MODERN ROMANCE

Review of Jennifer Gooch Hummer's Girl Unmoored up at The Nervous Breakdown, and Anais Mitchell

2012-02-24T09:20:00.001-08:00

So far today, I have watched 3 hours of Will & Grace, danced in my underwear, and made two pots of coffee. A friend is coming over and we are going to eat and talk and I will not do my homework. This is quite alright. Tomorrow, I will cross the state of Massachusetts for a boy, or a man, to see a show. My mother is driving. She is too good to me.

My review of Jennifer Gooch Hummer's Girl Unmoored is up at The Nervous Breakdown. I've gotten a bit discouraged the past week or so, because the review has had to go through a few rounds of revisions, and it was my first experience of the sort. How many young writers have the opportunity to collaborate with an editor to make their work the greatest it can be? Brad Listi is superhuman.
Pre-order Jennifer's book. I loved it. I more than loved it, and I more than love her.

Anais Mitchell surpassed my expectation. I will make music for the rest of my life, as long as I have fingers to move and muscles to move them with. I used to give concerts in my bedroom to hypothetical audiences, banter on my pretend stage and sing songs I was too young to understand. My family would interrupt me, I would cry, and continue. I still do this.
I've never wanted to be a touring musician, not for a few years. The constant travel, each road followed by another, exhausts me to even think of it. I wouldn't want to keep playing the same dozen songs every night for weeks on end. The hugs and handshaking after the shows would more than make up for it, the new faces and places. If that happens, it will happen, but I'm not holding out for it.
What I'm trying to say is that Anais Mitchell inspired me. I broke a guitar string this morning, trying to tune it. I have melodies that circle my head and I coax them out, getting them down on paper, singing them aloud. I will always write. I'll likely always sing. I can't imagine not playing the piano. I can't imagine not hearing music, not feeling it, or having one without the other. I couldn't handle the lights.
I don't have much else to say about it. After you pre-order Jennifer's book, buy Anais' new record. Go outside.

Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus, by Deborah Jiang Stein

2012-02-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

I'm on vacation. I've spent the past few days with a few different friends and I'm feeling relaxed. The musical at my high school opens two weeks from tomorrow, so the two weeks following this one, once I'm back in school, are going to especially frantic and exhausting, which I wasn't sure could happen. After, though, the school year will be nearly over, and I'll be able to focus on studying and actually doing well. And by studying and actually doing well, I mean writing.
I'm halfway through the fifth season of 30 Rock. I'm one chapter into A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. The review I wrote for Jennifer Gooch Hummer's Girl Unmoored will be up at The Nervous Breakdown fairly soon. I should also be finishing The Kite Runner for English, but that may have to wait until Sunday night at 9:30 PM. I'm actually a very good student, friends. My sense of humor gets in the way.
Anais Mitchell is playing Club Passim in Cambridge tomorrow night, and my mom and I are going. Her new record is streaming at Paste. The new Perfume Genius record is even better than Learning. There are half a dozen book signings in March I want to go to, but I've forced myself to pick one, and I've chosen Margot Livesey. I have a review copy of her new book and it is large and heavy and I can already feel the brilliance.

Deborah Jiang Stein was born in a women’s correctional facility, and adopted one year later. Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus follows her from childhood through adolescence, to adulthood, the present. It provides a brief look into the world of a woman who fought not only the system, but the people who cared for her, when in reality, she was merely fighting herself, her origins, her identity. Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus is a unique memoir, the true story of Deborah’s self-discovery, and the road that led her there.

An angry child, Deborah craved love, but refused to accept intimacy. Even after learning at the age of twelve where she had been born, she couldn't speak of it for years, unable to accept it, or even entirely realize it. A rebellious child, Deborah challenged all around her, naturally pushing boundaries and testing limits, exceeding them. She felt an energy, an anger, she couldn’t identify, or was too young to. She spent a significant amount of time alone, asking herself the questions any adopted child asks. Where were her birth parents? Why didn’t she look like the rest of her family, or anyone else she met? Deborah was multiracial in a Caucasian America, and wasn’t sure for much of her life which races she could file herself under. She found trouble for herself, created it, not believing she deserved anything but.

Barely out of high school, Deborah dove into the drug trafficking and addiction. She was involved in a string of unfulfilling relationships, both romantic and otherwise. She fled from one place to another, crossing any and all borders, smuggling drugs. Deborah believed she belonged in prison, that those women were her true family. When in danger, though, Deborah would find herself exhausted and afraid. In one chapter, Deborah is pulled over by two California Highway Patrolmen, her car filled with drugs. She is overcome by not only adrenaline, but also fear, of getting caught, of not being good enough to get away. As a child, she challenged her parents, her teachers. As an adult, she challenged fate. Deep in her subconscious, Deborah knew she was greater than her origins, meant to do better things, but continued her life of organized crime nonetheless.

Over a decade later, a series of events lead Deborah to rethink her life and actions, her future. She went into recovery, first temporarily, then permanently. Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus is a true story, a memoir unlike any other. Deborah finally discovered her birth mother, her birth family, her racial makeup. She grew closer to her adoptive family, the life they gave her that she never allowed herself to appreciate. She began writing, visiting prisons all over the country, speaking, reflecting, evolving. Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus is about being a woman, but also about being comfortable with the idea that where you are going is more important than where you come from, the things you’ve done. Deborah forgives herself, a lifetime later.

The tutu is a metaphor, “for the power of paradox, the tension of opposites in this ride of life...how to turn a rough past into a gentle future.” (174) At around 180 pages, Stein's memoir moves quickly and ends too soon. Her writing is concise and assertive. The sole issue I had with Even Tough, though, was the writing, the tense. Stein wrote this memoir in present tense, which is underused and often avoided. The chapters detailing her childhood were written this way, which felt a bit strange, seeing they were flashbacks, meditations on the events that occurred. I became used to it, though, before the book’s finish. Somehow, Deborah made it work.

There is no doubt this memoir will be successful. Memoirs are risky, seeing that they are published nearly as often as fiction now, if not more. The genre become a niche market and, though many are wonderful, others don’t have such luck. Deborah Jiang Stein will not need luck, not with a book like this. It seems there are at least a dozen memoirs about anything you could think of, but this story is Deborah’s entirely. Who better to tell it than the woman herself? She is a warrior.

Reviewing, writing, and listening

2012-02-11T06:13:00.000-08:00

In school, the first two Fridays of every month, we have "Advisory" periods. Last week, we had to write the classes we'd taken first semester and the ones we're taking this semester, though only electives had changed. There was space for us to fill in the grades we'd received, areas we felt we'd either excelled or missed the bar in. I wrote multiple times that I would like to study more. I considered writing that there are multiple bars to not reach and the school system or the country or the world is making it increasingly difficult to do so. Maybe that is the point.

Yesterday, we talked about credit. Most of the Advisories are separated by grade, so mine is comprised entirely of Juniors. I've sat with the same girl nearly every time since my Freshman year, but I talk more now. Our Advisor told us about credit and debit and loans and mortgages and the purpose of the entire thing was to scare all of us into being frugal and never making a single negative decision, which is both impossible and unnecessary. The fear tactic worked, but also disappointed me. We all have debit cards. I use mine to buy concert tickets and coffee.

I went back to school yesterday. People hugged me and asked how I was doing. My Choir director said something really wonderful about me and I think I blushed the way I used to before I figured out how to turn that off. I have most of the work I need to make up, which is upsetting, because now I'll have to do it. My mom bought me a 6-pack of Post-It notes. I make a lot of lists and stick them to the wall above my laptop. One is the books I have to read and review, in the order I'd like to read and review them, with a rough timetable. Another is movies I want to see. There is also a Post-It note my nephew scribbled on one day while he was sitting in my lap. I would like to bring that with me wherever I end up.

I have two other Post-It notes that are below my computer, and they are the ones that led me to writing this. I'm working on reading a collection of poetry, and the review I write about the book is going to be published in a literary journal I really like. For now, both the book and the literary journal are to remain secret, but I'm beyond excited about this, and I can't wait to share it with you. I'm reading the book as a PDF file on my computer which I've saved to my Desktop. When I first started reading, I highlighted lines and words I wanted to remember or look up, but the formatting kept changing when I tried to save. Since then, I've been making a lot of bullet points, with arrows and page numbers and quotations. I considered only writing, "Since then, I've been making a lot of bullets," but I'm not that violent.

I've latched onto the idea that a review of mine is potentially going to be in print. I'm not as comfortable reviewing poetry, though, which another train of thought that's led me to writing this. I've reviewed poetry in the past, but I'm never very satisfied with what I come up with, which is why I'm grateful for the challenge. This interview with Helen Vendler has really inspired me. She says, "I write to explain things to myself." She says, "In each case...the poem was seen to spring out of the trial, struggle, relation of events...both contextualizing ways...and philosophically and literally contextualizing". To understand the context of that, you'll have to read the entire interview, which I highly suggest you do. There are multiple other things I'd like to quote from the rest of the interview, but I'll leave it at that.

I read mostly fiction. I write mostly fiction. Fiction is not as foreign to me as poetry, which is why I'm drawn to it, to both. Also, reviews I write for this blog are different than reviews I write for other places, The Nervous Breakdown being a suitable example. I'm much more spontaneous here. When reading something, anything, I keep a mental list of things I want to touch upon in the review I'll likely write after I finish. I don't proofread. I write what comes and I press "Publish" and I go on with my day. Writing for TNB, and now for this literary journal, I don't have the luxury of approaching reviewing this way. I can be spontaneous, but I should have some sort of roadmap, even a vague one (hence the Post-It notes). I have to proofread, because though I am still writing to comprehend and hopefully ignite discussion, there is a larger audience. It feels more legitimate; it is. More thought has to go into it. Part of me would like to approach everything in my life this way, with spontaneity but also purpose. I'm not going to proofread this, simply to spite myself.

Much of what I used to post here was like this, mostly aimless and wandering. I've only written 4 poems this year. Last year, I had a goal to write a poem for each of the 52 weeks, which I reached and passed. This year, I'm letting them come as they come, or don't. I have a different goal, but I'm afraid I'll curse it if I write too much about it. I'm trying to use less "I" and "you" in the poems I write. The angst remains, but I'd like to travel elsewhere.

I've also been thinking a lot about college. I registered for the SAT on Thursday. March, April, and May have each been assigned a different test. March will be the SAT, April the ACT, May the AP Bio exam and the SAT IIs. I know my GPA and my class rank, and I am unsatisfied with them, but I'm trying not to dwell on it. I dream of going to college somewhere distant, only reachable by Amtrax or road trip, but I've also dreamt of going to college somewhere familiar, reachable by MBTA or a more practical trip. My family is suburban, middle-class, average. My parents cannot afford to send me to a school that they'll have to take out a second mortgage for, and I wouldn't be comfortable with that even if they afford. I know even now that I cannot afford to take out loans I'll be paying off for the rest of my life. I have to be logical and reasonable and realistic. To rephrase, I have to be my father. I'll create a home wherever I decide to plant roots for the college years and onward. I'll have to choose between English and Psychology. I'll have to accept rejection and defeat and also pursue the possibility of it. Maybe I'll fail. Then again, maybe I won't. I like the idea of a PhD. That is a bar that, though pretty outlandish, is finally reachable.

Thank you for reading this. Here is music I've been listening to-

"Ghost," by Ingrid Michaelson

I don't like her new music much at all, but this is captivating.

Sharon Van Etten, La Blogotheque

I interviewed Sharon Van Etten once, for this blog. She is beautiful, and her music. This article is great, along with the video. I need to pour myself more coffee. It was supposed to snow today but I think it's only rain.

Interview with Jessica Keener (Night Swim)

2012-02-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

I am home from school. My mouth is swollen. It is 12:30 and I have not showered. I slept for much of the morning. There are very strong drugs I've been given to take as needed, but I am trying not to need them.
I have a few goals of things to get done while I'm home, but it is becoming increasingly apparent to me that this may not happen. I have an AP Biology lab report to begin and finish. I would like to write a book review. Maybe I will go back to sleep.
I met Jessica Keener through Caroline Leavitt. I reviewed her spectacular Night Swim for The Nervous Breakdown, and met her last month at the Brookline Booksmith. She's an overwhelmingly warm and welcoming person, and she has written a fantastic book. I hope you don't mind that I'm posting two interviews in a row. I'm reading, I promise.

1. At your signing in Brookline, you mentioned that a few parts of Night Swim are semi-autobiographical. How did your childhood influence the writing of this book? You also fought Aplastic Anemia, and won. How did that influence your writing as well?

Night Swim derives much of its inspiration from my upbringing. Like Sarah, the protagonist in my novel, I grew up in an affluent suburb of Boston. My family belonged to a country club and had black, live-in maids. I wanted to tap into my emotions from childhood and adolescence and reexamine the lifestyle that I experienced growing up, and explore what it means to inherit a certain kind of upbringing. As we all know, we’re each born into specific circumstances and families. Childhood involves dealing with this set of particulars—a deep and powerful process that occurs over nearly two decades of our lives. As kids, part of our burden and challenge is figuring out what we were born into, and trying to understand what does or doesn’t make sense to us. In Night Swim, I wanted to show the intelligence of children and get inside the drama that occurs daily between parents and their kids. And, I wanted to explore how kids at different ages deal with emotional confusion and complexity; love and anger—all the basic emotions that make us human. Adolescence is a heightened time of life, fraught with unexpected revelations.

To answer your question about illness—it’s pretty simple how it influenced me. My illness taught me that life is short and added a sense of urgency to my life. Right after I recovered from my illness, I committed myself to writing as a professional career. I didn’t anticipate how long it would take me to publish a novel, but I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t give up or stop.

2. Fiction Studio Books published Night Swim. What has your experience been, playing such a large role in the publication and promotion of your book?

It’s been liberating. I’ve been freelancing for a long time and am used to working on deadlines and pitching ideas to different editors, and working independently. In a way, publishing with FSB was an extension of this. I was used to taking control of my work and comfortable with the copyediting requirements, and demands of promotion. I’ve had a lot of experience in fundraising and promotional work for other people and causes. The challenge has been getting used to promoting myself! That feels awkward, so I tell myself: it’s part of my learning curve. Overall, the experience has been fantastic and fulfilling.

3. Music has a large role in Night Swim. Why?

Music is a lifelong love of mine. I used to sing pretty seriously. I took voice lessons. I sang in semi-professional choirs, as well as a gospel choir in college. I don’t sing anymore because male hormones I was given as a treatment for my illness messed up my singing voice. But my passion for music lives on. By creating a singer in my novel, I was able to revisit a world that I knew and adored. Language is a form of music, too, so I enjoyed the challenge of trying to conjure up sounds of music through words. Additionally, in Night Swim, music becomes a connecting force in a family that is fractured. It gives Sarah another access to her heart and soul and transports the full range of her emotions in a way that offers relief to her pain, as well as healing.

4. Though you’ve had many stories published, this is your first published novel. How was writing this different from your past projects? What are you working on now?

Night Swim is technically my second novel. I have another completed novel in my drawer, and a third one that I’m excited about that is in revision. I’m not sure writing Night Swim was so different than my past projects, but perhaps the culmination of many years of writing and publishing short fiction, plus feature writing, combined with timing, the marketplace, and changes in the publishing industry—of these factors converged, finally, in the right way for Night Swim.

5. What is your process? Where do you find inspiration?

My process is all about untangling emotional content and exploring these emotions by way of relationships and drama in stories. Whether it’s a novel or shorter fiction or memoir-like essay, I seek to understand and reveal how emotions are driving my characters to act in certain ways, because the heart propels us to behave sensibly and insensibly. That’s what I find endlessly fascinating: love, envy, desire, family dynamics, the self’s relationship to self. So, my process starts with an emotional seed/problem/question and I go from there.

6. Any advice for eager young writers such as myself (or any, for that matter)?

You are so on your way, Robby, in terms of writing talent and ability. The only advice I’d give you is: keep going; follow your heart; don’t let anything stop you; believe in yourself. Also, know that everyone’s writing path is different. What will work for you won’t work for your friend or vice versa. I also should add that it’s important to surround yourself with people who want to help you. Run from people who bring you down, and if you land in a pothole or bump into walls, or don’t succeed initially, don’t give up. Find another way.

