So this is the end...

...and now it's time to say, "Goodbye."

It's over, my friends. The work is finally finished and the readings are now all over.

We made it.

We're done.

Well, I am at least. Handing in these final portfolios is my last endeavor as a student of The College of New Jersey. It's been  a fun ride and I am more than glad to have ended it with the classes that I did.

I would also like to thank Karen Russell for kindly coming to read on my birthday, which was also my last day of classes. Couldn't have been better.

And actually, I was the one who purchased the wolf figures for Karen Russell. She's my kind of lady, and her reading was a delight. She also took questions with poise, even when we got down to business with her. I take pride in my questioning, as well as the follow-up I was able to squeak in.

I do hope that, in my writing future, she and I may meet again...

and that you and I will, too.

Bye now.

This is the part I played.

Within our Writing Communities Public Relations Group, I was the "Coordinator."

COORDINATOR

Preface:
The origin of the Coordinator position arose from the initial thought that Administrator position needed to be split, as there was an excess of responsibility placed on that one person. Following that plan, the Coordinator will take on the more menial work; organizing the archive, keeping the minutes, group checklists, etc.

As time progressed and the responsibilities of the other group members took on minds of their own, the tasks of the Coordinator Position grew as well.

The Archive

The archive is an organized portfolio presenting all of the projects (teasers, excerpts, posters, etc.) that the P.R. Group has put together over the course of the semester. The Coordinator will need to collect and keep track of all the paperwork as it is put out (according to the calendar) to ensure a complete archive.

The Minutes

Keeping the minutes may seem tedious, but whether you like it or not, the weeks do fly by and it is easy to let some of the details fall through the cracks if there is not a record of what is supposed to be happening and when. Meeting times and lengths may vary, but as long as the Coordinator can keep a basic Task List or Group Member Updates under control, everything will be peachy.

Calendars

A new facet added along with the new position, providing a tangible calendar for the entire group that can be used at the first meeting for each writer was quite a success. Sitting down with everyone, physically marking the completion dates of each task became a necessary reality check as to how much prep time was actually available for each event.
So:

Blank Calendars + Group Members Discussing and Marking = Good Time Management

Ordering the Books

This step seems self explanatory, but it’s important. Order the books, and double, NO, triple check that the bookstore has them on time.

The “Lackey” Effect

Being available whenever possible to all of the group members is probably the most important task of the Coordinator. This position is suited well for someone who lives off campus (thus, is not as available for as many on-campus duties), as many of the tasks are more organizational or errand-based. Offering help, especially to the design group with their overabundance of responsibilities, is the MAJOR DUTY of the Coordinator. Which means:
 * Always help with distributing teasers, excerpts, posters, etc.
 * Help with assembling the mementos.
 * Help to “beef” up the blogs, event invites, and Facebook pages.
 * Offer to run errands and/or pick up necessities for the events.
 * Be prepared to assist with all set up and clean up at the events.
 * Bake, Bake, Bake, Bake, Bake, Bake, Bake!

When I don't write like myself...

Who am I writing like?

Sunday School Agnostic
by Rachel Pinkstone


Her star shines like an emblem of certainty against her neck.
It rests in the hollow, six points of direction, not the five I place on top of the tree.

And that is the only place I put it. There’s no place in me for that.

Her star comes with a purpose and a plan; not just a religion, but a life.
While I was pulled from the womb and immersed- cold, wet, clean of my sins,
she was born into a warm cocoon of faith, family and tradition;
a chrysalis that will house her until the day she dies.
Her unmarked body will be buried in the family plot.

I had planned to be spread against the wind--blown far away.

 I pass the synagogue on my afternoon run; the song and the prayers rise out against the murmur of traffic. It hurts to hear the passion and the practice of their tune, 
but I can’t help myself from listening—there’s no song I hear for me.
They say the covenant was made between God and Abraham, that Moses had given them books; that each life has a place and a part in the song.

I can barely recall the last time I even bowed my head to pray.

I wisecrack about the opiate of the masses,
but I’m still just waiting for the drug.

Oh, Lorin, you shouldn't have!

Hey Afternoon New York City Trippers:

Here's what Lorin had to say:

"Dear Rachel, Jess & Co.,

The pleasure was all mine. I'm sorry to been so disorganized, and to have blathered on, and to have so little to offer in the way of practical encouragement. On such a happy day, too! In any case, feel free to get in touch. I'd be happy to meet with any or all again.

