Hypertrophic Press: Spring 2018 Issue

Hey y'all.

This post is a week overdue, but I'm thrilled to be part of Hypertrophic Press's Spring 2018 issue. My short story "Chinatown," originally published in Luna Luna Magazine (three! years ago), has been dusted off. The issue is available online and as a beautiful print issue, a lovely collection of poems and stories held together by some of the best artwork I've ever seen, courtesy of Victoria Olt.

You can purchase the print issue here.

Thank you to Lynsey Morandin and Jeremy Bronaugh for their hard work and dedication to this literary project. And a special thank you to Maddie Anthes, who works as their acquisitions editor and was gracious in accepting my work, which I didn't expect to be published again. Its original publication home underwent a redesign, and previous work vanished. "Chinatown" is one of my personal favorites, and I'm thrilled it's back out in the world again. I'm sending love to all three people: I hope editors and readers around the literary world know how much they're appreciated, since so much of what they do is behind the scenes.

And a thank you to AJ Wolff, b.g. thomas, Chloe N Clark, Courtney LeBlanc, Kanika Lawton, Hannah Gordon, Kathryn McMahon, Liz Howard, and Paul Schiernecker. It's an honor to be included with you and your amazing craft. Hugs and high fives all around.

The Literary Magazine Project: Introduction

In the past, when I updated this blog regularly, I often did two things consistently: 1.) I'd have a great idea, say something along the lines of "I'll write about this soon!", and then never get back to it. 2.) I'd recognize this failure, claim to not make plans in writing, and then the cycle would repeat again.

But in this case, I'm taking on a smaller scale project for 2017, and I think the benefits I'll outline here have merit.

The accompanying photo shows two shelves of back issue literary magazines and journals. While I'm sure others have much more impressive collections, I have to admit that I haven't finished a lot of these. There are a handful that I've read front to back, some issues I've read selections out of, and some that I haven't touched. People love to talk about collecting books, and this word has spawned endless memes and book posts. But what about literary magazines? Are they counted as books, especially when piled up? Or should they be considered their own class?

This also came about because there are many books I want to reread this year, and I realized that nobody talks about rereading literary magazines. I'm not under the assumption that I'm doing anything unique or radical. This is my own project, to help myself as I put more emphasis on supporting the literary community that has supported me.

I'm not concerned with definitions; what I am concerned with is dusting off some older archives, and giving new attention to pieces that might not have been widely read in the last couple years. When literary magazines are published, they receive attention, hopefully some sales, but this often isn't sustained. The bump in sales and clicks is probably at its strongest when the issue debuts. What I'm hoping for is a renewal of this energy.

So for the rest of 2017, I'm going to read these all from beginning to end, and I'll document hidden gems, early pieces from now well-known writers, and give older literature a bump.

I'll also add to my collection as the year goes on, through single issues that I find and through subscriptions that I'll be taking out in due time. As for online literary journals, I'll work those in, but I'm not sure how. For now, the focus is on the printed, physical ones, especially in this age when not many journals still produce actual magazines.

I started this last night, and I already made a pleasant discovery: I'm reading a 2010 issue of Eleven Eleven Journal, and I read an early piece by Alissa Nutting, one of my favorite fiction writers. I'll include more analysis when I report back on the issue, but this is what I want: to see the early development of writers, and to discover names that have slipped under my radar. Maybe these are writers who are still widely published; maybe I'll fall in love with a story by someone who published one piece of fiction in 2012 and never published again.

I'll either do single issue recaps, multiple issue analysis, or a combination of the two. I might incorporate online magazines as well, but this will mostly be devoted to the physical copies, old and new.

If anything else comes to mind, I'll update this post accordingly. For now, I like this foundation, and I'm eager to really get it moving.

2016 Readings, 2017 Goals

Happy New Year, y'all. Here's my annual reading recap.

For starters, this is what I wrote last year, when I revisited my 2015 readings: "In 2016, I want to read more classics, more international translations, and spend more money on small press titles. My goals will fluctuate as the year goes on, but I think that's a good starting point."

Back in 2015, I read 93 books. This year, my total went down to 55, but I have good excuses. First, my girlfriend and I moved from Chicago to Lafayette, Louisiana for her PhD candidacy. From packing, to planning, to coordinating the drive down south (helped immensely by my brother and sister-in-law), reading time was taken up by this. I also started teaching English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I highly enjoyed teaching, but was unaccustomed to how time consuming it is. Lesson planning, class readings, assignment preparations, student meetings, grading, and general anxiety about essentially performing four times a week in front of nearly fifty students: I read fewer books from September to December. I started several, but they took over a month to read when they should've taken a week at most.

My goals for 2017 as a reader aren't as detailed as my goals as a writer. I (still) want to spend more money on small press titles, because we as a community need to sustain them. I'm not preaching from a soapbox, because I could have done more to financially support worthy literary organizations. With the Trump administration just weeks away (oh fuck, just typing that makes me angry), small presses will need to to remain voices and homes for the voices that might be silenced or marginalized by the powers that be. I want to remain optimistic about 2017, but deep down, I worry it'll be a shitshow. So, I want to do less talking about supporting diverse demographics and more buying, reading, and promoting of them.

So this means I'll do everything I can to help small presses and literary magazines. I also have an entire shelf of great literary magazine back issues (Hobart, American Short Fiction, Fence, Tin House) that need attention.

I'd love to hear your goals, too. As always, I'm eager for recommendations.

Here's to 2017. As we read and write, don't forget to fight back against the backwards thinking that wants to prevail in our culture. This is a challenge to myself more than anything.

My 2016 readings are listed below:



1.) Mothers, Tell Your Daughters by Bonnie Jo Campbell

2.) Crazy Horse's Girlfriend by Erika T. Wurth

3.) Negroland by Margo Jefferson

4.) Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexual by Patricia Lockwood

5.) Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

6.) Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

7.) The Unfinished World and Other Stories by Amber Sparks

8.) Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago by Gillian O'Brien

9.) Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen

10.) Elegy/Elk River by Michael Schmeltzer

11.) What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

12.) The Girl Who Could Only Say 'sex, drugs, and rock & roll' by Kendra Fortmeyer

13.) The Farmacist by Ashley Farmer

14.) The Revelator by Robert Kloss

15.) Slut Lullabies by Gina Frangello

16.) Find Me by Laura van den Berg

17.) The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

18.) The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

19.) Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell (re-read)

20.) A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

21.) If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home by Dave Housley

22.) The Upper Peninsula Misses You by Mark Magoon

23.) A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

24.) Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories by Barry Hannah

25.) The Vegetarian by Han Kang

26.) Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

27.) The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation by Natalie Y. Moore

28.) Please Don't Be Upset and Other Stories by Brandi Wells

29.) The New York Stories by Ben Tanzer

30.) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

31.) My Only Wife by Jac Jemc (re-read)

32.) Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss

33.) Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA by Jonathan Abrams

34.) Beloved by Toni Morrison (re-read)

35.) Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi

36.) Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

37.) Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith

38.) The Tennessee Highway Death Chant by Keegan Jennings Goodman

39.) McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh

40.) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

41.) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

42.) Dandarians: Poems by Lee Ann Roripaugh

43.) Insurrections: Stories by Rion Amilcar Scott

44.) Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money by Rebecca Curtis

45.) Mesogeios by Steve Karas

46.) Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

47.) How the Post Office Created America: A History by Winifred Gallagher

48.) Sex Object: A Memoir by Jessica Valenti

49.) The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward

50.) Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar

51.) No Man's Wild Laura by Beth Gilstrap

52.) The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai

53.) Sing the Song by Meredith Alling

54.) Swing Time by Zadie Smith

55.) You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

Flutterfucked: Reading Snapshots

In order to devote more time to writing my novel, I've taken an extended break from social media. I haven't posted on Twitter and Facebook in two weeks. But that's not to say I'm completely off the grid: I'll admit to scrolling from time to time, and I've been more active on Instagram (it's an outlet and a pleasant distraction, but one that, for me, doesn't lend itself to endless, mindless staring).

I'm sure I'll have the occasional post in the next couple weeks; this isn't an endless break, just a small one, because I found myself thinking of all the time I spend gazing at a screen without any engagement. Of course, I'm still wasting time online, but it's easier to blink when browsing, say, ESPN or NPR for long stretches.

Being off social media means I haven't liked or shared my reading activity. I'm writing this to showcase some of the things I read this week that stuck with me.