7. What do you hope readers take from Night Swim? What is its purpose?

I hope that readers feel moved by this story about a family in crisis, and can identify with the struggles of the Kunitz family, and embrace these struggles as their own. Its purpose, I think, is to address issues that are universal to families: what happens when marriages are failing; what is the emotional fallout for children who need to be loved and nurtured. How do we deal with complications that arise because of grief and loss? We all fail. We all need love. We all struggle. Beyond the written pages, my hope is that the story of Night Swim will live on in readers’ hearts.

Interview with Laura Harrington (Alice Bliss)

2012-02-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

I'm having my wisdom teeth removed Monday afternoon. I'm nearly finished writing a story about a couple who fall back in love while driving across America. I'm nearly finished reading Girl, Unmoored by Jennifer Gooch Hummer. I'm nearly finished learning this piece. I read this article this morning, and also the new TYPO. Both Sophie Klahr and Julia Cohen have poems in there. Read it. You do not have a choice.
I went for coffee with Laura Harrington a few days ago. She signed my book and we talked about college and writing and I was thinking again how strange my life is now. I go to school, spend hours in class and at home doing work for my classes, and then I get to do things like meet published writers for coffee. I've considered deleting this blog. Afternoons like Wednesday are the reason I won't.

1. Nearly all of your previous work was written for the stage. How was writing a novel a different experience for you?

Each form has its limitations and possibilities. Writing novels has been a time of expanding my imagination and learning all kinds of new things about writing and about myself as a writer. I find that I love pushing the boundaries, whether that’s from a play to a radio play or from music theatre to opera or from theatre to books.

How did you approach the concept?

The biggest challenge of course was not knowing how to write a novel. That was also the greatest gift. On the other hand, no one knows how. Each book, each play is its own Everest. You learn how to write this play or this book, and then become a beginner all over again with the next one.

2. You've taught at MIT for quite some time. How has teaching impacted your writing?

Teaching forces you to analyze and identify the “how” of writing; to break the process down (as far as that’s possible) into discreet elements in order to be able to understand it and then put it back together. So it has kept my analytical skills pretty sharp. The most important thing I teach my students, is also something that I need to be reminded of every single day: Writing is a practice. Forget the romantic idea of sitting around waiting for the muse to appear. Instead, model yourself on musicians who show up every day to practice whether they feel like it or not.

What advice do you give your students in creating the best work they can?

At the beginning of my playwriting classes I ask my students to post the following on their computers so that they can see it every time they sit down to write: Trust your instincts. Be kind to yourself. I also like to quote the composer John Cage: Begin anywhere. You’ve got to get that first draft out there, and then work and work and work to revise it and make it better.

3. Who has influenced you and your writings (musicians, writers, etc.)?

Earliest influences would be my mother and my oldest brother, both avid readers. Libraries influenced me. I found them magical as a child and clearly remember the first time I went to the city library, so much larger than the branch library in my hometown.
Writers who have influenced me: E.B. White, A.A. Milne, C.S. Lewis, Thornton Wilder, Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, Tim Winton, William Trevor, Virginia Woolf, Marilynn Robinson, Hillary Mantel.
Poets: Stanley Kunitz, Louise Clifton, W.B.Yeats, Kenneth Patchen.
Musicians: Musicians have taught me the importance of silence and the power of structure. Mozart most of all, Bach, Gorecki, all of the composers I’ve worked with, and the singer/songwriters Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, The Roches, Leonard Cohen.

How would you like to influence others?

What an amazingly interesting and difficult question. I have sort of a round-about answer, so please stick with me.
I think that language is music, and that discovering or creating the cadence of your characters’ speech patterns and, for a novel, thought patterns is absolutely essential. Because I love the music of language I also think that silence is as important as speech and that what you leave out is as important as what is on the page.
To give you an example: When you’re writing lyrics for a song or an aria, the words cannot say everything that needs to be said, or else there will be nothing for the music to do or express. The words need to be concrete, specific and permeable. That permeability, that space is where the audience or the reader is engaged; the reader/ listener provides what is missing through the use of their imagination. This is the great pleasure of reading: having our imagination engaged. The writer gives us enough clues so that we create our own version of the character, or the room, or the town, or, perhaps most importantly, the emotion. If the writer tells us too much, there is nothing for us to do, and we become passive. Knowing what to leave out is what activates the reader’s imagination.

4. Alice Bliss is in part about war. What I appreciated about this aspect of the book is that you didn't use your story to express your personal opinion about the war, only your characters’. Were you nervous about what the response would be, because of how sensitive people are regarding the topic? It was a brave decision on your part, and a successful one.

Thank you for saying that. You know, it didn’t occur to me to be nervous
about the response, which was probably very naïve. I was hoping there would BE a response. In addition, I think you write what you have to write, what you’re compelled to write, what you’re obsessed with. And you have to shield yourself from that kind of question and concern because it can stop you in your tracks. I guess I had the courage of my convictions. I believe that making the war personal is important; telling the stories of those left behind, illuminating the lives of spouses and partners and children who have a loved one deployed is important. And I’m idealistic. I believe that stories have the unique power to open our eyes and our hearts to people and to worlds and to experiences that we would not otherwise know. I wanted to find a way to tell the story of this endless war, to shed light on these struggles, and most importantly, I wanted to hear these voices.
I hope that Alice Bliss can help us begin to see this war one child at a time, one soldier at a time, one missing father at a time.

5. What is your next project?

I’m about to begin work on a commission from an Off-Broadway theatre in NY, Playwrights Horizons, to write Alice Bliss, the musical, with the composer Jenny Giering and lyricist Adam Gwon.
And I’m deep into my second book. My next novel begins with water, as Alice Bliss does. There’s a large Irish Catholic family with six kids. It’s 1966 and the Viet Nam war changes everything

Where would you like to see your career go next?

Honestly, the publication of Alice Bliss, feels like it is the next phase of my career. I want to write my next book, and the one after that. I’m also hoping that some synergy might develop between my book(s) and my plays and musicals; that these various audiences might merge somehow.

Review of Night Swim by Jessica Keener (posted at The Nervous Breakdown)

2012-01-26T14:16:00.000-08:00

Second semester has begun. I am making my way through the second season of 30 Rock. This morning, I finished The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Tomorrow is already Friday? I haven't been writing very much. My brain refuses to settle. I should do my homework.

My review for Jessica Keener's Night Swim is up at The Nervous Breakdown.

Interview with Samuel Amadon (Like a Sea)

2012-01-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

Midterms are over. Monday, second semester will begin. I have a Jazz Band concert tonight, for which the dress code is Hawaiian. I joked with M that I will be wearing a hula skirt and coconut bra, dancing behind the piano. I will not actually do this.
My goal is to really relax this weekend. There is no homework I need to do, for once. I can practice piano and write and watch movies and cry. I woke up to snow. I've cried a lot this past week. I finally have the time for it.
I'm having trouble writing the review for Jessica Keener's Night Swim. I had the same trouble when I was trying to review Blue Nights, by Joan Didion. I know what I want to touch upon, but I can't figure out how to begin the review. It will come.
I'm reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I bought a signed copy a few days ago. After this, I'll read Jennifer Gooch Hummer's debut Girl Unmoored, which will be released in March by Fiction Studio Books (who also published Night Swim). I really like what they're doing.

Samuel Amadon is a great, great poet. I reviewed his collection Like a Sea a few months ago, after winning it from Gigantic Sequins. Here is the biography from his website-

"Samuel Amadon is the author of Like a Sea, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and The Hartford Book, forthcoming from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in A Public Space, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The New Yorker,Ploughshares, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is the author of four chapbooks, including Each H from Ugly Duckling Presse. He regularly reviews poetry in places such as The Believer, Boston Review, Lana Turner: a journal of poetry and opinion, and Rain Taxi. A poetry editor for Gulf Coast from 2009-2011, he also co-founded the chapbook press Projective Industries.

He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2007. While in New York, he curated the Frequency Reading Series in Greenwich Village with Shafer Hall and worked for the Poetry Society of America. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate (expected 2012) in the University of Houston’s PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature. He teaches courses in composition, creative writing, and literature at the University of Houston and works as a writer-in-residence for WITS (Writers in the Schools), teaching creative writing in the Houston public schools.

Recipient of a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he has been awarded the Carol Houck Smith Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Lucille Joy Prize in Poetry from Inprint Houston."

He is more or less everything I hope to be. Read his poems. They will shake you.

1. What is your process? Do you draft and revise or do the pieces seem to come all at once? How has your process changed over time?

The poems in Like a Sea were written, or at least were begun, in fairly distinct ways, and the poems in The Hartford Book and in my current project Tourism differ widely from those. Many of the poems in Like a Sea began by a playing out a specific game. That includes the collage poems, like “Nine at Nine,” which began with me taking the first line of the first story from Salinger’s Nine Stories and then the last line from the ninth of those stories. I decided to use that as a guide, and began picking from a series of other books, and imposing nine. I ended up developing a structure as I went. I took the first line from the first and the last line from the ninth, then the second line from the second and the second to last line from the eighth. The authors were ordered reflectively like this:

J.D. Salinger

Ezra Pound

Walter Benjamin

Jane Kenyon

Robert Lowell

Eugenio Montale

Joris Karl Huysmans

E.A. Robinson

Primo Levi

E.A. Robinson

Joris Karl Huysmans

Eugenio Montale

Robert Lowell

Jane Kenyon

Walter Benjamin

Ezra Pound

J.D. Salinger

After I took all this source material, I removed the punctuation and re-punctuated to make a new kind of sense. Chance is responsible for the poem, and then I tried to bring it close to the level of sense-making. (That’s really how I felt about writing while I worked on Like a Sea: that I was bringing these hulks up from the bottom of the ocean, right up to the surface, so we could see them.) The first line of “Nine at Nine” ends “and then went down to the ship,” which is the first line of Pound’s Cantos, and the last line of “Nine at Nine” ends “have to help him carry the sails down,” which is the last part of the fifth to last sentence in the fifth story of Nine Stories. This was, essentially, a lucky break, but one that I really love. And when I think about that poem, I’m excited by those sorts of coincidences. But they don’t happen all the time. And so, back to your question, sometimes things—especially real experiments like “Nine at Nine”—are un-writeable. They don’t work out.

But at the level of revision, whether the poem be a collage experiment or a narrative-monologue—like the poems of The Hartford Book—or a poem in traditional form—like some of the poems from Tourism--my process is the same. I begin with a chunk of language, sometimes a massive block—like the “Each H” sequence, which began as a sort of experiment in automatic writing—that I begin to shape, cut from, add to, and play with. Eventually I print out my draft, I read it out loud. I read it out loud again. I make changes. I put it down. I print it out again. I read it out loud again. I make changes. I print it out again. (I’m horribly irresponsible in this way.)

2. You are a PhD candidate at the University of Houston. How has your schooling affected your writing? What is your teaching style?

There was a point when I never finished reading the work of poets who were important to me. I wanted to leave it open, I guess. Like if we looked at their work as a problem, I didn’t want to see the whole answer because I wanted to finish it for myself. I think this is “developing a voice,” but at this point in my career, it’s become clear to me that I can’t escape my own voice, so there’s little need to protect it. In other words, I’m reading to the end now and that is affecting my work. I feel a bit more ambition, I guess.

Teaching, though, I think might be having more of an impact. I love teaching for a number of reasons, but I really find that it makes me see the whole picture, or at least more of it, because of what students see and say. I find that teaching also makes me more open to works I hadn’t really had the time for before. For instance, I was never wild about “Bartleby the Scrivener,” but since teaching it, I love it. I just hadn’t had the patience before.

3. What would you like readers to take from Like A Sea? What is its purpose, in your mind?

I’d like it if readers of Like a Sea had their own personal and idiosyncratic encounter with the book, but my real hope is for a recognition like this one that you made in your review: “In Samuel Amadon’s poems, the surface is intimate, as is the depth.” That’s really the kind of encounter that I’d hope people would or will have with the poems.

4. Who inspires you?

There are a lot of poets who inspired me, more all the time actually. I don’t know if it’s my response to the stupidity of the poetry wars (narrative versus experiment, where both terms are suspect) but I’m pretty inclusive in my reading. Maybe I’ve just gotten stuck with the idea that I’m trying to figure this (this being “Poetry”) out. Either way, I tend to read for poets who don’t quite fit with the other poets on my bookshelf, people who are doing something that surprise me. I began reading Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens. That’s my initial group that I’ve been trying to fill in from ever since. Lately, I’m excited about Gwendolyn Brooks, Louis Zukofsky, May Swenson, George Oppen, Sonia Sanchez, and Elizabeth Bishop.

5. Your next collection, The Hartford Book, is forthcoming. What can readers expect?

It’s pretty different from Like a Sea, but I think the voice is the same. It’s just doing different things. Essentially, The Hartford Book is a collection of interweaving monologues from a single speaker at different points in his life. The poems deal with death, chaos, and minor-league hockey, but they also deliver a portrait of Hartford, CT, and the people who live there. I’m excited about the book coming out. It’s been a long time coming—I wrote the first poem in 2003—and it’s been through a lot of revisions. It should be out sometime in the next couple of months.

"Tear It Down" by Jack Gilbert

2012-01-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

For the next few days, I will be constantly switching from busy and frantic to calm and unoccupied. I took my French midterm and Fitness final this morning. I have musical rehearsal in a few hours. I'm nearly finished with Jessica Keener's Night Swim. I also have an interview to post. For today, though, I have a poem to share.

I am 1/3 of the way through the first season of 30 Rock. I have been watching it in the dark, laughing to myself. If I'm eating, I have to turn the light on.

Yesterday, I was writing, and I had the kind of experience that I wasn't sure actually existed. I'm a few pages into a story, experimenting with a set of characters and only a vague idea of where they're going. I was seeing what came, a character said something, and I suddenly knew the ending. I don't feel in control of the story anymore. I would like to experience this again.

After I post this, I will finish Night Swim. I will probably watch more 30 Rock. I will think about studying. I will study. I have yet to find a solid method that works for me when it comes to studying. I improvise. I should probably figure that out.

"Tear It Down" by Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

Where age comes in

2012-01-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

I don't have school today. First semester is over, midterms are next week, SATs and ACTs are coming, along with the AP exam for my Biology class. Musical rehearsal is in full swing, and I have been missing piano lessons and meditating in therapy and trying to remember to pack a lunch. I finished the first draft of a story, and it is only 10 pages, but it is a start. I am buying tickets to see Beirut in August and Anais Mitchell in February today, and I think I have a consultation regarding having my wisdom teeth removed this afternoon. I should make breakfast. I'm not sure how to write this.

I have written two reviews for The Nervous Breakdown, and they can both be found here. In October, I reviewed selected unpublished blog posts by a mexican panda express employee by Megan Boyle, and in December I reviewed Joan Didion's Blue Nights. I got a lot more feedback for the Didion review, and I think that is overall just a better review, because I am more comfortable reviewing fiction. Reviewing poetry is more difficult for me, which is why I wanted to review Boyle's collection for TNB, to experiment. The review is brief, likely too brief, and I recognize this. There was more I could have said, regarding my thoughts on the poems and what they meant to me, or their general meaning, and I glazed over that. I tried to dig deeper with the Didion review, and I'm proud of that. I feel I was at least partially successful. Often, though, I wonder why I do this.

I more or less had a verbal argument with a commenter on the Boyle review. I'm writing this post to figure out where I stand with it, what happened and what happens now. I won't be catty and say his name, but if you go to the review, it is there, with a link to his website, and there goes his anonymity. I'm really glad he did that, because it made obvious that he wasn't trying to hide at all, and was confident in his opinion and response. Another commenter, who only left one comment and never returned, did not leave a link. The wonders of the Internet.

