The ratio of early complaints to eventual satisfaction is gratifying. Great ideas come from pushing against boundaries. The frustration of constrictions can distract the thinking brain enough to allow the deeper work of the creative mind to unfold. Get your students moaning. You won’t be sorry.

Tune in to tomorrow’s post for ways to find fresh entry points into your writing.

Unleash Creativity Part 3: Impose Time Constraints [by Tess Callahan]

My teacher Roy Kinzer routinely warmed us up for our life painting class with a series of timed gesture drawings beginning with lightning fast poses. He required us to use large paper and to fill up the whole page. Grumbles of exasperation reverberated as every 15-seconds he told the model, “Switch.” Sometimes, in his smooth evil voice, he would call the change after only five seconds. Our hands flew. Our charcoal snapped. We tore pages from our sketchpads and cursed. When the beauty of a particular pose made me desperate to capture it, I held my breath until the switch. Details impossible to catch abbreviated themselves into lines expressing movement, rhythm and musicality, as seen in this drawing by artist Greta Skagerlind. Once Roy had us where he wanted us, that is, with our thinking brains shut off and our arms in motion, he would gradually lengthen the poses to 30, 60 and 90 seconds. By the time we reached two minutes, it felt like luxury. He had succeeded in shutting down the part of our brains that wanted to hesitate, deliberate and ponder accuracy. We simply dove in.

Just as I had in Roy’s class, my creative writing students love to hate our timed exercises, which take many forms. Here are a few:

 

BAG OF TRICKS: I pass around a “bag of tricks” filled with various objects. Each student reaches in and grabs one, a pinecone, a playing card, a broken watch, whatever. Using the object as a prompt, they write for X seconds, and then pass the object to the right until every student has written about every object. Sometimes they write pure physical descriptions using the five senses. Other times they write memories or associations the object evokes. In the spirit of gesture drawing, we start with 15 seconds of writing and work our way up to a minute or more.

NOUN VERB SWAP: In a variation of the above exercise, I ask each student to write on separate slips of paper a verb and a noun. I tell them to go for highly specific words (“wire fox terrier” over “dog” or “paraded” over “walked”). Next, I set the timer and have them pass nouns to the left, verbs to the right. Students combine the two words in their hand into a prompt (…the wire fox terrier paraded…”) and write for a minute.

SPEED DATING: We do similar exercises in pairs, wherein students “speed date” by joining their words to a partner’s words for a blitzkrieg brainstorm before the timer sounds and they move to the next person. Inevitably they argue and beg. “We were just getting started!” Eventually, I increase the time.

IN-HOUSE FIELD TRIPS: The exercises the students love best are in-house “field trips.” For example, if we are brainstorming for a one-act play, I send them out of the classroom to collect eavesdropped dialogue for ten minutes. Another day I might have them pick from a hat a particular location in the school (library, cafeteria, gymnasium, etc.) and send them there to speed write sensory details (sounds, smells, textures, temperatures, colors, shapes, etc.) I ask them to write down both the obvious ones (the sound of a basketball bouncing), and those that normally fall below conscious awareness (the clinking of utensils, the hum of an air conditioner). When they return to the classroom ten minutes later, they share their spoils.

2-MINUTE SELF PORTRAITS: This idea comes from cartoonist Lynda Barry’s book SYLLABUS. Instead of drawing themselves as Barry suggests, students write a description of themselves in the 3^rd person present tense using as many sensory details as possible. It might be a portrait of themselves when they arose from bed that morning or from when they were 5-years old. Their choice. Many of the wonderful cartooning exercises described in both SYLLABUS and WHAT IT IS are easily amended to writing.

5-MINUTE STEPPING STONES: Adapted from Ira Progoff’s INTENSIVE JOURNAL METHOD, this exercise asks students to map their lives in 8 to 12 stepping stones beginning with, “I was born,” and ending with the present. The stepping-stones could be external markers such as “We moved to Brooklyn” or “I made my bar mitzvah” or more interior ones, “I was afraid of the boys in my gym class” or “I had a crush on Lisa.” Stepping-stones can be done multiple times with different results, depending on how you’re seeing your life that day. They can also be done for a certain time period or project, such as the stepping-stones of a novel you’re working on.