Lorin"

This lady seems quite swell!

RACHEL ZUCKER

Rachel Zucker was born in New York City in 1971 and raised in the landscape of Greenwich Village when not traveling around the world with her parents on Wolkstein's folktale-collecting trips (her mother was a folk-story teller and her father, a novelist). After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in Psychology, Zucker attended the University of Iowa where she received her M.F.A in poetry. Zucker has taught at Yale, NYU and Makor. From 2005-2007 she was the poet-in-residence at Fordham University where she taught writing and literature classes to undergraduate and graduate students.

Her works include four books:
Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections, (with Arielle Greenberg). 2008
The Bad Wife Handbook, 2007
The Last Clear Narrative, 2004
Eating in the Underworld, 2003
A Chapbook:
Annunciation, 2002
Contributions to several anthologies of both poetry and prose:
Not for Mothers Only, 2007
Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, 2007
Legitimate Dangers, 2006
Poetry 30: Thirty-Something Thirty-Something American Poets, 2005
Isn’t It Romantic, 2004
The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, 2004
Best American Poetry 2001
About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope, 2006
(Not to mention a laundry list of journals to which she has contributed.)
She is currently working on her fourth collection of poems, Museum of Accidents, which will be published by Wave Books in 2009, and a novel for which she provides little information.
_______________________________________________________________________
REVIEWS
"Zucker has the confessionalist's knack for turning personal and difficult into universal and transcendent, and the experimentalist's gift for fearless, associative play. The combination is unsettling and groundbreaking: a vitally necessary book for our age." 
-Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century
"The poems in The Last Clear Narrative find a path to the unspeakable. By way of a fractured narrative, Rachel Zucker painstakingly documents death and birth, taking us deep into the experiences of that 'stubborn body.' The Last Clear Narrative seeks, and finds, a remarkable language the body can speak." -Elisabeth Frost, author of The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry 
THE MOON HAS A REPUTATION
FOR BEING FICKLE by Rachel Zucker

I read the instructions twice and pee on my hand by mistake.
I wait.
I try again and then, in the 2 minutes 15 seconds it takes to get the first response
I watch Ponch deliver a baby in a trailer the CHiPs pulled over for speeding.
The woman's screaming.
Ponch pours water from a canteen over his hands and kneels between her legs.
Thirty-five seconds later he emerges from the trailer, pulls on black leather
riding gloves, there's no blood, and
one pink bar
on the plastic view screen.

I think I may have been Channeling Stewey Griffin.

Carpet
by Rachel Pinkstone

I can see it in front of me: yellow and mocking. I don’t remember leaving it there.
But it’s there.
The carpet itches my palms, however, it’s much better than the kitchen: cold and tiled. 
Where is that duck?

Yes, there it is in front of me. Maybe if I rock to the left—no—right. Where is she now?
This time I truly need her.

I don’t remember if she prefers mother or mommy. Mama, get off the phone with Sue.
That duck, further still, in front of me.
No matter where I lurch I only move backwards, just a wiggle with my pampered tush.
Now what it I was looking for?

There he is: orange bill and yellow plumage. Why must you tease from across the room?
Don’t mock me, Duck! 
Mama! MAMA! Can’t you see the 
duck and I belong together?

Thank you very much, Lorin Stein.

So after our wayward trip to New York on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, it was my job to thank the dear editor, Lorin Stein, from Farrar, Straus & Giroux:

"Dear Lorin Stein, 

Thank you for taking the time to discuss the “ins and outs” of the publishing business with our eager group of upstarts this past Wednesday. When recalling the experience with the other members of the assemblage, it was noted that we all took away a great deal of information and a stronger sense of the reality of both the publishing and writing world.

I, personally, appreciated that you took so much time to acquaint us with your newest project, Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, as well as the effort and pride that you take in all of your endeavors. I can guarantee you that each of us thoroughly enjoyed your company as well and your expertise in the area of writing communities. 

We hope to see such integrity in our own work and possibly another chance in the future to take up a little more of your time. Again, thank you for your consideration. 

Sincerely, 


Rachel Pinkstone and Jess Row’s Writing Communities members."

Well, Rachel, how about after the 70's?