"now that I’ve read your bio I see that you are 16"

"it did seem in line with a novice/young writer"

"There are few “youth” who should be reviewing anything. Mostly, they should be learning and keeping their mouths shut until they know enough to say something worth hearing...Robby, I suggest you go read a few hundred books, all the poetry in the dusty part of the library, and then come back and say something. Until then, you are just indulging yourself."

"based on Robbie’s review he doesn’t have any business writing AND being taken seriously"

The purpose of a website like The Nervous Breakdown is to have a conversation, to share music and literature and opinion, ideas, and discuss. Often, the discussion can switch from a friendly exchange of ideals to a catfight, akin to the kinds of disagreements I see on Facebook. The difference between Facebook and The Nervous Breakdown is that the writers or people who are commenting on TNB are more "educated" than the kids I go to school with. Whether or not they use their education and knowledge correctly is what is up in the air.

For much of my life, I've been the youngest person places I go, either concerts or book signings. That has gotten me recognition. Maybe people have paid more attention to me because of my age, which I'm torn about. It has opened doors for me, being 16 years old and doing the things I do, but I'm not sure I want to be known simply because I'm an adolescent. Would I be writing for TNB if I was in my twenties? Would I have been interviewed by Publisher's Weekly? I don't have answers to these questions, because I'm not in my twenties. These things have happened to me and I am so grateful and lucky but I feel a ticking.

At the Jessica Keener signing on Tuesday night, there was a girl in the audience who asked a question about whether or not Keener deliberately created the Kunitz family the novel focuses on with Freudian characteristics, the stereotypes of that time. I'm fairly certain this girl was younger than me. I imagined passing the torch to her.

I will let go of it. I am not the youngest person at concerts or book signings anymore. In 18 months, I will be a legal adults. Right now, I could be driving, if I had the motivation to take the permit test. My age has gotten me noticed, but I'd also like to think that I have promise, and that got me noticed, too. I do this because I love it.

I have a lot of growing to do, as a person and as a writer. I am taking advantage of my resources and using them to track my progress. Look at the reviews I wrote two years ago, compared to the more recent ones. Look at the poems I used to post here, when I was a freshman, compared to the ones I'm writing now. I've developed. I am just getting started.

I'm sensitive, and defensive. Maybe those two commenters are just bitter, or jealous, because they didn't have this opportunity when they were 16. For some reason, I do. And I am not going down without a fight. A peaceful one, to clarify. Thank you all for accepting me.

Interview with Brad Listi (The Nervous Breakdown, Other People)

2012-01-08T14:31:00.000-08:00

This has been the most hectic week of my short life. Yesterday was the Senior Districts concert for my region. The conductor of the Choir I was accepted into called me by name and shook my hand after we left the stage and joked a lot about emus. I could feel sweat between my thighs and I thought I had snot in my nose but I still sang better than I have ever before, I think. My parents told me they were screaming from the audience but I couldn't hear them. I came home and ate and slept. I do this regularly, but yesterday was special.

I've just finished watching Melancholia. When I think of Kirsten Dunst, I still think of Bring It On, trying to learn the cheer in the opening sequence with my sister. How young I was then! It was not very long ago. The movie was superb. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg are both magnetic. Lars von Trier is a great, great director.

The next few days will be much calmer, I hope. There are only 4 days left of this semester, to be followed by midterms. I am halfway through my junior year of high school. Tuesday night, I have musical rehearsal in the early afternoon, and then I'll be going into the city with my mom for the Jessica Keener signing at the Brookline Booksmith. I'm about a third of the way through Night Swim, the novel she'll be promoting.

Brad Listi has a permanent place on the list of people I am thankful for. Because of him, I'm now not only writing book reviews for this little blog, but also for The Nervous Breakdown, the not so little online magazine he founded. Along with being a faithful reader, I can also count myself among the contributors. Recently, Brad also founded Other People, a podcast series. 33 episodes have been published so far, with many more to come. Go, and listen, and subscribe. Brad Listi, this is an honor.

1. What led to the birth of Other People?

It's twofold. To begin with, I'm a big radio nerd. A big podcast nerd. I listen to a lot of this stuff. I love Howard Stern, for example. I love Terry Gross and Fresh Air. I listen to a wide range of podcasts, everything from This American Life to WTF to The B.S. Report to The Caucus, to you name it. And while there are several book-related podcasts out there, and many good ones, I found myself wanting to hear a show that was a bit looser, a bit more irreverent—one that really focused on writers as people: who they are, where they come from, why they do what they do. And so on. Ultimately I decided to try it on my own.

And then the other aspect of it has to do with the Internet, the two-dimensionality of the Internet. Obviously the web has enabled a greater degree of community and connectivity among writers than ever before—and much of this is terrific. But after a while, the Internet can start to feel a bit flat to me. Social media in particular. There's a lot of linking and liking and posturing that goes on. I find myself wondering who people actually are, and what they're actually like when they're not trying to say something witty and charming in 140 characters or less. I wanted to hear some actual voices and have some actual conversations with some actual people.

2. What is the podcast's purpose?

Well, for starters I want it to be entertaining. And hopefully a little bit funny and enlightening. The idea is to help perpetuate book culture and foster community among readers and writers. Spread the word about good books. And I'd like for it to be a place for aspiring writers to learn and get a little bit of inspiration here and there. That sort of thing.

3. When interviewing an author, how do you know to change from one topic to the next? The podcasts come off as being very conversational, which is the best thing an interview can be. Is this intentional or natural? How do you research?

I don't do much research, which is probably the secret. Maybe, like, fifteen minutes before an interview, I'll go online and read up on the person or something. And then I just wing it. It's improv. Two people talking. For me, the key to the whole thing is listening. If I'm listening well, if I'm really alert in that way, then the interview tends to go well. If not, then the opposite is true.

4. What do you see in the future for Other People?

Oh, man. Right now my vision of the future is pretty limited. The goal is to try to get better at this and to make sure that I'm paying attention to the little details. So far listeners have been really kind, which has been wonderful. But it's also a little nerve-wracking. Now that a few people are actually listening to the thing, it ups the ante a bit. I don't want to let them down.

5. And now, the killer- in this very moment, I'd like you to pick. The Nervous Breakdown, or Other People? How are they connected?

No way! I can't pick. To me they're one and the same. Part of the same organism. At their core, they have an identical function: to showcase good writers and good books, and to foster community, and so on. And they were born in exactly the same manner, which is to say pretty much by accident. The Nervous Breakdown originated as a result of the work I was doing as an author, stumbling around, trying to get the word out about my novel by blogging and so on. And Other People was born as a result of the work I've been doing at TNB, working with this big community of authors, talking to them regularly, hearing their stories. To me it feels like all of this stuff is of a piece. It's a reflection of the times we live in and the state of publishing, and the arts in general, in the digital era. We're living in an age of experimentation, and I'm a sucker for a good experiment.

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington

2012-01-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012, friends. I went into Boston yesterday and ran around with Sophie Klahr, doing things for First Night. We rode in taxicabs and wove through the back rooms of Symphony Hall and Boston Public Library. I heard music and embarrassed myself frequently, went to a friend's house, ate her pizza, and slept. Soon, I'll have to create a new document on my computer named "Poems (2012)". In 6 months, I'll be 17. I've been here for a long time.
Things are about to get even busier. Musical rehearsals are beginning and the end of the first semester is mere weeks away and then there are SATs and ACTs and more college visits and more commitments and hopefully more reading and writing and thinking and likely less sleeping but more happiness and conversation. If I have a single resolution for this New Year, it is to watch every episode of 30 Rock. And to be happy. But that is every day.

Alice Bliss defies genre. The main character is a teenage girl, and much of the book documents said teenage girl’s coming-of-age, but there is a maturity to the writing that seems to take it from YA to Adult. Not to say there is no maturity in Young Adult literature, but there is an intelligence to Laura Harrington’s writing that makes Alice Bliss marketable to any audience, accessible to any and every reader, which is not the case with many books being released in this day and age, most of which are written to cater to a particular group of people. Alice Bliss has something for everyone. This, Laura Harrington’s debut, is everyone’s story, because we have all been affected by war; we have all felt love in its varying stages, and were all adolescents at one point or another. Some of us, unfortunately, are still there.

It has taken me a few weeks to finish reading this, and I have many excuses, but will use none of them. Maybe it took me so long because, each time I read, I cried. And when books make me cry, that is how I know I’ve found something special. This, Alice Bliss, is a very special book.

Laura Harrington has crafted a world and a story that manages to be about both youth and war, and the effects of war on all people. Alice Bliss is our heroine, and the book follows her through the months following her father's departure, to fight in the war that all of us have been alive to experience, and process. Almost every person you meet knows someone who has fought in the war, who either made it out or didn’t. Alice Bliss’ father leaves for war and things seem to crumble without him. She is left to take care of herself, and the people who surround her. She makes that her responsibility, same as her father. She tries to finish what he started.

Alice Bliss enters the world of adolescent romance, after her father has left. The boys she becomes involved with are her best friend Henry and another boy named John Kimball, who Alice doesn’t know much about at all. She finds letters, plants a garden. She does all of the things she used to do with her father on her own, welcoming the Spring without him to stand beside her. She begins running, both literally and internally, worrying about all of the things that could go wrong with her father fighting overseas, letting those thoughts create a beast in her mind while the world continues.

Each character in Alice Bliss has a firm place in the story. Though the focus is on Alice, there is also her sister, and her mother, and her uncle, and her grandmother, and her neighbors, and their neighbors. Each character is given maybe a sentence, or a paragraph, to shine, to share their thoughts, before the spotlight is returned to Alice. Knowing Laura Harrington is an award-winning playwright, I was constantly trying to connect this novel to plays, trying to find similarities between the two; this is one that I found. Laura gives each character emotion, motive, purpose. Each character has their own branch of the story, their own bell curve, progression. I was riveted by that. The suspense did not lie simply in Alice, but in every person.

Alice Bliss is readable, but also complex. If I planned to read for a few minutes, I read for an hour. If I planned to read for an hour, I read for two. Laura’s prose is fluid, similar to music; she is also a lyricist/librettist. There was texture to her writing, though, vast revelations condensed into a single phrase, with none of the meaning lost.

Reading Alice Bliss was enjoyable and fun, while also being thought-provoking. It is not necessarily a commentary on war, but a long-form observation of the people involved. Laura Harrington’s talents lie in many areas, and I look forward to seeing her further explorations in this one.

Some cool things that happened in 2011

2011-12-31T07:33:00.000-08:00

Today is the last day of 2011. I only have a few days left of vacation, and there are many things I haven't done. I have not started my homework, or learned my music for Senior Districts. I have seen a lot of people I care about, though, and watched multiple movies. This has been the greatest year of my life. I'm glad I've gotten to share it with all of you. Hopefully my good fortune will continue and 2012 will be even better.

Tomorrow, I'll have a review up for Laura Harrington's Alice Bliss. I'm not making any resolutions for the New Year. I'm making resolutions for today.

There is no way this list is going to be chronological, and there is also no way I'm going to be able to thank all of the people I'd like to, but I can try. I got to meet a lot of wonderful authors this year- Paula McLain, Anne Lamott, Emma Straub, Alina Simone. I had the chance to interview a lot of wonderful authors, too. Emma Straub wrote in my copy of Other People We Married that I have (likely had, by now) the greatest hair in Boston, and Paula McLain told me I looked like one of her son's friends. I shook their hands and sometimes hugged them and consistently had to lock my knees to keep myself upright. Next year, there will be more.

Caroline Leavitt has earned her own paragraph. I read her most recent book Pictures of You sometime late last year, if I'm remembering correctly, and reviewed it here. Though I've read a few dozen books since then, I can still remember Pictures and its story with a clarity I don't often remember with, and among my many blessings, I have been blessed with a good memory. After sending a few messages back and forth, there was a break in our communication. A few months later, though, I read on Twitter that she was looking for someone to help her research for her next novel, so she could focus on writing. I leapt onto the opportunity, latched myself to it, and refused to budge. I got lucky, because she said yes.

Doing the research for Caroline became my escape. She sent me a list of questions and I worked on finding a few answers. Some things were harder to hunt down than others, but that was the fun of it. She was patient with me, as I tried to fit in working on things for her while also barely keeping up with my schoolwork. The first few months of this year were the most difficult of my life thus far, for multiple reasons, and collaborating with Caroline on the research definitely helped pull me through it, from point A to B. I met her at a signing she had in Waltham, and later she interviewed me for her blog, which is one of my favorites. Someday, I will have an entire Caroline Leavitt appreciation post on here. It will be great.

THEN, in September, I was interviewed by Publishers Weekly. This came to fruition after Hilary Emerson Lay, the manager of Spirit of '76 Bookstore (where I've sporadically volunteered the past few years), contacted a writer for Publishers Weekly and more or less got the ball rolling for this entire process. This interview opened so many doors for me. I am still just a boy and this is still just a blog but being interviewed by Publishers Weekly took me to an entirely different level, in my self-confidence and probably in reality, too. Writing book reviews is a hobby for me, and I'm so grateful I've been able to interview and meet the authors I've had the chance to interview and meet, and maybe this interview with Publishers Weekly makes me seem a bit more legitimate, which is never a bad thing. I'm rambling. This was one of the many highlights of this blissful, stressful year.

In October, my first review for The Nervous Breakdown was published. There's a long backstory to how this happened, also, but I'll try to condense it. One of the fantastic authors I interviewed this year was Lenore Zion, whose essay collection My Dead Pets Are Interesting made me laugh harder than a book had ever before, and since. Brad Listi, the founder of The Nervous Breakdown (also the publisher of My Dead Pets Are Interesting) e-mailed me a few weeks/months later and asked me if I'd be interested in reviewing books for TNB. It was an offer I couldn't turn down. One of my resolutions (for today, that is) is to start reading more again. There will be more of me here, for the foreseeable future. I'm realizing now that this post is really just me gloating about how awesome my life is. Is that okay? Thank you for reading this far.

On a personal level, this year was many things. At this time last year, I was dating a boy who I would've moved mountains for. I was so hypnotized by him that I truly believed I could have moved mountains, if I tried. It didn't work out, for reasons that were not in my control. I spent much of Winter, and most of Spring, listening to Brandi Carlile and sleeping and falling behind in school. I cried a lot, and learned a lot, and grew up a little. Not too long after the school year ended, at the end of June, I met Michael.

Maybe I shouldn't put his name here. I don't think he'll mind. M and I dated from the beginning of July until a few weeks ago. He's a freshman in college, and I love him in a different way than I have ever loved a person, and he has helped me grow up even more. He helped me come out to my father, and learn how to take care of myself, and I think I helped him, too, though I couldn't tell you how. He helped me help myself. There are a lot of pictures of us together on Facebook. Yesterday was the 6-month mark, 6 months since the day I met him, in Downtown Crossing near a Nantucket Nectars kiosk. He was/is good to me. I wear his peacoat.

That's all I've got for today, friends. Happy New Year. Happy day, really. I'm happy you're alive and I'm alive and we are crossing paths in this place. I have to finish my coffee and take a shower and catch a train. 2012 will be good to us, I think. Don't be a stranger.

ALSO, I was in a flash mob. That was the coolest. (Flickr)

12/25/11

2011-12-25T05:49:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays, friends. It is 8:39 in the morning and I have already opened all of my gifts, listened to Bon Iver's second record, and am now listening to Laura Marling's third. Maybe I'll do yoga today, or take a long walk, or both. A good friend is coming up tonight, and I'm looking forward to seeing him. My English muffin is burning.
I am setting goals for next year. Really, I am setting goals for this exact moment, which will hopefully carry over into the New Year. I am on vacation, finally, though I have quite a bit of work to get done. Plans have been made.
Yesterday, I was in a semi-flash mob with the Vocal Ensemble from my school. We went to the mall and sang loudly and clapped and interrupted shoppers and were nearly smothered by mall "cops." It was fun and we sang our entire song a whole step too high.
I would like my gift for you to be a review, but that is not happening, not yet. I'm not sure I'm going to finish the book I've been reading the past few weeks. It isn't that I don't like it, I'm just not sure it is the right time for me to be reading it. My desire to read has temporarily faded. I will likely change my mind.
Instead, my gifts to you all are these- here are the poems I've been writing and the songs I've been singing. Also, here is an Anais Mitchell song that has quickly become one of my favorites. It is quite relevant, really. Have a wonderful day.

