“There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it.”  -The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin

We make assumptions. For example, as a writer, I make assumptions about my audience, about you. One of those assumptions is that you read, most of you widely, and many of you deeply. Since this blog is attached to a literary journal, it is very possible that some of you write. At the same time, I could be completely wrong. That is the nature of assumption after all.

Last week, my wife and I were driving through a small town in the Utah desert. The evening was approaching and I was hungry. The next town was probably an hour off. The problem was that we only passed two restaurants on the highway, China Star and Pizzaria. Take a moment to look at the pictures and you might make some assumptions of your own.

Chinese, American, Mexican Drive-In…

And Italian-American Mexican Food, which happens to include Freezies and Chili Dogs.

I’m a food snob. I made assumptions. I did not stop.

When we got to the next town, there were many familiar eating establishments: Subway, Arby’s, McDonald’s. But after waiting so long to eat, I wasn’t going to eat fast food. I wanted to get out of the car, sit down and enjoy a nice meal. So we did the only thing I could think of, which was to ask a local where to eat. The recommendation we were given was an Italian restaurant called Red Gravy.

When we went inside, I couldn’t help but notice that the vibe of the restaurant wasn’t quite Italian. The décor was eclectic, as though someone’s grandma had taken all of her knickknacks and put them into a barn she decided to convert into a restaurant.

The entire back wall of the dining area was a chalkboard with an excellent drawing that I couldn’t help but photograph. It reminded me of New Orleans where I once lived, or what I imagine Venice might look like.

Then the food came, probably the second- or third-best Italian food I’ve ever had — which is saying something. Our waiter was professional and efficient. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience, perhaps made even more so by being unexpected.

But this post isn’t a travelogue of a trip into the desert. The point of all this rambling is the places.

The places I mentioned allowed you to make judgments. Even with limited details, my wife and I made assumptions. The roadside diners and the Italian eatery are the setting of the story; they allowed immersion in the tale. They don’t just give the story a place to happen. They give it flavor. And, in cases like this one, if it weren’t for the places, there wouldn’t be a story at all.

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He currently resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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I didn’t—because I teach at a private preschool.

That morning I spent time trying to find the right picture of Martin Luther King Jr. for the kids to color. I was looking for something that portrayed him well, and that might occupy a four-year-old for ten to fifteen minutes. The fact that I’m trained in art also complicated the process, I’m sure.

After finding that glorious page, I drove relatively traffic-free streets. I didn’t have to slow in the normal places for school zones. The weather was nice, with no trouble on the horizon.

After the kids colored the picture, I taught them about Martin Luther King, a man I consider to be one of the great American heroes. I wanted the children to understand why he has a day in his honor. I wanted them to understand King’s message and why that message is so important, but I realized they are only four.

My dilemma was how to bring it down to their level. I did my best by reducing his message to three basic points.

First, be nice to people who look different than you.

Second, be nice to people who are different than you.

Third, be nice to people who have different opinions than you.

This last one took some explaining, as children at this age don’t really know what an opinion is. I had to wing an exercise to explain opinions, and how they related to Dr. King’s message.

I asked how many of them liked broccoli. (Some of them actually did.)

I asked those who did if it was okay for them to say how delicious broccoli is. (Of course it is.)

I asked those who didn’t if it was okay for them to say how yucky broccoli is. (This is okay too.)

I asked them if we could still be nice to one another, and be friends, even if we had different opinions about broccoli.

The interesting thing about this exercise is that four-year-olds know the right answer to these questions. I didn’t have to prompt them with answers. I don’t feel the questions are steering them any sort of way. They simply knew what was right.

Dr. King said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” If you haven’t learned to be nice to everyone, that you need to accept people as they are, if you still need a lesson in common decency, I ask that you listen to these children. Sometimes the greatest answers come out of the mouths of babes.

One of the kids asked me if Martin King was still alive. I told the class that he was killed. The children had various responses, but the one that stood out to me was: “They killed him because they didn’t listen when he told them to be nice.” He’s right.

One of the things we didn’t discuss in this class was what “nice” means, mostly because the children in my classes have a basic and pure understanding of being nice. For those of us who have outgrown the childish definition of nice, let me clarify: being nice doesn’t mean putting on a smile and tolerating someone. It is not merely being civil. Nice, the way the children understand it, is being good to each other, truly treating people the way they deserve to be treated.

So I’m putting it out there, please be nice to each other. The world needs more nice.

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He recently published poetry in the Clockwork Kiru Anthology. He resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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REGGIE CARLISE: Tell me about yourself.

OLIVIA CRONK: I live on the north side of Chicago, where I also teach writing at a small commuter university, Northeastern Illinois University. I teach both Introductory Composition and upper level Poetry Writing courses, so my artistic and professional selves are at once in competition with one another and deeply entangled.

