Blog (page 11)

John Ashbery and the Eastern Bloc: The Absurd is Our Guide

ashbery three poemsJohn Ashbery, My Guide


The past three decades have been an exciting time for poets from formerly Soviet nations. Many contemporary poets from this region came of age (and established their voices) while poetry was inextricably linked to rebellion against communist regimes. You were a protest poet—or you weren’t a poet. But after the dissolution of many corrupt governments in the 1980s, poets were able to inhabit or create different identities—even apolitical ones.

I find myself hungry for these voices, and want to hear their stories. I’ll be the first to admit I often lack the context for the works—and I’m reading English translations to boot. As an American reader, I lean on more familiar poets to be my guides. Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun has often cited his affinity for (and influence by) American poet John Ashbery. And so, Ashbery has been my escort through Šalamun and other poets from this region.

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My Murderous Heart

Last year, I wrote a confessional essay in honor of the 2015 Lenten season about a time I nearly killed my ex-husband. It was recently published in The Cresset. Several of my friends read it, discovering that, at one time, I’d had a murderous heart. You never know, of course, if anyone will read your work or if it will go unnoticed. I had hoped for oblivion for this one mainly because it was difficult to know how friends and colleagues would react. I do a tolerable job of helping others think I’m homespun, normal—I think we all do this. It helps us gloss over the messiness of life and makes day-to-day interactions easier.

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Assumptions in the Desert

“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.

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Remembering “Before I Forget” by Andre Brink

Cover of the novelThe first time I went to Cape Town, South Africa, I was about to turn twenty. A junior in college, I had little experience with life, love or literature and I was hungry for more. In the Cape Town library, I discovered Before I Forget, Andre Brink’s shameless fictional recollection of lovers possessed by the book’s narrator—who happens to be an aging South African author.

I was captivated.

When I decided to reread it nine years later, all I could remember was that it was indulgent. In the opening pages, eighty-year-old Chris Minaar sets up the premise: He’ll recount every woman with whom he’s slept over the course of his long, debauched life as a white South African novelist.

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We Are Made of Words

When I think of words, I imagine a terrain and see myself as an amateur geologist of sorts. The words are stones, shaped by the passage of time, by the elements. I pick one up and examine it to get a feel for its weight, shape, edges, size and proportion to others. I hold it up to the light to get a sense of its tint and hue, trying to decide what new dimension it will add to my collection. I recognize it as a weapon, a fragment of a puzzle, as evidence. As building material.

I celebrated my fortieth birthday a few weeks ago, and received a gift, the very best gift: Words. They came in the form of short, personal notes from several of my students (I teach at a small college in northern Indiana). They wished me a happy day and encouraged me by explaining their experiences in my classrooms. I don’t know who organized such a thing. I didn’t tell anyone beforehand that it was my birthday (though, on the day, it splashed across Facebook). Someone anonymously delivered the notes to my office. It was hush-hush, a surprise. By the time I finished reading, I was in tears.

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NaNo FAIL; Or, How Cello Lessons Had No Impact on My Ability to Write a Novel

Last November, I posted about how taking cello lessons inspired me to participate for the first time in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Since then, a lot of people have asked me how the experiment panned out. I’ve been waiting—partly from shame, and partly for the enhanced perspective that is the reward of time—to admit that I failed to produce a complete novel in a single month.

The last few days of November were excruciating. I woke up on November 30th with my inner voice screaming, “You failed! You are a failure! A fail-y, fail-y FAILURE!” Like I’ve said before, my inner voice is a jerk.

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Heather Kirn Lanier: A Poet Obsessed

LanierHeather Kirn Lanier’s poetry chapbook, Heart-Shaped Bed in Hiroshima, a finalist for the 2014 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, reflects an obsession. But it should not surprise us that most of her work does this. Like many writers, she finds she must follow her obsessions wherever they lead.

“The collection is about trying to understand the brutalities of war through mediated forms—memorials, museums, news headlines, biographers. It’s about trying to bridge the chasm between the citizen and the far-away war her country is waging. It’s about feeling responsible to bridge that gap, even while it’s ultimately impossible,” says Lanier.

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Olivia Cronk: Junk Drawer Poet and Mood Thief

Olivia Cronk is one of two finalists for Newfound’s 2014 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize. Her sublime imagery, irreverence and precision of language struck the panelists and the judge. Coupled with her unique perspective on poetry, she is one to watch, if not to get to know. Look for her poetry in our print issue.

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 CompositioOlivia Cronkn 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.

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The Memoir Writer Under Interrogation

I like watching true-life whodunnits. I’m particularly fond of NBC’s Dateline. It’s my secret lowbrow television pleasure (along with Say Yes to the Dress, but that’s for another post). In general I like hearing other people’s stories. But with true-life crime you spend an hour learning about a bizarre, hideous murder of an often unusually endearing person in some part of the country very far from where you live. I guess the secret dirty pleasure part comes in because watching true-life murder mysteries are a sort of cathartic experience: my life isn’t as bad as that person’s. At least someone didn’t kill me. Nor have I been accused of murder.