Now, let's take a moment and ponder my influences who have received poetry awards post-2000:

Winner of The Salt Hill Poetry Award and The Barrow Street Poetry Prize (2000):
Rachel Zucker

Winners of The Walt Whitman Award:
(2006) Anne Pierson Wiese- Floating City
 (2007) Sally Van Doren- Sex and Noon Taxes 
 
 Winners of The Wallace Stevens Award:
 (2005) Gerald Stern

Winners of The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize:
(2006) Eleanor Lerman- Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds
 

Jordan asked me to write a poem about Christmas.

Up on the Rooftop.

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed. 
The halls, again decked in lights and temporal keepsakes; 
however, the Precious Moments nativity still claimed a 
Holy place above the TV. “What do you mean, you don’t believe?” 
Tearfully, she remembered the day she lost her St. Nick: 
half eaten cookies, empty bottle, drunken grandpa and the living room 
floor smelling of whiskey and pine needles. Last year he’d forgotten my
 chessboard. Before that, Michelle’s baby doll that could pee. 
“He’s just not the man I’d thought he would be.”

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed; 
however, I slept on the couch anyway. It wasn’t the clicking of
hooves that woke me, or the pleasant resonance of a laugh. No, 
it was the sensation of being lifted, or shaken – an impression I’m
not likely to forget. “So you think you can just forget about me, eh?” 
His breath reeked of venison and mulled cider. Sausage-link fingers dug
 beneath each of my armpits – he was keeping me far from the ground.
“Well, son, here’s some proof -- you know Santa won’t lie.” 
I simply couldn’t wait for a special surprise.

This year, I let her know that I no longer believed
in myself or the people who love me. When the jolly man placed me back on my
feet, he turned me around; I closed my eyes with delight. The wooden floor slightly 
moaned under the shift of his weight, a quick motion I could barely perceive. He bent me over his knee, pulled at my skivvies and slapped my ass with his big ham of a hand. “This. Is what. It means. To believe.” Each line accompanied by a matching 
flat-palm blow. Then a chuckle resounded. Jingle bells chimed.
 After looking up, he was gone.
Looking back now, I was wrong.

Joshua Beckman

JOSHUA BECKMAN

This loverly Thursday afternoon, Joshua Beckman gave a hypnotic reading in the TCNJ Library Auditorium. He performed for us three poems from Your Time Has Come, which was over in a matter of moments as the pieces are so short. It was his reading from Shake that was particularly interesting. He read through the entire first section of Shake, without skipping a poem or a beat. His pace and speech made each of the poems hypnotically ryhthmic, rocking back and forth or side to side as he spoke. While he read, certain themes became obviously important: the repetition, the sound choices, hands, wanting.

His work makes the ordinary and unoticeable into something extraordinary and important. Then many of his poems simply mock this importance. His work mocks modesty in its own humility. His words are seemingly about learning. The constant need to keep learning and moving. Wanting.

After the reading, he answered the questions just as we all thought he would: like a Rock Star.

He claimed that he spends years making the decisions concerning his collections. Nothing is done spur of the moment, and most of his work truly ends up on the cutting room floor. And when asked if being an editor has helped his work he said, " Probably not. It may hurt it, though!"

He was a good man, Charlie Brown. He enjoyed a cookie or two and made sure to sign every book we through at him.

That'll do pig.

On my Fall Break Vacation, I went to Witch Country!

1692

by Rachel Pinkstone

The room, stuffy and dated, filled
quickly with innocents and perspiration.
The voice behind us buzzed below within
our seats, charges vicious with intent.

The lights, dramatic, accusing, and timed,
poked like God’s angry finger at the damned.
The devil’s face flashed gruesome and waxen,
ready to take his heathens below.

They played loudly her voice as she cried 
out the lord’s prayers, “You are with the Devil,
now! The black man is at your back!”

Mr. Corey under boulders, Lady Nurse
dying behind bars, and the nudging
reminder to visit the gift shop. Kitchen-
witches and snow globes on sale.

We watch to learn tolerance.
We watch to avoid persecution.
We watched to receive the free Magick Wand.

Since this is a poetry kind of semester...

Here is a short moment listing my poetic influences pre- 1970:

1) Walt Whitman, of course- Leavse of Grass
2) Allen Ginsberg- Kaddish and Other Poems (1958-1960)
3) Marianne Moore- Collected Poems (1967)
4) Adrienne Rich- The Fact of a Doorframe (Poems 1950-1984), Leaflets (1965-68)
5) Elizabeth Bishop- The Complete Poems (1927-1979)
6) Gary Snyder- Back Country (1968), Regarding Wave (1869)

Fin.