1.) I finally read Juliet Escoria's BLACK CLOUD, a stunning collection of stories (with a linked theme of depression, addiction, and loneliness) published last year by Civil Coping Mechanisms. I've followed Juliet online for awhile, and the book had been on my to-read list ever since it came out. I snagged a copy at AWP and finally devoured it. Some highlights:

"The train comes but it has the wrong number on the front and I move myself to the middle of the platform, because suddenly I realize how beautiful it would be to jump. If there were swords in stones with the pricks facing outwards, I would surely hurl my heart at one, just to try it, just to say that I did. To see what it feels like to have something slice me open (85)."

"I wanted to stop speaking now, but I had already treaded too far. The words tumbled out of my mouth in ribbons, bitter and curling. I watched his eyes glaze over as I spoke. I watched his pupils turn into flat disks, dull and dry as paper (103)."

2.) The spring issue of Wyvern Lit was published this week. There are so many literary magazines out there, and Wyvern Editor-in-Chief Brent Rydin has done a stellar job of making each issue kill. Click here to browse the spring issue (including their first-ever inclusion of poetry!)

I made the story "Other Gods" by Emily Carpenter the Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. It's a stunningly crafted examination of weather, religion, and combinations thereof that lead to unexpected catastrophes:

"On the tenth of April, Our Heavenly Father sent a tornado that wiped out practically the whole town of Rosewood. Every family lost their home. The Murphys, Engels, Hillyers, Rathbuns, Randalls, Wyatts. Everybody. The grocery and the hardware store were smashed to pieces. The post office, the school, and the fire station—all gone too.

The only buildings left standing were the church, the armory, and my house. My house, praise the Lord, with me in it."

3.) I'm leaning toward making July a month devoted exclusively to my stack of literary magazines, but I started Issue 22.1 of Yemassee, co-edited by the stellar writer/reader Matt Fogarty. A poem by Rachel Mindell caught my eye right away with a terrific use of what is now my favorite word: "flutterfucked:"

...There's this good spot. We could just get
in any car. The miles would part their legs
for us headscarves all flutterfucked.
As it stands, I possess a near doctorate...

4.) And finally, something I should have written about a couple months ago. I'm super excited that Steve Karas' debut story collection, Kinda Sorta American Dream, is being published this fall by Tailwinds Press. I had the fortune to read this collection awhile back, and I'm thrilled it has found a home. Steve is one of the best short story writers and literary citizens around, and I can't wait to hold the book in its physical form. I'll update once there's a set publication date.

I'll do more updates, especially when I do my literary magazine project. I'm eager to read new and old journals that I've been collecting, and I'm sure there are plenty of brilliant pieces by writers with whom I'm unfamiliar, waiting to be discovered. Can't wait. And thank you for reading.

places, peoples, ghosts: Joshua Young's "To the Chapel Of Light"

Some months ago, I attended a release party for The Diegesis, a poetry collaboration between Joshua Young and Chas Hoppe. After a late-night marathon of great readings at the party (by Young and a group of poets from Chicago's Columbia College), I ended up buying a copy of the book with the intention of reviewing it here. As is normally the case, I got sidetracked with other projects, and then I realized April is National Poetry Month. What was supposed to be a series of several poetry reviews has turned into just this single one, but I'm pleased that it's going in the opposite direction from the one I intended. I found The Diegesis to be a terrific, challenging project, but as much as I admit my shortcomings in poetry, I felt any review I'd do wouldn't serve the collection well. And, as much as the poets I know stress the universality of their work (that is, even challenging works can and should be enjoyed by people not necessarily inclined toward poetry), my limitations in being able to truly analyze the forms would show. Also, I found myself unsure where Young's work ended and Hoppe's began, and vice versa, and I would have wanted to give both writers equal footing in my own writings. In addition to The Diegesis, I also bought To the Chapel Of Light, one of Young's chapbooks. This tiny volume, picked up on a whim, ended up hooking me greatly. I've now read it three times, and for someone like myself who feels the need to stress a lack of knowledge about poetry, I was amazed at what Young packed into less than 80 pages. The book takes the form of a screenplay with a sort of road narrative, with the poems evoking prose, settings, and sometimes fictional intentions. Like any terrific work in any genre, I found myself discovering something new in my subsequent readings. Also, my last reading was bittersweet: as I started to draft this essay, I discovered that Mud Luscious Press, the publishing company that put out To the Chapel Of Light under its Nephew label, is closing shop. More on that later.

To the Chapel Of Light opens with a cast of characters, some of whom appear readily within the text, some of whom don't. The following scene is a fantastic, surreal description, drawing the reader into what appears to be a strange fantasy world. Scenes like these appear elsewhere in the text, but for the most part, Young focuses on smaller, more atmospheric details. The opening is a serious attention-grabber before more "regular" happenings ensue.

"INT. APARTMENT--NIGHT

a poet comes to my door with snakes wrapped around his arms and says he's gonna pull a fiddle from the throat of a sparrow. no one believes him. his friend--another poet--makes everything worse, keeps saying, 'I like it when a camera stops outside the door like this & just waits a moment, listens.' and then he tries to pull an organ from the speakers of the stereo.

rubbing the snakes wrapped around his arms, the poet says, 'that's not what we came here for.' and so, the friend of the poet closes his eyes and opens his mouth to speak, but the words sound like mud sliding off of a roof.

he clears his throat and waits a moment.

and then, he starts talking about the camera.

FADE TO BLACK: (Young 2)"

After this, the travel begins: the journey is set to the chapel of light. This journey could be read literally or metaphorically. The beauty of Young's writing is that, for a book rife with potential metaphors and imagery, nothing is meant to hit the reader over the head. Some of the potential meanings are explored carefully while other meanings are casually mentioned. In one of my favorite passages/stanzas, Young explores the way a reader could potentially read the book. There are clues, but they shouldn't always be taken at face value. There's no true map, but the destinations aren't meant to be obvious.

"dear brothers,

no, we did not get a map, but we nodded as if what they said were lines and x's drawn on paper, something that could guide us. before they left, the poet said, 'the road is not your friend. no matter what you see or hear, it is simply a guide, or maybe you can look at it as the tracks hunters follow to the watering hole. so, follow it, but do not trust it. it might leave breadcrumbs to keep you lost, but only follow its sound and movement, not ever what it has left behind.'

so, here we are chasing...what?

places, peoples, ghosts. halves of stories (Young 5)."




The screenplay format (interiors, exteriors, fades to black, etc.) could potentially be distracting if handled differently, but Young (a filmmaker as well as a poet), aside from the cinematic cues, isn't making this strictly a poetic imagining of a film. At times, it feels like an interpretation of what most of us have done on a boring day, namely imagining our lives as moments in a movie. Young's screenplay notations are really just a guide to the final pages. The poems, and the scenes/people therein, appear and recede. A striking, unexpected twist comes through Young's imaginings of Americana. The journey is a play on every road trip or movie set during one. Young's details are sometimes easy to miss (again, some of them didn't appear to me until my second or third reading), but he's skewering the American landscape, honoring it, and slightly lampooning its pedestal status all at once. There are even religious hints as well.

"EXT. PARK--DAY

out before the horizon spreads, an old man keeps preaching about the new floods and the bursting and building of damns. but he doesn't remember that if you reach the ocean by sun up, and turn to face the land, a camera might be there to move in and hold. catch all that western dying light, the last hope for that one southern American dream that keeps tugging at the shirt sleeve of your jacket. but now, there's nothing to stop the fall, just a curtain slowly drooping into darkness. you'll still remember the light, 'cause the sun left spots in everyone's eyes.

CUT TO: (Young 21)"

Young's poetry is striking and can stand alone out of context to the rest of the book. The passage below is an excellent example of this, even with the explicit mention of the chapel of light. I found myself rereading passages like these and being amazed at their tangible and intangible meanings.

"to the chapel of light

if you start at the road leading up to the armory, you can hear the followers off in the trees, around a fire, dressed in dirty white, singing about god's wrath and love, and how it all coincides with the washing of sins. if you look east at dark you can see the flicker of their fire like a candle in the belly of a whale.

they keep pulling at the wire leading to the shoreline as if it is attached to the toes of god, or at least some kind of monster waiting to sink its teeth, but the wire is nothing more than a guideline for failure, or a path to salt, or even a string to sand where strangers dance on the roofs of rusted cars like they just saw the pale horse descend into the fields across town (Young 36-37)."

