The Best American Poetry

The Sweet Smell of Excess [ by Charles Coe ]

So here I am in the drug store once again, staring like a sunstruck mole at dozens of men’s deodorants, trying to find a single unscented one.

Men’s deodorant comes in mind-boggling variety: “Wolfthorn”. “Swagger”. “Adventure”. This puts me at a disadvantage, because I’m not really in the market for “adventurous” pits. My main goal is to keep the person sitting next to me on the train from edging away.

Just then a seedy-looking young gent walks up, reaches up for a can of Axe spray, pops the cap and spends a good five seconds hosing down his coat—arms, chest, and back.

In case you’ve never noticed their TV ads, Axe deodorant spray is marketed to young men between 18 and 25 on the premise that any attractive female Earthling within ten yards will insist on mating with them immediately. I am now collateral damage in the War of the Young and Horny--enveloped in a cloud whose aroma suggests the dance floor of the hottest dance club in Paramus, New Jersey. Or a Chippendale’s green room.

The young gentleman gives me a conspiratorial grin. “Smells good, huh,” he says, and puts the can back on the shelf.

My central nervous system is in vapor lock, as if I’ve been hit with a mild dose of nerve gas, so I’m unable to speak. But he’s fine carrying on a conversation without any help. “Yeah man,” he continues, “I’m mad at these people. I tried to return something and they gave me a buncha noise.”

He leans back and eyes me speculatively. “You buyin’ anything? Payin’ cash? Want me to buy it for you?”

My Axe-addled brain’s unable to sort out exactly what kind of scam he’s running, but I manage to find enough oxygen to say “No”—the only sensible answer—and he harrumphs and walks away.  

As he exits stage left a young store employee comes over. “Pretty stinky stuff, huh? You know which one he was using?

I point to a can of “Anarchy” with the back facing out and she takes it off the shelf. “Yeah, he’s in here all the time, she says. "He’ll buy something with manufacturer’s coupons, bring it back an hour later and try to return it for cash.”

As she saunters off I get to thinking: Now that I have my own Axe force field maybe I should go find an attractive young female Earthling who’ll insist on mating with me immediately.

But I end up going home, eating a bowl of lentil soup and catching a Law and Order rerun.

 

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.

Megan Coles and Andreae Callanan Read, Curse and Pickle at Mallard Cottage

by Emily Deming

Last Sunday, In the two original rooms of Mallard Cottage’s heritage structure, warmed by a large double-sided brick hearth, Andreae Callanan and Megan Coles read new fiction and poetry over plates passing and glasses clinking. The acoustics were not perfect, but the response from patrons was good. And that was not a given. When booking a St. Paddy’s Day brunch not everyone thinks, “I hope that just before the dessert course a stranger stands up in her red minnie mouse heels, taps on a stemmed half-pint of Blanche de Chambly and announces a poetry reading.” 

But these were the right artists for the first ever reading organized through Mallard’s Writer-in-Residence Program: Callanan’s poems of grandmothers coming together to solve the world of ills through new production means for mustard pickles; Coles’ roiling, funny, touching and oddly appropriate profanity-laced short fiction. The audience was not self selected for the material. There were babies and retirees, dates and family reunions, art critics and anaesthesiologists. A restaurant manager from another popular spot was part of the first seating; on his way out, he told one of Mallard’s owners, “I don’t usually like art … but I enjoyed that.”

[Above: Deming, Callanan, Coles. Below left: Session musicians Duane Andrews and Darren "Boobie" Brown. Below right: Callanan and Coles. All photographs courtesy of Ken Holden Photography]

While that makes me want to grab the whole world by the collar and say, “oh no! You’ve been mislead about art! It is exactly what you like,” it also proved I may not have to say a word. Not with people with Callanan and Coles sharing their words so broadly and so openly. The readings were not disruptive, they were additive. And the audience was engaged and relaxed. A few people came in from elsewhere in the restaurant to stand in the doorways and listen for a while, before heading back to the uninterrupted live music and buffet out in the main room.

Readings are not just for writers. Fiction goes with everything. Poetry is incorporable. Art is not easy; but it turns out it is not hard to swallow.

Excerpt from Megan Coles’

“This Berry Bucket is just a Butter Tub”

We take the ferry to Bell Island.

You insist. Against my better judgment, I concede. The heat wave and my hangover make me malleable to your will on a Sunday afternoon. And you promised Soft Serve, maybe whales, so there was relenting. A disagreement unfolds in the car almost immediately and we curse at each other without cursing. Slut whips out like a birthday party whistle and I careen around to see if it has penetrated the front seat-back seat divide of adult delusion. The boy’s eyes are ready for me. Their size acknowledge I’ve said a bad word and I start babbling about fantasy milkshakes awaiting us on the other side of this strip of ocean. A weak cover up. A lame bribe. You should never promise children things that may not exist, I think, and my guilt demands I return to my sofa. Turn around now, logic says.

This is a doomed day at the seaside.

Besides, I would rather spend the time in my sweaty panties watching Footloose on Netflix. Or Ghostbusters. Nature documentaries, maybe. A lot of cooking shows. Every TED Talk ever made about sex and love, vulnerability, how to cope. Wisdom on a loop in an attempt to soak up some better strategy then driving toward a smaller island than the island we’re currently on. Why be after another tiny island? It’s preposterous. What’s to see? Nothing more than an evolutionary accident of ancient shifting tectonic plates. Metamorphic rock, a bit of grass, some berries perhaps. Not even berries. We’re in between berry seasons. The bakeapples have gone sharp, the raspberries are weeks off, there’s barely a hint of a blueberry. Lord fuck.

Regardless though, you’ve containers in the back seat. Just in case we strike them, you say. Dismissing botanical science, the lunar cycle, growth seasons and climate change with your desire to go berry picking. As if that’s the answer to all of life’s problems. A few berries crammed into a plastic margarine tub. Why do you still eat margarine? I have told you a million billion trillion times how bad that shit is for you. Buy real butter dummy! You are going to die of a heart attack before you’re fifty. Yes. Yes. You do look like you’ve gained a few pounds. You look like someone who spreads whipped, dyed, vegetable oil on your toast. And no. You do not look Eversweet! Jesus. And I think, you’re a fool. Truly deluded. You know nothing. Why are we even friends?

Can a man and a woman even be friends? I scan my mind for examples of permanence but they all end in a wedding dress. I vow aloud to never be friends with her. You can’t make me. And it’s the first brutal incision of the day. I have punctured you with this declaration. I can see the tiny hole squirting despair into the car and I decide to fill the cab with it. I will tailor you into one of your girlfriend’s trashy belly-tops, you will be a blood red mesh sleeveless number alerting others from streets away, like some visual siren, that you doubt your self-worth.

So I continue my slaughter. I will never go to your frigging barbeques. I will never attend a frigging baby shower. I will never frigging call her on the frigging phone. I won’t even answer if she calls me. Texts, maybe. Maybe I’d return her frigging text. But I will not frigging like her. And I will not pretend to frigging approve of your ludicrous relationship. You are not frigging Romeo and she is not frigging Juliet. I say frigging a lot for the boy but you know my vocabulary doesn’t allow for subtly. And you leak with the knowledge of what I mean to say. You can hear the plethora of fucks piling in the back of my throat. A cacophony of vulgarity directed at you. You know me so well. We’ve been friends for fifteen years. So far, anyway.

[Megan Coles is a graduate of Memorial University, the National Theatre School of Canada and is currently enrolled in the UBC MFA Opt-Res program. She is Co-founder and Artistic Director of Poverty Cove Theatre Company. Megan is presently working on her debut novel (House of Anansi 2017) and The Driftwood Trilogy of plays. Megan's first fiction collection, Eating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome (Killick), won the BMO Winterset Award, the ReLit Award and the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award and earned her the one time Writers Trust 5x5 prize. Originally from Savage Cove on the Great Northern Peninsula, Megan now resides in St. John's where she also the Artist-In-Residence at the Arts and Culture Centre and Executive Director of Riddle Fence A Journal of Arts & Culture.]