7-MINUTE INVENTORY: Also transmuted from Jungian scholar Ira Progoff, this exercise asks students to take stock of their current life circumstances through a series of quick lists. For example: Who are the people in your life right now, both the inner circle—family and friends—and the outer circle—the gas station attendant, bakery cashier or others you see daily but may not know by name? We go on to list recent life events, projects we are working on, current circumstances relating to our bodies (health, sleep, diet, exercise, sexuality) as well as the current places in our life, both those we visit and those we think about. Next comes a brief list of our societal circumstances (home, office, school, town, nation, etc.) followed by any recent dreams we may remember. After compiling the list, I ask students to write a paragraph beginning with the phrase, “This has been a time when…” or “This time has been like…” Often a simile is waiting to unfold.

These exercises are fertile additions to what Anne Lamott refers to in BIRD BY BIRD as “the compost heap” of our journals. Lump these things together on a page and something is bound to combust. Whether describing an acorn in 15 seconds or writing a life inventory in 7 minutes, the clock we love to rail against is our writing ally.

Tune in to tomorrow’s post for ideas about liberating your creativity by limiting your palette.

A Hairy Situation [ by Charles Coe ]

Nowadays just turning on TV news or glancing at a newspaper headline is enough to make you want to hide in the broom closet or go work on a ferret ranch in Montenegro. The people need a new distraction. Something beyond rhinos in helmets and cleats and hourly updates on the Kardashians.

So I think it’s time to bring back the mullet, that "Business in front, party in the back" classic. Mike D of the Beastie Boys is generally credited with coining the term in his song “Mullet Head,” in which he described the haircut and the fashion-forward pioneers who wore it.(Apparently there was some French fashion dude in the early seventies called "Mollet" who invented it.)

Back in the day, celebrities like Billy Ray Cyrus, Hulk Hogan, Rod Stewart, and Patrick Swayze all rocked awesome mullets. And maybe the King of Mullets was pop crooner Michael Bolton, whose combination boy perm/mullet set a standard for the ages. But it wasn’t just guys. At one time Lady Mulleteers Cyndi Lauper, Rosanne Barr and even Ellen Degeneres all sported the look.

Sadly, the mullet has all but disappeared from the urban scene. But beyond the sidewalks, especially below the Mason/Dixon line, it lives on. As William Faulkner once said about the south in another context, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Down there one can still spot the occasional mullet at a duck hunt or tractor pull without too much trouble.

So like I was saying, I need something new to distract me from the world condition. The mullet seems like just the ticket, and I know exactly who should spearhead the campaign: today’s generation of young hipster dudes. Here’s why:

1. Hipster dudes are into retro. Their Victorian beards and moustaches, topknots, skinny ties, pegged pants and so forth all harken back to days of yore. For these guys this kind of trip in the Tonsorial Wayback Machine would be a natural. Of course, we’d have to train and sedate (not sure of the proper order) a new generation of barbers to master the nuances of the style.

2. Hipster dudes are into irony. And what could be more ironic than reviving the mullet—the most entertainingly awful fashion felony of the twentieth century?

It would only take a few strategically placed photos on Instagram of prominent hipster style-setters (whoever the heck they are) out for a night on the town while sporting mullets. In no time, dudes across the land would be getting buzz cuts or bangs in front and letting the back run wild like hipster versions of the Chia pet.

And when the plan reaches full flower a grateful nation will enjoy hordes of fashion-forward young gentlemen in mullets, staring at iPhones and sucking on eCigs and eggplant-raddichio lattes, marching across the land like hairy locusts in flannel shirts and Doc Martins, letting their freak flags fly and providing the unhip masses with much-need diversion.

I can’t wait. The National Council of Hipster Dudes needs to go into special session immediately to make this happen.

At least I hope they mullet over...

 

Charles Coe is author of two books of poetry:  “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents” and “Picnic on the Moon,” both published by Leapfrog Press. His poetry has appeared in a number of literary reviews and anthologies, including Poesis, The Mom Egg, Solstice Literary Review, and Urban Nature. His novella, "Spin Cycles," was published in November, 2014 by Gemma Media. He is the winner of a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Charles’s poems have been set by a number of composers, including Beth Denisch, Julia Carey and Robert Moran. A short film based on his poem “Fortress” is currently in production by filmmaker Roberto Mighty. Charles is co-chair of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union, a labor union for freelance writers. He was selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light for 2014.” He is currently an artist fellow at the St. Botolph Club of Boston.