I tend to shy away from reviews that describe a piece of fiction as "poetic," and I honestly don't know if poets feel the same way (i.e. "your poems read like a novel"). However, Young's prose gave me that feeling. It's not that I was reading his work as fiction, but instead, it made me tune in to how my own fiction can use such vivid imagery without pointing obvious signs at it (as in "hey, look at these landscapes and tiny details"). Right now, I'm reading Laird Hunt's 2003 novel Indiana, Indiana, and I'm noticing some similarities between that particular fiction and Young's poetry. Both use evocations of American landscapes in sometimes surreal patterns, and both are are careful combination of the literal and the fantastical. I'm grateful that I ended up grabbing a copy of To the Chapel Of Light, and I'm still amazed at how such a small chapbook can do so much.

And now for a sad closing. A few days ago, Mud Luscious Press announced its closing. Founded by J.A. Tyler (an amazing writer in his own right), Mud Luscious published some stellar work, including Young's chapbook and Matt Bell's Cataclysm Baby, one of the best books of 2012. There's really nothing I can say that hasn't been said already, but I'll close on this plea: if you support a literary magazine or publisher, don't disregard any of their calls for donations or mentions of financial struggle. The end of Mud Luscious Press has been mentioned by a lot of writers as if it were a death in the family. They did some marvelous work, and it's awful to realize they won't be publishing more amazing work. Kudos to everyone involved in that organization. You were an asset to literature.

Work Cited:
Young, Joshua. To the Chapel Of Light.

A Cool, Non-Dry Place: Roxane Gay's "Ayiti"

Sadly, I was like many people in 2010: when the earthquake devastated Haiti, I found myself giving more thoughts than I ever had before to the country and the people. Of course Haiti existed long before it was hit by a natural disaster, which made its plight that much more visible. In the wake of news coverage, calls for donations, and the newly placed attention on its citizens, good things came to my attention. My friend Ben was beyond horrified at the devastation and wanted to do more than most people. Instead of being satisfied by a ten dollar donation, he volunteered with an organization called All Hands, spending several months helping rebuild sections of Leogane, west of Port-au-Prince. The earthquake also led to renewed attention on Haitian art and culture, with the 2011 publication of Haiti Noir being one of the more referenced and reviewed examples. Last year, Artistically Declined Press published Ayiti, a collection of stories and sketches by Roxane Gay. I've been familiar with Gay's work for quite some time, as she's one of the more vibrant, talented short story artists working today. Her pieces (both inside and outside of Ayiti) are unique looks at people from their odd (and oddly sexual) standpoints. This book wasn't what I expected, but as I found out upon completion, my expectations of standard, fictional looks at Haitian culture, people, and philosophies were all wrong. By exploring these themes in quick, sometimes minimalist chapters, Gay manages to do what most the most successful "place" fiction should accomplish--it uses fictional characters to create a better understanding of an area's mindset.

Gay is undoubtedly familiar with stereotypes, and these are debunked right away in hilarious fashion:

"When my college roommate learns I am Haitian, she is convinced I practice voodoo, thanks to the Internet in the hands of the feeble-minded. I do nothing to dissuade her fears even though I was raised Catholic and have gained my inadequate understanding of the religion from the Lisa Bonet movie that made Bill Cosby mad at her.

In the middle of the night, I chant mysteriously, light candles. By day, I wear read and white, paint my face, dance possessed. I leave a doll on my desk. It looks just like my roommate. The doll is covered with placed strategically pins. I like fucking with her. She gives me the bigger room with the better dresser. She offers to take my tray to the dish room in the dining hall (Gay 21)."

"[Things Americans do not know about zombis:]

They are not dead. They are near death. There's a difference.
They are not imaginary.
They do not eat human flesh.
They cannot eat salt.
They do not walk around with their arms and legs locked stiffly.
They can be saved.

[How you pronounce zombi:]

Zaahhhhnnnnnn-Beee. You have to feel it in the roof of your mouth, let it vibrate. Say it fast (Gay 25)."

It's tempting to call Ayiti a short story collection; I've even tagged it as such in this post. However, while the pieces are seemingly unconnected (at least by characters), the book as a whole works as a look at everyday lives of people in (or associated with) the country--their actions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams are common, yet tinted with the way life is lived in that area. Gay's looks at people emigrating to America is a touching look at "the American Dream," and shows how illegal immigrants are not limited to Mexico, and do so with the shared hope of creating a better life in the face of serious obstacles.

"When Lucien arrives in the United States by way of a trip to Canada, an illegal border crossing, and hitching rides down to Miami, his cousin Christophe, who made his own way to Miami years earlier hands him a 50 dollar bill and tells Lucien to eat Hot Pockets until he gets a job because they are cheap, filling and taste good. Lucien sleeps on the floor in an apartment he shares with five other men like him, all of them pretending this is better than what which came before. There is a small kitchen with an electric stove that has two burners and a microwave that is rarely cleaned. Christophe tells Lucien that Hot Pockets are easy to prepare.

Lucien is in the United States because he loves Miami Vice. He loves the shiny suits Tubbs and Crockett wear. He loves their swagger. He loves the idea of Miami as a perfect place where problems are always solved and there are beautiful women as far as a man can see (Gay 51)."

Gay also includes fictional details of Haiti's unsavory history. A character's grandmother survived the Parsley Massacre, a killing ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. The narration combines stunning details and factual details about the massacre, creating a small slice of historical fiction about a genocide that seems to be lesser known than some of history's other mass killings. For all of Gay's variety in styles throughout the book, she uses the narrative to create a detailed, saddening chapter (both in the book sense and the historical sense). Nothing is over-hyped or exaggerated; the account is presented honestly, with the memories of the massacre itself providing its own intense flourishes.

"It was General Rafael Trujillo who ordered all the Haitians out of his country, who had his soldiers interrogate anyone whose skin was too dark, who looked like they belonged on the other side of the border. It was the general who took a page from the Book of Judges to exact his genocide and bring German industry to his island.

Soldiers came to the plantation where my grandmother worked. They had guns. They were cruel, spoke in loud, angry voices, took liberties. One of the women with whom my grandmother shared her shanty betrayed my grandmother's hiding place. We never speak of what happened after that. The ugly details are trapped between the fragments of our family history. We are secrets ourselves.

My grandmother ended up in the river. She tried to hold her breath while she hid from the marauding soldiers on both of the muddy shores straddling the river. There was a moment when she laid on her back, and submerged herself until her entire body was covered by water, until her pores were suffused with it. She didn't come up for air until the ringing in her ears became unbearable. The moon was high and the night was cold. She smelled blood in the water (Gay 59-60)."

In much the same way as it's not entirely correct to call Ayiti a short story collection, it's not correct to attempt to pinpoint an exact meaning or theme from its pages. Of course, the Haitian experience is the linking force, but there's (not sound needlessly saccharine) an overall atmosphere of shared humanity. The lives, loves, and setbacks encountered by the Haitian people in Ayiti can be applied to scores of other people and nationalities. What makes the Haitian experience so unique is the aforementioned, renewed attention and the dominance of stereotypes. What Gay successfully communicates is the fact that Haitian people have a lot of problems, and Western views can cloud that with needless, false assumptions. This is conveyed by a look at the actions of American tourists in the land:

"The Americans, the men, they like us and want us. They think we too are for sale as part of the Hispaniola experience. They offer us their American dollars and expect us to be impressed by the likeness of Andrew Jackson. We prefer the countenance of Benjamin Franklin. The Americans grab our asses and whisper in our ears, leaving their hot, boozy breath on our skin. The less original among them say things like, 'Voulez vous couchez avec moi?' in heavy, awkward French, over enunciating each word. Some of us are indeed for sale or want to know what it would be like to be with a man with such pale skin or we are bored or we just don't care. We tell The Americans to follow us. We walk down the hot sandy beach slowly, shaking our hips and they ogle us and they say vulgar things we pretend not to hear (Gay 82-83)."

Roxane Gay has a wide following in the literary community, and this publication might not have the visibility or promotion to present her works to wider audiences. However, given her stature among other writers, Ayiti has been favorably reviewed and mentioned in the last few months. This isn't a work for anyone expecting a tidy, glossy celebration of Haiti, but rather it's a book that manages to illuminate an intangible sociology. The characters and the land are equally flawed and troubled, and Ayiti shows this without judgement, hypothesizing, or exaggeration. You'll know more about the country than you did going in, but not in the ways you anticipated; personally, I was grateful for this, and these stories are going to stay with me for quite some time.

Work Cited:
Gay, Roxane. Ayiti. Copyright 2011 by Roxane Gay.