Sometimes don't you just want a hot cup of Haiku?

“Fall(ing)”

Up high in the sill
the man in the pin-striped suit
sways calm in the breeze.


“Rent”

She opens them one
by one. Lays them on the desk.
He will never come.


“Five”

Struggling with words,
this language is new for him.
Remember he is young.


“Dow”

Money, paper, pens.
If it falls again, will we?
Try not to invest.


“Stephen-cat”

I reflect the light
on the floor. He likes to play
with his own shadow.

This one, I plan to fight for...

CHRISTINE SCHUTT

Christine Schutt is a novelist and short story writer who received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then, later, her MFA from Colombia University. Currently, Schutt lives in New York City where she is an English teacher at the Nightengale-Bamford School, an all girl prep-school. I suppose I find this so interesting because most of us only get to study under our writing idols once we've already labored through High School and most of college, but not these girls, OH NO, they get it that luxury even before they get their lisences. 

Schutt is also the senior editor of the annual literary periodical published by Diane Williams, NOON.

Her published works include:

Nightwork (1996)

Florida (2004)

A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer (2005)

All Souls (2008)

Schutt is a Pushcart and O'Henry Prize winning author and was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction, and Nightwork, a collection of  short stories was chosen by poet John Ashbery as the best book of 1996 for the Times Literary Supplement. Her writing is raw, inviting and familiar, the kind of writing where you want to look away because it has gotten to you from within, but when you try to put it down, you simply cannot. You just won't.

"Another boy, another car, she used to let him feel her up just so long as she could sleep. 'The night shift,' she said to her father, 'is such a bitch. You're always tired. I can't talk,' she said, and she kissed her father. She opened her mouth to him and worried her hand inside his coat and felt the warm damp of his shirt, the hard back and heat of her father." ~You Drive

REVIEWS:

"In the opening piece, 'You Drive,' a grown daughter and her father cross the boundaries of any usual parent-child relationship as they sit in a car, sharing secrets, kissing and memorizing the smell and texture of one another's skin."

~Kirkus Reviews

"Shor through with [Virginia] Woolf's lyrical, restless spirit...A bold, sharp story about teenage girls, class and illness, about those moments when we achieve the miracle of human condition--and those when we don't."

~Maud Casey, New York Times Book Review

"Schutt's writing is sharp as ever, with a keen eye for life's everyday grotesqueries...Schutt continues to capture the messiness and confusions particular to adolescence, but in All Souls, new terrain refreshes this writer's astringent voice."

~Christopher Schmidt, Time Out New York

Exercising my Creativity?

“79”
by Rachel Pinkstone

Prologue
The door, unusually open, gushed a flood of welcoming light 
no more inviting than the torrent of expectation behind it. Nine months 
since this threshold was passed last. Nine months of promises made
 into a solid ball of guilt, hard against my stomach. The doorbell 
had the same old chime, that tune we all know, but can’t recollect.  
Her eyes (wrinkled by irritation and our hesitance to walk right in) met 
each our matching set of baby blues. That look said so many things: 
surprise, relief, anger, maybe joy.

Chapter One 
How’syourmother?Whendidyouchangeyourhair?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Whendidyouloseallthatweight?Haveyougottenarealjobyet?Isthereamaninyourlife?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Whenwillyoubringusgrandkids?Whyhaven’tyoucalled?WillweseeyouatThanksgiving?HowaboutChristmas?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?Don’twealwaysseeyouatChristmas?Didyouthinkwe’dforgetyourbirthday?Didweknowyouwerecomingthistime?

Chapters Two through Twelve
The clink and tap of utensils, fork against plate, metal vs. porcelain,
was deafening. Aunt ---‘s new crown, third molar in back, twice now replaced, 
made audible effort to bite. Uncle --- gargled his mashed potatoes, 
coughed after a swallow. We watched him for struggle; returned to our meal. 
Grandpa maneuvered his food; turkey slid into place, biscuit rumbled off the plate, 
green beans squelched under the force. I only stirred my drink, repeatedly, 
the ice played like bells. A forty-minute orchestration instrumented, 
entirely, by of our digestion.