Summer went the way of spring
winter's waiting in the wings
And we haven't saved anything
but that's alright
Cause we already paid the rent
there's still some money we haven't spent
Go put on something different
we're going out tonight

I have loved you for so long
even when I could only do you wrong
go see if they have our song
on the jukebox over there
A dollar gets you seven plays
I watch you through a smoky haze
a secret smile on your face
I'm sorry if I stare

But you look like a stranger
in that old-fashioned hat
And I've got a pocketful of change
and I don't wanna go home yet

Clearly I remember when
I used to scratch my poems
on the backs of other lovers in
the darkness of my mind
Back before I made my home
in the marrow of your bones
Now I know your figure like my own
even from behind

But you look like a stranger
in that old-fashioned hat
And I've got a pocketful of change
and I don't wanna go home yet

Hey and we'll be married soon
we'll be dancing to this very tune
Then we'll have a honeymoon
then we'll start to fight
Bring the tonic and the gin
say what was your name again?
Stick another quarter in
and stay with me tonight

You look like a stranger
in that old-fashioned hat
And I've got a pocketful of change
and I don't wanna go home yet

12/15/11

2011-12-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

Poems published in my school's literary journal and other words

2011-12-10T09:42:00.001-08:00

I went into Boston last night to see Matt & Kim with a very good friend of mine. My mom drove us to the subway and we got on and got off too early and got back on and found our way. We waited in line and I watched the people who walked by and thought about their lives and the security guards told me to go home after I'd walked by. We went inside.

I don't go to many rock concerts. I used to go more concerts, but I only went to 3 this year, including last night. It was a different experience, because I was surrounded by kids my age, or people a few years older than me. It was different because usually I am the youngest one the places I go, but this is changing. I'm getting older. I smiled at a lot of people and sometimes they smiled back and I lost my cardigan but found it and got sweaty and fell and jumped and screamed and made acquaintance with people I will likely never see again. Is that what a concert should be? I felt invincible, sick, ecstatic, etc.

I have a rehearsal to go to today and tonight I will be singing outside of restaurants and tomorrow I will be singing in a church and Monday I will go back to school. The 2 poems I am about to post here are 2 poems that were published in my schools literary journal, AEGIS, of which I am a member. The poems that were published in last year's Winter issue I posted here. Has my writing changed? Everything does.

FRAMINGham (8/15/2011)

In past lives, his teeth were whiter ceilings

stretch and water falls to words the

lights bells singing veil lifting leather

hands hold my hold my hands behind his back.

Columns calling my teeth are shifting the bottom

drops out soul to soul the sky breathes

life and when the emptiness comes, I am falling

farther hold me hold me back.

I tell this man “Framingham” with tears in my eyes they ask me

if my son is yet a champion and I say time will

tell tell him I will not bring him down

with me spend days thinking of death.

He leaves a new bruise on my chest and goes home

I watch him go I go home I watch the world pass me

by I watch people watch and in past lives, I was

9/17/11 and 9/18/11

As a child, we used to throw our sneakers like bombs
into her yard; she would toss tomatoes back
through the cracks. My father tells me she died in January.

The cucumbers she gave us always had soft seeds
in their centers, and I spent the summer wondering why
I hadn’t seen her, not knowing she was already gone.

Now, they drop bombs into deserts and toss
bodies into bags onto planes into earth into
urns I have earned this sadness.

He has found the soft at the center
of me I am a towel wrung dry clothes hung
on a line I grow lighter it takes time.
She told us she could’ve slept through a war and now she will.

At 15, A filled their bottles with water
and her stomach with air I remember hearing wind
howl on a day there was no wind.
I wish on every lash.

"This is all the pain we need."

2011-12-07T06:28:00.001-08:00

GlitterPony #13 is up and I like it. I am in English and should be working on an essay outline but instead I am copying and pasting and letting my brain drown in something. It is a gloomy day but the air is warm. I studied for that Biology quiz I have today. Sometimes I get work done.

Of the poems I read from Glitterpony, this was one of my favorites.

"Bark Flies over Nebraska," Alina Gregorian

It is 1927 and nothing is lowly in the universe. Pines fall from the sky. You open your mouth, you want to speak, but words are motions and your hat keeps falling off. You tilt your head to catch the falling pines. You expel all my expectations. You never use nouns. The feather on your lapel is not valid. Please depart this poem until I feel the need to demonstrate animosity I’ve never felt before. You are to me as bark is to neophyte aluminum. I have a thousand robots with knitted shawls. They see the glory of monstrous suitcases. They live in pits with ants on their heads. I respond kindly to the call of grackles. They don’t know how to say: “This is all the pain we need.”

Also this stanza, from "The Strange Sensation of Having Moved Through The Past Almost But Not Completely All Alone" by Dara Wier.

It seems kind of lonesome in the past.

But that's just another kind of sentimental obfuscation.

I know you were with me there all along.

We know we were with one another in the sweetest ways.

You know I was right there by your side.

We know we were us right there and then.

And finally this. Class is ending soon. From "The Heart is my Favorite Organ But Not Because it is Grand" by Emily Pettit.

Astronomy lands on your hands. Hands that can

hold how this hurts. Concerned with objects.

An organ is an object. The heart and human affairs

and stars and holes, all concerned with objects.

Calculate a location. Let it linger. I want to drum

that drum.

That is all for now.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion (published at The Nervous Breakdown) and other words

2011-12-06T09:40:00.001-08:00

My second review for The Nervous Breakdown was published today, and you can read it here. Comment here or there or nowhere. Call someone and say you love them.

I auditioned for my school's musical yesterday. Though I'm a junior, this is the first musical I've auditioned for since I've been in high school. The production this year is Thoroughly Modern Millie and I tried to dance without falling and sing without cracking and I think it worked. I pretended I could tap. I sang "All That's Known" from Spring Awakening. Cross your fingers.

I'm reading Alice Blue by Laura Harrington. I have an English project to do and a Biology test to study for and PreCalculus homework to catch up on and a Vocal workshop tonight at school and Choir rehearsal tomorrow and Friday night I am going to see Matt & Kim in concert for the second time with an old friend and I'm ready to sweat and scream and lose my hands in a stranger's hair.

More sometime, friends. Life is happening.

The writing issue

2011-11-15T14:00:00.001-08:00

I am making it a goal of mine to frequent this blog more often. This is my third update in less than a week! I'm getting better, you see?
I am almost halfway through Joan Didion's Blue Nights now, reading frantically but also slowly. I'll let you know when I finish.
The only reason I have for writing this post is that I want to ramble about writing, and the story I've been writing since January, and how I am becoming further convinced by the day that I am never going to finish it. I'm just not sure I have it in me.
About a year ago, I was in a rut. By that time, I had been writing a longer piece called "Pink Light" for months and months and months. It was about a boy and another boy and some kind of love and also self-acceptance and I never finished it. I gave up. It was named after this Laura Veirs song.
I stopped writing for a few months. When I don't write, I get emotional. I am emotional regardless, hence the writing, but I feel increasingly unbalanced the longer I go without writing on a semi-regular schedule. It has been this way for years. I know for a fact that this is exactly how it is supposed to feel. It becomes a need. It is a need. I have to write.
The difficulty with this is that then there is the question of what to write. Before "Pink Light," I was writing a story called "Nude as the News," and before that there was a story called "More than I Knew Before." Those two are named/take their names from these songs, respectively. I am unoriginal, as you can tell.
Keep in mind that I finished none of these. "More than I Knew Before" was called "I'll Be the One" at one point, and "You Had Me From Hello" before then. I wrote it an and off for a long time, working on "Nude as The News" in between versions, and I did finish drafts of these, multiples ones, but I've never considered them finished.
With "Pink Light," I felt so inspired, and so great about what I was doing, but then said inspiration and great feelings were gone. This happens to every writer. There is always a period (or multiple periods) in the process of writing a long-form story (or even a short one) where the prospect or idea of finishing it seems ludicrous, impossible, and unreachable. I have reached this point with everything I've written thus far, and I've pushed through, and I've stopped. I am at this point with "Modern Romance."
I have been writing "Modern Romance" since January. It is named after this song, and I even titled this blog after it. Originally, I was thinking it was going to be a novella-length story from the perspective of two young adults, a boy and a girl, the summer after they graduate from high school. I wrote this for a while, and then it became just the girl's story. I wrote this all summer. I restarted. I made progress, and filled holes, and found new ones, and filled those as well, or tried.
The story is about a girl and food and friendship. The idea came to me in the shower late last year, and I knew that it was what I'd been waiting for. I have been so certain that this is finally the story I'm going to stick with, the one I'm going to finish, something I can really be proud of. I am proud of (nearly) everything I've written, but this has always seemed much more special to me. It still does. But I don't think I can write it.
I was inspired. I've been writing, but it gets more and more difficult to go on to the next chapter/section each time I sit down to write. I want to be feverish and infatuated with my story, and with my characters. Every writer does. There were times that I am, earlier in the process, but not in a long time.
I don't want to give up. The idea of giving up is almost as daunting to me as the idea of finishing. But then I start to think that maybe this is part of the process I have to go through. I don't consider these stories failures. I poured myself into them. I am pouring myself into this one now. But I am also trying to pour myself into my own life, and there is a balance that needs to be found. I haven't found it yet, and even when I do, that doesn't ensure its permanence.
The trouble I've had with letting go of this story is that I also can't imagine writing anything else, though I have more or less stopped writing. Maybe I'll write stories. Maybe I'll start something else. Maybe I'll go back to something old. Either way, this doesn't feel right. I've attempted to push through it, and it isn't budging. Maybe I haven't looked at it from the correct perspective. Maybe if I changed just one more thing, it would work. But I want the fever, and I'm going to keep searching.
I'm not sure why I had to explain all of this.

I think I'll give it some more time.

Like a Sea by Samuel Amadon

2011-11-12T10:27:00.001-08:00

I have been passing time passing time. Yesterday, I started reading Blue Nights by Joan Didion. Her signing in Boston sold out before I bought my ticket. I'm already about a fourth of the way through, so that review will be making its way into the world sometime soon. I am going to start reading more, writing more, again. That is the plan. I have a lot of plans. Thanksgiving is less than 2 weeks away.
I started writing the story I've been writing on and off since January from scratch. I am going to finish it this time. This is another plan. Yesterday was the only 11/11/11 I will be alive to experience. How funny.
Here is a link. I'm nervous to post this because I keep a lot of the things I write private, but if I want to make a life of the things I create, the hiding has to stop. So this is a step. Enjoy, or cringe. Either way, here.

By the time I got to the second poem in Samuel Amadon’s debut collection, Like a Sea, I knew I’d found something special. “It was always different after there were no moments/it was always different after” is the first line of the poem, “Of Deadish New England Towns Sups the Incandescence.” A few poems later, there are a few lines that read, “You know what’s buried/in the chest of me could/be my bright new self, or night.” Those lines are from Each H (IV), which is a longer poem in the collection, its 11 sections interspersed throughout the 5 sections of this book.
I’ve always reviewed more prose than poetry, but the past few months I have been reading much more poetry, and I’m never sure how to go about reviewing it. Each poem has a theme, and maybe each collection as a whole has its theme, but I’m still learning how to see beneath the surface of a poem, instead of simply skimming. In Samuel Amadon’s poems, the surface is intimate, as is the depth. I underlined whole stanzas in dark ink, spent minutes staring at a single word. Throughout my life and the books I’ve read, I’ve almost always found it easier to identify with female writers. Samuel Amadon has been added to this list.
In the second section of Like a Sea, which consists of a long poem called “Like an Evening,” the image of comfort (and discomfort) appears more than once. Amadon’s lines seem to run into each other, each thought merging and leading to the next, sharing words and syllables but not necessarily meanings. Images that do not seem to logically relate do here, and even illogically they belong. In “Like an Evening,” Amadon writes, “we do not know how/backward we determine ourselves.” Throughout the action and metaphor of these poems lies simple declarations and observations of life and people, and they are genius.
Amadon forms his sentences meticulously. In “Each H (IX),” Amadon writes, “That it could sound like him./That it could sound like him/sounding like he knew//what he sounded like.” Even reading the poems here takes thought, without a search for substance. I realized at some point reading this book that even the surface has substance, and this was a realization I’ve been waiting to make for a long time.
Towards the end of the book, I started to lose interest. The poems remained beautiful and complex and shapeshifting but something in me did not remain. A later poem in the collection, “Fresh Warm,” concludes like this- “where if we didn’t notice the progress/of the lawn, we would not be ourselves./But wish to. And not know how to investigate/our loss, or what was taken/was where we were what we were after all along.” And there is no question mark at the end of this. And that left me wondering.

No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July

2011-11-10T16:34:00.001-08:00

I do not have school tomorrow. I am eating ice cream for the second time this afternoon. I played music for a long time today and it made my wrists hurt, because I tend to pound instead of playing with correct form. I've accepted it. I've accepted a lot of things this year.
I'm not going to review this book. I read it. I loved it. It made me think. The stories were urgent and promiscuous and provocative and uncomfortable and beautiful and hypnotic and profound and simple and unique. Miranda July is unique in everything she does.

No One Belongs Here More Than You is the kind of collection I could write about for hours. Said writing would get very repetitive, but I would not stop. Miranda July's style is special, even, the way she forms her paragraphs, the way her characters think. I gave the book to a boy I love, and I hope he likes it as much as I did.
I found two of the stories in the book published online, here and here. This version of "The Shared Patio" is different than the one in the book, though I think "This Person" is more or less identical. I was intending to write a review of the book, but now that I've sit down to write it, I know that it is not going to happen.

This is the website Miranda made for the collection.
This is a video Miranda filmed about her new book, It Chooses You.
This is the trailer for her first film, You, Me, and Everyone We Know (which I loved about as much as I loved the collection).
And finally, this is the trailer for her new film, The Future. Go here as well.

An apology, and a review

2011-10-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

It is Halloween. I did not go to school today. I have not updated this blog in nearly 4 weeks. I have no excuse. There is always schoolwork to do, always words to read/write, always food to eat and things to laugh about. I have been taking advantage of some things and neglecting others. This blog is one of the things I have neglected. Hopefully this will not continue. Unfortunately, it likely will.
I do have a review I could write, though. I finished No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July's short story collection, a week or two ago, and it floored me. There are only two months left of this year. I am just about a fourth of the way through my junior year of high school. There is a boy next to me, and he is singing.
Many cool things have happened since I last updated, one of which I would like to direct you towards. I am now writing book reviews for The Nervous Breakdown, about once a month. The first one was published yesterday, for this book. Enjoy. I'll return sooner or later. Happy Halloween.

Monkeys by Susan Minot

2011-10-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

This year went by so quickly. Life is hard and good. Hard because of school and good because of people. I have a four day weekend, and I slept in this morning, and I have homework to do, but for now I am sitting and listening, and maybe soon I will be sitting and writing, and I've felt calm this morning. I am usually a calm person. I like to think of myself as collected. The past month or so has taken that from me, and left me vulnerable and slightly wounded. This is self-inflicted, because I did not fight it. This weekend has the potential to make up for all of it.

I bought this book at The Paper Store over the summer, along with a few others. I knew Susan Minot’s name, not because I’d read any of her other work, but because of the movie adaption of her novel(la) Evening. I remembered watching it with my mother, though I didn’t remember anything from the movie. I liked the title, and the summary, the feel of this tiny book in my hands, so I bought it. In a way, I think I set myself up to be disappointed.

I have written the first paragraph of this review countless times, and I have continuously restarted, because I want to make sure I say what I want to say as concisely as possible. This is one of the first books in months that I can honestly say I did not enjoy. I’ve gotten lucky, because I consistently love nearly everything I read. I can usually tell if I’ll appreciate a book or not, based on the first few paragraphs, or even just from the summary. I had high expectations for this book for many reasons. For one, Susan Minot is a bit of a legend. Also, The New York Times Book Review compared the Vincent family to J.D. Salinger’s Glass family. A few pages in, though, I lost interest. I finished it because I couldn’t imagine not finishing it, but that is about it.