 

Revival

By Andreae Callanan

 

The national canning company said

there would be no more mustard pickles

for our Sunday lunches of cabbagey

 

boiled comfort after mass,

no pickles to grace our salt meat hash,

no pickles for our baked ham dinners

 

nor for our cold ham sandwiches

on warm white bread. None

for the pan-fried fishcakes, dense

 

with salt cod, confettied with onion

and flecked with summer savoury.

No thick jar-bottom pickle sauce

 

for spooning into the potato salad,

a secret ingredient brightening

the dish's pallor to near-neon yellow

 

on charity turkey tea paper plates

at the Lions' Club or the parish hall,

And so the grandmothers stepped in,

 

opened their pantries, brought jars

from basement shelves, ducked crawlspace

clearance to emerge with half-pints, pints,

 

standard and wide-mouth jars gleaming

gold (and near as dear). They arranged

their wares on church-sale tables and raised

 

enough money to fund a mission to India.

The missionaries returned with suitcases

of turmeric, fat, damp rhizomes folded into

 

souvenir t-shirts and silently smuggled.

The turmeric was planted in new-built

community glasshouses, flourished

 

among the cucumbers and red peppers.

Gardeners tended their vegetable plots

with wartime vigour. Around the bay

 

the old-timers hauled the twisting

silver bodies of caplin by bucket loads

to nourish the stony soil, brought pans

 

of clean ocean to dry in the sun, raking

the water away until there was only

salt. In town, construction of hotels

 

was halted, the land dedicated to lush,

waving mustard fields and the cultivation

of sugar beets. Children spent their

 

summers plucking pale-green caterpillars

from cauliflowers' pale-green ribs,

wrapping the leaves tight to shade

 

the white heads of curd within. Neglected

crab apples were newly prized, as urban

foragers discovered the ancient secrets

 

of making vinegar from windfall. Each

small shop developed a signature slant,

each community a variation, an accent.

 

In the provincial archives, two pieces

of paper are on prominent display: one,

a brittle, spill-stained list of ingredients

 

taken down in a slanting, last-century

hand, and the other a facsimile of an official

letter to the national canning company,

 

telling them they can shag right off.

 

[Andreae Callanan is a poet and essayist from St. John's. Her poetry was shortlisted for the Fresh Fish Award in 2009, and she has received multiple other awards, including McGill University's Lionel Shapiro Award for Creative Writing and Arts NL's Lawrence Jackson Writers' Award. She has created original work for interdisciplinary performances and installations, and has had several poems translated into French and Catalan. She is currently pursuing a masters degree in English at Memorial University.]

Remembering Easter, 1916 [by Terence Winch]

On Easter Monday of 1916, 150 or so Irish rebels took armed action against their British rulers, seizing the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin. After a week of fighting, they lost to the thousands of British troops arrayed against them, but the Rising ultimately led to Irish independence from the mighty British Empire. Given the musical and literary traditions of the Irish, it is no surprise that the rebellion also gave rise to poems, songs, movies, and books. (In fact, Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising, was himself a poet.) Probably the best-known of the poems is William Butler Yeats's "Easter 1916":  

Easter 1916

I
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

II
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

III
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

IV
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

_________________________

One of the best of the many songs that came out of the Easter Rising is "The Foggy Dew," written in 1919 by Charles O’Neill, a parish priest from County Down. This version by the great Dublin singer Frank Harte, who died a few years ago and who was once described by my friend Doug Lang as having "a voice like a tenor sax," is my favorite (listen here to "The Foggy Dew"), though Sinead O'Connor's rendition with the Chieftains also gives me the chills.   

 

And here let me offer a BAP scoop. One of the heroes of 1916 was the socialist and labor leader James Connolly, whom the Brits executed sitting down, as his battle wounds had yet to heal. One of the most stirring songs about Connolly was composed by poet-songwriter-playwright Patrick Galvin, from County Cork. Paddy, now in his 80s, visited my brother Jesse's house outside D.C. in February of 1981 for a house party, a few days after Paddy and Celtic Thunder, the band started by me and Jesse, had performed in concert together.  We recorded him talking, reading poems, and singing. So here is Paddy himself singing his composition "James Connolly" from that magical evening ('James Connolly'). Jesse, currently Cathaorleach (chairman) of our local chapter of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (the worldwide Irish music society), accompanies Paddy on the bodhran (drum).  Ten years earlier, we got to spend some time with Brian Heron, James Connolly's grandson and the founder of  the National Association for Irish Justice, one of a number of groups that were formed back in those days to support the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. [right: Brian Heron, 1971; © Jesse Winch]  

The Easter Rising became the starting point for modern Irish history, its echoes clearly audible throughout the recent Troubles in the north of Ireland (as this song of my own, called "The Streets of Belfast,"demonstrates). In the years immediately following the Rising, the struggle for independence from Britain continued, eventually leading to the partition of Ireland as a condition for the establishment of the Irish Free State. Partition, in turn, spurred a terrible civil war among Irish nationalists that tore the country apart. This grim and bloody period has inspired a number of searing films, including two of recent vintage: The Wind that Shakes the Barley,  Ken Loach's 2007 film starring Cillian Murphy, and Michael Collins, the 1996 Liam Neeson film written and directed by Neil Jordan. But for me the greatest of them all is the 1935 John Ford classic, The Informer, based on a Liam O'Flaherty novel and starring Victor McLaglen as Gypo Nolan, an ill-fated "gutter Judas," to use the New York Times's memorable phrase.  (Here's a clip of McLaglen at work.)

Happy Easter & Up the Republic!

 (ed note: This post first ran on April 4, 2010)

Hemingway Reassures Fitzgerald on His Penis Size [by Jim Cummins]

Jim Cummins initially filed this report in 2009. It has become a classic. -- DL

<<<
Everybody my age knows about Hemingway's story about measuring F. Scott Fitzgerald's penis in A Moveable Feast, but maybe it's a good way to introduce a younger generation to Big Papa's work.  I've always wanted to write a poem about it, but nothing I ever came up with came close to matching Hemingway's account.  The story is this.  F. Scott Fitzgerald asked Hemingway to advise him about an important problem that had come up between Scott and Zelda.  (So to speak.)  So Scott and Papa go to Michaud's ("on the corner of the rue Jacob and the rue des Saints-Peres") for lunch and consultation.  Fitzgerald swore Hemingway to tell "the absolute truth" when answering.  Hemingway says, "He drank wine at the lunch but it did not affect him and he had not prepared for the lunch by drinking before it."  (This doesn't have a lot to do with the story, but the sentence knocks me out; I think it's the "did not" and "had not" constructions.)  Anyway, Zelda had told Scott his penis was too small.  Here's the Hemingway:

'Finally when we were eating the cherry tart and had a last carafe of wine he said, "You know I never slept with anyone except Zelda."

'No, I didn't.'

'I thought I'd told you.'

'No.  You told me a lot of things but not that.'

'That is what I want to ask you about.'

'Good.  Go on.'

'Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy and that was what upset her originally.  [Ed. note: This conversation was held somewhat after what Hemingway describes as "what was then called her first nervous breakdown."]  She said it was a matter of measurements.  I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.'

'Come out to the office,' I said.

'Where is the office?'

'Le water" [the "WC," i.e. the men's room], I said.

We came back into the room and sat down at the table.

'You're perfectly fine,' I said.  'You are O.K.  There's nothing wrong with you.  You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened.  Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.'

'Those statues may not be accurate.'

