desperate times call for desperate writing surfaces
Dear Reader, did you think I’d forgotten the roundup today? No, indeed. This morning I was busy rounding up squirrelly fifth-graders into class lines at morning yard duty. I don’t do yard duty very often, but when I do I’m right in there with the same class of yard duty gals as the one who my kids describe as “the mean yard duty lady with the megaphone.” I don’t have a megaphone yet, but I admit the prospect is tempting.
Then I was rounding up things around here. I’ve packed two boxes now! Am I done yet?
At any rate, for today’s round up I want to talk about the books you don’t want to read. Here we go:
why read it? I’m taking a class up in the college town and we’ve been reading a wide variety of poets. For this week, we read Tomaz Salamun‘s A Ballad for Metka Krasovec. I have to say, it’s not my favorite book. It starts out very fragmented, without footholds, or connective tissue. As the book goes on, the poems take on more substance syntactically speaking, with titles, narrative threads, etc., and you kind of think to yourself, Geez, this guy can write. Why was he putting us through all that at the beginning? Okay, so, the obvious answer is because it was some sort of artistic strategy. Long story longer, there’s one person in the class who has not been shy about his distaste for a lot of contemporary poetry. This reader wants a poet to be generous — not to withhold or create puzzles that keep the reader at arm’s length. He had started reading the book and put it down after the first several poems. He asked, very genuinely, “Why read it?” So we talked about that as a class. We all have our personal taste in poetry, right? Some books we love; others we struggle through and just don’t like at all.
For me the answer to “Why read it?” is: because I might learn something. Or I might find ten words used in a way that interests me and gives me an idea for my work. Or the way the poet gets out of the poem on page 23 might help me figure out my most recent failed poem about fill-in-the-blank. Sometimes it’s good to struggle through a collection you don’t particularly love to see what you might learn. If, on the other hand, you’re reading purely for enjoyment and you hate the poems, I give you permission to put it down and move on.
We also had a really interesting conversation about the professor’s assertion that Salamun was “creating a persona” of himself in order to make a social comment (the book is rife with autobiographical details of the sex, drugs, rock-n-roll variety that I, for one, could’ve lived without). Some of the women of a certain age, myself included, wondered why we were talking of the poet “creating a persona” for this book, while last week, when discussing a book by a woman poet, we talked freely of her use of personal details in her work — no discussion of the woman poet “creating a persona” to make a statement. Do I smell a possible double-standard? But that’s a post for another time, or perhaps for a doctoral dissertation.
the book you’re afraid to read There’s the book you don’t like, and then there’s the book you’re afraid to read. Come on, admit it, we all have one or two. Maybe we’re afraid the book will bring up issues we’d rather not stir up. Maybe we’re afraid it’s going to be so good we’ll be shamed into writer’s block for months. Maybe we’re afraid this book is the book we were going to write.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Last night in the dance studio waiting room, I opened Steam Laundry by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (which I won in Erin‘s Big Poetry Giveaway, thanks Erin!). I began with the author’s note, and put the book back down with a stone in my gut. I was afraid to read this “novel in poems” about a wife who had followed her husband West during the frontier days. The Mail Order Bride’s ears were ringing. I was afraid my book — you know, the one I haven’t written yet — had already been written.
What do you do when you start to panic? I write. I started digging in my purse for a pen and paper. No paper. No paper? Oh, no. But, luckily, I had brought the priority mail envelope the book had come in. Desperate times call for desperate writing surfaces. Away I went on a draft called, “I Find Myself Without Paper, Holding a Book I’m Afraid to Read.” The draft is all about the fear that someone else has already written my book. It ends:
What worries me is, whoever
wrote it, what if they forgot
the most important part,
which is the pre-dawn moment adorned
with stars and my mother’s hand
pressed to her throat. Translation: Goodbye.
I’m not saying it’s ready for prime time. But I will say this: you never know where a draft is lurking. Also, once I wrote through the fear, I started reading the book and immediately understood that (a). this is not my book, and (b). this book will help me think about my work in new ways. No fear, poets, no fear!
the men who became streetnames And about Steam Laundry, I’m on page 45 and I love it so far. I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about this book soon. For now, though, here’s the opening poem. I love how it looks at a town through the eyes of its founders.
**
River Town
The men who became street names
meet in a saloon in the afterlife.
They raise glasses, clink. Whiskey spills over the lip
on onto their dirty fingers. They smile
and nod, bob their heads in the only agreement
they’ve ever all shared:
it’s a pleasure to see the roads they cut
through stands of willow paved.
Whether they’re in heaven, surrounded by dance hall girls,
straps falling over shoulders,
or they’re in hell, sweating in starched paper collars,
bones aching with regret, they’re still with us,
perched on poles, peeking out between
the loops and columns of the letters on their names.
The two brothers-in-law who intersect
at the library and the Korean restaurant
watch a man jaywalk, wondering if he ever sold out a partner,
or brought a bank to ruins.
The bank president looks down from his corner
onto run-down apartments.
On Saturday nights, cruiser lights reflect off him,
as men in handcuffs shuffle through the winter’s first snow.
The rent collector snakes from First to Third, disappearing
before Fifth. On that street, everyone locks their doors.
When a boy jumps his bike over a curb, and looks up,
he thinks he hears faint applause.
And the woman signaling left on Isabelle feels an inescapable
longing as the tick of the turn signal counts out
her heartbeats, as if she had to sneak out of town
in the middle of winter in a sled, hands clasped in a wolf fur muff.
All of them wish they could climb back down, muddy
their feet on the riverbank, but the afterlife, if anything,
is green and reflective, and perfectly still,
unlike the river, which so long after they bottomed out,
is still going in the same brown direction.
– by Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, in her book Steam Laundry
**
Reader that’s it for this week’s round up. I think it’s plenty. In fact, I suddenly have this feeling that I talk too much. Have a wonderful weekend. I hope you have some time to read something you really love. As for me….. I’ll be, um, packing.