 

 

 

Unleash Creativity Part 2: Emulate the Masters [by Tess Callahan]

For my students’ first poetry assignment this year, I distributed a dozen past issues of BEST AMERICAN POETRY along with other anthologies snatched from my shelf and asked them to browse through and settle on a poem that caught their eye, one whose style or cadence made them envious, a poem they wish they had written. Next, I gave them several prompts to consider and we did a bit of memory brainstorming around those ideas. In particular, we conjured up the memory’s smells, tastes, sounds, textures and visual details. Finally, I asked them to use their brainstorm to construct a poem in the style of the one they admired.

Initially, some students were not enthralled. Hadn’t they signed up for this course in order to unearth their own personal voice? Why imitate someone else?

I described the copying exercises that are part of traditional visual arts training, in which the student tries to create a replica of a masterpiece by analyzing the brushstrokes, composition and color. In the painting classes I took with artist Roy Kinzer, (seen in photo) we sometimes started with monochromatic under paintings, as the masters did, and built the painting up from the inside out, endeavoring to mix colors and apply brushstrokes to resemble the original. The learning curve was steep. The point was not to do one such copy and subsequently forever paint like that artist, but rather to do dozens of them from a wide range of styles, each time depositing another tool in the toolbox, building up our own style. Art forms, whether painting, poetry, dance or music, move forward collectively, an unfolding conversation. Picasso borrowed from Braque, Braque from Cézanne and so on. Last year, a student of mine named Michael wrote an emulation of Major Jackson’s “Why I Write Poetry” called “Why I Do My Homework.” Another student named Dani wrote an emulation of Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Map” entitled, “The City,” which Poetry.org selected for publication on their website. These poems were not appropriations of Jackson or Bishop, but a salute to them. This year, a student wrote an emulation of Robert Haas’s “After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa,” an emulation of an emulation!

I sometimes do a similar exercise with fiction. I give students signature lines from established authors with a wide range of styles—Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, Borges, for example. (Having asked my English Department colleagues for their favorite lines of literature, I have an ample supply). I then ask the students to pluck out the nouns and verbs and replace them with their own words while retaining the scaffolding of the sentence. What’s left is a syntax the student may never have considered using before. While there’s no immediate end product to this exercise, it attunes their ear and broadens their idea of what’s possible.

Strictly speaking, these are not true copying exercises in the style of the visual arts, but many writers do find it useful to handwrite passages they love word for word as a way of absorbing their rhythm and structure.

Perhaps the best part of an emulation exercises is that it offers students the luxury of wading through stacks of poetry anthologies to find a poem that speaks them. It all begins there.

Tune in to tomorrow’s post to see how time constraints can be your new BFF.

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

 

Unleash Creativity Part 1: Give Students Chains to Break [by Tess Callahan]

Give your students a Houdini challenge. Having taught creative writing for more than ten years now, I’ve found the most restrictive assignments, the ones they gnash their teeth over, invite the most inventive work, while the free-for-alls they beg for often produce reams of ‘meh.’ I’m talking high school students here, but writers of any age enjoy outwitting a dare.

When I was a high school student myself, my English teacher asked us to write a story on the theme of violence. Maybe he was trying to engage the bored freshmen boys by giving them the chance to write shoot-em-up stories (not so quaint anymore). I thought the theme was stupid and retaliated by writing about the violence of being silent when your voice is needed. I thought I had tricked the teacher by twisting the prompt to my own design. Of course, he had tricked me by giving me a chains to break open.

Studies show wild chickadees who must forage for food have bigger brains than captive ones with an endless supply of seeds. The passion of Juliet and Romeo is multiplied by the taboo they brazenly dodge. Artist Andy Goldsworthy’s site-specific vision springs from the natural constraints of his landscapes (see photo below). Be like Goldsworthy, Shakespeare and the wild chickadees. Give yourself and your students something to wrestle with. Trick them into tricking you.

 

Many of the shackles I devise for my students are borrowed from techniques used in visual arts, such as copying exercises, limited palettes and timed tasks. I’ll describe these more fully in forthcoming posts this week. While I’ve gained vital insights from my MFA teachers and critique groups over the years, the person who taught me the most about writing was my painting teacher, Roy Kinzer, and he only wanted me to produce a decent canvas. I’m not sure I ever did that, but he did make me a better writer. These days as I complete my new novel, I still hear his voice telling me to work the entire canvas at once, to resist getting stuck in one area, to keep moving, to relate new colors to previous ones and to spend more time looking than rendering. He taught me to work within constraints of time and material, and most of all, to have an honest eye.