Monkeys, Susan Minot’s debut novel, is separated into stories which follow the large Vincent family over the course of many years. For about 60% of this book, I was waiting for Rosie Vincent, the mother of the story, to die. I repeatedly had to flip back to one of the front pages, which had all of the children listed from oldest to youngest, because I couldn’t decipher one from the other. I wanted to like this book. I wanted to love it, really. But despite my effort, I just couldn’t.

Some of the stories were better than others, which is often case. “Party Blues” was my favorite. I wanted the entire book to be “Party Blues.” I’m thinking that this story may have worked better for me if it centered on one of the children, and how they view their family and the events that occur over the years this collection follows. Minot’s writing was too choppy for me. Her descriptions are beautiful. Certain sentences leap off of the page and command your attention, but are usually surrounded by paragraphs of filler. The way she writes is vague, yet so attentive to detail, which is a complete oxymoron but the only way of description I can think of.

This likely was not a choice of Minot’s, but it should not have been included in the summary that the Vincent mother died. I included that in this review because it is mentioned on the back cover. I figured it would happen early in the novel. I figured wrong. I was waiting for it, waiting to be surprised, but then it came and passed and leaped ahead. The problem with Minot’s ambiguity is that it left a lot of holes in the plot, to be filled by the reader. And that is not always a bad thing, but there were too many, and I have a feeling I fell into all of them.

I would like to read more of Minot’s work, but I’m not sure I’ll buy something else of hers, not unless the next thing I read really takes me. I understand the lure of this book, and why it is considered a “modern classic,” but it left a lot to be desired, for me personally. I haven’t had to write a negative review in so long, and it has troubled me to write this, but I’m not going to love every book I read, and this was a good challenge. Monkeys had a lot of promise. For me, it just didn’t deliver.

That really crazy moment when I am interviewed by Publishers Weekly

2011-09-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

I was interviewed by Publishers Weekly. The backstory to how this came to be is that this woman who works at this bookstore told a writer at Publishers Weekly to look at this blog, and then everything started to fall into place, and life got so much better than it already is. I told someone last night that I am beginning to doubt how much higher things can go. I'm happy to say, though, that I don't doubt they will.
Also, the librarian at my school pulled me into her office yesterday afternoon and talked to me about the poem I submitted for Summer Reading. I had that posted on the Internet somewhere for a while, but I took it down. Maybe I'll post it here? We'll see. Either way, it was one of the highlights of my year. And though we are only one month into school (ALREADY), I'm sure it will remain one.
FINALLY, I made a Linkedin. I am still putting it together and trying to make it look presentable, but if you have one, look me up! "Connect!" Sooner or later, that will be all we have left.
Finallyfinally, here is my favorite picture ever. I have to go eat breakfast now. Have a wonderful day.

Tea by D.A. Powell

2011-09-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

This is my third post in one week, and may very well be the most I've posted this entire year. By some stroke of luck, each of the three posts involve poetry. I have homework to do, as always, which I will begin after I hit "Publish."
D.A. Powell is having a reading in Western Massachusetts in November. It is on the other side of the state from where I live. If I could go, I would go. Someday, I will meet him. After reading this collection, I am determined.
I received this book in the mail from Gigantic Sequins, because their poetry editor Sophie Klahr (aka Goddess) entered me into their Summer Raffle for my birthday. It quickly found it's way to the top of my ever-growing To-Read pile.

I was sitting alone in a practice room at my school this past week, the same day I finished this book, and I flipped through the poems backwards and underlined things I wanted to remember. It was the first time I had ever written in a book. I used a blue pen because I did not have a pencil.

“how will I survive surviving”

“could the sparse line on a sign indicate the forest”

In the first poem in this collection “[to end and to open with a field: andy buried under a hunter’s moon. deer born of headlights]”, one of the final lines is “I was the one who shined into the ground/the ground refused me.” I don’t remember where I was when I read that line, or what I was doing, but something clicked in my physical body as I read these poems. Something out of alignment fell back into. This collection inspired me, and fascinated me; my new goal in life is to crack DA Powell’s code. I was reminded why I feel becoming a poet is a choice that is not a choice at all.

Earlier this week, I posted a review of Jorie Graham’s The Dream of the Unified Field. I wrote briefly about her style, how she separated her stanzas and where she placed her line breaks. Reading her poems, I was captivated by those qualities. Reading DA Powell’s, I found myself clinging to those details as well. The format of these poems is abstract; the lines seem to stretch, and the stanzas seem to bear no relation, yet each poem flows into the next poem. The collection, as a whole, is one being.

There is no capitalization here. None of the poems are longer than a single page. There is brevity, but each piece is complex and complicated and intertwined with the rest. DA Powell writes of many men, and many versions of himself, with a raw quality that many poets try to embody, with maybe half the success Powell has had throughout his career.

I found myself relating to these poems. I was not alive in the period many of these poems take place in. I am unfortunately not DA Powell. I am a young boy/man who is coming to terms with his sexuality. With that, I relate. I am a young boy/man trying to create some sort of art out of the things I experience and observe. With that, I relate. DA Powell’s poetry is unique, sensitive, aggressive, nostalgic. I have much to learn.

Interview with Jeanann Verlee (Racing Hummingbirds)

2011-09-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today, I walked home from school and listened to this song. I had to run a mile in my Fitness class and, instead, walked. I started writing a poem in the morning, but my pen died, so I finished it in Film+Literature. I finished Tea by DA Powell yesterday, and have started reading Monkeys by Susan Minot. Grey's Anatomy premieres tonight. I have homework to start and attempt to finish.

Also, today was the first meeting of my school's literary journal. I am the copyeditor now, which is a wonderful thing to be able to call myself, and I saw many new faces this afternoon. It is going to be a good year, this one. I've begun planning my college visits.

I read Jeanann Verlee's Racing Hummingbirds a few months ago, after a friend of mine let me borrow his copy. I have watched dozens of videos of Verlee performing her poetry since then, and have discussed her writings with quite a few people. Her website is here. I am so honored I've had the opportunity to do this. I cannot wait to tell my friends.

1. What is your process? How do you know when a piece is finished, at least for the time being? How do you begin a piece, when taking it from a seedling of an idea to a full fledged beast?

My process varies poem-to-poem. Some flood me – compelling me to stop everything I’m doing and write – and find themselves in “first draft” status in one sitting. Others take weeks, months, years to clunk through and piece together. I have a number of poems that sit wait – either because they are not good poems but have a couple decent lines worth salvage, or because they are a generally interesting idea but I’m not skilled enough yet to convey the idea properly.

The editing process is lengthy. My first edits are immediate; I edit as a write, involuntarily. My mind works to keep an additional eye to language, repetition, rhythm, base copy edits, etc., all while generating content. Then, upon several rereads, revisions, nips and tucks, I may consider the piece a “first draft.” This is scarcely the end of the editing journey. I then push it into the hands of a circle of authors and editors with whom I regularly work. Individuals who not only provide careful criticism, but who I trust to be gruelingly candid when necessary. Sometimes poems just aren’t good and it needs to be said outright. Such feedback informs the next several drafts.

Sometimes poems don’t even make it this far. Others move to yet another round of editors. Others feel ‘done enough’ to test out in submissions to journals. Eventually, some may be picked up. This is still not the end. Many poems that have been published in journals are not yet complete – but it is an important part of the process. Ultimately, when building a chapbook or even a full manuscript, a collection of the more tested material – those that speak to one another and tell a single story or a series of stories – eventually form the skeleton of a collection. It is here that the process begins again for me and my editors – we effectively start over with the most careful attention to craft to ensure the poems are doing their best work to tell the stories effectively.

2. How did you become involved with spoken word? How has that affected your writing? Something that instantly struck me about your poetry was your ability to take your words from the stage to the page, while maintaining all of the intensity that comes across in your performances. How do you handle the transition, when using different mediums for the same poems?

I came to spoken word long after college, long after my first publication credits, long after pretty much everyone else. Ha. I had been approached to read my work and play the game of Poetry Slam when I was in college, but had little interest in competing with art. It seemed silly as well as daunting. Much later (over a decade), I was participating in various Open Mics throughout Brooklyn and was lucky to bear witness to some startlingly effective readers (Rachel McKibbens, Jeffrey McDaniel, Taylor Mali) and when they each made particular note of their involvement in poetry slams, I figured I might go watch one. Eventually I did start to compete and have had some successes there. What the game has illuminated for me most is attention to performance. It matters more than even I would like to sometimes admit. A well-crafted poem which is given proper performance attention is an important impact to the genre. Bluntly, poetry should not put people to sleep.

Overall, however, I try not to let performance – and certainly not competition – affect the actual writing. I write for the page first. If it is something that I think may translate to the listening ear, I will try it out in an Open Mic or during a feature set. I’m thrilled that you find my work communicates in both mediums. I work hard to make the poems speak without me – on the page. I strongly feel that poems need to do just as much work without me there to recite them. It is when readers find themselves impacted that I am most proud.

My educational background is in English/creative writing and theatre performance and I am thankful that my performance experience helps communicate my poetry when recited aloud. The transition for me is all in rehearsal. Yes, rehearsal. Once a poem is in a place of “done enough” on the page, I will work it out audibly. Not unlike working out a scene in theatre. Standing, in my living room, reading aloud – I find the material’s peaks and valleys, explore places of heightened emotion, experiment with varied volumes, etc. I take pride in my performances as well, and I don’t want to disserve the poems by “phoning in” a recitation. Whether memorized or not, a poem deserves to be communicated with as much attention and craft as possible. To me, taking the time to focus both on the craft of written word and the craft of spoken word is vital for the art of poetry. Readers deserve to understand and be impacted by poems in the silence of their own heads. Audiences deserve the same impact in live performance.

3. What inspires you?

In regard to what inspires me to create art/poetry, the answer is: whatever makes my heart lurch. Whether personal experience, witnessing events, or reading a poem/essay/story/article, if my emotions are tornadoed, I’m in. I actually almost cannot stop myself from exploring the matter through writing. As a deeply emotional person, if I am not impacted, I simply am not interested in discussing it.

In regard to good old fashioned day-to-day life inspiration the answers are many: my father; Johnette Napolitano; friends (some of whom are also poets) Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Sarah Kay, Eboni Hogan, Angel Nafis, Missy Wahlers, Julie Houston, Adam Falkner, Jon Sands; poems; cooking shows; childbirth; mothers; trauma (war/assault/prison/rape/natural disaster) survivors; animal rights workers. And polka dots. Usually pink ones.

4. I am inferring that much of your poetry is autobiographical. If I am wrong in this assumption, disregard this question. Do your poems write themselves, or do you have to actively sort through your thoughts and decide what to share and what to contain? Or is the process a balance of both?

You are not wrong. Most of my work is autobiographical. I think to be successful in crafting poems, one must actively sort the ideas. Otherwise, we’d be reading and discussing chaotic, vulnerable, and painful diary pages, no? If the information pertinent to a given poem is a true emotional or psychological risk – not just a challenge, but something that may damage the author further, cause some greater vulnerability – of course it should be omitted. No one’s art should sacrifice real-life health or safety – physical, mental, or emotional. As such, I use various tools to protect myself in crafting poems – tools of distance (i.e., second or third person, animals, surrealism). Such tools also allow me to address situations that I might otherwise be unable to examine in writing.

Further, I believe any artist must keep a keen eye to what is better left unsaid – not just in light of protecting oneself psychologically and emotionally, but also for the sake of craft. Poems that give too much too easily – those which over-explain or lack any particular artfulness – are dull. Such poems often fail. Not that poetry need be impossibly cryptic, but one must work in the given medium and trust the reader to follow. Readers are smart, no need to oversell the telling. Evoke an emotion before stating one.

5. What do you hope to accomplish with your poetry? Where would you like to take your writing next, to what level?

Well, like anyone, I would love for my poems to pay my rent, bills, taxes, and buy groceries and maybe a couple new pairs of shoes. I have yet to figure that out. As for next steps – I plan to keep working, studying, reading, honing. I return continually to the idea of furthering my education, though funding is a major barrier right now. My next projects include a new manuscript (in its infancy) and some long-term editing projects which should finally be into publication in spring/summer 2012. I also have some older personal projects which have gone dusty in the filing cabinet waiting for my attention: one children’s book and two long fiction projects. I have no idea when I will make time to return to those.

6. Are you currently working on another collection, or are you focusing on life outside of your head?

Yes, as mentioned above, I am currently working on a new poetry collection. In fact, I just compiled the freshest first raw draft this week. I’m unsure if it’s really ready to be named “manuscript” just yet, but I’ve got it sitting in the hands of editors for first-round feedback and that is a very exciting prospect. I’ve recently taken a small step back from the ‘outside’ world of poetry – the reading series I curate, the literary magazine I edit, the host of editing projects I am assigned (anthologies, other author’s books, etc.) – for a personal ‘breather.’ This has allotted some time to focus on my own work and it is definitely overdue. For those of us who naturally tend to take on more than is necessarily healthy because we are a mix of ambitious, capable, willing, and kind (those of us who can’t say “no”), such change of focus can be a difficult thing. It can feel awkward or selfish to put one’s own art at the helm after working to help other folks for an extended period. I’m glad to be seeing myself as an artist again.

What inspired you today?

Three things. 1. This interview. Digging up answers to questions I never ask myself. 2. My neighbors’ morning argument, their voices filling the apartment building’s courtyard with Turkish curses. This is an infrequent incident, but one that cannot help but pique curiosity. Arguments, when not of particular danger or violence, remind us we are not alone. Things hurt and sometimes we are ill-equipped to handle them without shouting. 3. I’ll be seeing Daphne Gottlieb read poems later this evening. Inspiration in mouthfuls.

7. Because I have to ask, what advice would you give a young poet, or any poet?

Read. Experiment. Risk.

What advice would you give yourself?

I have written more than my share of “advice to self” poems. I think I continually return to the subject matter because (unfortunately) I don’t heed my own advice. On my current path, I’ll say this: Go easy. Trust your voice and all its new and changing forms. Write the poems you fear most. Risk in real life as much as you risk on the page. Read more. Try something of which you never thought yourself capable. Stop doing everything for free – your art and your skills have value. Read more. Read more. Read more. Hopefully this time, I listen.

The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham

2011-09-20T03:49:00.000-07:00

It is 6:36 in the morning. Laura Marling's new record was released last week, as well as St. Vincent's. Girls' new record was released recently as well. I have been listening to a lot of music. I have had a lot of homework. Last week, I wrote a poem nearly every day. I am still working on the story I have been working on since January. Sometimes I'm not sure I'll ever finish, but I believe in it.

The book I am about to post a review for is overdue to the library. I owe them money. They are probably going to freeze my account. I took my time. I had to. I was reading Jane Eyre, but I lost interest fairly quickly. Now, I am reading Tea by DA Powell. I would elaborate, but I cannot yet put words to my thoughts regarding his poems. In a few days, I am going to be posting an interview that I am very excited to share with you. And there is also something else coming, but I will reveal that once I have evidence of how good the world is to me. Have a good day/week, friends. Soon it will truly be autumn. We don't need a date to know.
PS- In the process of creating this post, I spilled my coffee. I am also not sure why I cannot make the text a readable size. This new Blogger is confusing me. I am not a true member of the Techonological Generation. My loss, I guess.

Jorie Graham was one of the first poets that I truly felt understood what I was attempting to create in my own writing, though we are certainly not on the same level, seeing that she has won a Pulitzer Prize and currently teaches at Harvard. For years, the only poetry I read was Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and I was constantly going back and forth between the two. I didn’t have the courage to branch out. I wasn’t sure I had the intelligence. Nearly spontaneously, Jorie Graham appeared, and it was no longer a choice.