My first book, Skin Horse (Action Books, 2012), came out of the time of my early teaching life (adjunct work at sometimes three schools at once—this is likely a familiar routine to many Newfound readers) and those poems were an extreme examination of the domestic, often in the flavor of B Horror films, Vincent Price, Giallo, David Lynch, Clara Rockmore. I think those were very, very interior in part because I had such a hectic work life.

And now, my labor situation is a little smoother (or, rather: as smooth as might be expected in the fucked up economy of academic jobs), but I have a small child, and somehow I find myself writing only in long-form (it’s easier to simply “drop in” on a fresh page of an ongoing document)—I only want to work on manuscripts, not on discrete poems. My submission to Newfound’s chapbook contest is from a long poem, “Middle Mansion,” which is about genre, the Fantasy genre, fantasy, (the self inside of the place of) memory, fashion, early adulthood, and apocalyptic settings.

Those things are very thrilling things to me right now, and my writing-things are informing my teaching and even my parenting, to some extent. I believe in genre-contamination. I believe in filth and disgust and poor taste and aesthetic excess—and the delightful “good taste” that emerges in such an accumulation. I believe in the tender overlay of a thick imaginative life upon a real one that takes place in this particular moment of this particular apocalypse.

CARLISLE: Why poetry?

CRONK: I write poetry because it is the form my writing most often takes.

Obviously, I love poetry—as a set of lineages/historical forces; as a contemporary practice; as a hazy, wilting notion hanging over my physical life; as a sort of anachronistic position; as an ideological position—but, also, I listen to others,

like Philip Sorenson:
“You aren’t really people . . ..”

and Andrea Rexilius:
“Poems are ghostly semblances that materialize before our eyes or in our
imaginations.”

and Daniel Borzutzky:
“Poetry. What the fuck? . . . [W]hat I want is to have the bloody inferno that
the world is exposed to me in no uncertain terms . . ..”

CARLISLE: What inspires you?

CRONK: I don’t really believe in the conventional, writerly notion of “inspiration;” honestly, the word evokes, for me, a ridiculous and small-minded idea of how writers work.

I write in response to and in the service of texts of all media/genre/brow, in relation to textuality, and because of my need to contextually, subtextually, and metatextually comment on such. I try to steal tricks from writers I like. I try to steal mood from much film, television, and pulp. I try to generate content by having an active brain and an interesting diet of texts.

I write to create junk drawers for any possible and all known readers.

CARLISLE: How do you approach the content?

CRONK: I approach content by seeing what I have, once something is actually there. I figure out what the piece is doing/about after a little of it exists.
I often have a project in mind as a backdrop, but I have to see what comes out.

I commit myself to writing occasions (these happen somewhat sporadically though with ritualistic components), during which I hope for a good chunk of material.

Because I oppose the tyranny of literalism, I privilege the reader’s experience of the text: it is my desire to collaborate with my reader.

CARLISLE: What about form?

CRONK: Form can suggest to the reader the level of openness.

It can awaken the sleeper.

It can contain the reader in a safe gesture.

It can be a metatext.

It can be a script.

I’m not particularly interested in Form, though I am interested in creating pleasing and breathable structures—and also suffocating ones.

CARLISLE: What would you ask if you were the interviewer?

CRONK: I would ask:

Do Virginia Woolf’s claim about the Middle Brow and Curtis White’s subsequent argument against Middle Mind still seem relevant? And how do we aim ourselves toward an artistic anti-Middle?

What invisible face does your writing wear?

What relationship exists between The Psychedelic Experience (however and through whatever media a respondent has pursued such) and teenage television melodramas?

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He currently resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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For me, this was one of the highlights of our trip. Not only was it a chance for me to show my children a piece of American art history, I also got a chance to watch others enjoying the artwork. Like the biggest ball of twine, or Austin’s Cathedral of Junk, it has a certain mystique, an allure. Unlike cordoned sculptures in climate-controlled museums, installations such as these invite us to experience them fully by walking through and around them, climbing on them, contributing to them.

As we approached this automotive Stonehenge, it felt as though my family was completing a pilgrimage. My childhood was filled with fascination for roadside attractions, and here I was, in a muddy field, staring at the actual cars. My daughters looked at me, asking, “Is this it?” What they really meant was, “Did we come all this way just to see cars with their butts in the air?” But we had. I touched the cars, reverent, waiting my turn to add to the inches-thick paint jobs. My contribution: the red smiley at the top of the page. Nearby, a mother photographed her daughter in ankle-deep muddy water, holding her cowgirl boots. Another family laughed as they slowly turned one side of a car Smurf blue.