Madness Methods: 'Monkeybicycle' Issue 9

For the last several months, I've been generally familiar with the fiction/poetry journal Monkeybicycle, having selected some of their stories for the Instafiction archives. Going by those samples, and by my recent reading of their latest print issue, there's no explicit theme, but rather an explicit mix of styles: straightforward narratives, experimental forays into different forms and plot arcs, and the occasionally, intentionally off-kilter humorous piece. Generally, this could be a treacherous variety, since literary magazines rarely have a medium between "strict adherence to a given style" and "anything goes." However, Monkeybicycle 9's mix is fascinating, with a strong complexity that requires multiple readings. I went into it expecting breezy, "summer"-like literature (I don't mean that negatively), but what I ended up with was a challenging, diverse collection that gave me more insight into the journal's overall mission. This mission isn't a concrete, quotable statement, but rather an intangible atmosphere. Most importantly, I now have a list of writers whom I'll be eagerly following in the future.

"I later learned that my mom had waited to buy my cake until the night before at an hour when the only open store was our local erotic bakery. But at the time I suspected that she wanted to announce that Alfy Wiggins, her second-born, 12-year-old son, was the sort of boy who would want a penis cake for his birthday. This was not true (52)."

"But it was too late. Bernie had already run downstairs. I soon heard the downstairs freezer door open and shut, and then the screen door slammed. Bernie had run away twice already that year. The first time he had taken a half-eaten bag of potato chips from the kitchen and then climbed a tree in our front yard, fending for himself for a whole afternoon until Mom and Dad came out and begged him to come back inside. The second time he had run outside with a loaf of bread and a pack of cheese slices, then had climbed back into his room through the window. He sat in his room all afternoon watching everyone in the neighborhood frantically search for him while he ate cheese sandwiches (57)."


These out-of-context passages come from Rory Douglas' "The Best Birthday Party Ever," a touching, hilarious story about the awkwardness of adolescence and the quiet family troubles that never go away, even during moments of celebration. Before, had I been asked to give an example of a "usual" Monkeybicycle story, this would have been my selection. Douglas combines a knack for sometimes dark humor and strange interactions, but without sacrificing a strong grasp of good storytelling. These ideas pop up frequently in this issue, with another excellent example being Jon Steinhagen's "The Next Place," told almost exclusively in dialogue between two literal, eccentric companions. They stand outside of a potential new dwelling and through their conversations explore past apartments and hints to what they ultimately desire. As much as I tend to loathe "quirky" as a description for any piece of fiction, Steinhagen's story fits this in the best of ways:

"What will we net by relocating ourselves to this address? asked Squiller. A roof over our heads? We can get that anywhere.
A metaphorical roof, said Trill. We don't currently share a top-floor apartment, nor is this a top-floor apartment. In other words, no matter where we live, we'll have a ceiling over our heads, which is just as good as a roof--possibly better.
Better? asked Squiller.
I'm not in the mood to go into the physics and metaphysics of it, said Trill. Go on. You were warming to your subject, and I was wrong to interject.
Quite all right, said Squiller. Stop me if you disagree. Now: We will have two bedrooms, one bathroom, one kitchen, one living room, and one dining room. Correct?
And one porch, said Trill. Or what passes for a porch in these buildings.
The dining room will be smaller than the living room and the main bedroom will be smaller than the dining room and the second-best bedroom will be smaller than the main bedroom, said Squiller.
Don't say second-best bedroom, said Trill. That's the bedroom I always get (41)."

Some of the stories are complex, layered narratives, with an early example of this being "Shapeway" by Colleen Morrissey (pictured above). It's a fictional history of an early 20th century theater owner and his wife, told from both of their points of view, and balancing their respective views on their relationship and the history of the small theater. Throughout these explorations, the two share curious insights into Edie's (the wife) personality, which adds to and detracts from the story's conclusion, since her makeup shifts between coldness and warmth for those around her. The selected passages are beautifully written, tense looks at Edie's relationship with her various family members, the first part narrated by Tom, the second narrated by herself:

"Edie was in our bed, soaking wet, her black hair stuck like tar to her face and shoulders, her legs wide apart. She was sitting in a round black-red puddle of blood that sunk so badly into our mattress that we never could get the stain out. She was crying. The only times I have ever seen Edie cry were during that first birth and her mother's death.

Edie reached out to me, and I went right to her, kneeling beside the bed. She clutched her slick arms around my neck and shoulders, her cheeks pressing into mine.

'It's all right,' I said to her, one of my hands on her back, holding her to me, and my other one on her stomach, tryng to make her feel better somehow.

'Tom,' she said, 'Tom. I don't want it anymore. I don't want it.'

'I know,' I said.

'I want it to be just you and me (19).'"

"Yes, six years after his death I remarried. I don't like to think so, but maybe I did love Tom less than he loved me. I never did find it easy to care for people. When friends moved away or went off to school, everyone else would say how much they missed them, and I did, too, but I always got the feeling that I missed them less than anyone. Even when I was little, before my brothers and sisters were born, my mother would go into town for the day to shop, leaving me with my grandmother, and I never cried. I hardly even noticed she was gone. When she'd come back, ready to comfort me and be barreled down by a running embrace, she'd find me in the yard petting the chickens, and I'd say 'Hello, Mama,' as calm as anything. I think it hurt her feelings that I didn't bawl or scream like other children did (26)."

I was especially moved by Marshall Walker Lee's (pictured below) story "Cape Canaveral," a meticulously plotted work about a young man's relationship with his father before, during, and after a shuttle launch. Lee's work also ties nicely into my above mention of the necessity of rereading the issue. I didn't know what to make of "Cape Canaveral" at first, but my second reading allowed me to both foresee where he was going with the actions and at the same time this revealed new motives and characterizations. I also enjoyed how Lee incorporated such a specific, American event as the backdrop, using a complex moment as a support for complex relationships. I'm still amazed at how quickly my opinions changed on this story, since a little bit of time allowed me to disregard my first impressions and reassess the story's meaning.

"Three. Two. One. Liftoff. The shuttle drags against the ceiling of the world, scissoring the blue sky, opening a seam through which thick white smoke pours. The crowd goes positively apeshit. One man jumps for joy, literally jumps, again and again, as if on springs, until he trips and tumbles down and rises with his face and chest splattered with muck. The others cheer and smear their own faces with mud. They press closer to the swamp, closer to one another. They kiss their neighbors on the mouth.

At my side, my father cries softly.

I say, 'You are crying because you are happy, because you have seen this wondrous thing, because you have fulfilled a childhood ambition.'

'No, no, no!' my father wails. 'I am crying because I have failed myself. What I wanted was to be onboard the ship. To be strapped inside the nose cone and to feel my stomach tight against my spine. To be in space and see the world spin through my little window (114).'"

Thematically, the poetry in Monkeybicycle 9 also follows a balance between the standard and the offbeat. As I've mentioned before, despite my handful of poetry reviews, I'm much more confident in literary criticism as opposed to poetic critiques. However, I thoroughly enjoyed Dustin Hoffman's "Amateur Paleontologist Stumbles Into My Foot," which at first seems like a strange set up for a poetic exploration, but quickly evolves into deeper conversations about chance, personality, and a much, much bigger picture, touching upon science and metaphysics in the span of a few stanzas.

"His apprentice lugs an armful of phalanges through my foot, over the arch to his makeshift table, bones like stars against my blushed tendons.
These are clues, code he must decipher. Nose slick with sweat, his
bifocals slip,
teeter the tip of his dusty nose. But he doesn't correct, lets them dangle,

slice bone-blur through his vision. Nothing matches, attaches,
the way he wants it to. He bends, fingertips lacing ligament brambles,
until a shard pricks, snapped metatarsal--the apprentice and his fat hands,
he thinks, cement grip that choked the future by cracking the past (100)."

Jessica Levine's "Day Into Night" is also a careful mix of the emotional and the scientific. Similarly to the dark humor/interactions that link some of the seemingly unrelated stories, the poems of Hoffman and Levine share these very faint similarities. So while Monkeybicycle 9 doesn't have the aforementioned explicit theme, there are very slight connections, which add to what I feel are the "intangible connections."

"3.
In the absolute unwinding of day,
in the softened pleat, the well-worn thread,
in the peace of the laundered hour--
I ride our speeding planet into darkness
advancing by splayed degrees,
obeying laws I don't understand (138)."

I would have liked more essays in this issue, only because the two featured essays are so compelling, and I'm curious to compare the themes and styles of Monkeybicycle's essays selections. Kelsi Sexton's "Rafting Event" is a stunning example of creative nonfiction, a carefully detailed look at lemur activity. She writes with a passion for zoological studies, highlighted with terrific prose, creating a work that combines both forms without being distracting.