I always find videos of poets on Youtube, reading their poems or conducting interviews, but I can never sit through them. I have to be reading something on a page, speaking it aloud. It is not enough for me to watch something on a screen. With Jorie Graham, though, I was captivated. I watched every video on Youtube I can find, most more than once. I read as many poems as I could track. I didn’t always understand the imagery, or the wording, and I had the same experience with this collection, but I could not stop reading. I was physically incapable of it.

The Dream of the Unified Field is a collection of Jorie Graham’s selected poems, taken from the years of 1974-1994, spanning her first five collections. There is a generous selection from each collection, though some more than others. It took me weeks to make my way through this, but not once did I consider reading anything else. It only took me so long because each time I sat down to read a poem, once finished I would have to look somewhere besides on the page, and think. This happened for nearly every poem. That is the only explanation I can give.

For my History homework last night, my class had to read a short biography on Upton Sinclair and write a one-page response. Upton Sinclair was a politic-based writer, and many of his stories had much to do with government and the workings of America at the time he was alive. I wrote at one point that writers can ignite thought, but it takes much more than good writing to ignite action. I have to read Jorie Graham’s poetry aloud. It almost feels necessary. And if I’m reading aloud, I have to move. And if I’m moving, that is action. And action takes thought. So it is a cycle. Jorie Graham moves me, physically, emotionally, in every way. For this reason and this reason only, I committed to finishing this collection.

When it comes to reviewing poetry, I’m never sure exactly what to say. The poems speak for themselves. I was fascinated through The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham’s use of line, where her line breaks were, where she placed her stanzas. Certain images seemed to reappear. Many of the poems include an “I” and also a “she,” so I spent much of my reading time wondering who the specific speaker of the poem was, and by the end, I realized that the speaker of the poem was not the most important thing. What was most important were the feelings I got while reading, and I had many.

Jorie Graham’s poems are often on the longer side, spanning two or three pages. They do not go off track, though. Instead, everything is the track. Anything goes. She switches subjects, topics, nearly seamlessly, connecting them in a simple and surprising way. Her poems have meter, but it is easy to fall off of that meter. If the reader does lose the meter, which I often did, they can choose to rebegin. And as they make their way through whichever poem a second time, something new appears. Jorie Graham’s poems are like paintings. There is so much at the forefront, but also so much beneath the surface. There is a certain depth that has become almost an obsession for me since I discovered her poetry. Each word seems to have a significance. Each line could operate as a separate entity. Yet she pulls the words and the lines and the stanzas together and creates magic.

Of course, I liked certain poems more than others. Of course, there were times when I was slightly bored of constantly looking for the substance instead of simply having it placed in my lap. But isn’t that the wonder of reading? You have to search for the answers to your questions. They are not always in the forefront. Sometimes they are not even in the background. Jorie Graham is talented enough that she can hide these answers, or the ones she supposes the reader will be looking for, in such obvious areas that they are easily overlooked. But for the reader who discovers these answers from the beginning will think, “Oh, it has been right here all along.” And that is the genius of Jorie Graham.

Mannahatta by Walt Whitman

2011-09-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

I am listening to Joni Mitchell. It is September 11th. Last year I posted this, and this year I am posting this, and I'm sure a year from now I will be posting something else. Most days I miss the way I used to write.
I went for a long walk yesterday, and I think I will go for an even longer walk today. I am thinking of things I haven't thought of in weeks these past few days.
I was going to post my review of the Jorie Graham collection I finished a few days ago, but I just read this poem and I cannot write that review today. I apologize. It is coming.

Mannahatta, by Walt Whitman

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city, 
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, 
   unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old, 
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays,
   superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and 
   steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, 
   strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown, 
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining
   islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, 
   the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the 
   houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-
   brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week, 
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses,
   the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing 
   clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the 
   river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or 
   ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd, 
   beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the 
   shops and shows,
A million people--manners free and superb--open voices--
   hospitality--the most courageous and friendly young 
   men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! 
City nested in bays! my city!

Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson

2011-09-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

Blogger friends, I am a Junior in high school. Today is the last day of my long weekend, and it is September, and I am ready. Yesterday, my boyfriend moved into college. I saw the campus and we said goodbye for now and it was emotional and I am emotional but I took a lot of trains and walked through the city. I have a large pink Domo that he bought for me/us sitting next to me, and I would take a picture of it but I don't think any of you care very much, so I am just telling you about it instead.
As you can probably tell by the title of this post, I finished Wit. I am still making my way through Jorie Graham's Dream of the Unified Field, but I am on the last of the five sections, so I'm sure that review will be posted shortly. After I finish that, I have to actually read my summer reading book, though school has already started. Don't tell administration. They might think less of me or something.
This is all I have been listening to today. I have been posting a lot of poems here. After I write this review, I am going to practice piano, and then go for a long walk. I should probably do some more homework, too, but we'll see. Have a wonderful holiday, you wonderful people. I hope all is well.

This is the first play I have ever read in it’s entirety, besides the ones we’ve been assigned in school. A friend of mine let me borrow his copy, the same friend who recommended Flowers for Algernon. He is in college now, though that is not of much importance. It has taken me a few weeks to read this, not because I haven’t had the desire to read it, but because so much has been happening, and every time I picked this tiny book up, the rest of the world disappeared. There was no chaos, no ever-growing list of things to do, while I read this play. The world could’ve ended while I plowed through this, and chances were I wouldn’t have even noticed.

Wit is about Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English professor who has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. The play takes place nearly entirely in the hospital she has been admitted into, and there is a small cast of characters. Much of the story takes place in Vivian’s mind, as her body seems to eat itself alive. Each of the supporting characters are pivotal, but this could probably be considered a ‘one-woman play.’ It is the story of a woman, and of life, but also death, and what it takes to make a person.

Dr. Vivian Bearing has spent nearly all of her life studying English, or teaching English, living and breathing words every moment of every day. She has written countless books and articles on John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, and she has achieved a significant amount of success through her scholarly analyses. She has a reputation of confidence, and also brilliance. Her classes are difficult, and she herself is difficult, keeping nearly everyone at arm’s length while holding words as closely to her being as she can. She has spent years crafting a legacy, and she has without a doubt managed to do this by the time the play begins. But by the time we meet her, this legacy is fading fast. Because behind the scholar, behind the notorious professor, is a woman who will do anything she can to continue to living, even if it takes everything she has.

What I have always loved about plays is that, when staged, all of a play’s work must be done through words, through dialogue, and body language. There can be monologues, sure, but the rising action of a play lies in the characters, in the actors who play the characters. Each movement is significant. Tone is significant. As I read this play, I could see it, but most of all I felt it, and that is how I came to realize the size of Margaret Edson’s talent. After I finished reading this, yesterday on the train, I looked back, and all I saw were metaphors. Every scene, every line, was a metaphor. There was the story, but also what was beneath that, and beneath that undercurrent was something else entirely. I spent hours wondering what this something was.

John Donne’s Holy Sonnets were a symbol. The one Vivian speaks the most of is largely about death, as all of them are. She is determined to fight this cancer, and she is determined to fight death, so that way she can die proud, knowing how hard she has fought. But as the play progresses, as she quickly gets sicker and sicker, she is no longer worried about the fight. She is no longer worried about much at all. Instead, she remembers the past, and the things that have made her who she is. The Holy Sonnets made her, but they also break her. She has spent the entirely of her life creating this image of herself, and for what? Because she realizes that she is not an image, but a person, and that is the hardest lesson of all.

The play is brief, almost too brief. But that, in and of itself, is a metaphor. Vivian thrives for years, and then suddenly she is not thriving. Death comes quickly and suddenly and aggressively. The play’s brevity is yet another image, of death. The writing is witty, much like John Donne’s writing, and Vivian herself has a sarcastic sense of humor. But she changes, or, she doesn’t necessarily change as much as let the sarcasm fade away. Beneath his wit, John Donne was a vulnerable man. Beneath her wit, Vivian is nothing but vulnerable at this point. She has hidden behind the facade of wit, behind the image, behind the Sonnets, and there is no more hiding.

Margaret Edson has inspired me. Reading this play made me want to write, to act, to live. Life is brief. Vivian may have lived a profitable life, but she was not happy. In life, we must work hard, and we must experience, and we must be strong, and we cannot escape pain or hurt or sickness, or death. Vivian faces life, and faces death, with the eyes of a warrior. The cancer makes her weak, but she is anything but. She is a strong woman, and this comes through in every line of Margaret Edson’s writing. There are so many things in life that can create weakness, that can leave us drained and empty, but we forge on. And if we cannot, at least we can say we tried.

I am going to start reading more plays.

"By blood and by mean, I fall when you leave."

2011-08-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday, I will be back in school. There is a hurricane moving through my town, my state, my coast. The only thing that truly belongs to me is myself.

So it is raining. I am still reading Jorie Graham and Margaret Edson. I am learning my Jazz Band music. I have bought my summer reading book, but still have not started it. I have plans for the next few days, but for now I am alone. Monday, I will lose my hair. Tuesday, I will break brownies. 2 years from now, I will most likely be moving into college, wherever I end up heading. 2 years ago, I didn't see this coming.

The past few days have been a whirlwind. Thursday night, I ran and cut open my toes. Last night, I slept and woke early to the sound of an alarm. I am going to have to get used to that again, soon. My toes are feeling better, as am I.

A few minutes ago, I read this poem over the phone. A friend read most of it, but I cut him off during the last section. Loving poetry, I figure I have to read Leaves of Grass in it's entirety some day(s). I plan on it.

"Hunger Moon" by Jane Cooper

The last full moon of February
stalks the fields; barbed wire casts a shadow.
Rising slowly, a beam moved toward the west
stealthily changing position

until now, in the small hours, across the snow
it advances on my pillow
to wake me, not rudely like the sun
but with the cocked gun of silence.

I am alone in a vast room
where a vain woman once slept.
The moon, in pale buckskins, crouches
on guard beside her bed.

Slowly the light wanes, the snow will melt
and all the fences thrum in the spring breeze
but not until that sleeper, trapped
in my body, turns and turns.

"Anyway" by Richard Siken

He was pointing at the moon but I was looking at his hand.
He was dead anyway, a ghost. I'm surprised
I saw his hand at all. The moon, of course, is always
there—day moon, but it's still there; behind the clouds but
it's still there. I like seeing things: a hand, the moon, ice
in a highball glass. The moon? It's free, it doesn't
cost you anything so go ahead and look. Sustained attention
to anything—a focus, a scrutiny—always yields results.
I'd live on the moon probably except I think I'd miss
the moonlight, landscaping craters with clay roses in earthshine
and a reasonable excuse to avoid visiting hours
at the mental hospital. In space, no one can hear you
lying to your mom: "Can't make it, Mom. It's
a really long schlep." The coffee's weak and the coffee cake's
imaginary. You're not missing anything. Inside: a day room
and a day pass. Outside: a gazebo under a jackfruit tree.
The other inside: a deeper understanding of the burden
and its domestic infrastructure. Make yourself white.
Make yourself snow but the black bears trample
your landscape like little black dots that show up on x-rays.
It is not enough to be a landscape. One must also become
the path through the landscape, which is creepy. Truly.
The sun melts the snow, the bears wander off, the leaves
tremble like all my sad friends. I can still see his hand.
Once, in a fable, the moon woke the dead. Buried
underground, its light was too much to bear. How did it
get there? Greed. The brothers who owned it had it
buried with them. Later, St. Peter hung it in a tree.
The dead went back to bed, allegedly. One wonders why
a story like this exists. Who wrote it and to what end?
An ingenious solution: trees. Cashew, avocado, fig,
olive. Put it in a tree. Hide it in plain sight and climb
higher. We are all of us secret agents, undercover in our
overcoats, the snow falling down. Little black dots.
Some dream of tall things—trees, ladders, a rope trick.
My dreams are filled with bricks, or things in the shape
of bricks. Rectangles in the hot sun. A cow, a car,
a carton of cigarettes. Even my imagination sleeps
when I sleep and why not rest? Why crash the party
on the astral plane? You'll just be too tired to go
to the real party later. Have you ever eaten
Swedish meatballs at a dream party? They taste like
your blanket, because they are your blanket.
My imagination wants breakfast burritos. It refuses
to punch the clock until then. I could eat six but then
I'd need a nap. A breakfast that puts you back to sleep
is useless. Dear bears, we must not hibernate!
The bathroom tile is always wet and slippery and the door
from sleeping to waking always sticks and squeeks
but I have arrived, triumphant, with corporate coffee!
Tawnya has written our names on the paper cups
in her immaculate cursive. Her eyes are dead
and lusterless but her heart is in the right place, I guess.
Somewhere deep in her chest, I guess.
We take our hats off and get down
to business. "You got plans tonight, Dick?"
"Eight dollar spaghetti dinner and all you can sing
karaoke at the Best Western. Gonna school
Pace and Killian in the finer points of falsetto."
Not even one hour later: smoke break
in the breezeway by the handicapped bathroom.
Why is it we believe we only have one soul?
Because it's easier to set the table for one. And you can
sing your dinner tune to yourself while you eat over the sink.
The throat of the sink: silent. The throat of the argument:
more silverware, a tablecloth, gratitude, more souls.
A kid under a tablecloth isnists he's a ghost. A table
underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us,
only pretending to be invisible. Or worse:
dressed for work and not in the mood for, you know,
how it all plays out, always the same ways, boring times infinity.
"When I grow up I'm going to be a truck,"
says the kid underneath the tablecloth, and that's one way
to deflect the weight of the inevitable, to insist on possibility
in the face of grownups and the pumace of their compromises.
The trees die standing. My Spanish teacher told me this.
I had conjugated the verbs beforehand and taped them
to the bottom of my sneaker. Cheater, yes. Also uninvested
in the outcome. She could tell. Nothing to be done about it.
Verbs of being and verbs of action. We, neither
of us, were doing much anyway at the time and the room was
too hot. I think she meant unroot, which is a good thing to mean
but a difficult thing to hear when you're living under someone
else's roof. I climbed trees then, too. Then climbed back down.
How do I tell you how I got here without getting trapped
in the past? I suppose that's a bigger question than I expected.
"Hey Dick, tell ‘em about that one time when we made out.
That was a good time." Yes, it was. And yet
should we really spend our velocities on backwards motion?
Yes. Any motion, every motion. It's spring, green, take off
your coat, pull down your cap, roll up your sleeves, we're
hunting, we're arrows, we're stag in a meadow, in a frenzy.
"Like I said, Dick. That was a good time."
Soul 1: Was it a good time?
Soul 2: I had fun. You seemed to like it.
Soul 3: He's no Neil Armstrong.
Soul 2: Few are.
Neil Armstrong: Hush.
"He was such a colicky baby. Always fussing and crying.
As if he didn't want to be here at all. Right, Dicky?"
No, mom. I don't remember. And you're not supposed to be
in this part of the poem. You come back later, near the end,
with the ghost and the hand and the moon, after dark, after
the gimlets. "Sweetie, you asked for prompts and it's getting dark
on the East Coast. Tick tock. And don't type drunk."
Dear East Coast, I'm sorry it's getting dark. It must be problematic,
living in the future, always a few steps ahead, knowing
things you shouldn't say, since they haven't happened
to the rest of us yet. And Poland? I don't dare wonder
what you know about tomorrow. "Your grandma was from Poland."
I know, mom. And grandpa was handsome and you
were the smart one and the pretty one. "Still am. Poor Barbara.
You know, Dicky, I've been out of the hospital for a while now.
Remember how you promised you wouldn't write about me
while I was alive, Dicky? Remember? So if you're
writing about me that must mean something, yes?"
You're not sticking around for the end, then. "No, you're
doing fine, Squish. And yes, I miss you, too."
We cannot tarry here. We must march, we must bear the brunt.
Smoke break: in the alley by the oleanders, the pink ones.
Dear East Coast, it is getting dark here too now. Suddenly.
"It's getting late, Little Moon. Sing them the song."
It's not that late, Mr. Kitten.
"You are my moon, Little Moon. And it's late enough.
So climb down out of the tree."
Is it safe? "Safe enough." Are you dead as well?
Soul 1: Sing.
Soul 2: Sing.
Soul 3: Sing.
Stag In The Meadow: Sing.
The Black Bears: Sing.
Kid Under The Tablecloth: Sing.
I've been singing all day.
"Yes, you've been singing all day. And no, I'm not dead, not
everyone is dead, Little Moon. But the big moon needs the tree."
There is a ghost at the end of the song.
"Yes, there is. And you see his hand, and then you see the moon."
Am I the ghost at the end of the song?
"No, you are the way we bounce the light to see the ghost."
He was looking at the moon by I was looking at his hand.
He was dead anyway, a ghost. I'm surprised I saw
his hand at all. Once, in a fable, the moon woke the dead.
One wonders why a story like this exists. Who wrote it
and to what end? Sure, everyone wants the same things—
to belong, and to not be left behind—but still, does it help?
Perhaps. Once, in a fable: a man in a tree. Once,
in a fable: the trace of his thinking, the sound of his singing.
I like seeing things: a hand, the moon, ice in a highball glass.
The light of the mind illuminating the mind itself.
Put it in a tree. Hide it in plain sight and climb higher.
We are all of us secret agents, undercover in our overcoats,
the snow falling down.