'They are pretty good.  Most people would settle for them.'

'But why would she say it?'

'To put you out of business.  That's the oldest way in the world of putting people out of business.  Scott, you asked me to tell you the truth and I can tell you a lot more but this is the absolute truth and all you need.  You could have gone to a doctor.'

'I didn't want to.  I wanted you to tell me truly.'

'Now do you believe me?'

'I don't know,' he said.

'Come on over to the Louvre,' I said.  'It's just down the street and across the river.'

We went over to the Louvre and he looked at the statues but still he was doubtful about himself.

'It is not basically a question of the size in repose,' I said.  'It is the size that it becomes.  It is also a question of angle.'

I explained to him about using a pillow and a few other things that might be useful for him to know.

'There is one girl,' he said, 'who has been very nice to me.  But after what Zelda said--'

'Forget what Zelda said,' I told him.  'Zelda is crazy.  There's nothing wrong with you.  Just have confidence and do what the girl wants.  Zelda just wants to destroy you.'

'You don't know anything about Zelda.'

'All right,' I said.  'Let it go at that.  But you came to lunch to ask me a question and I've tried to give you an honest answer.'

But he was still doubtful.

'Should we go and see some pictures?' I asked.  'Have you ever seen anything in here except the Mona Lisa?'

'I'm not in the mood for looking at pictures,' he said.  'I promised to meet some people at the Ritz bar.'"

****

I love so many things about this.  I love how throughout AMF Hemingway gives exact locations of the bars and cafes he frequents; I love how Scott hasn't drunk any whiskey to prepare himself for this manly lunch among manly men; I love how H. inspects Scott's, er, "junk" in the bathroom; and I really really love that they go to the Louvre to compare Scott's penis with the penises of sculptures and paintings.  Can't you just see Hemingway with a laser pointer?  And the "question of the angle" is a hoot.  So why have I been unable to write a poem about this?  Maybe from the point of view of old man Michaud, who has to take a leak and pushes open the door to the toilet, just as Hemingway is squatting down on his haunches to look at Scott's package in profile, saying, "Pull it a little, see if it does anything."

TBT: "Invictus" Recited by Renee Harwood, 2010

Trochaic Theory Favors Sanders; Clinton Gets an Asterisk; Ted Cruz Doth Lose; etc. [by David Lehman]

Trochaic theory, the political forecasting system based on poetic metrics, which correctly predicted Obama's presidential victories in 2008 and 2012, has shortened the odds on Bernie Sanders -- if, and it's a big if, the Sandman gets the Democratic party nomination. The reason: his name conforms to the double trochee pattern that has reliably given us an array of chief executives including Andrew Jackson, Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon.

The odds of presidential triumph shorten further if the candidate's first and last name alliterate (e.g. Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan). But it is probably too late for Bernie to change his name to Sandy. While deeply critical of Israeli PM Netanyahu, the Brooklyn-born Sanders remains a Zionist ("Do I think Israel has the right to exist? Yeah, I do") who scores high on the "Jew You" test devised by a team of experts including Larry David, Sarah Silverman, and University of Vermont professor Richard Sugarman. His favorite poet would be Yehuda Amichai if he had a favorite poet and were at liberty to disclose the name.

Hilary Clinton merits an asterisk if only because the two major precedents for her name are those of Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln -- in both cases a dactyl before a trochee. Astrological analysis sees the likelihood of war following such an ascendant. But maybe that's just talk. If Clinton were to consider an "Abraham Clinton" ad campaign, with an actress playing Hillary in the role of Honest Abe, she would gain ten points in some polls. Deliberate mispellings of her last name (Clitnon), common in right-wing supermarket tabloids, are bound to backfire.

The monosyllabicTed Cruz doth lose unless, like George Bush he faces an opponent who shortens his name to the same thump thump (2000) or a hapless chap on water skis (2004) The triumph of the first George Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988 remains an aberrant case that is usually explained (a) as an expression of satisfaction with the Reagan administration, (b) proof that a picture (Dukakis in tank with helmet) is worth a thousand words, and (c) the insertion of two middle initials in Mr. Bush's name, ostensibly to distinguish the 41st from the 43rd US president, but with attendant metrical mischief.

 It is however pertinent to note that the metrical makeup of "Michael Dukakis" resembles that of Barack Obama except that, luckily for Barry, his first name scans as an iamb not a trochee and so he escapes the Dukakis ignominy.

Of John Kasich, it may be said that his best hope is to add a middle initial, preferably F, and launch an "all the way with JFK" campaign, but that would cost a huge amount of money and the candidate would dismiss the idea in line with his no-nonsense Ohioan personality. The relative fates of the governors of Ohio and Michigan during this primary season fall into their own pattern -- the many seasons when the Buckeyes trounced the Wolverines by three touchdowns and went on to a bowl game.

As to the one person I seem to have left out, I would reiterate that a simple syllabic extension of his last name -- from Trump to Trumpet -- would make all the difference. -- DL

Monday Comic by Nin Andrews

Summer Camp Quiz [by David Lehman]

1) Bug juice is

a) an experiment conducted by the nature counselor
b) insect repellent for canoe trips
c) the fruit drink that is served at meals
d) none of the above

2) The song beginning "Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts"  has all these words except

a) "mutilated monkey meat"
b) "chopped-up little birdies' feet"
c) "beetles and beets and other things unsweet"
d) "and me without my spoon"

3) A marine is

a) a John Wayne-type
b) a strict counselor
c) a humorless head counselor
d) a camper who occasionally has an accident in bed

4) When a waiter drops a full tray, the campers spontaneously sing

a) "You'll Never Walk Alone"
b) "What kind of Fool Am I?"
c) "He's a hero (he's an all-American jerk)"
d) the Notre Dame fight song

5) OD means

a) off drugs
b) on duty
c) O Delice, the name of a cheap condom stashed in a sleeping bag
d) an ordinary day

6) Color War is

a) an extension of finger-painting in Arts and Crafts (for the youngest bunks)
b) a week when the camp is divided into two teams competing in athletics, dramatics, music, and art (posters, stage scenery)
c) a recreation of a Civil War battle with everyone in either a gray or a blue uniform
d) the summer camp equivalent of war games in basic training (army)

7) Arts & Crafts was popularly known as

a) "Faigala Fiesta"
b) "Arts & Farts"
c) "Farts & Crap"
d) "A one-hour time out"

8) On Palm Sunday

a) the girl campers wear grass skirts and carry a palm branch while they dance to Neal Sedaka singing "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do."
b) even the irreligious attend services
c) the counselors (shirts) play the waiters (skins) in basketball
d) parents visit and counselors stick out their hands for tips

9) General Swim is

a) the nickname for the chief lifeguard
b) the time when everyone is in the pool,(or lake) except the lifeguards
c) any group activity that is mandatory for all except those in the infirmary
d) the required weekly test of the buddy system

10) To keep bottles of Coke and Pepsi cold,

a) campers pool their resources to buy a mini-fridge
b) counselors bribe the cook for use of the kitchen refrigerator
c) campers stash the bottles in the back of the toilet
d) see (c) above