When I gather with a new batch of young writers every September, our first order of business is to establish ground rules for our workshop. When I give them this job, they eye me suspiciously. Why should a class about creativity and free expression start with regulations? But I charge them to create their own parameters, decide what’s allowed and what’s not in terms of our conduct toward one another and our work. In June, with the benefit of hindsight, I ask them to revise those rules and package them up as suggestions for the following year’s class. Generally these ground rules have to do with confidentiality, anonymity, specificity, trust and mutual respect—qualities that establish a fruitful environment for creating and sharing work. With the permission of my current students, I’ve included this year’s ground rules below. These self-imposed strictures give them the freedom to be honest and open with each other.

The following principles were created by my current creative writing students: Sarah, Young Se, Mark, Jenn, Sam, Katy, Eva, Megan, Nick, Francesca, Sanya, Maddie, Maggie, Ben K., Ben L., James, Maddy, Tarco, Betsy, Alena & Abbey.

Tune in to tomorrow’s post for emulation exercises to unleash creativity—your students’ and your own.

 

Tess Callahan, Guest Author December 7-11

This week we welcome back Tess Callahan as our guest author. Tess is the author of the novel APRIL & OLIVER published by Grand Central Publishing (USA), Random House (UK), and by publishers in Italy and The Netherlands. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in AGNI (Pushcart Prize nomination),Narrative Magazine (Story of the Week), The New York Times Magazine, Powell’s Books Original Essay Series, National Public Radio’s “Three Books” series, the STYLUS ANTHOLOGY, Boston College Magazine and the BEST LITTLE BOOK CLUB IN TOWNanthology. Her new novel is presently firing in the kiln. You can find more information about her work at tesscallahan.com. Follow Tess on Facebook and Twitter @tesscallahan.

Much Depends on Dinner: Cooking Latkes with Gabriella Gershenson [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

"Fried things are highly popular at any celebration:  they add a piquant variety to the menu; they are nice to look at, possess all of their original flavor, and can be eaten with the fingers, which is always pleasing to the ladies." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste.

This is really a public service announcement disguised as a cooking post. In case you hadn't noticed, we're deep into latke season here.  If you read through this post, study the photos, and follow the instructions, you will never have to eat the leaden, oily, flabby discs that so often pass as latkes in restaurants and delis, and, yes, your relatives' homes.  My friend, the superb writer and editor and Food Network judge Gabriella Gershenson  (photo, above) has generously agreed to share the outstanding recipe passed down from her Latvian babulenka and perfected for the modern kitchen by her mother, the superb chef and caterer Anna Gershenson. Your search for latke heaven ends now.  By heaven I mean that your latkes will be thincrispflavorful and so light that you will dispense with all social niceties such as dishes, knives, and forks and eat them with your hands as soon as you can after they emerge from their brief bath in bubbling oil.  

We begin:  As Anna instructs in the recipe at the bottom of this post, assemble your ingredients and cooking accouterments.  You will need several bowls, sheet pans, lots of paper towels, some aluminum foil; the kinds of things that may not immediately come to mind.  If you have to stop mid-cooking to find them, latke perfection could be out of reach this time around.  (Below, the ingredients: eggs, flour, onions, potatoes, oil. You will also need salt and pepper.) 

Before we took this photo, Gabi and I had already peeled and cubed a boatload of russet potatoes.  The type of potatoes is key: you want a starchy variety.  I'll leave it to the food scientists to explain why. You also want to have a lot of oil on hand (Ed. note: Gabi uses Canola.)  
Once you're at the point shown in this photo, you grind the onions and potatoes.  "WTF? Grind? Every latke I've ever made has used shredded potatoes." I know, I know, me too.  At first Gabi and I couldn't believe it either but you do grind the potatoes. You fit your food processor with this blade and blast away. How do you know when your potatoes have been ground to the proper texture?  You listen to Anna: When you see that the potatoes are beginning to slide in the bowl and don't just sit attached to the walls, and moisture starts appearing, it's time to stop.

(Here is where we pause for a brief departure from Commandment #2 to say thank you to the god of small kitchen appliances for creating the food processor, without which we would be doing  this.)

Next, you dump your first batch of ground onions and potatoes into a strainer set over a large bowl.  Grind and strain the remaining potatoes and onions and when you're done, a goodly amount of milky water will have accumulated in the bowl. Peer through the water and you will see that the bottom of the bowl is coated with a thick white paste.  This is the potato starch. Pour off the water, being careful to preserve the starch (see photo, right).  

Happy Hanukkah!