Chapter Thirteen

Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Wewon’tbearoundforever,sometimesIforgetmymedication,Muslimsmovedinacrossthestreet,Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Ihavetopinchtherosebushbeforethefirstfrost,Rememberwhenweboughtyouthatbike?Promisemeyou’llvisitmore,Didyouseemetakethecolaseorthexanax?Rememberthatweloveyou,Promisemeyou’llvisitmore.

Epilogue
The door closed, unusually, behind us. 

The Hermit: Gary Lutz

Gary Lutz
Gary Lutz is a fiction writer and a poet who has had pieces published in The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, New York Tyrant, The Quarterly, Conjunctions, Unsaid, Fence, StoryQuarterly, Slate Magazine, , Noon, The Apocalypse Reader PP/FF: An Anthology, The Random House Treasury of Light Verse and several others that I am sure I have forgotten. Besides writing, Gary Lutz fills his time as a Professor of Composition and English at the University of Pittsburgh at Greenburg.
Gary Lutz has a writing style the sounds, more often than not, that you are right inside the mind of the characters, analyzing not only the world around them, but all the internal nonsense we tend to forget we are thinking, making us realize how similarly odd we all are.

Lutz has a few collections published, including:

Stories in the Worst Way (1996, republished in 2002)
I Looked Alive (2003)
Partial List of People to Bleach (chapbook, 2007)


 “Then I did a dumb thing. I moved into an apartment house and grew concerned that the person living in the unit above mine was following me, upstairs, from room to room. For much of the day, my life would be down to just this one concern. I would walk from the living room to the bedroom, or from the kitchen to the bathroom--I had just those four rooms, in that order--and there this person would be, right overhead, the footfalls clumpy but companionate, solicitous . . . Sooner or later it dawned on me that this person had divined how things were laid out in my rooms . . .” ~ “Devotions,” Stories in the Worst Way 
“Did I ever worry about the smell when I was passing out handouts in class? Because all I did was pass out handouts and read them out loud, then collect them and dismiss the class. None of it would be on the test. There were no tests—just papers. Not essays, themes, reviews, reports, compositions, critiques, research projects—but papers, sheets of paper, stapled together. I’d lightly pencil a grade in the upper right-hand corner, and that would be it—no comments or appraisals subjoined in authoritative swipes of a felt-tip pen. I made sure no telltale signs—spilled coffee, dog-ears, creases, crumples, crimps, fingerprint grime—would lead students to believe that their papers had ever been read. “~Slops,” Stories in the Worst Way

REVIEWS:
”His characters spend their time enduring the weight of everyday life, dwelling on the minutiae of their own neuroses. In a story titled “Slops,” a college professor with colitis maps out all the campus bathrooms in a small notebook. In another, a man passes out pamphlets and gives forty-five-minute presentations (with charts) in search of a prospective wife. Lutz labors at each meticulous sentence, word by word, to create a language of striking insight, peripheral emotions, and reinvented vocabulary.”
—Ross Simonini, The Believer
Gary Lutz is the best writer you've never heard of. To certain stylists, he's a kind of prose god. Lutz belongs to a category of sentence geniuses that includes Ben Marcus, Aleksandar Hemon, and David Foster Wallace. 
--Christopher Frizzelle, The Stranger

Influence driven Poetry.

"Superheroes"

by Rachel Pinkstone

He emptied his pockets to show
me what he was Worth.
A dirty Quarter from 1978, the year 
his mother was born.
Used tissues, slightly sticky, bloodied,
wadded into a ball.
A Rock, thought an arrowhead,
still enveloped in dirt.
A Note to the nurse, a claim
his dosage had changed.
A Spider-Man tattoo, temporary,
but perpetually his hero.

“I like Spider-Man too. Can’t say
I’m a fan of Mary-Jane.”
He eyed me first, amassed his wealth
and laughed. Turned away, then left 
the classroom, 
Smiling, coughing 
hard on the way out.

Call me Dreamer...

Mary Gaitskill

“It seemed to me that I was just writing about things that people deal with pretty regularly.  I mean, not everybody has a boss that spanks them for typing mistakes, but many people have experienced the cruelty of office politics…”

 ~Mary Gaitskill responding to her predilection for the “dark side.”