"The Creation of the Moon" by Anonymous

The man cut his throat and left his head there.
The others went to get it.
When they got there they put the head in a sack.
Farther on the head fell out onto the ground.
They put the head back in the sack.
Farther on the head fell out again.
Around the first sack they put a second one that
was thicker.
But the head fell out just the same.
It should be explained that they were taking the head
to show to the others.
They did not put the head back in the sack.
They left it in the middle of the road.
They went away.

They crossed the river.
But the head followed them.
They climbed up a tree full of fruit
to see whether it would go past.

The head stopped at the foot of the tree
and asked them for some fruit.
So the men shook the tree.
The head went to get the fruit.
Then it asked for some more.

So the men shook the tree
so that the fruit fell into the water.
The head said it couldn't get the fruit from there.
So the men threw the fruit a long way
to make the head go a long way to get it so they could go.
While the head was getting the fruit
the men got down from the tree and went on.

The head came back and looked at the tree
and didn't see anybody
so went on rolling down the road.

The men had stopped to wait
to see whether the head would follow them.
They saw the head come rolling.

They ran.
They got to their hut they told the others that the head
was rolling after them and to shut the door.

All the huts were closed tight.
When it got there the head commanded them to open the doors.
The owners would not open them because they were afraid.

So the head started to think what it would turn into.
If it turned into water they would drink it.
If it turned into earth they would walk on it.
If it turned into a house they would live in it.
If it turned into a steer they would kill it and eat it.
If it turned into a cow they would milk it.
If it turned into a bean they would cook it.
If it turned into the sun
When men were cold it would heat them.
If it turned into rain the grass would grow and the
animals would crop it.

So it thought, and it said, "I will turn into the moon."
It called, "Open the doors, I want to get my things."
They would not open them.

The head cried. It called out, "At least give me
my two balls of twine."
They threw out the two balls of twine through a hole.
It took them and threw them into the sky.

It asked them to throw it a little stick too
to roll the thread around so it could climb up.

Then it said, "I can climb, I am going to the sky."
It started to climb.

The men opened the doors right away.
The head went on climbing.
The men shouted, "You going to the sky, head?"
It didn't answer.

As soon as it got to the Sun
it turned into the Moon.
Toward evening the Moon was white, it was beautiful.
And the men were surprised
to see that the head had turned into the Moon.

"San Sepolcro" by Jorie Graham

2011-08-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

I posted yesterday, and I am posting again today. I sang a song with my friend yesterday called "Again Today." I am reading Jorie Graham's The Dream of the Unified Field, a partial collection of her poetry that won the Pulitzer Prize, and this is the first one I read this morning. I would like to share it with you. And also a picture, which I found here. Enjoy.

"San Sepolcro" by Jorie Graham

In this blue light
I can take you there,
snow having made me
a world of bone
seen through to. This
is my house,

my section of Etruscan
wall, my neighbor's
lemontrees, and, just below
the lower church,
the airplane factory.
A rooster

crows all day from mist
outside the walls.
There's milk on the air,
ice on the oily
lemonskins. How clean
the mind is,

holy grave. It is this girl
by Piero
della Francesca, unbuttoning
her blue dress,
her mantle of weather,
to go into

labor. Come, we can go in.
It is before
the birth of god. No one
has risen yet
to the museums, to the assembly
line--bodies

and wings--to the open air
market. This is
what the living do: go in.
It's a long way.
And the dress keeps opening
from eternity

to privacy, quickening.
Inside, at the heart,
is tragedy, the present moment
forever stillborn,
but going in, each breath
is a button

coming undone, something terribly
nimble-fingered
finding all of the stops.

The size of Texas in my chest

2011-08-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is not a book review. I had the most amazing day today. Today was possibly the most amazing day of my summer thus far, and I have had a pretty wonderful summer. I saw people I haven't seen, and also people I have seen. I was surrounded by people for hours. I was surrounded by love. We ate brownies, and played music, and I sang louder than I have ever sang before. I gave a lot of hugs. I came home and cried. But only briefly, as I looked at my living room ceiling and wondered how I got this place in my life. I can wonder as much as I want, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll find an answer. I will continue to search for answers. I am learning to ask more questions.

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under it's roof." That is a Barbara Kingsolver quote I read a few minutes ago. A lot of coincidental things have happened today, and I think reading that quote was another coincidence. While my friend Sophie and I were playing music today, singing from the top of a hill, a friend of mine pointed someone out to me. We were between songs, and I walked towards him and the two girls he was with, but I kept my distance. We made eye contact, and I knew he knew who I was. In a way, he is partially responsible for how upset I was for the first half of this year. I am waist deep into the other half, though, and I am loving it. I am also partially responsible for what happened. Or maybe not what happened, but how I handled it. And now I have learned, and the hope has returned.

This afternoon, I was talking to a good friend of mine, a girl who is leaving the country for 10 months this coming Friday, and she told me how strange it is for her that people have come to admire her, myself included. It is strange that a lot of things that have happened this summer have happened. I am reflecting. I wrote a poem over the course of the past two nights, and though I have yet to pick it apart too deeply, I am going to share it here. My writing has changed so much since I began this blog. When I began this blog over two years ago, I was just a barely pubescent boy who read books largely written for a female audience, and I wanted to write, and I wanted to experience, and now I have. I have read dozens of books. I have written thousands of words, stories, poems, reviews. I have experienced. I have more to read. I have more to write. I have more to experience. And that will come in it's own time. Today, I am glad for what I have. I am glad for what I don't have. I am glad I have seen what I have seen, and been able to write about it here. I value this. I value everything. I don't think I've been this content in months. I'm reluctant to let it go. Maybe I won't have to.

The title of this post comes from a song by Anna Vogelzang called "Texas," which is on her new record Canary in a Coal Mine, which will be released very soon. I have listened to this song repeatedly the past few weeks, all over my house, all over Massachusetts, and I love it. It is sad, yet hopeful. It is heartbreaking, yet healing. I write to reflect, to feel, to think. I process my thoughts through writing, whether it is a story or a poem or a book or a text message. I have come to need that, in some shape or form, and I'm glad I've found a way to express myself. There is a lot of expression in this song. I would like to create something this alive some day.

That is a picture of my friend and I, as we were in the process of making 48 brownies. We danced to music and flung batter at each other. Later that day, we sat on the roof of my father's truck and talked to the sky.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

2011-08-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

I have been having mood swings. Because I am a teenage boy, I have come to expect this, but I am still working on 'welcoming' them. I am listening to Keith Jarrett play Bach, and I have a few things I want to get done before my friend Sophie comes over this afternoon. Writing this review is one of them. I had trouble sleeping last night.
I am going to begin reading Wit, a play by Margaret Edison. I am also going to begin reading a collection of Jorie Graham's selected poems. After that will come Jane Eyre. I can put it off no longer. Exactly three weeks from today, I will begin my junior year.

I made a list of books I wanted to read this summer in June. I made a stack, and took a picture, and posted that list here. I have read a few of them, but I have also gotten quite distracted. I was in the library with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and I came across this book. I have been interested in reading something by Joan Didion for the past few months, and there this was, at exactly the right time.
I finished it last night. I read it in a Braintree train station, and in a living room of a house I had never been in before. The entire time I was reading this book, I felt a lump in my throat, growing larger as I turned page after page, and I laughed to myself a few times, alone in my kitchen mid-morning, but I never cried.
This is a book about Joan Didion, and her husband, and her life, and the complex process that we call ‘grieving.’ My husband is not dead. I have never been married. I’m not sure I’m old enough to get married at all. But throughout this book, I found myself nodding many a time, because I understood. Joan Didion understood me, and vice versa. The year after her husband’s death was her ‘Year of Magical Thinking.’ I related to this, because I have come to think of this present year as mine.
Joan Didion’s husband dies early in this memoir. She writes of the weeks and months after the fact, while also flashing back and looking ahead, and reflecting on things she had never thought much about at all. Her daughter is sick, and she is a widow, yet time goes on. This book’s only plot is time. It is a love story. It is a family story. It is a life story. It is less action and more thought. Joan Didion looks deep inside of herself and asks questions she knows she is not comfortable answering. She questions all that can be questioned, including the specifics of her relationship with her husband, and also her daughter, and who she is a woman, and a wife, and a mother. She avoids grief. Through avoiding grief, she grieves. She runs from time. Through running, time passes. She begins writing, and this is what comes. There is not much closure to be reached, or much acceptance, but Joan Didion makes her way.
Her writing is near perfection. Joan Didion crafts her sentences simply, minimally, yet her language is poetic, her paragraphs, her prose. The memoir reads as a sort of stream-of-consciousness, with present becoming intertwined with past, with Joan not necessarily leading but recording. With a five word sentence, she says something that would take other writers an entire paragraph. There is an art to her letters on a page. She wrote this without John, her husband. He had always edited her drafts, told her what was missing. This time, in her earliest drafts, she was on her own, for the first time in decades. She had to see the story through his eyes. She had to become him. She had to become more of herself.
Later this year, Joan will be releasing another memoir, entitled Blue Nights, about her daughter, and about aging. Joan has created a career out of her life, out of her thoughts. A wonderful writer, she has written a wonderful memoir. This is not just the story of a widow, a mother in crisis, a writer in doubt. This is a story about the emotions of a person over the course of time, and the effects of time on a person’s emotions. She has created something beautiful, something honest. Through death, Joan Didion found the strength she didn’t know she needed.

Interview with Emma Straub (Other People We Married)

2011-08-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

It is August. I am listening to Jessica Lea Mayfield. I am reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I am watching The Big C. I am not reading or watching at this present moment, because right now I am staring at this computer screen, but in the past 24 hours I have read and watched those things. Enjoy your summer, friends.

I posted my review of Emma Straub's Other People We Married a few days ago, and because I am one of the luckiest people on this Earth we call home, I got the chance to interview her. It was a quick exchange, and I would've kept it going forever if I could, but Ms. Straub has better things to do than converse with overemotional teenage boys who hide in their bedrooms and write angsty poetry. Emma, thank you. Readers, thank you. This is her website. This is her Twitter. Read her book. She is a gift.

1. How do you write? What is your process? Where do you usually begin? How do you revise?

I tend to work quickly--most of my first drafts were written in two or three sittings. I write every day, whether it's part of my novel, a story, an essay, or just a hundred Twitter posts. It's really just the way my brain processes things--by writing them down. Revision has always been hard for me--far harder than getting down a first draft--but I'm getting better at it as I get older. Now I get some sick pleasure out of multiple drafts. The more, the better!

2. When I went to your signing, I remember you being asked a question about how the book came to be. Other People We Married has a unique story. What is some backstory regarding you as a person, who just so happens to write? How has your life impacted your writing?

Well, I've always loved to read, and my father is a writer, and so it seemed like a natural choice. The only choice, really. Some people are far more well-rounded than I am, with many many interests. I've always loved stories, and making things up, and spending time alone, in my own little world. I'm not sure that answers your question.

3. Something I loved about Other People We Married was your ability to embody so many different characters and story-lines throughout the connection. Have you always written that way, or is it a skill you've developed over time? How has time changed you as a writer?

It's all about experience. Both the experience of writing stories and seeing what works and the life experience to draw from. I know some people who went straight from undergrad to MFA programs, which seems silly to me. It's nice to get out in the world a bit. For me, moving to Wisconsin, where I did my MFA, was enormously helpful, not just the schooling itself, but also living outside of New York, and the bubble I'd built for myself.

4. You're currently working on a novel, which is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. How is writing a novel different from writing a story? Can you see yourself writing both novels and stories for the entirety of your career, or do you think the time will come when you'll have to choose?

Writing a novel is REALLY different than writing a story. In some ways it's easier, because you have all this room to play, and can go off on little tangents, which you really aren't supposed to do in stories. Of course, it's also excruciating and painful in a way writing stories isn't, because you have to keep so many balls in the air. I certainly do get pleasure out of both, so my hope is to be able to continue on this way, going back and forth. I will say, though, that both require a certain amount of practice, and so my short story writing brain feels a bit atrophied at the moment.

5. What inspires you?

Oh, lots of things! Traveling is a big one--I always get ideas when I travel. Talking to people. All writers are actually robots, you know, are are secretly tape-recording all their conversations for possible future use. That is a fact. And this last one should be totally obvious, but I'm also inspired on a daily basis by the books that I read. There is nothing that I find more inspiring than a good book.

6. What do you hope readers take from Other People We Married? What direction would you like to go in with your writing? Chocolate or vanilla?

I hope that readers find the stories sad and funny and poignant, and that they want to read my novel, when it's out. As for a direction, I'd like to keep writing forever. So I guess that's sideways. And chocolate, my dear Robby, always, always, always chocolate.

7. What are books you are currently finding inspiring? Music? Movies?

Right now, I'm reading a lot of books about old Hollywood-- the 1930s WPA Guide to Los Angeles, biographies, etc. Those are wonderfully inspiring. Movies are huge for me right now, too--when I was in California doing some research, my husband and I went to see Top Hat, the Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire movie on the big screen, and I giggled throughout, I loved it so much.

8. How much of your stories are autobiographical?

None of my stories are a hundred percent autobiographical, but a lot of them are five percent. There's often a real detail, or one aspect of my personality that comes through, but no, none of them are straight-up non-fiction. That's cheating!

9. What happened to you today?

Today I worked on my novel, ate some delicious leftovers straight out of the fridge, rewarded myself for getting a lot of revision done with two episodes of 'Game of Thrones,' and then went out to dinner with my husband and my parents. It rained all day, and I couldn't have cared less. A lovely day.

10. And now, because I am making this interview as stereotypical and cliche as possible, what advice would you give to a young writer, such as myself?

Don't give up. Ever. It's really that simple. Writing requires heaps of confidence and self-discipline, but don't worry, it's the kind of self-discipline that still allows you to eat as much ice cream as you like. Don't give up. I already said that, but it's still true. Don't. I believe in you.

Also, brownies.

Racing Hummingbirds by Jeanann Verlee & Other People We Married by Emma Straub

2011-07-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight's soundtrack has consisted of Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Tender Forever, and Peter Bjorn & John. Spotify is taking over my life. I do not mind in the slightest.
In about a month, I will be back in school. I will be a junior. Soon will come SATs, and college visits, and holidays. I am excited. I am taking things day by day. I have been chaotically busy, either in my mind or in the world, and I am having the greatest summer. I took the train today, for hours. I wandered around Boston by myself, and watched people, and watched my reflection. I thought of the people I know, and the people I don't, and how magnificent life is. That thought has often appeared in my mind, the past few weeks. Life is not always easy. Life is not always satisfying. But life is life, and I am alive, and I don't want to waste any more time. Or, if I'm wasting it, I would like to at least think through the wasting.
Here are two reviews of two great books (or, collections). I am about to send both authors love letters via my e-mail. This explains everything.