As a counselor, the author of this quiz

a) excelled at no sport other than ping pong and archery
b) once received a letter consisting entirely of the complete lyrics of "To know know know him / is to love love love him"
c) wrote the songs and plays for his team in competitions
d) broke curfew twice and was duly punished
e) gained weight by drinking a nightly rum collins or two at the local bowling alley slash cocktail lounge
f) lost weight by swimming daily and drinking skim milk
g) never had a serious girlfriend though he had a crush on Norman's sister Anna
h) read Hemingway and Norman Mailer
i) listened to Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Patrick Sky because Norman brought a record player
j) edited the camp newspaper slash yearbook that was distributed to everyone on the bus going home
k) wore hooded sweatshirts before they were the rage
l) was friendly with guys majoring in English and philosophy
m) played second base and caught a line drive to end the game
n) learned to drive
o) sneaked into Grossinger's on one memorable day off
p) wrote rhymes about the kids in his bunk
q) learned the words and music of all the songs in Guys and Dolls
r) made Norman and the other guys laugh by saying that The Old Man and the Sea was "shallow"
s) was counseled, by a potential girlfriend (Barbara), to wear cordovan penny loafers with cream-colored socks
t) disdained the universal gesture for "big deal" (a finger held up and slowly rotated)
u) got letters from his father with clips from the New York Times on the exploits of Koufax and Drysdale
v) saw Viva Las Vegas on a day off
w) felt that the best TV and radio jingles were for Buick cars, L & M cigarettes, and Schaefer and Rheingold beer
x) accompanied friends, after camp ended but before school began, to Yonkers racetrack, Freedomland (an amusement park in the Bronx), Shea Stadium to see the Mets play, and the Gaslight cafe on MacDougal Street where we -- Norman and I and maybe Milty -- drank champagne cocktails and heard a waitress sing Jerome Kern's "Cleopatterer"
y) watched Larry pin Norman in an impromptu wrestling match
z) felt solemn each sunset when the flag was lowered and "Taps" was played

-- DL

Word Counts in Novels (by Lawrence J. Epstein)

Among the vast number of contradictory phenomena I don’t understand there is this: Why do Americans seem to have a decreasing attention span (witness the popularity of tweets and the fact that interest in a YouTube video declines after thirty seconds) while at the same time publishers and presumably readers want longer novels? For example, I read a lot of mysteries, and it turns out that between 1960 and 1979 the median length of novels that won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery was 72,001 words. However, since 1980 that medium length has been 102,533. There are a lot of theories about why the length of all novels has increased. One person in publishing told me readers feel cheated if they pay thirty bucks and get a thin novel. Or maybe novel readers take a look at the world and have a greater need to escape than they once did.

For those of you who enjoy or write novels under 65,000 words, I thought I’d compile a list of brief novels. I figured I’d list ten classic novels under 50,000 words to emphasize the point. Here are the titles, authors, and word count of those novels:

Animal Farm, George Orwell, 29,966

A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens, 28,944

Farenheit 451. Ray Bradbury, 46,118

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 47,094

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 29,160

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 26,601

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane 47,180

A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, 37,761

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, 49,459

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, 49,965

There are also many great classic mystery novels that are relatively brief. James M. Cain was a master of brief novels. Double Indemnity, for example, had 30,072 words. I don’t have the exact word count for The Postman Always Rings Twice, but it was about 35,000 words. Cain wrote such tight prose with compelling narratives that I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the films made from these two novels are among the best mystery films ever made.

Of course, this is not to suggest that great novels need to be brief. In the 19^th century, without all the distractions of contemporary life and without radio, film, audio books, television, video games, and the internet to offer alternative ways for readers to find the pleasures of storytelling, novels were often much longer. War and Peace was 587,287 words. Tolstoy was, by comparison, a slacker in creating Anna Karenina. That was only 349,736 words. In the United States, Melville took 206,052 words to compose Moby-Dick. Emily Bronte was, by comparison, frugal with her words. She used only 107,947 of them to write Wuthering Heights. Jane Austen was somewhere in the middle. Emma was 155,887 words.

I personally often prefer shorter novels. I can carry the characters and the plot completely in my head throughout the story. I can finish a book in one sitting. A briefer novel can, at its best, carry the power of a poem. But, judging by novels now being published, I am in the distinct minority.

I’ve been thinking about writing a literary mystery. However, if I do, it will be brief, and I therefore wonder how it would ever be published and, if it were, whether readers would feel cheated, as though they bought a blouse or shirt only to discover a sleeve was missing.

What strange literary questions contemporary America engenders.

Union Square Farmers Market Encounter: Only in New York or is this a Paul Violi Poem? [by Stacey Harwood-Lehman]

Woman: Do you have pullet eggs?

Vendor: Yes.

Woman: Great! I'll take some.

Me: I'd like some too.

Woman: Would you consider splitting a dozen? I live alone and half a dozen is just right for me.

Me: Sure.

Me: How do you use them? For baking? Or just as you would use any egg?

Woman: I like to fry them. Like in the Velazquez painting, the one at the Prado. 

Me: So you fry them in olive oil? 

Woman: Yes! 

Me: That painting was here briefly, at the Frick, last year. 

Woman: I didn't know that! 

Me: Yes, it's gorgeous. 

Woman: I agree. Enjoy your eggs! 

(Me, to myself: I miss Paul Violi)

-- sdl

 

The Cakes! (and other perks of writing in a restaurant) [Emily Deming, Writer-in-Residence at Mallard Cottage]

A Writer’s Residency in a restaurant involves, at times revolves around, food: fueled by it, inspired by it, writing about it. Part of the (verbal) contract arranged for this residency was a sort of all-access-pass to the kitchen. I get to observe the butchering on Tuesdays; watch the chefs mix the pastries and meatballs on Wednesday; smell the soups cooking on Thursdays; listen over the cheerful mix of rap, 80s ballads, and Motown that is this crews’ chosen soundtrack, as “Fitz” explains - in terms of preparation, cut, taste and texture -  the difference between corned beef, smoked meat and pastrami. I also get to eat cake for breakfast. 

 

When there are special events, I am invited to record, write and pitch in my pre-residency role as a food, travel and culture journalist.

Here is an excerpt of a piece I got to write last week about a fundraising event held at Mallard Cottage for a new Young Chefs Grant, in which the best sous-chefs, chefs de cuisine and pâtissiers from some of St. John’s most lauded restaurants came together to feed their colleagues, their executive chefs and anyone who was lucky enough to get a ticket:

Last Tuesday it may have been the Ides of March, but all was collegial as the kings and queens of some of the best local restaurants (The Jeremys Charles and Bonia, Shaun Hussey and Michelle LeBlanc and Todd Perrin) willingly stepped aside and enjoyed a menu created by their right hand men and women.[...]

The “Young Guns” who executed this fundraiser were not the executive chefs who we know from the press. These are the people who keep their heads down, and prep and cook brilliant food night after night. These are the ones to watch for. The ones who will build the next generation of Newfoundland food. And it won’t be built by screaming in the kitchen and cults of personality. Picking up the celebrated but no-drama gauntlet and style of their bosses (those executive chefs mentioned above), these sous chefs worked together under the heat lamps in the Mallard Kitchen with a visibly clear ethic of work, cooperation and respect which runs through their entire Brigade de Cuisine.

Kuymin Hahn (Head Chef, Merchant Tavern), along with Mia Boland (Pastry Chef, Merchant Tavern), Barry Fitzgerald (Sous-chef, Chinched), Alex Fitzgerald (Chef de Cuisine, Mallard Cottage), Ross Larkin (Sous Chef, Raymond’s) [pictured above] took time outside of their regular work, planning the event over group emails. As Larkin says, “It’s not like we get Friday nights off to hang out.”

They consider their work, though for different restaurants, a collective endeavour. [...] Watching them in the kitchen build these courses, one after another after another (it was a five course meal consisting of eight separate dishes and six appetizers or “snacks”) you hear no banter, and see no bravado. It is all concentration and cooperation. And joy. Not smiling, laughing, beer drinking joy (that is reserved for after the meal), but the joy of full artistic engagement. In other words, they were killing it”

 

Here is what the best of young St. John’s cooks when given free reign:

Snacks

Corned moose tongue on alder branches.

Nduja made with Calabrian chilies on charred toast.

Warm cod brandade and preserved lemon.

Puffed cod sounds.

Sour cream and onion chicharon.

Pork belly with dips.