           It is Mary Gaitskill’s effortless ability to make her reader feel shamelessly excited and utterly uncomfortable with the honesty of her prose that has kept her in constant rotation with my favorite authors since the first time I opened Bad Behavior. For those of you who do not know, The 2002 film starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary, was based off a piece from that collection, and it provided little justice to the characters’ audacity and distance.
           A Kentucky native who has lived her life in myriad places, a good deal of which spent in New York City when it was an epicenter of the AIDS era, has published work in The Best American Short Stories (1993 and 2006), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998), The New Yorker, Esquire and Harper’s Magazine. She was also written several well-received novels and short story collections:
Bad Behavior (1988)
 Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991)
Because They Wanted To (1997)
Veronica (2005)
          Her bold writing style had led us to survey prostitutes turning tricks, strippers, abortion, lesbians, shut ins, and sadomasochists Her own salacious past of exploration may have even offered insight to her work, “Gaitskill herself seemed like a character from her own pages. She too was a downtown girl and a waif, someone who had cashed out her twenties on a series of sexual improvisations. She’d sold flowers in San Francisco as a teenage runaway and worked as a stripper and a call girl.” No matter how or why her characters developed, her strength lies in the honesty that she provides with writing these stories. She is unapologetic and inspirational to all writers who want to tell you that story that you’re afraid to say yourself.

“The lawyer was a short man with dark, shiny eyes and dense immobile shoulders. He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go.” “Secretary,” Bad Behavior.

“He turned the edge of one nostril over with his thumb and nervously stroked his nose hairs with one finger. He knew it was a nasty habit, but it soothed him. When Kitty was a little girl he would do it to make her laugh. ‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘do you think it’s time we played with the hairs in our nose?’ And she would giggle, holding her hands against her face, eyes sparkling over her knuckles.” “Tiny, Smiling Daddy,” Because They Wanted To.

 Yager, Carri Anne. “Mary Gaitskill: Critics Line up to Get Her Wrong.” College Crier Online.
Nussbaum, Emily. "Mary, Mary, Less Contrary," New York Magazine, Nov. 14, 2005 

Tracy K. Smith

TRACY K. SMITH

This afternoon, Tracy K. Smith gave a fantabulous reading down in the TCNJ Library Auditorium. The turn out was superb which can only mean that the PUBLIC RELATIONS GROUP did their job, top notch.

*wink wink*

(I have to represent for my people, obviously.)

She read a good assortment of her poetry, with special emphasis on Duende, which came to be expected as it is the more recent book. She then let us in on a couple pieces from her up and coming book (the date of its release as well as the expected title have completely escaped me) which was a real treat. The slight, distopian, otherworldly themes that she only slightly touched upon in Duende, are a main focus in her new work. The pieces gave way to wit and humor as well as peaceful beauty and scene. She read with grace and comfort infront of the crowd, which led me to believe she may have some theatre background; however, when asked, she denied anything of the sort. Just natural ability!

After the reading, she was superbly receptive to the questioning, especially when we got down to the hard ones, digging into her nitty-gritty detail. Even when a random crowd member asked her what "her body's question" was, she handled with with a giggle and a joke.

Then rest of the event went on with only a slight hitch...the girl from the bookstore had LEFT!!!! I suppose she got bored and figured, "well, who would want to buy a book and get it signed now that Ms. Smith has read and we know just how great her work is?" I was ready to get fist'a'cuffs! So after I ran back to the bookstore and gave them a piece of my mind, I returned with the books and a man to sell them.

At the end of the day, I think we were all rather pleased.

So how would you write this?

I suppose I would erase it:

And here was the recipe:

"Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of piece.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstractions. "~ Ezra Pound

The Stretch from California: Joe Wenderoth

  

Joe Wenderoth.
        It is really only right to begin a discussion of Joe Wenderoth with a quote from Letters to Wendy’s. When I was first introduced to those work, I had never seen anything quite like it, and with each new reading I find something new and inconceivable to explore.

“February 8, 1997
Wendy will you not even poke me? Not even a slow poke? I wonder why you treat me so. Am I a wooden board? Am I to be thought of as a simple wooden board? Come on, just give me a slow poke. I’m not a wooden board, honey. Come on, just poke me like you used to. Just a slow poke. Look into my eyes—are these the eyes of a wooden board?” ~Letters to Wendy’s.
 
         Wenderoth hails originally from Baltimore Maryland and is currently an Associate Professor of English and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of California. (I site him with the hope that he has family still living in Maryland, and he could possibly use a trip to TCNJ as an excuse to visit family on this coast as well!)

Wenderoth has made a name for himself in many anthologies and has been called “one of the ten best writers under 35.”
 