The part of the show that most piques my interest happens when police investigators haul the suspect into the interrogation room. The scenes are high anxiety as investigators try to buddy up with the suspect and get definitive proof while the suspect tries to evade the truth and not give herself away. Secret camera video footage often captures a person out-of-sorts, divided between herself and what she’s done. I can relate.

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2015 Pushcart Nominees

We are proud to announce our nominees for this year’s Pushcart Prize:

* David Samuel Levinson for his story, “The Dinner Guest”

* Darrin Doyle for his story, “Engagement”

* Craig Santos Perez for his poems, “From All With Ocean Views”

* Sarah Messer for her poems, “Only Sky Animals,” et al.

* Harrison Candelaria Fletcher for his nonfiction piece, “Artifacts”

* Jennifer Baum for her nonfiction piece, “A Different Set of Rules”

Though selection is never easy, we nominate six writers every year for the Pushcart Prize because we believe in the endeavor of keeping the world reading and writing,

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Pilgrimage to Cadillac Ranch

 Last summer, my family and I went on a road trip which included a stop at Cadillac Ranch. For those who are unfamiliar with it, this enormous installation is composed of old Cadillacs planted end-up in an empty field. The history of the work has to do with the evolution of the cars’ tail fins. For a car guy, this is interesting enough. Yet, even if you aren’t aware of — or don’t care about — tail fin evolution, you can enjoy interacting with the work by spray-painting the cars. In fact, this is sort of the point. You don’t even have to bring your own paint. Partially-used cans are scattered all around. In our case, another family offered us their cans when they decided to leave.

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How Cello Lessons Convinced Me to Do NaNoWriMo

There is something liberating about doing a thing you enjoy, even if you know you aren’t doing it well. It feels like skinny-dipping in the town fountain, or giving someone the finger: there’s a defiance, a recklessness to it. If you are a perfectionist, that is.

If you too are a perfectionist, you understand that it goes beyond high personal standards; perfectionism can be crippling. There are loads of things I’ve shied away from because nothing mortifies a perfectionist like a learning curve. We want to be excellent at everything, right from the get-go.

To wit: This was supposed to be The Year I Wrote a Novel. I’d made this promise to myself before; my hard drive is chock-full of false starts. Invariably, somewhere along the way I’d realize what a mess I was making. I knew the middle part, maybe, but not the beginning or the end. “You’re wasting your time,” a little voice inside my head would say. “Stick to short stories! You’ll waste decades of your life writing a stupid novel no one will publish. You’ll be the most embarrassing kind of person in the world: a novelist manqué!”

My inner voice is a jerk.

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The Writer’s Enemy

Social media is to the working writer as is a ball to the puppy in obedience training. Set it in front of her and curiosity often wins, unless the reward for ignoring it far outweighs the rewards of chasing it. In the writer’s case, when that little red Facebook notification pings, it is nearly impossible to avoid diddling away an hour by scrolling and posting and liking and commenting. Or, I’ve found that to be true for me at least.

In my own behavior regarding social media, I’ve noticed a near constant need while at the keyboard to check for notifications, scroll, and generate pithy status updates. I’ve noticed it in others, too. Writer after writer—my friends—comment about the distractions that prevent them from making progress on their writing projects. As it turns out, the rewards—hearing the sound of the ping and seeing the little red number in the top right of my Facebook page—are precisely what make social media so insidious. Thanks to our biology, the pleasures of publishing can hardly compete.

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Who Decides the Humanities’ Future?

I’ve just stumbled across yet another depressing article about the bleak future of the English Major. They usually go something like this: People are reading less, it’s terrible, woe to we who write! I read these types of articles because they are posted in literary magazines, by and for people concerned with the decline of reading and literature. But I believe articles of this ilk may be missing the point.

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.

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A Writer’s Confession

I don’t believe in writer’s block. If I can’t write, I go out and live. Then, if I’m a writer, I’ll find something to write.” –Peter Arpesella

Confession: as someone who writes memoir, I often get sick of myself. For several years I’ve been working on the same project—growing up in poverty with a closeted homosexual single mother—first as a graduate student in an MFA program and now as a writing professor at a small liberal arts college, where tenure in part depends on publication. I’m on the third and, hopefully, final draft.

This summer, I spent my break rearranging, rewriting, and recreating. By the end I was saturated once again with the sticky, cloying oil of my past. It coated everything. Every time I licked my lips, I tasted it. Every time I sat with my laptop to write, I smelled it, scorched and dark. My skin was thick with it, my vision blurred; sounds were distorted. Immersed in that world for months at a time, my sense of who I am now—writer, wife, teacher—begins to waver as though my adult self were only a mirage shimmering in the foreground of my past. That’s when the words get stopped up and I don’t want to write. Often, I take a vacation from myself, from writing.

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