 

Main Courses

Smoked Coppa Di Testa w/ brussels sauerkraut, pickled mustard seed, rye crouton.

Raw fluke, snow fungus, brown butter, white soy.

Grilled Squid, haricots verts, fermented turnip, lemon puree.

Sustainable blue salmon, pea puree, courquette, southern Indian spiced butter, mint.

Bucatini, farfalle, strozzapreti.

Moose loin, sagemite chanterelle soil, ash baked turnip, partridgeberry jus, moose sausage.

 

Dessert

Poached rhubarb, milk sorbet, duck egg sabayon

Chocolate pudding, strawberry puree, freeze-dried raspberries, liquorice

 

I will leave off with one more cake, which is saying in its soft, crumbly way, "Come visit":

The Origin of "Cops" [by David Lehman]

How did the police acquire the nickname "cops"?

1) It's an acronym for the dread "Committee on Public Safety" that wreaked havoc during the French Revolution.

2) The initial shields worn by uniformed policemen in nineteenth-century New York were made of copper.

3) They got the name from David Copperfield -- the Dickens character, not the magician -- who aspired to a career in law enforcement, idealizing the day job of a decent and humane beat policeman, but who was tragically prevented from reaching his goal by the machinations of Mister Macawber and Uriah Heep.

4) In 1876, a London bobby, also known as a peeler-- both names deriving from Robert Peele -- was sipping a concoction consisting of eight parts gin and two parts vermouth. This put him in such a good mood that, when the waitperson returned with a refill, the randy fellow smacked her bottom, "copped a feel," and went home sheepishly with a black eye. His wife asked him what happened. He lamely said he had walked into a door. "Rubbish," she said. "I bet you went to the local and copped a feel." The fame of the anecdote was legendary and the man on the beat never did get credit for the modern martini, which he had accidentally invented. ND "copped" shortened to "cop" lives on.

5) The coinage is John Milton's from Paradise Lost, Book XI, as Adam gratefully accepts the knowledge that his future offspring will redeem the race. "Peace returned / Home to my breast, and to my memory, / His promise, that the cops shall bruise our Foe; /  Which then not minded in dismay, yet now / Assures me that the bitterness of death / Is past, and we shall live."

Meet the Press: Karen Schubert in Conversation with Kristen A. Elias Rowley of The Ohio State University Press

The Ohio State University Press

KS: I live in northeast Ohio, and a few months ago I attended a celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Kent State University Press. The Wick Poetry Center, at Kent State, had just opened their beautiful historic house and center, with a gorgeous poetry park graced with a large bronze sculpture and poetry on banners tucked around the landscaped greenery and meditative spaces. The press, itself, was jubilant and the gala well attended.

In attendance were friends and acquaintances of mine from the University of Akron Press that, in that moment, had fallen to budget cuts. It would receive a national groundswell of support and the president would reverse his position and reinstate the press, although as I write this, the exact terms of the near future are unclear.

I want to begin with this question of politico-economics, because as a press in Ohio, you will have also experienced these simultaneous events viscerally, and I also want to give you a chance to preach to the choir and talk about how, in this world of mega publishers and mega online book outlets, why we need university presses.

KER: It’s an important question, so I’m glad you asked. University presses have a mission: to disseminate important scholarly work. And many university presses have long recognized that charge to dissemination as not just applying to scholarly work, but to regional and literary work as well.

We need university presses because they are willing to publish artistic, daring, and innovative literary titles—in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry—that push boundaries and seek to expand in content, form, and style the field of literature. And while there are seemingly limitless publishing venues for literature, truly innovative work—whether in format, content, or style—tends to be ignored by for-profit trade houses who are concerned with sales numbers as a bottom line. University presses can take risks on unknown authors, books that may not have mass market appeal, books which will incite debate and critique.

We want to expand the field of literature and promote new thought. It’s right there in our mission. Being not-for-profit and mission based helps us to keep the priority on the artistic medium, on providing a platform for new writing and new thought[1]. University presses fill a void by publishing the important, cutting edge work that for-profit publishers eschew. And university presses can act as small, boutique trade houses developing thoughtful publication lists in cultivated areas, becoming a place where people know to look for high quality literature. So as an editor, I’m not looking to change manuscripts to fit a certain mold or expectation, again, because I’m not interested in satisfying a particular established audience. For us, at a university press, it’s about collaboration with authors and the individual and unique merits of books, and then the quality and care we bring to the table in terms of editorial, production, and marketing.

And, of course, we serve the same purpose when it comes to publishing academic scholarship. For us, it’s about the contribution the scholarship makes to the field, the new conversation it opens, and the debate it incites, even if it’s for small academic subfields and we know sales might be limited. We care about more than just the numbers. And we bring to the table the scholarly vetting process and the board review which provides a solid, scholarly scaffolding that non-university presses simply can’t provide.

KS: Tell us about your newest poetry collection.

Our newest poetry collection is Talvikki Ansel’s Somewhere in Space, the 2014 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry winner which we released in December. It’s a beautiful book about our tenuous connections to the world around us. At its core, it is an exploration of how we are situated within the world around us, within the mingling of made and natural, wild and tamed. Ansel points readers toward the otherwise overlooked bits of nature, encouraging engagement and connection with emotional moments. The effect is that readers can recognize themselves anew in the natural world, thanks to Ansel’s keen eye. The book is clever and sumptuous, a stunning addition to the series.

My favorite poem in the collection is “Mycorrhizae.” I think it’s a beautiful example of the kind of dissection of the infinitesimal that she performs throughout the collection. And I find the last two lines even more sharp every time I read them.

Mycorrhizae

When you dig up a tree,
keep some soil around the roots,
webby strands
wrap the taproot, the calm anchor, reach
horizontal through duff and toad dung,
damp mould. Things move so
discreetly sometimes,
I didn’t even notice.
A tiger’s ear flares in shade.
Was that the water molecule’s
elemental split? The sleight of hand
described on page twenty? No, not exactly,
you prop a shingle barrier up
to shelter a wind-torn cabbage sprout.
Strawberries edge the bed, an upside down
pot keeps rain from the post hole,
another adage proved: plant
at the new moon,
a stitch in time saves nine,
if you must leave, don’t
go bare, take some dirt with you.

KS: Yes; the last lines shape the poem into a startling directive. Tell us more about The Journal Award.

KER: OSUP has been publishing the prize winner of The Journal Award in poetry since 1986. It’s a longstanding collaboration with the The Journal and the OSU English department that we’re proud to be a part of. And it has allowed us to remain involved in publishing creative writing through the years, even though—until now—literary prose and poetry had not been a significant portion of our publishing program and editorial mission. It’s a great partnership that allows the press to work not just with talented writers, but the students and faculty on campus who work diligently to select the winning manuscript.

Each year, manuscripts by emerging and established poets are screened by volunteer readers associated with The Journal and OSU. Associate Poetry Editor Pablo Tanguay selects semi-finalists and Kathy Fagan, Poetry Editor, selects one full-length manuscript of poetry for publication by OSUP. This year the final selection was made by guest editor Marcus Jackson, the author of the chapbook Rundown (Aureole Press) and Neighborhood Register (Cavan Kerry Press). In addition to publication, the winning author receives the Charles B. Wheeler prize of $2500. Over the years, the prize has been won by such poets as Judith Hall, Lia Purpura, Mark Svenvold, Edward Haworth Hoeppner, and Kary Wayson, to name a few.

This year’s winner, Rosalie Moffett’s June in Eden, marks the 30^th book in the series and will be published in spring 2017. June in Eden is melodic and clear, centering on loss, loneliness, and the inscrutabilities of the world around. Moffett’s voice is one of veracity and authenticity. Her poems have appeared in such literary magazines as Tin House, The Believer, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, Cincinnati Review, AGNI, and Ploughshares, among others.