"Some lemurs fit in the palm of your hand, others easily breach four feet. Some scratch posts with scent-marking glands in their wrists, a semipermanent 'Lemurs were here' impressed on soft bark. Others sing to each other in the waning light of the moon, brief reminders that they aren't alone. Some lemurs even kiss. It is a cast of characters no Amazonian or Sumatran rain forest has been able to match (48)."

I include A.A. Balaskovits's "Black Spots" as an essay, but it could very well be a fictionalized account. It details the life of a firefighter grandfather (her own? or the one of the unnamed narrator?) in Chicago, and even if it is fiction, there's an undeniable path of a family history, and it works both ways. If this is an account of Balaskovits's own grandfather, it's a beautiful examination of his life and career. If this is a short story, there's no doubt it could reflect the outlooks and observations of anyone who has had a firefighter in his or her own family. In any case, the prose is beautiful and evocative, and after several readings, these feelings never waned.

"I don't know much about what kind of insides it takes to go into a burning building, so I can't picture bright flames disfiguring his face. I haven't seen many photographs of him, so when I think of him I think of my father with white hair and thicker glasses. I imagine him reaching down to pick up the body of a child and holding only ashes in his big, gloved hands, his mouth open but unable to utter noise, breathing in those small black spots. He must have inhaled so much that day. He held those children inside him like the city holds the memory. I think each time Grandfather exhaled, he tasted them, that infinite sorrow of their brief lives on his tongue, and each word he said was tinged with the flavor (171)."

I feel I've given a proper range of examples to show the diversity of Monkeybicycle 9. Like almost any collection, there were some pieces that didn't work for me, some experimentation with forms and language that were too forced and too obviously "different," therefore being a slight distraction from the story in the name of creativity. However, there is nothing in this issue that's any sort of filler or throwaway piece--the stories themselves are compelling, even if I had the occasional issue with the styles. As a whole, what seems like a random assemblage has careful, emotional connections. It's always fascinating to discover new creative voices, and again, I'm excited to keep abreast of the forthcoming works of the writers featured here. Monkeybicycle 9 is a challenge, and I mean that in a very complimentary manner. Most importantly, as I continue to follow their productions, I now know what the journal is capable of doing--they're unafraid of presenting different styles and voices, but instead of a hodgepodge collection, there's an emphasis on celebrating the varying directions. For the most part, this is terrific summer reading, and a concrete example of what's out there when readers (both professional and curious) continually beg for recommendations of new readings. As a reader, writer, and bookseller, I've long championed small presses, since there's so much out there that seems to be overlooked. This is a great example of what I mean.

Ninth Inning Town: Nelson Algren's "Chicago: City On the Make"

For the last several weeks, I was mentally plotting an essay about Chicago's collective psychology in relation to the views on the professional sports teams and athletes. While this could very well be a piece I return to, a random reading and thoughts on other strains of civic psychology turned me in a different direction. Back in May, when Chicago hosted the NATO Summit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a telling remark that was supported and repeated by local media outlets. Despite the protesters and general apathy about the magnitude of the meeting, Emanuel stated that he wanted to show off Chicago as a "world-class city." This isn't the first time that this idea has circulated, and it always strikes me as odd and pointless, since Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, yet local politicians and boosters maintain a mentality of Chicago being a small town looking to make good.

More recently, Chicago was beset by a nasty heatwave and a rash of gang shootings (which seem to be always ongoing, sadly). A local news channel conducted interviews with tourists vacationing downtown, with some of them stating they would have had reservations about visiting had they been aware of the rise in violent activity. While violence can happen anywhere at any time, part of me was incredulous, since a lot of upper-class visitors remain in the confines of the downtown shopping districts and would never come close to venturing to the areas with concentrations of violence. Media outlets often conduct interviews with the people living in the dangerous neighborhoods, yet I found it strange to watch interviews with people who have only heard of the less-savory parts of Chicago. These thoughts were in my head as I recently read Nelson Algren's poetic 1951 exploration, Chicago: City On the Make. The slim volume contains a wealth of sociological views and assessments, and while not all of them still apply today, it's still an excellent example of how Chicago's image, from both the outside and the inside, maintains a distinctly unique veneer unlike other major metropolitan areas.

Algren shares stories of his own childhood and tells Chicago's tale from the points of view of the drunks, the working class, and the hustlers, the nameless folks who oftentimes share the same personal qualities as the powerful in the city's hierarchy. The working class people represent the majority in numbers, yet are more likely to be disciplined and reviled for doing on a small scale what the elite minority do on a bigger scale. This is Algren's take on Chicago's beginnings:

"They hustled the land, they hustled the Indian, they hustled by night and they hustled by day. They hustled guns and furs and peltries, grog and the blood-red whiskey-dye; they hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer. And decided the Indians were wasting every good hustler's time.
Slept till noon and scolded the Indians for being lazy.
Paid the Pottawattomies off in cash in the cool of the Indian evening: and had the cash back to the dime by the break of the Indian dawn.
They'd do anything under the sun except work for a living, and we remember them reverently, with Balaban and Katz, under such subtitles as 'Founding Fathers,' 'Dauntless Pioneers,' 'or 'Far-Visioned Conquerors (Algren 11-12).'"

Some of Algren's passages are deftly comic and still timely, providing an early, hip assessment of how to handle Chicago's citizens and outlook. A paragraph about the suburbs might appear to be an insult, and in today's Chicago, residents of the city will likely smile, at least inside, at this take:

"So if you're entirely square yourself, bypass the forest of furnished rooms behind The Loop and stay on the Outer Drive till you swing through Lincoln Park. Then move, with the lake still on your square right hand, into those suburbs where the lawns are always wide, the sky is always smokeless, the trees are forever leafy, the churches are always tidy, gardens are always landscaped, streets are freshly swept, homes are pictures out of Town and Country (Algren 26)."

To reference my opening paragraph, Algren writes about his youthful attachment to the Chicago White Sox, especially in the aftermath of the 1919 Black Sox scandal. What led me to ponder Chicago's attitude toward athletes came about after Kerry Wood's retirement from the Chicago Cubs. After years of brilliant flashes and too many injuries, I couldn't help but wonder if Cubs fans still clung too tightly to Wood's 1998 game against the Houston Astros. In that game, Wood's fifth as a major-leaguer, he tied a baseball record with twenty strikeouts in a 1-hit shutout. His arm was constantly injured by the sheer force of his pitches, and for years, Cubs fans kept hoping for a resurgence, with that single game defining Wood for the duration of his on and off tenure with the team. Algren makes a reference to White Sox pitcher Charlie Robertson, who, coincidentally, threw a perfect game in his fifth major league game and never made any true progress afterward.

"(And what became of No-Hit Charley Robertson, who stepped off a sandlot one afternoon to pitch that perfect game for the White Sox? What ever became of No-Hit Charley, who put twenty-seven men down on strikeouts and infield popups--and then stepped back to his sandlot and left nothing behind but that perfect afternoon when nobody in the world could get a hit?) (Algren 54-55)."

Dozens of other writers have made names for themselves by exploring the lives of the downtrodden and blue-collar. The difference with Algren, at least through the lens of Chicago: City On the Make, is that, in addition to seeming like one of the people, is his deft understanding of how Chicago reflects its citizens. While the same claim can be made for Bukowski's Los Angeles, Algren was a much stronger writer. His prose is poetic without being forced or obvious, and while the work is a creative rambling, there are no obvious embellishments or romanticizing. Algren's Chicago was a tough place, and much like today, while solutions for the problems are needed, it's much easier to put a positive spin on the good qualities, even with serious problems in the background. One can only imagine how Algren would have responded to Emanuel, who welcomed the NATO summit with only passing nods to the protesters and the need to call attention to the myriad of problems in the world. Much like today's world, some of the issues in Algren's time were best represented in creative acts. As he states in his 1961 Afterword:

"When the city clerk of Terre Haute refused to issue warrents [sic] for arrest of streetwalkers in spite of his sworn legal duty to issue warrants for arrest of streetwalkers, and instead demanded of the Terre Haute police, 'Why don't you make war on people in high life instead of upon these penniless girls?' the little sport performed an act of literature (Algren 81)."

In the Afterword, he also acknowledges the negative reception the book initially received, since people were more comfortable reading positive spins rather than grim realities. This is still represented in today's political world, when attempts to shed light on problems can be met with resistance or a desire to maintain the status quo. In the 1950s and today, higher ups would much rather put emphasis on Chicago as a tourist destination than thoughts like:

"The slums take their revenge. And you can take your pick of the avengers among the fast international set at any district-station lockup on any Saturday night. The lockups are always open and there are always new faces. Always someone you never met before, and where they all come from nobody knows and where they'll go from here nobody cares (Algren 67)."