          Author and literary critic, Calvin Bedient claims that “Joe Wenderoth's brave new poetic talent is like nothing so much as a live wire writing its own epitaph in sparks. [His poems] throb brilliantly with a sense of the 'too much.' . . . But in Wenderoth's case the too much is the too little or the too ordinary-a very remarkable discovery to have made so late in the history of poetry. Philip Larkin and a few American poets have approached it, but Wenderoth's instrument is sharper than theirs; he makes quick cuts in the meat of the ordinary, which is the meat of the impossible."
Besides my own personal fascination, Letters to Wendy’s (2000), Wenderoth has published several other works:
Disfortune (1995)
It Is If I Speak (2000)
The Holy Spirit: Essays Written for John Ashcroft’s Secret Self (2005)
No Real Light (2007)

An interesting tidbit: In 2007, Wenderoth performed in collaboration with Gibby Haynes (butthole surfers) in Brooklyn at the Issue Project Room.



“April 19, 1997

It is rare for a baby to be so bad that it is sentenced to be hanged, and even rarer for the sentence to be carried out, and yet, when a baby is hung, what a pleasant surprise it is for the passersby.” ~Letters to Wendy’s.

*Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zTwb-F7Mtc)

The Gibby Haynes sessions are a litle muttled on youtube, the music is a little low (but the one with the glasses is Gibby) and the blonde man reading, looking like he came in after a night on the street,  is Wenderoth.

*Here, I am including another video by Joe Wenderoth, from a collaboration he has made with several artists, including Gibby Haynes, where they are known as the House Crackers in their Jame sessions.*

"She asked me if I liked Tattoos..."

This is my second workshop poem, written in response to an ill-informed poem about tattoos.

[Untitled]


The pen pierced into my soil, planting 
her favorite flower.
“African Violets,”
 I demanded.

They tried to sell me just a rose.

My blood pooled upon the petals; these 
flowers had no thorns. The air
filled with bees.
Stingers. Buzzing 
down into my bones.

When the flowers fully blossomed, 
 fruits of his labor meticulously 
drawn: She criticized my choices 
but kissed me, 
sweetly,
for the blooms.

Visit this site at your own cost...

...because Erasures are addicting.

When we were Mexican, revised. by Rachel Pinkstone

*Original Text: Bohemian San Francisco by Clarence E. Edwords

http://www.wavepoetry.com/erasures/

Just keep reading, Rachel...just keep reading...

"Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking and when she passes, each one she passes goes, "A-a-ah." -  "Girl from Ipanema" -English lyrics written by Norman Gimbel.

D.A. POWELL

If you aren't caught off guard by the obvious need to turn your book sideways in order to take part in some of D.A. Powell's poetry, his use of catchy, and often ironic pop songs will definitely give you a little kick in the pants.

I seem to be drawn most passionately to the poets who are hiding personal pain(of the speaker) or experience right out in the open. Powell's poem, "[tall and thin and young and lovely the michael with kaposi's sarcoma goes walking]" uses a play on this popular song about a beautiful young woman to heighten the power and beauty of living with disease.  The Bossa Nova song, fits perfectly, crooning about a landscape so different from the one provided in the poem; however, the speaker seems to walk with content along the cold beach displaying the battle scars of his disease and little power he still holds in his "final stages." The power of the song, and the movement, and the hope.

Wow. That felt deep.

Anywho, it's D.A. Powell's ability to mold the music that keeps together the frail world that the characters of his poems live in, with the harsh words of the reality that they exist in. 

Reflections on the First Week, pt. 2.

"You know the way Jesus/ rips open his shirt/to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny"

NICK FLYNN 

Massachusetts born with a stint at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a graduate degree from NYU, he writes in all the right publications and when he isn't teaching at the University of Houston he is "elsewhere."

The above quote does not come from the two poems that drew me to Nick Flynn, but, boy oh boy, it show is one sentence how this poet is able to turn you completely around with the use of one word. Specifically: thorny.

It is, in fact, the two poems entitled "Cartoon Physics, part 1" and "Cartoon Physics, part 2" that caught me.

Contemplating the perceptions of real life pain and atrocities through the eyes and psychological abilities of children, he provides irony, sympathy and playful lyricism.

Pardon me for this forthcoming long quote, but I feel this is a more than appropriate example:

"Years ago, alone in her room, my mother cut/hole in the air/& vanished into it. The report hung &/deafened, closely by an over-/whelming silence, a ringing/in the ears. Today I take a piece of chalk/& sketch a door in a wall. By the rules/of cartoon physics on I can open this door."