The interaction is one of the most important features of public art. It is also what sometimes leads to it being misunderstood or undervalued. Too often, we limit our understanding of “art” to those forbidding and forbidden pieces in galleries and museums. But public art is arguably just as important.

Public art, simply put, is art displayed in public, for the public. This includes statues and monuments, large-scale sculptures in parks and city squares, as well as roadside attractions. No matter the form, there are a couple of factors common to most public art.

Due to the large scale, many public art installations are relatively permanent, so the location often provides context clues to the content of the artwork. The people who live and work nearby also provide context. Public art can be a way for the artist to speak to or about the people in the area.

To me, the most impressive thing about public art is its ability to bring people together. One example of this is the Cloud Gate in Chicago. Known by locals as “the Bean,” this mirrored sculpture sits in the middle of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park. People come to this artwork to see distorted images of themselves as they walk under or around the massive metallic legume. But they also come for photos, to eat lunch, or just to take a break from their busy lives. This artwork has become a gathering place.

If we let it, public art can draw us in. It can inspire play. And it can bring us closer to each other.

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He currently resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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However well-intended and meticulously researched, the journalistic approach of this type of article lacks the essence of the discipline they are discussing. Literature and the arts are not about facts and figures, they are about what it means to be human, hence the label: the Humanities. Literature seeks to expose the truths of human existence, the shared experience, the feeling of being alive. So, in my first post for Newfound, I find myself looking for my place in all this cognitive shifting sand.

Doomsayers typically predict the downfall of the humanities by college enrollments and declared majors. There are more people studying business, medicine, and accounting, they may say. English departments are downsizing due to decreased interest. There are several problems with this argument, but let’s examine the most glaring fallacies. First, people study the subjects they think will get them jobs, e.g., business and medicine. Yet, in a bad economy, there are fewer jobs for everyone regardless of one’s area of expertise. The fact that one studies humanities does not decrease employment opportunities; the economy does that. Second, people don’t necessarily need a university education to succeed in fields such as literature, art and music. Using college majors to determine success seems unfair when you are comparing brain surgeons to painters; it’s apples and oranges.

Those bemoaning the downfall of literature often state that people are reading less—at least for fun. I would counter that people are reading more. When people spend more time staring at their phones than actually talking to people in real life, they are in fact reading. And although a tweet isn’t the same as a novel, perhaps their Twitter feed will read like one. By scrolling through someone’s Facebook, you can read the story of a person’s life, or at least the parts they share. Perhaps it isn’t highbrow literature, but you have to admit it is raw humanity. And it’s fun.

But if everyone is online, then should we study communication or marketing? Often this is the suggestion from these articles. However, these fields teach people to spin, how to be perceived, to control what is admitted. They hide the truth behind created fictions. Writing for corporate communication, marketing and advertising are very different than humanities writing. Literature seeks to reveal the truth through  fiction, to show more than what one usually perceives. There is a reach to provide the reader with an experience, not just an opinion.

Articles concerned with the decline in recreational reading generally mention benefits of reading, such as increased focus and imagination. They will discuss how reading can improve attention spans and promote empathy. This seems to be a turn, but often is no more than a pause to tease the literary reader that what they do might be worthwhile. If only the articles stopped there.

Instead, they usually conclude with more saddening news, such as this statement by Sarah Schwister in Quail Bell Magazine: “Americans are still turning away from serious fiction, and sadly the literary novel may wind up mostly forgotten, like poetry.” Statements such as this one make me furious, and cause me to wonder at the writer’s intent. In my outrage, I find my place, the solid ground on which I stand.

Poetry is not forgotten, not even somewhat forgotten. Not only is poetry still alive in its own right, but poetry is at the heart of every well-turned phrase, every novel surely, but also the clever meme or funny anecdote. The disturbing thing here is that people in the field, the writers who pen such articles,  have already given up on poetry as a form of expression. They have bought into the idea of an America that is turning away from words.

Society does not determine whether the humanities live or die. We do, we that live in the world of the humanities. Some of us work hard every day to promote reading and arts, cultural values and societal change. What is true and always has been is that the hearts and minds of a society’s poets and artists determine its direction, functioning as its moral center. Sure, we are finding new forms of expression, but that does not mean we have to kill off the existing ones. Perhaps multimedia is the future for the humanities, but that does not preclude the writing of books, or even poetry.

It is the artist who makes the difference. Let us not look at the world and have it tell us what will and will not be. Instead, let us look and tell the world what might be. And let that expression take any form. The future is as bright as we paint it. Let us not give up on ourselves just yet.
 

Reggie Carlisle finished his BA in Creative Writing at Weber State University in 2014. His first published story was in the Fall 2013 Mixitini Matrix. He currently resides in Utah with his wife and five daughters.

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