KS: How many submissions do you receive each year? Also, reading fees seem to be a hot topic in the writing community, so I wondered if you could speak to what your fees are used for.

KER: The submissions are received by The Journal and they handle the entire selection process. The press enters the process once the winner has been chosen. The series receives around 600 submissions each year. In this case, it’s more of a handling fee because the readers volunteer their time. The fee covers the costs for using Submittable to process the submissions, it makes up the bulk of the prize money, and the remainder goes to production and marketing for the book. It allows us to price the book reasonably and to publicize the book effectively, including attending exhibits like AWP to offer author book signings and promote the book to writers, writing programs, and general readers alike.

KS: Having read so many manuscripts, what do you want submitting poets to know?

KER: I’d encourage poets to take the time to prepare and polish their materials as best they can so that they have the best shot of catching the attention of a reader or editor. A carefully honed cover letter that describes the project makes such an impact on an editor. I encourage writers to think hard about their pitch and how they present their book to editors; what makes their work different, new, or important. It’s concerning if authors can’t explain the heart of their own project or why anyone would want to read it. The careful attention and time spent crafting the perfect cover letter is well worth it because it’s the first thing and editor sees and it sets the tone. And I always recommend that writers do their research; know who they’re submitting to and what kind of work they publish, when they accept submissions, and in what form. Don’t send hard copies if they only accept electronic, or send materials outside of their stated reading period, or send projects that are clearly outside of what they publish. Better to spend more time researching and send out fewer manuscripts than to send to places that won’t even consider the manuscript because they aren’t currently reading or they don’t publish that type of work. Don’t hesitate to ask questions. Email an editor and ask what they’re looking for and if they’re taking submissions. Perfect your three-sentence pitch and email editors if you want to know if they’d consider your work. And most importantly: don’t give up. It’s about getting your manuscript into the right hands at the right time and that might take some persistence.

[1] (much as our new literary trade book imprint, Mad River Books, plans to highlight).

Kristen Elias Rowley completed her graduate work in literature at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. She is Editor-in-Chief at The Ohio State University Press where she acquires nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for OSUP’s new literary trade imprint Mad River Books, as well as critical race and ethnic studies and gender and sexuality studies. She previously acquired the literary trade list at University of Nebraska Press, acquiring such books as Barry Jean Borich’s Body Geographic, a 2014 LAMBDA Literary Award finalist; Ellen Cassedy’s We Are Here, winner of the 2013 Grub Street Prize in Non-Fiction; Joy Castro’s Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Awards’s first place in the Most Inspirational Nonfiction Book in English category, and Nancy Miller’s What They Saved, winner of the 2012 Jewish Journal Book Prize. She has published such authors as Lee Martin, Sue Williams Silverman, Patrick Madden, Mary Clearman Blew, Dan O’Brien, Ilan Stavans, David Lazar, Jared Carter, R.A. Villanueva, and Susan Blackwell Ramsey.

Learning to Tell Tales: Memories/Fiction/Geology [by Emily Deming]

“The dust of an eroding planet and the tiny animalcules of the chalk are destined soon or late to entomb us all” - Loren Eisley (Introduction to T.H. Huxley’s On a Piece of Chalk, 1967)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am writing in one of the oldest buildings in one of the oldest cities in North America, and all that on top of a rock partially made of the oldest physical material on the planet. And the stories I am writing, these true-fictions, are all about danger. Each story (though mostly still unwritten) tells about a violence that was close enough to whisper in my ear. We live on just the thinnest sliver of the planet, and all above and beneath us is so fundamentally inhospitable that traditional hellscapes look like cluttered, stuffy, basements. Below us is the searing density of mantle, above us the freezing void of space, and just there, driving towards you in a late model, white sedan, is someone without your best interests in their heart. I am writing about that sedan. All the tiny exquisite dangers on our human scale.

Or… my intent is to write about that sedan. Three weeks in to this eight week residency at Mallard Cottage, and what have I written? I am writing these fictions, and concurrently rushing to understand how I can write fiction. All while I practice writing fiction so I can do it well enough to produce it. This concurrency is the least efficient synchronicity of work I have experienced. And, so far, my fictions are not even false. Some are other people’s stories I have dug up, some are stories I remember.

For the latter, the fiction is in the translation of memory. Some of the stories happened, objectively. Probably. Others are accretions of auxiliary memory. Anecdotes and little white entertainments lying up against favored personal myths. They may have no chronological or geographical origins in common but have since slid along the strike-slip faults of resonance and lateral thinking and now form one contiguous landscape. Your story overheard, my story, that guy’s story that is mine but more suspenseful, now lie together: valley, mountain, plateau, desert. They are waiting for good lighting (the illumination of sunrise/surprise) and the right vantage to deepen the shadows, until the surface compels exploration. Adjusting that lighting. Making the landscapes I love compelling outside of myself - that is the art. But not art, not science. Stage lighting is a trade. I am learning a trade.

Up here in (sort-of)Canada, we have been following the sexual assault trial of once popular CBC host Jian Ghomeshi as it plays out, tweet by painful courthouse tweet from the mainland. Each woman’s memories of the traumas he caused, taken apart by the defense. Memories are so vulnerable to cross-examination. The problematic subduction of details and compression of emotion forms terrain, crumpled and difficult to map. Once subducted, a memory metamorphoses and is not so much in disarray or partial, but elementally changed. Lighter elements return to the surface through volcanic activity (or whatever tenor this geologic vehicle describes). The remainder is fractionated, heavy and dark, and continues down until incorporated into deep mantle. This ultramafic black and deep green, viscous solid is cut off from the cycling and recycling of the lighter, surficial material. Only under very special circumstances can we find this mantle “memory” again exposed. Beautifully for this metaphor, one of those places is here on the island of Newfoundland.

The urgency of translating memories into fiction is more sedimentary/stratigraphic than igneous/metamorphic. The more that I tell a story of an actual experience, the less I remember it. As if each time I tell it, it is being touched. As the substrate is touched in the telling, it erodes. That erosion eventually wears down the whole story and it's gone. I've noticed, whether I tell some stories ten, or a hundred, or just three times, I can feel the last time that I will be able to tell each of them from memory. An experience gets told up. It is told out. And if I try to tell that story again, I am not telling it from a memory of it happening. I am telling it from the memory of the last time I told it. At that point, it becomes a second-hand story. I am then telling somebody else's story. That other person happens to be me, but it is not my story anymore. There is no memory at the base of it.

Before they are dust, I want to set some of these stories into something stronger than memory: the epoxy of fiction. It will preserve them through time and it will infuse the natural intergranular voids with substance. I will make up the parts that are unknown, add coherence and lustre. The more stories we can take from life and classify and polish and preserve; the less dust of words and memory there may be to bury us. Or at least the more we will have to read when we are finally entombed beneath our own lived detritus.

TBT: Anne and David Lehman with Pat Conroy at the White House, 2003 (by Stacey Harwood-Lehman)

L to R: Anne Lehman, Pat Conroy, David Lehman at the White House, 2003 (photo (c) Stacey Harwood)

 In 2003, Dana Gioia, then chairman of the NEA, invited David and me to join him at the White House for the ceremony preceding the National Book Festival, in which David and Dana were going to take part. "Oh how my mother would love to be there!" said David. Dana promptly phoned his office and arranged a ticked for Anne, David's mother. She was 88 at the time and was a Holocaust survivor from Austria.  

Following an extravagant breakfast buffet, we took our seats in a large room set up auditorium style. Laura Bush welcomed everyone and talked about the importance of books and reading. She was followed by Pat Conroy who spoke warmly of his life of reading and writing. He shared an anecdote from his childhood about how upon learning of the Holocaust he ran to the home of Jewish neighbors and knocked on their door. "If the Nazis come," he said, "we will hide you!" 