Despite these sketches of the seamy sides of city life, there's never a question of Algren not living Chicago. Chicago: City On the Make isn't a tour guide, but in the midst of the stark honesty, there's a bustle and liveliness that Algren continually evokes, even in the saddest pages. It continually evokes the often-used phrase of "history being written by the winners," when in reality, there's much to be gained from accounts of the losers. Before mainstream activism, before Howard Zinn, and before the start of the Occupy movements, writers like Algren were doing their best to shed light on the masses, even if nobody (at the time) wanted to read or think about such things. This is where Algren's beautiful prose becomes most important. Look at the carefully plotted and detailed paragraph below. Again, it doesn't romanticize, but it genuinely sympathizes.

"The nameless, useless nobodies who sleep behind the taverns, who sleep beneath the El. Who sleep in burnt-out busses with the windows freshly curtained; in winterized chicken coops or patched-up truck bodies. The useless, helpless nobodies nobody knows: that go as the snow goes, where the wind blows, there and there and there, down any old cat-and-ashcan alley at all. There, unloved and lost forever, lost and unloved for keeps and a day, there far below the ceaseless flow of TV waves and FM waves, way way down there where no one has yet heard of phonevision nor considered the wonders of technicolor video--there, there below the miles and miles of high-tension wires servicing the miles and miles of low-pressure cookers, there, there where they sleep on someone else's pool table, in someone else's hall or someone else's jail, there where they chop kindling for heat, cook over coal stoves, still burn kerosene for light, there where they sleep the all-night movies through and wait for rain or peace or snow; there, there beats Chicago's heart (Algren 67-68)."

And finally, I'd like to offer cited remarks as a representation of the state of Chicago journalism. In a recent "revamp," The Chicago Sun-Times has started a terrible trend. Chicago "celebrities" are given a one page editorial to sound off on their pet projects and view of the city. While the money often goes to good charities, the paper lets it be known that they paid the writers an excellent sum for terrible writing. The first editorial was an awful, embarrassing op-ed by Jim Belushi, who commanded a $1,000 writing fee (again, donated to charity, which is noble, but I'm still shocked that he can command that kind of money from a supposedly struggling newspaper). Chicago is full of great, hungry writers who would do anything for that kind of platform. Instead of actively seeking out the thousands of voices in the city, the Sun-Times plays it safe with pointless celebrity ramblings. These Algren pieces are my way of protesting this.

"Therefore its poets pull the town one way while its tycoons' wives pull it another...(Algren 57)."

"It used to be a writer's town and it's always been a fighter's town (Algren 62)."

Work Cited:
Algren, Nelson. Chicago: City On the Make. Copyright 1951, renewed 1979 by Nelson Algren.

2011 Readings, 2012 Goals

Right after I shared Jeremy's write-ups on Instafiction's best stories of 2011, he posted a list of the books he read in 2011. I had posted a quick summary of my own readings on Facebook, but when I saw Jeremy's classifications, I felt moved to provide my own list here. Jeremy provided some tiered categories for his own readings: 'Masterpiece,' 'Great,' 'Very Good,' and 'Good With Reservations.' I'm going to copy those designations, but with a small caveat: I'm going by my feelings at this very moment, so a given classification may or may not match with the critical emotions of my previous reviews. I read 21 books this year, which is down from my total of 31 in 2010. If I can bump my total up to 25 or so this year, I'll be pleased. I'm not sure why there was such a drastic drop, but some of the books were very time consuming (in a good way), and I'm still fighting a never-ending battle with my filing cabinet of New Yorker back issues. Here goes:

MASTERPIECE:

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

GREAT:

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke

John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead

VERY GOOD:

Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Caclida Jetha

Ararat By Louise Glück

As She Climbed Across the Table and The Ecstasy Of Influence by Jonathan Lethem

Tin House #37: The Political Future (various contributors)

Collected Poems by Paul Auster

Hermit In Paris by Italo Calvino

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

GOOD WITH RESERVATIONS:

My Life As An Experiment by A.J. Jacobs

03 by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

Smoking Typewriters by John McMillian

Oh What a Paradise It Seems by John Cheever

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

There Is No Year by Blake Butler

My goals for 2012 are pretty modest. There are a lot of 2011 books that I want to finish early in the year (I'm just about to begin Chad Harbach's The Art Of Fielding), including Ready, Player One, Zone One, The Marriage Plot, and Open City. I also want to squeeze in more nonfiction, especially world history, contemporary politics, and writings by black and female artists. My November publication in The Chicago Reader has sparked a desire to increase my freelance work, and if I can do so and help Instafiction at the same time, so much the better. As for my own fiction, I have a lot of ideas and half-sketched stories that need attention. That is all I'm going to say about my creative endeavors, since my history has been one of talking a lot about it, but without actually having much to show for it.

Are you a reader or an artist? Do you have a reading list from 2011, or a list of resolutions and creative goals? I'd love to read your notes. Comment away.

Inside Voices: The Poetry of Paul Auster

While researching previous essays on Paul Auster, I was reminded of the criticisms he receives. My review of Moon Palace highlights some of the major ones, namely his lack of dynamic female protagonists and his tendency to repeat common themes throughout his fiction. However, since I've read only one of his novels so far, the majority of these critiques are taken from secondary readings. Rare is the writer who lacks personal or creative faults, especially when various writings are open to vastly different opinions. Then again, I'm personally able to take the bad with the good with some of my favorites. I've written many pieces that stress my admiration for the style and philosophy of Jonathan Franzen, yet I've disagreed with more than a handful of his statements. Getting back to Auster, I was perplexed to re-read the words of literary critic James Wood, who likened Auster supporters to dutiful stamp collectors, and in a roundabout way expressed dismissal over Auster's prolific output. The man has written many books. Recently, I was browsing his collection at Chicago's Harold Washington Library, and I scanned titles that I hadn't recalled seeing before. The pros and cons of a vast bibliography seem like new arguments, but ones lobbed at only a select few writers. One could make the case that, for example's sake, Don DeLillo works in similar fashions, with seemingly annual works that occasionally blend themes and settings. Since I have a long way to go in reading the rest of Auster's works, I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of his Collected Poems. I'm an ardent fan of his nonfiction, and more readings of his novels will come in the future. By reading his poetry, I was able to introduce myself to his writings in a different format, and in the process discover new traits (as well as sketches of his older ones).

The selections in Collected Poems span the 1970s, and also include some of Auster's French translations from the late 1960s. Given the fact that these are the works of a young poet (as Norman Finkelstein writes in his introduction, Auster's later poetry was the precursor to his fiction), especially when written in a time of social upheaval, one wouldn't be faulted for assuming that the works would be biting. He does bring the occasional outline of (then) contemporary culture, but the majority of the poems are striking in their combination of thematic simplicity, expanded into complex poetic atmospheres. Subjects and metaphors that can easily be overwrought are presented in sometimes minimal context, hitting their marks and moving on before they have the chance to be redundant or weighed down. The human senses are prevalent, and one of the best examples is the third poem from the collection "Unearth:"

"The blind way is etched
in your palm: it leads to the voice
you had bartered, and will bleed, once again
on the prongs of this sleep-hewn
braille. A breath
scales the wick of my stammering,
and lights the air that will never
recant. Your body is your own
measured burden. And walks with the weight
of fire (Auster 39)."

In a strictly basic sense, I found myself continually reminded of Moon Palace, in that the poems jump back and forth between urban and rural atmospheres, even if the settings are only passing hints. The reader is transported to literally timeless scenes, and sometimes the balance between a poem and its title can hint to both the urban and rural conditions. The easy "answer" is that perception is the same, no matter where one comes from; it's what we perceive that changes, not the actual act. To make more sense of this, the poem "Northern Lights" helps. There is no hint of any outside influence beyond natural phenomenon, therefore making the poem a wonderful moment that could be experienced anywhere.

"These are the words
that do not survive the world. And to speak them
is to vanish

into the world. Unapproachable
light
that heaves above the earth, kindling
the brief miracle

of the open eye--

and the day that will spread
like a fire of leaves
through the first chill wind
of October

consuming the world

in the plain speech
of desire (Auster 125)."