These "rules of cartoon physics" are used as an insightful tool in the speaker's specific perception of the loss of his mother.  The story telling is built around childish ideology, but the  first line ends with cold facts: "my mother cut."

The poem about Jesus is easier to consider with humor as well as the underlying confusion/fear, but the innocence of the cartoon physics saturated in the distance of the speaker intrigued me far more than the thorny Lord.

First reading it, now writing it?

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” ~Percy Bysshe Shelley  

Write a poem that lifts the veil and makes the familiar unfamiliar. 

I do believe this Poetry workshop will be a definite stretch for my creative abilities, as Poetry is not exactly...my bag. Don't get me wrong, as I have mentioned, I happily provide feeble attempts at deciphering contemporary poetry and the grand array of new writers popping up like delectable little mushrooms. Unfortunately, when the pen is put in my hand and I am asked to create in this genre, I often revert back to kindergarten tactics, with childish rhyme schemes and silly imagery.

More often than not, I revert to being funny...because that's what I do best.

All right, then. Here goes. Lifting the veil:

[“Half past the hound’s leg”]
Rachel Pinkstone


Half past the hound’s leg,
noble purpose is spoiled 
by the day’s early waste.

August heat swells and
puckers; still, the air is too moist
for a spark.

Respect and function pass by
these proud pillars rounding 
every corner, alongside power-
walkers and bichons.

That is, until metal clangs and 
sinks cold between the joints, 
prying apart the Johnnie
on Second and Chester.

And, finally, when the pressure
is released and fluid rushes
forward, children squeal with 
delight and relief.

Originally titled, "For the love a Hydrant," I decided to leave and air of mystery in the first few stanzas as this is the only arena where the poem is accompanied by a visual.

Reflections on the first week.

Let's talk about Poetry. Let's talk about Poets. Let's talk about abstracts, obliquity and unexplained line breaks. Let's talk about things I don't understand, but have a burning passion to talk about with authority and delight.

JOSHUA BECKMAN 

I will have you know, it is not simply because he was positioned at the beginning of the alphabet and thus plopped in front of me from the start of Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century that I chose Joshua Beckman as the first poet to indulge. There were a few names and pieces I perused first, but his cut and dry, often comedic, thought-provokers struck me with something special.

However, before I even tackles his use of language, I would like to make note of something in his "blurb." With each poet I encountered, I made a point to labor through their two to three paragraph biographical excerpts. This process put in me a trance of university patterns: Swell undergrad, Super Post-grad, and presumed elite writer's workshop or doctorate. Soon enough, I was beginning to believe that all these poets have ever done was attend school. Beckman, however, states happily his stint at Hampshire College and then his the honest life and writing experience that has followed. I am not saying, that having a PhD in English Literature and teaching Creative Writing in a Princeton MFA program is small peanuts, but it was slightly refreshing to hear that not all poets have to fit the mold.

Ok, here we are: ["I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant..."]

"Yeah. I go/running in, all ready to show everyone the/karate chop of love. And that girl named Katie./A Barrel of Chicken."

Upon three reading of the same poem, I feel that his work really needs to just be taken in, laughed at, taken in again, and then the reader must reach back into his memory and find the moment where he sat at a party, beer in hand, contemplating the actions of his baffling "friends" and slowly letting reality catch up to him, right before he takes another swig.

The poem reads well with humor. Beckman and his audience give a laugh with the reading. As the is in the present tense and written entirely in short, noun-ridden sentences, it's seems urgent and honest, like the reader is part of the thought-process of the speaker. The fact that there is little "sense" or moral provided by the poem gives it that feeling of unstable acceptance. It's as if we, the readers, are at the birthday party, we may be sitting next to that girl Katie, and as we reach in for the next pieces of fried chicken before he performs the "Karate chop of love."

A play of stupidity? Nostalgic musing? Commentary on youth and booze and drugs and balls and girls? A poetic play of language? Purpose or poetry? Just plain fun?

I don't know, but I am totally into it.

It Begins...

 

[The New one talks like me—She is for ever rid] by Rachel Pinkstone

*Original Text: A Bundle of Letters by Henry James

My work here begins with a piece of found poetry, if you will, in order to ease the reader into the creative, instructive and ridiculous nature that I plan to provide.