When the speeches were over and everyone was milling about, Anne worked her way through the crowd to reach Conroy. "I was there," she said. "When the Nazis came. And look at me now! In the White House with my son." 

Pat Conroy took her hands and looked into her eyes. "I'm glad you made it," he said. 

Within a year or so Anne began her long slow decline. I'm forever grateful to Dana Gioia for giving her such a wonderful memory and to Pat Conroy for his kindness. 

More pictures from the trip:

Basketball great Willis Reed spoke about his literacy project. David was eager to get his predictions for the upcoming Kincks season.

That's me with former Detroit Pistons center Bob Lanier. (Note: I'm 5'6")

Calling All Tattooed Poets: Show Us Your Ink!

 

 

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Since its inception in 2008, we have cheered on Bill Cohen, one of our favorite bloggers, as he has assembled an array of tattooed poets for Tattoosday's annual tribute to National Poetry Month. We are once again happy to spread the word to inked poets everywhere.  Bill would like to post an image of your tattoo on Tattoosday every day during April. Tattoos need not be literary in nature to qualify. If your ink is featured, Bill hopes to give a little history of your tattoo, some background about you and your poetry, and he'll include links to your own website, books, and poems. With your permission, he'll even post a poem. 

In addition, you'd be joining the ranks of over two hundred poets, many of them BAP contributors, who have participated in years past. You can see who's been cool enough to join the ranks here . 

For more details and to express your interest,please contact Bill at  [email protected].

Dispatch from St. John's: A newly invented residency in a very old place [by Emily Deming]

For the last week I have been, and for the next seven weeks I will be, the Writer in Residence at the 22nd best restaurant in Canada in my adopted home of St. John's, Newfoundland. This is a position I invented. When I pitched the idea to the co-owner of Mallard Cottage, I called my own bluff. You see, I am working on some short fiction. Sort of fiction. I am writing a fictional version of real horror. I write regularly, journalistically, for St. John’s local Arts and Culture monthly (The Overcast), but fiction is new to me. I was looking for a way to commit myself to the work while having a deadline to work towards and an audience to work up to. I have been a writer for only two years. Most of the work I have done since declaring myself a freelancer was in response to various requests: can you write, research, investigate, comment on, review this? Yes. I can. No problem. I can help. I can be of service. I can write. This is my way of taking the next step: Here is a story no one asked for. You are welcome.

For this residency in a restaurant, I am provided a space to write, undisturbed but not lonesome, three mornings each week before they open for evening service. I am offered coffee/tea and a plate of cake from the icebox. If the kitchen staff has lunch while they are butchered or prepping, I have it too. I get a weekly stipend and a venue for a reading of my new work at the close of the residency. In return, I make myself available to customers and the public at a table during Friday brunch service. What that looks like, I will find out over the next weeks. What I have discovered so far is that writing in this setting embraces superstition. It is an experiment and a dare.

Newfoundland is a place of deep superstition (this is simply true, but it is also a quote from Jason Sellars, the public programming officer at The Rooms, our provincial museum and archives). I am a person of no superstition. My beliefs all lay out in the open, ready for testing, on serpentine asbestos labtop tables. Query. Attempt. Observe. Test. Repeat. Rethink. What I do have in common with my new compatriots on this island is a willingness to use whatever tools are within reach. Superstition is a tool. So are fear and misery; an implicit understanding of the horror of life; the lack of claim we have to a long one. These lay all around the woodpile in Newfoundland. These are tools I am using.

I use them in two ways. First, I let the random brutishness of this North Atlantic outpost compel the spirit of laissez les bon temps rouler, a spirit required when attempting an artistic life. A spirit I found seductive, but ultimately sickening, in the permissive heat of New Orleans where I lived for a while pre-Katrina. There I abandoned writing for a career in science. But here, decades later, the soft, wasteful, Caligulaic swaddlings of living “in the moment” are long gone to trade for food or to warm a frozen foot or a baby through 6 months of winter. The urgency of comforts drives all freedoms here and produces a haphazard entrepreneurship. Stripped of the “mainland” ambition which so thoroughly directs lives along the coasts and oil belt of the US, my own once included, here you try things because your day job ends at 4:30 and the bands don’t play until midnight. Here you try things because it does not matter in the long run. There is nowhere to rise here. This place is a full stop. Recently, another writer wrote asking about my work and wanted to know “what was the closest large city?” I was tempted to answer “Atlantis”. Surrounded by ocean, famed for cultural achievements and utterly irrelevant outside of one bubble, it is closer to St. John’s than is Toronto or New York or even Montreal, Halifax or Reykjavik. With no way to communicate and no thought of escape, Atlantis is still creating, still producing myth and stories.

The second way in which I'm using the tools of superstition is more tangible. I'm touching wood.  I'm knocking three times on old doors. I'm filling my pockets with cake to ward off the fairies. I am sitting for two hours each weekday morning in one of the oldest buildings in the oldest city in North America. I'm walking, biking, or driving the two miles through blowing ice or RDF (our constant companion between winds: rain, drizzle, fog), from the heart of a harbour city to a smaller, even damper, inlet known as “The Gut”.  At the same time each day, I'm arranging the same notebook, the same blue 0.7mm mechanical pencil on one of three wooden tables (depending on how near or far I want to be from the boisterous kitchen). I am following the oldest urges of repetition as superstition, and I am reaping the benefits of routine and harnessing the psychological powers of “classical conditioning”.

Just as bread in a child’s pocket serves a practical purpose if they do get lost in the woods, fairies or no, the inside-out shirts, unlaundered lucky-streak underwear, or trusty rabbit's foot rubbed by the same hand, in the same pocket, all serve to put us back on our mark like tape “spikes” on a stage to achieve our performance consistently. Yes, says our skin, this is what it felt like last game when I hit a homerun. This is what it felt like to write yesterday. This is how I will write again today. This is a skeptic's “automatic writing”. I am letting atmosphere lay on me and stroke my hand like rabbit fur.

 Emily is a freelance food, travel and culture writer in Newfoundland. She writes regularly for The Overcast (St. John's). Before that, her comics and advice columns appeared in The Scope and her poetry was recently featured in the newly established FreeFrame. She writes reviews and blogs annually for both the Festival of New Dance and the St. John's International Women's Film Festival. She is working on her first pieces of fiction as the Writer in Residence at Mallard Cottage. Before becoming a writer, Emily worked as a geoscientist specializing in 3-D visualization techniques. 

Le Louxor Palais du Cinéma: toward Stalingrad and a Hierarchy of Time [by Tracy Danison]

 

Karine and I were on the way back from the movies at the Louxor Palais de Cinéma the other evening. Since it was a nice night – no, that’s not right. It was not a nice night or, not yet or, not again, a nice night.

It no longer signifies that the air was warm as we left the theater. Warm and cold fronts seem to change and change about in the atmosphere like the ticks of a crazy clock: cold, colder, warm, cold, warm, warm, hot, cool, cold, warm.

We now decide to walk only on grounds of physical or spiritual need. “Nice” has become “lucky”.

The walk east along the boulevard de la Chapelle is only for people who unconditionally love urban landscapes: all crash-banging elevated, enameled cast-iron pillars, blank walls and emptied space.

Hand-in-hand, we set off toward Stalingrad.

I was just opening my lips to begin enlarging on my new Theory of Vaginal Perplexity and its pertinence in respect of the socially and politically retrogressive Jihadi movement and its hypocritical patriarchist lickspittles when Karine said something I didn’t quite catch. No wonder, either. Using this type of abstract political language makes me temporarily unable to hear, or even notice, other people.