Granted, fiction and poetry, and essays are their own forms. Even with his general lack of well-rounded female characters, Auster has a place as one of the strongest writers of masculinity and male creativity. With this in mind, his poetry is amazingly neutral, and goes back to my aforementioned hypothesis of creating emotions that fit into multiple categories. The strongest theme in his poems is communication, or lack thereof. Voices are stifled, intention is lost, and communication in all of its forms is highlighted in both complexity and the ability to be limited. The emotional looks at love and communication are left open to be potentially uttered by male or female speakers. Given his background and knowledge of the French language, some of the stronger imagery could be broken down as masculine or feminine words, if they were translated into French. But for the most part, disaffection and the struggle to voice feelings are sociological as a whole, and not meant to give one gender more illumination than the other. Finding the best poetic representation of communication in his work is daunting, but some are excellent introductory examples, like "Choral." Also, this is a good example of how Auster continually leaves explicit communication at the end of a poem, making the reader go back to make sense of how it fits into the whole.

"Whinnied by flint,
in the dream-gait that cantered you across
the clover-swarmed
militant field:

this bit
of earth that inches up
to us again, shattered
by the shrill, fife-sharp tone
that jousts you open, million-fold,
in your utmost
heretic word.

Slowly,
you dip your finger into the wound
from which my voice
escapes (Auster 70)."

The collection closes with "Notes From a Composition Book (1967)," a collection of thirteen brief passages in which Auster attempts to make sense of the world and language, and, given the date, to potentially provide potential themes of his future works. Of course, these are not set in stone, and given their brevity, it would be far too easy to pick and choose the most adaptable passages. However, the passages are universal to creativity, and not just Mr. Auster's. Mission statements, hypotheses, representations, and conflicting styles are always present in contemporary writing. Writers and critics champion some forms while disparaging others, and vice-versa. Auster is no stranger to being disparaged, yet the breadth of his work and styles manages to illuminate many themes, or at the very least, open various topics to discussion. His tenth note (cited below) manages to convey this, and as a whole, is hard to argue, since it neatly simplifies the act of writing while still leaving it open to its vast potential. I found a lot of good in his poetry, and while there is still much that I haven't read, I'm happy that these early pieces go beyond what I'm familiar with in his canon.

"The eye sees the world in flux. The word is an attempt to arrest the flow, to stabilize it. And yet we persist in trying to translate experience into language. Hence poetry, hence the utterances of daily life. This is the faith that prevents universal despair--an also causes it (Auster 204)."

Work Cited:
Auster, Paul. Collected Poems. Copyright 2004 by Paul Auster.

The Ties That Bind: Louise Glück's "Ararat"

Louise Glück and Mary Oliver are two poets who have been on my reading list for quite some time. The works of Oliver are championed by many of my friends, so much that a copy of her collected poems was given as a gift during a birthday get-together I attended last year. The book was presented, explained, and passed around eagerly among the people there. I fully plan on reading some of her works in 2011, but Louise Glück was the poet who managed to break through first. Her bibliography and past appointment as the United States Poet Laureate were new to me until recently, yet her name has always managed to pop up in various readings, outside bibliographies, and the (admittedly, still) few poetic readings, both actual poetry and outside critiques, which I encounter. I finished reading Ararat several weeks ago, but found the collection to be a challenging one to approach. Had I read this collection years ago, I very well could have been hampered by my earlier struggles with poetic forms; that is, I could have mistaken it for a "typical" book of poems. However, I found Ararat to be a work that could challenge the usual poetic cliches. Glück focuses heavily on family strains, death, and unhappiness. Expected poetic themes? Yes, but they are composed in fashions almost shockingly exposed.

"My sister and I
never became allies,
never turned on our parents.
We had
other obsessions: for example,
we both felt there were
too many of us
to survive (Glück 48, excerpt from "Animals")"

One of my usual "hobby horses" in literary theory is the separation of an author from his or her text, the implicit understanding that, even with evidence to the contrary, a reader shouldn't assume that the words on the page are a true mirror of a writer's personal life. However, Ararat reads like a definite biographical sketch. Glück doesn't use proper names, but consistent references to her parents and her sisters abound. The beauty of the seemingly random citation above is in the fact that Glück manages to provide both intimate personal details ('never turned on our parents/We had other obsessions') that blend seamlessly with phrases that can be read as both personal as well as representations of larger issues. The amazing phrase ('we both felt there were/too many of us/to survive') can be viewed as a representation of the speaker's family life, or expanded to mirror the world at large.

"My mother's an expert in one thing:
sending people she loves into the other world.
The little ones, the babies--these
she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say
what she did for my father;
whatever it was, I'm sure it was right (Glück 28, excerpt from "Lullaby")"

Glück's poems are sometimes strictly familial, and almost always intentionally uncomfortable in their blunt evocations. "Lullaby" shares the recurring themes of a mother's unhappiness and loss (the loss of children, the unhappiness of a strained marriage), and while these issues may very well speak to people who have experienced the same, Glück renders it into a personal sketch. However, in my reading, her line breaks are crafted as to offer different takes on the given statements. The separation of "she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say" is broken off from the previous line about babies; these can be linked as a continuous line, but I couldn't help but view the stand-alone line as a wrenching image of the mother rocking, whispering, and singing by herself, a portrait of solitude and sadness. This reading may be off, but in any case, it immediately shifts to the mention of the father, and the idea of "what she did" is intentionally vague. Glück's ability to jump from one idea to the next, mixed with the possibility of a single line potentially meaning something altogether different is startling, in a good way.



Given the themes which speak to human and family nature, I couldn't help but wonder if I wasn't the right reader for the works in Ararat. While not explicit, I found a strong tone of the feminine point of view, as if the collection is meant to speak primarily to the struggles of women and, more specifically, sisters, mothers, and wives. Even with this in mind, Glück does have excellent way of occasionally upending male stereotypes. The passage that jumped out at me the most in this regard (and, separately, the stanza that I found to be one of her best overall) is found in the poem "Cousins."

"It's not that my son's inept, that he doesn't do things well.
I've watched him race: he's natural, effortless--
right from the first, he takes the lead.
And then he stops. It's as though he was born rejecting
the solitude of the victor (Glück 53)."

While these citations and interpretations are merely a few of many, this first reading of Louise Glück proved to be valuable. Granted, there are dozens of equally skilled poets whose works I'm still behind on, but the reading of Ararat began as a way to familiarize myself with an established poet, and ended with me being challenged, occasionally unnerved, and continually finding various interpretations of what appear to be straightforward lines and stanzas. The notion of "challenging poetic cliches" mentioned in the opening might seem misleading. I wouldn't classify Glück as an experimental poet, despite her occasional deceptive line break or double meanings. The true sign of her talent is in the poems themselves, in her ability to take the obvious and make it both personal and universal. Family strife and death have been themes of poetry and fiction since the beginning, yet ways of expressing them are continually changed and explored. In the future, I might have to be in the right mindset to resume further readings of Glück's work, and I'm curious to see how her other collections handle different potential themes.

Work Cited:
Glück, Louise. Ararat. Copyright 1990 by Louise Glück.

A.S. Byatt's Poetic Justices

Taking a step back, it's unnerving to imagine what A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel Possession could have been had it been written by someone else. When its themes, genres, and progressions are taken at strict superficial value, we're presented with a book that is heavy on genre fiction, from mystery to thriller, a slight dash of paranormal implications, and a group of characters that virtually wear signs that read "heroic" or "villainous." The full title is Possession: A Romance, and there's plenty of that, from the classic definitions to the contemporary notions. Perhaps I'm beating around the bush--the elements of this novel could have been combined to create a terrible piece, or a work that would be looked at as heavy on the potential, but lacking serious substance. However, when taken in after a full reading, it's just as easy to see how talented A.S. Byatt is as a novelist.

Possession tells the story of Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, two young scholars who come together to research the previously unknown romance between two regarded Victorian poets, Henry Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Michell is a research assistant to an English Ash scholar, and during his research, he comes across two undated drafts of a letter to a female acquaintance, written in Ash's handwriting. They aren't exactly love letters, but they are undocumented pieces and do hint to the possibility of emotions beyond regular salutations.

"Dear Madam,
Since our extraordinary conversation I have thought of nothing else. It has not often been given to me as a poet, it is perhaps not often given to human beings, to find such ready sympathy, such wit and judgment together. I write with a strong sense of the necessity of continuing our talk, and without premeditation....to ask if it would be possible for me to call on you, perhaps one day next week (Byatt 7)."

Through his inquiries, Roland hypothesizes that Ash's letters were written to LaMotte, and he meets Maud, a feminist scholar, and even before they meet, when her name is first mentioned, the reader has a feeling that something will blossom between the two characters. They're joined by a passion for their respective subjects, and, much like the uncovered romance between the two deceased poets, the reader has to be patient and wait for revelations to be unfolded. Sure, most of them may seem obvious, but Byatt is careful to balance the expected plot developments with the occasional unexpected twist. Once Roland and Maud begin their joint research, the project takes them to LaMotte's former home, where more letters are unearthed. The potential revelations are sure to have a domino effect throughout the literary field, since Ash was supposedly devoted to his wife, and LaMotte, while herself a gifted feminist poet, was thought to have lived her life in social and sexual seclusion. Much like a classic British drama, more characters are introduced, all of whom have their own interests and agendas in the Ash-LaMotte correspondence. In returning to the notion of the "heroic" and "villainous" characters, an excellent example is the terrifically named Mortimer Cropper, an American rival of the professor (James Blackadder) who employs Roland. His introduction is such that, while he's a definite foil, he's created in very sly, revealing tones.

"His face in the mirror was fine and precise, his silver hair most exquisitely and severely cut, his half-glasses gold-rimmed, his mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt (Byatt 105)."



For such a varied plot, Byatt's writing shines in various formats. To begin with the most stunning example, she meticulously "reprints" pages upon pages of poems that were written by the fictional poets. This goes beyond a simple recreation. The poems are beautifully crafted and could easily be actual Victorian citations, not just well-crafted homages to the style. While nobody could blame her for showing off, she's not doing so. Byatt's poems compliment the novel, adding further metaphors to the imagined letters between Ash and LaMotte. To have written such a complex, nuanced novel without fictionalized poetry is a marvel; the combination of the two alone, in this single book, is enough to elevate Byatt's placement among the world's best novelists, male or female.

"What is a House? So strong--so square
Making a Warmth inside the Winds
We walk with lowered eyelids there
And silent go--behind the blinds

Yet hearts may tap like loaded bombs
Yet brains may shrill in carpet-hush
And windows fly from silent rooms
And walls break outwards--with a rush--

-CHRISTABEL LaMOTTE (Byatt 229)."

Byatt also provides many salutes and winks to the world of academia, specifically in the field of literary and poetic studies. Anyone who has spent any time in a university English Department will appreciate the sometimes tedious nature of research and the understanding that business and funding can sometimes usurp creativity and the bigger picture. The new histories that Roland and Maud uncover, and the way it unfolds, is done very dramatically, almost wistfully. The reality is that a major discovery like that would almost never happen, and the ensuing drama, while sexy, would likely be wishful thinking in real life. However, Byatt rarely veers into truly unrealistic happenings. The bulk of Possession is devoted to the poems and letters of the poets, with the plot serving as a link between the chronology. So while most English majors and PhD candidates would love to have an adventure like Roland and Maud's, the reality is that the true excitement comes from the reading and the research. This serves as excellent ammunition to people who view the Humanities as a waste of time and money. This skepticism is vocalized more than once in the novel, along with the realistic tedium that flares up in even the most passionate personal studies.

"'Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying. We had a sort of poet in this house once. I expect you'd think nothing to her. Terrible sentimental stuff about God and Death and the dew and fairies. Nauseating (Byatt 88).'"

"Much of his writing met this fate. It was set down, depersonalised, and then erased. Much of his time was spent deciding whether or not to erase things. He usually did (Byatt 325)."

Could some of the letters and poems been scaled back, quantity-wise? It's possible, but then again, it would have taken away from Byatt's definite, albeit fictionalized, bibliography. The Victorian words, poems, and even the names of critical texts feel terrifically authentic, and much like real bibliographies, sometimes the extent can be daunting, if not exasperating. This intense attention to detail, coupled with the beautiful writing, is what elevates Possession beyond the aforementioned realm of disposable genre fiction. For a work so steeped in the classics, it's definitely experimental even in the face of the classic story arc. However, while many writers would have the audacity to attempt this, only a select few would be able to make it feel this authentic. There are many plot elements that I haven't explored in this essay, but much like what the characters go through, the joy is in the surprises.

Work Cited:
Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. Copyright 1990 by A.S. Byatt.

'59 Heavies

I was anything but a precocious or intelligent elementary school student, but even so, I'm sure my eight or nine year-old self would have been envious at the wealth of history books that have been published in my adult lifetime, works that would served as either replacements or healthy compliments to the bland textbooks. 2004's America: The Book worked as a wonderful spoof not only of American history, but of the layouts and banalities of standard elementary school textbooks. Historians such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough have the ability to create works that are both intellectually stimulating and vastly entertaining. These are just two examples of good writing, but on the flip side, the market is saturated with history books that have blatant political agendas (hello, William J. Bennett) or attempt to capture niche markets (the American Civil War was undoubtedly multifaceted, and every battle and character seems to have at least two books devoted to the subject). I recently read Fred Kaplan's 2009 book 1959: The Year Everything Changed on the basis of its focus on a seemingly innocuous era, especially given the events before and after. I had a feeling that, for such a slim volume, it would lean towards the "niche" side of history publications. However, Kaplan's writings do reveal some pleasant surprises, or, for a better phrase, lesser known happenings in that year.

"[Fidel Castro] was a far more engaging, charismatic figure...Just thirty-one years old, sporting green army fatigues and a scruffy beard, Castro strolled along the Washington Mall, paying respects to the Lincoln Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, eating ice cream cones, kissing babies, signing autographs, waving to students on buses (many of whom shouted, 'Hi Fidel!') and chatting--in heavily accented but fluent English--with anyone who approached him (Kaplan 95)."

Fidel Castro's visit to the United States never seems to garner much attention, both historically or in contemporary analysis of his power. In other more partisan hands, the account of this visit could have been skewed negatively, but Kaplan does an excellent job of proper "historical journalism." In reality, The United States didn't know what to make of the young rebel, and the visit was viewed as a hopeful avenue to steer his fledgling government away from Communism. A visit like that (and, by extension, any event in world history) lends itself to the idea of the opposite direction. In simple terms, readers are either introduced to, or forced to think about, the idea of "what would have happened otherwise?"

Kaplan does hint at the "what ifs?" even if he doesn't devote much analysis to the potential outcomes. This is a history work, and what actually happened in 1959 is worth more than the potentials. However, the occasional sentence does lead to the occasional pause as to how history could have played out. In the chapter on jazz musician Ornette Coleman, Kaplan's account of a meeting between Coleman and record label owner Lester Koenig almost reads like a cinematic climax, bridging the gap between Coleman's creative breakthroughs and the possibility that it never would have happened.

"The timing was fortuitous. Coleman had given up on a life in music; he'd planned to go back to Forth Worth and get a normal job. The day he first met with Koenig, his mother sent him money for a bus ticket home. Now he decided to give jazz another chance (Kaplan 202)."



Analyzing every 1959 event that Kaplan includes would turn this into a tedious summary. The happenings include the emergence (and backlash against) Lenny Bruce; the crusaders and doctors who came together to create the birth-control pill; and another U.S. visit by a foreign leader, one that is better known than Castro's--the tense visit by Soviet premiere Nikita Khruschev, described in all of its emotions and potentials, for better or for worse. At times, 1959 runs the gamut from mere recaps of the events to more insightful narrative. Kaplan should be commended for highlighting such a whirlwind year, but, whether through his own time constraints or editing, the book does suffer from some faults. Depending on the subject, some of the chapters seem to go through the motions, especially "Civilizations In the Stars," a look at (then) modern science's search for extraterrestrial communications. From beginning to end, the research is impressive, but Kaplan is much more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the art scenes in 1959. Kaplan's music writings are stunning, and highlight an obvious deep passion for the music of the era, combining both historical happenings with accessible analysis of complex musical theories. His looks at Coleman, Miles Davis, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg are the most striking.

"A year before he wrote Howl, Ginsberg wrote to a friend, 'I have been looking at early blues forms and think will apply this form of elliptical semisurrealist imagery to rhymed blues type lyrics....internal variants and changes of form in midstream like conversational thought.' He later told a critic that Howl's cadences were inspired in part by a recording of Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet solo on 'I Can't Get Started (Kaplan 33).'"

While 1959 is a wonderful look at cultural developments, it does, as I mentioned before, feel constrained. For such vastly different stories, it's a relief that Kaplan didn't attempt to make hasty connections between such dynamic people, but the occasionally "encyclopedic" feel does put a sort of hold on an obviously talent writer. It's my hope that Kaplan will publish more detailed books on singular people and developments. For example, his knowledge of jazz could be applied to biographies of some of the lesser known artists and experimenters of that time. However, 1959 doesn't always go for the obvious stories and opinions, and what it does illuminate is done professionally, without any unneeded nostalgia or poetic waxing.

Work Cited:
Kaplan, Fred. 1959: The Year Everything Changed. Copyright 2009 by Fred Kaplan.