Even so, I am using such language to talk to Karine, who, like many people of a progressive bent, has a tendency to put things in abstract and analyzed political terms. So, like the cheese-eating surrender monkey I truly truly am, I try to mime what she most easily understands rather than just wind her up with perplexing blather she has no hope of ever getting.

The mime comes out as bombast, sure. But when two ways of expressing one’s self are so contrasting, what do you want?

For instance, hearing that Donald Trump has endorsed torture, Karine might say, “This man personifies, as well as legitimizes, the sense of radical victimization that masquerades as politics these days. Thus, his politics naturally has a fascistic expression.” Or, hearing of Marine Le Pen, the egregious American’s Gallic counterpart, murmuring on the special nature of white folks, she might say, “The question here is power. Such people want to put themselves into power. Thus, she mouths the narcissistic self-congratulation of the majority without necessarily believing in this or anything else beyond her own need for power. Heaven only knows what that woman will do if she climbs into office.”

For my part, I tend to express my socio-political opinions in terms of hidden erotic anxieties and fears. Thinking of Trump, I hear the wet slap of his meaty red hands on the pale, withered, buttocks of a superannuated prostitute. I share this man’s shiver of creeping dread as he realizes that, this time, he may just have to work too hard for the money. I think of Marine Le Pen and see through the quivering lens of my anxiety: the bead of sweat bulging out just below her ear as she makes me a coarsely-worded proposition in a public toilet. The proposition involves putting her hand on my throat.

it still a wonder that I am reduced to bombast in talking socio-politics with Karine? She thinks, then analyzes. I fear, then luridly, hysterically visualize. Even if I think that our views are quite the same in the end, I often wonder how is it that this woman can stand me?

She squeezes my hand too tight, often, so she may wonder the same, at least sometimes.

Anyhow, she beats me to the talking point when she says, “Did you like the movie?”

I did, so I say, “Yes.”

The movie was a Japanese slice-of-life movie called in French Les délices de Tokyo by Naomi Kawase. I have no idea what the English title might be, so it’s lucky for you “Tokyo” is spelled the same in French and English and that délices resembles a word that fast-food giants desperately want you to associate with their slumgullion.

Les délices is about how liberty can be expressed in a world of self-limitations and external constraints. In spite of that, and even in the absence of gunshots and car chases, it’s a good movie.

Jumping suddenly into the phosphorescent wake of my too-thoughtful “Yes”, Karine breaks in to say she believes we are ruining ourselves with the Hierarchy of Time.

“It’s this question of how much time you invest in worries over what hasn’t yet happened,” she declares. “I mean our concerns about things, rather than about the doing of them. You know, toi, you know … I mean about the way you judge how much Time you waste talking to the woman at the checkout counter as opposed to the Time you invest in worrying about paying off the house early or something.”

Some months before, Karine and the cashier at her regular supermarket had decided to “thou” each other – after ten years’ acquaintance, ten years of groceries and tampax and formal “you”. So, now they call each other toi and not vous. It comes to me that no remark, none, period, is ever a throwaway.

I lower my head slightly, turning my ear toward her, to catch her voice, which, I notice, is slightly hoarse.

“Expressions like ‘Invest your Time” are made up to mislead us into thinking that there really is a Hierarchy of ‘good Time’ and ‘bad Time’, ‘Time well spent’ and ‘wasted Time’,” she continues.

“We make as if the Time of Life is a sort of sophisticated financial package, a CDO, that requires Timely Action On Your Part… Or…”

The capital letters are hers.

To demonstrate the pretended outcome of not Taking Timely Action on the Time CDO, she draws the hand that is not painfully squeezing mine across her neck. She grunts, “Before the Special Offer expires. Tu comprends?”

We are just in the shadow of the number 2 Métro line tracks.

It is spitting rain. There is a long blank wall drifting off toward Stalingrad, blankness bathed in a fetid twilight rising from the tracks leading in and out of the Gare de l’est.

“Really,” Karine says, “In the Hierarchy of Time, worry about what hasn’t yet happened or that which might possibly happen is what creates good Time.” She breaks off, enlightened.

To herself, she observes, “This is why economic forecasters and astrologists and prophets are paid so well, though all admit they they are almost always wrong.”

“Anyhow,” she comes back at me, “Worrying about not worrying enough is what ordinarily Good people do before they go to bed or while they are ‘Relaxing’. If you talk to somebody just to talk to her, it’s a Waste of Time.

On the other hand, if you tell somebody that you won’t meet your deadline and don’t have time for a chat, you’re using Time well. Note that.”

She points her finger in my face. “Using Time well. It’s the Capitalist view of Time. It’s like the Capitalist view of money. In the Hierarchy of Time, Time doesn’t belong to us all, but to the Worthy who supposedly produce it, like money belongs to it’s supposed producers.

So. The Hierarchy of Time supposes that those who spend their precious Time worrying about what hasn’t happened yet are those who are using Time thriftily. Such folk are therefore worthy to have their Time in the same way that those supposed to work hard and save are Worthy of their money. Those who are like the lilies of the valley, misusing Time rather than using it by, for example, chatting to the supermarket cashier, are Unworthy.” She sighs.

“I mean, it’s ridiculous… Do the 62 people who own half of all the Money in the world produce it? And are there 62 big Time producers out there, who, along with all the other Worthy people, make and have all the Time in the world, too?”

She pinches her nose and glances at me.

“But you tell me, mon Tracy, where does Time come from, if not from all of us?”

I take my hand away from hers; she has very hard, itty-bitty fingers, like pinch-pliers.

“My mother is so worried,” she continues, “About how things are for me, for my sisters, my brothers, my children, our children, whether doing this or that or having done the other is or might have been, right, wrong or indifferent. So much so she convinces herself that next to me, next to her children, her friend dying of cancer is unimportant.”

She glances at me again. “Thanks to the imposed priorities of the Hierarchy of Time, both friend and death are unimportant, I mean. But, tu comprends? She’s not really thinking of me or the others. She’s thinking about her concerns for me, for them. It’s obviously not the same thing, me and concerns about me, them or concerns about them.

But the Hierarchy of Time Mom’s bought into deludes her into believing there’s no difference between me and the idea of my needs, just as it deludes everybody else who buys into it, deludes us all into believing firmly we are thinking about others when we’re really thinking about anything else but. So, If I wake Mom up in the middle of the night and ask her what’s on her mind and she’ll say, ‘You, chérie’ and can’t possibly mean it.”

Karine chokes with dismay at the idea.

“Underneath, like the rest of us, she’s really, truly worried about really tough things like the dying friend. But the Hierarchy of Time gives her, and all the rest of us, the perfect excuse for not thinking about those tough things. It lets her and us be more afraid of death than anybody presently is of Living Badly.”

She chops the air. “Tu vois, thinking about death would remind her that she can’t do anything about it. Remembering that she’s powerless over the biggest fact in Life would lead to all sorts of Un-hierarchy of Time thoughts – tu comprends?

In the end, it would remind her – remind all of us too – that the only thing that we can really control is what we do, can do, personally, with Life.” She stops in her tracks.

“Yiyiyi! Where might that lead, feeling responsible for our own life? Would we achieve Communism of Time?”

She puffs her heeheehee laugh then heaves the biggest sigh I have ever heard slip out of her.

We continue the rest of our walk in silence.

When we reach Stalingrad, we have a glass of spicy red wine while the waiters wipe the tables, stack the chairs and suggestively dim the lights.

I try to wake up some interest in my Theory of Vaginal Perplexity but, at this hour, my bombast splutters ineffectually, so I lay off quickly.

We hug and kiss, then turn our backs against each other to go on to our separate Métro entrances to go to our separate households. We’ve both got to work in the morning.

Neither one of us had paid enough attention to the time, and neither knows the Métro has closed.

Both of us wind up taking a taxi, separately.