The same friend who recommended Flowers for Algernon for me recommended Racing Hummingbirds. Before reading this collection of poems, Jeanann Verlee’s first, I had never read/listened to any of her work. I began reading this book on my bed, with my head against the wall. I couldn’t stay that way for long. I had to get up and pace. I had to yell.
Jeanann Verlee is a slam poet. If you look her up on Youtube, and there are dozens of videos of her reading her pieces to enthusiastic and lively audiences who hook onto every single word. Her poems read that way as well, the syllables and occasional rhymes bouncing off of each other and continuing. As I read these poems aloud, I whispered. I screamed. I went back, again and again, to the lines that struck me most. There were quite a few. I have already given my friend his book back.
The poems are raw. There is recurring imagery throughout the collection, and certain ones seem to make an arc, though not usually a perfect one. At a few points, Verlee writes that the entirety of her poems are autobiographical, but she writes in the third person, because saying ‘I’ would make it that much harder. The words painted pictures, both in sound and as visuals. Some poems were more violent, more present, more forceful, than others. Each poem had a voice.
The collection is split into sections, and the first few hit me much harder than the later ones. I was constantly wiping my eyes and clearing my throat while reading these poems, because they were alternately overwhelming and hilarious. There is a sort of dark humor in some of these poems that only the most talented writers can manage. The humor maintains the intensity, and the aggression, and the honesty, but also brings a smile to the reader’s/listener’s face. Verlee has mastered this.
Slam poetry fascinates me. Often autobiographical, most of the performers I’ve heard seem to lose themselves somewhere in the reading, in the execution, but I had yet to be lost with them. Reading Verlee’s poems, I got lost. In the past few months, I have had a handful of these experiences, while listening to poets reading their poems, or actually reading them, where I am no longer in my body, in my house, or on a train, but am instead in the pages, or in the throat of the poet. The greatest writers have the ability to uproot a reader- from everything they are comfortable with, from everything that surrounds them- and put them in a different place, not always physically, but certainly mentally.
Jeanann Verlee uprooted me.

I have been stalking Emma Straub via-Internet for many months now. I have read nearly all of her blog posts, and used to frequently visit her Twitter page. Now, I restrict myself to about once a week/day. Even before I bought Other People We Married, her first collection of stories, I knew I was going to love it. Even before I met her in Brookline last month, I knew I was going to love her. And I did. This book was much more than I expected, and I will tell you right now that I had pretty high expectations. I wish I could fit Emma Straub into my pocket, so I could take her around with me and she could read me stories all day. Or just talk. That would work, too.
Other People We Married is a collection of 12 stories, set in 12 different places. Each story is about the same thing, though there is nearly always a different cast of characters. Each story begins and ends at exactly the right point. Emma Straub’s writing is familiar, and unique; welcoming, and shocking; honest.
Each story is about relationships. There was not a single story in this book that I didn’t love. What I love about short stories is their ability to portray everything that a novel does, in a tinier portion. Instead of being spread over the course of weeks, or months, even years, stories are often just one day, or a series of days. Writers hold an imaginary magnifying glass over the worlds they create for their characters and watch them as closely as possible, documenting their actions, thoughts, nuances, weaknesses. Emma Straub’s stories are frank, and sharp, but not in an overwhelming way. Rather, her stories move subtly, and a single line or movement will reappear hours later, and you will think, “Oh. So that’s what she meant.”
I got deeper into this collection the farther I read. I often read stories in one sitting, but forced myself to stop before moving ahead. I had to sit with the characters, with the stories themselves, and wait for them to leave on their own. The characters in these stories ask the questions that we all ask- What are the consequences? Why am I living this way? Who am I supposed to be? The list could go on.
In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” a college professor questions moving forward with her flirtatious feelings for a student. For the entirety of the story, the tension builds, and the reader waits for the climax, for the final decision, but it does not come. Or, it is easily missed. Not all of the stories in this collection are resolved, but these is nearly always a foreseeable resolution.
The two stories that affected me most were “Other People We Married,” the title story, and “Hot Springs Eternal.” It just so happens that both stories feature homosexual characters. That certainly played a part. But also, the stories center on relationship dynamics that I am constantly thinking of- the relationship between friends, or lovers, or friends as lovers, over time. Most of these stories explore that, the effects of time, and emotion, on both the inside of a person and the way they interact and perceive the outside.
Each of the stories showed me something. I wasn’t reading them; I was living them. Straub pulls her readers inside of these stories similarly to Verlee- always mentally, and often physically. The dark humor from Verlee’s collection is also present here, though not as aggressively. Instead, the significant lines are carefully placed, and they surface slowly.
There is not always a beginning, middle, and end to these stories, but there doesn’t need to be. The stories in Other People We Married are about life, and life does not always have place-marks. Often, we place them subconsciously, so we at least have somewhere to refer back to. Emma Straub understands this. And though each story has a different setting, those are not at the forefront. They simply play a part.
In my book, she wrote that I have the best hair in all of Boston. I will never forget this.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

2011-07-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted on here in two weeks. This summer is going by too quickly. I, as always, have been working on AP summer assignments and drinking quite a bit of coffee and sleeping many hours. I got an invitation to join Spotify a few days ago, so now there is always some sort of music in the background. This morning, I am listening to Johnny Flynn. I have things to do. I am going to write these reviews first.
How are you? I am currently reading Other People We Married by Emma Straub. I'm a few stories in, and loving it just as much as I knew I would. My Summer Reading list is being adjusted slightly, because I've received a few more books, and I would like to read those first. I saw the last Harry Potter movie last week, at midnight in a town I had never been in before. I spent the weekend away, and I loved it. I have written a few poems. My writing is changing as I am. I will tell you more about this soon.
I could ramble more about my life, but I have made you wait quite some time for these reviews, so I figure I should just move on to those. Hopefully I still remember what these books were actually about. There is no way I could've forgotten.
Here is the first review. The second will come this weekend, most likely. I will not make you wait as long this time. Probably.

A few weeks ago, I was with a dear friend of mine. We were walking near the beach, talking about plays and stories we’d read. He’d been trying to remember the name of a book for a few hours by then, because he thought I’d enjoy it. We were walking away from the beach, back towards town, and he remembered. He said, “Flowers for Algernon. That’s it.”
I checked it out of the library. I owe them a lot of money. Because they are nice people, they let me take the book out nonetheless. I began reading it a few days letter. I read slowly, in the mornings and on train rides. A woman stopped me on the Commuter Rail and told me that Flowers was one of her favorite books. She had read it as a girl. At the time, I was only a few pages in. I knew I was going to love this book. I did.
Flowers for Algernon is a classic. The story is about a man named Charlie Gordon. Severely mentally disabled, he works in a bakery. The novel is written in the form of Progress Reports, as Charlie begins to enter a testing and observation period for a procedure he may be the prime candidate for. He understands little about the world, but smiles and loves unconditionally regardless of whether or not he knows exactly what is happening around him. He is passionate about learning, about the world. This procedure takes that passion and runs with it.
Flowers follows Charlie as the procedure comes closer and is executed. The book largely takes place after, as Charlie’s brain slowly expands along with his scope of the world. The procedure’s purpose was to make him smarter, more intelligent, to raise his IQ. He was the first human that the procedure was done on. He begins to absorb life, all of the life around him, and he changes. Through this all, he still understands very little.
Charlie reads everything, and remembers. He begins to think about his childhood, memories he wasn’t previously sure he had. He becomes more aware of the people around him, and the way they treat him. He does indeed become more intelligent, but only in terms of academia. In terms of interaction, and relation, Charlie operates as a child. In a way, he doesn’t know better. He has been taken advantage of his entire life.
This book was written many years ago. Something I found very interesting was the format. As I mentioned earlier, the book is written in the form of Progress Reports. Over the course of the book, as Charlie learns more about grammar and spelling, words in general, the progress reports improve. In the beginning, he can barely write. He isn’t sure what letters to use to make certain sounds, or where to put certain symbols. By the middle of the book, his writing is flawless. His thought processes are more easy to follow. But this isn’t a necessarily a good thing. Charlie is old enough to be an adult, when the procedure is done. And he is an adult, but not inside. He learns how to spell, and how to write, but he still needs to learn how to live. This is much more difficult.
The largest symbol in Flowers is the mouse, Algernon. Algernon is intelligent, quick. The procedure was done on him many months before it is done on Charlie, and he has been closely observed. Charlie’s experiences closely parallel Algernon’s, though not at the same time. Algernon’s patterns foreshadow the events of the book.
There are also many themes. The book is about what it means to be smart. You can be smart academically, but not intimately. You can be smart socially, but not in terms of textbook. The book is about judgment, misconceptions, especially regarding people who appear to be handicapped in any way. The book is about relationships, and maturity. People are maturing all of their lives, and all at different speeds. The book is about independence, dependence, and the dynamics of our infinite world.
Charlie becomes unbelievably intelligent, but also very commanding. He doesn’t understand why other people aren’t as smart as him, or why other people don’t always want to share ideas with him. He is not entirely sure how to share, or how to express, his opinions and emotions. His life becomes intertwined with many people’s, including his colleagues and his teacher, the woman across the hall. He is not sure how to handle this. He is not sure how to act, or how to be. Flowers brings nearly everything into question, and provides no answers. That is the job of the reader.
For me, the main idea of this book was what it means to be a person, whether or not people are born and raised the way they are born and raised for certain reasons or not. Our lives and paths are shaped by our experiences, our parents and siblings, all of the people around us. Our worlds are shaped by our experiences. Is it our place to manipulate that? Is it our place to judge others, if they operate under different circumstances than we do? I am still thinking about this book.
The ending broke my heart. I would like to see the movie. I would like to read more by Daniel Keyes. I would like to see the woman from the train again, and I would like to shake her hand. I’m glad I have friends who love words as much as I do.

A poem by Mark Strand, for my mother's birthday

2011-07-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Today is my mother's birthday. I made her this card.
I love her more than I will ever be able to tell her, or show her. I wrote this poem in the card I made for her to try.

"My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer"
by Mark Strand

1

When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon's ash-colored coat
on the black bay.

2

Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.

3

My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures --
the mouse and the swift -- will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.

Interview with Justin Evans (Town for the Trees)

2011-07-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. We are a little more than halfway through 2011. When people ask how old I am, I have to say 16 now instead of 15. A lot of has been going on all around me, and things are moving quickly, and I love it. I love the summer. I love the things I am doing, and the people in my life. I am still reading Flowers for Algernon. I cannot wait to tell you all about it.
Before I get in the shower, I have an interview to post. A few weeks ago, I posted two reviews in one, one of My Dead Pets Are Interesting by Lenore Zion, and one of Town for the Trees by Justin Evans. Since then, it has become one of the most viewed posts in the history of this blog, and so has my interview with Lenore. Now, I have an interview with Justin. This is a great one, friends. Enjoy.
Read his blog. Buy the book.

1. How do write your poems? Do they take shape over time, or do you usually write them in one sitting? How do you revise? How do you know when a poem is finished?

Most of my poems come in one sitting―at least a first draft.... However, a lot of times I let the idea for a poem develop over a long period of time, meaning I keep thinking to myself I want to write a poem about ___________ or I need to write a _______________ poem to fill in this gap for my manuscript. When it comes to the specifics though, I tend to wait until I am writing. For me, I am very much the kind of poet who needs to have a notepad around at all times because I will get ideas out of the blue, almost like a radio transmission, and I will need to get writing right away or risk losing the idea forever. One thing I have learned is that every idea for a poem has merit. Even if I never develop what I have written, it was worth the time. I think this for two reasons. Writing helps clear the cobwebs and bad poems so I can be ready to write (and recognize) the good poems when they come to me, and I can always go back to old notes and fragments to glean little gems for later use. I revise as I write. I actually know I have a good poems when I can't leave it alone. I am so energized to keep writing and working the poem I lose track of everything around me (which tends to irritate a lot of people in my life) and I will hammer it into shape. Sometimes this is frustrating because I realize I am not a good enough poet to do the poem justice, and I have to leave it for some other time down the road. After, I tinker a bit here and there, but an overwhelming number of my poems are in their final shape within a week of having been written. Some poets have famously said a poem isn't finished, it's abandoned, but I don't buy that. I think a poem is finished when it becomes the best you know how to make it. That requires a bit of trust in your own voice and a lot of practice. I generally know when one of my poems is finished when it pleases both my own aesthetic and on an immediate level.

2. Time and place seem to play big roles in the poems in Town for the Trees. What were your intentions for the poems as you were writing them, and how do you feel about the collection now that it is published?

First off, I did not immediately recognize that I was writing a book when the first of these poems were being written. I was writing what I knew, and what I had started to learn from reading more widely and what my teachers were talking about in class. It's a funny thing, because I think most poets begin with preconceived notions of what poetry is supposed to be, and as long as we hold onto those ideas, we will lack our authentic voices. Many poems in Town for the Trees mark the beginning of me finding my authentic voice. I was writing what I know, and that was where I am from. At the time I had no idea I was following in one of the larger undercurrents of American poetry, that of defining myself by way of place. Once I learned about that, it almost gave me permission to feel good about what I was writing and to celebrate the things I knew. It may sound odd for me to use that word, 'celebrate' when so many of the poems in my book speak of loss and death, but I am not talking content or subject matter. I am talking about ownership in what we write. In one way, I was claiming ownership to my way of seeing the world and myself, finding a context in which to talk to the world at large. These poems, as I think with any poems by any poet, are my declaration to the world that this is where I can connect with you, if anyone is interested in listening. It takes so long for a book of poems to be published. This book took more than five years. I feel a deep connection with them now they are published in one place, but there was a time when I had to divorce myself from them because I needed to write different poems and create different projects. I can now look at the book as a whole, a complete unit and singular expression, where before, when writing the poems and putting the book together there was no one thing they had yet to become.

3. What direction do you think poetry as a genre is moving in?

I think poetry is moving in the same direction it always has. What is changing drastically is the world of publishing. Poetry has always been fragmented, and I think it is a fool's errand to try and enforce distinctions between way people write. Yes, I write lyric poems for the most part, and somebody might write narrative or be extremely experimental when compared to perceptions popular among the general public, and even poets, but that doesn't mean anything except each of us are drawn to different methods and devices. Poets are I think too concerned with the cosmetics of poetry―whether a poem looks like a poem. And while the physical appearance of a poem is certainly important, it's the poet's use of figurative language which should concern the reader and other poets alike. There are the poems I like to write and the poems I prefer to read for the joy of reading poetry, but every poem has worth and every good poem (another highly subjective term) has the potential to teach me something new about poetry I can understand and hopefully use in my own writing. So for a short answer, poetry continues to evolve, but not enough people in the world of poetry are willing to let it happen without sticking their nose in everyone else's business.

4. What direction are you currently moving in with your poetry? Do you believe that a poet's writing evolves and grows as they do?

Shortly after Town for the Trees reached its final form in 2008, I started to write a series of poems which were unlike anything I had ever written before. These poems were influenced by two specific books: W.S. Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius and Zachary Shomburg's Scary, No Scary. Something in them pushed me to a place I had never been with my writing and I could not stop writing. Between October 2008 and January 2009, I had written more than fifty pages of poetry, which never happens with me. I am a very slow writer in that I don't write a lot of poems. But here I was writing dozens of poems in a voice I never imagined possible and not really caring (at first) what it was all about. After I had finished the first major burst of writing, I sat down with these poems and figured out what they should be. It took a few false starts, but I clued in to what the poems needed to become and I started working towards that. Since then, my writing has reverted to what I am used to. I am a better poet, which I need to be for the book I am working on now, but I am back in familiar territory. As for direction, I would hope I am always moving in the direction of my next poem, and hopefully that poem will be better than my last poem.
A poet's work most assuredly evolves and grows as the poet grows. No question about it. It is something more than becoming a better poet. A good reader can see certain things beyond craft or control. There is a depth only age and experience can bring to poetry, but this does not mean age is the only determining factor. And while some poets move towards simplifying their poetry, a reader can tell when the simple poem is a result of a lifetime of working with language coupled with a lifetime of experience.

5. What poets have inspired you, in your writing? What in the world inspires you?

Dave Lee, William Kloefkorn, and Gary Short have all directly influenced me as a writer, but I think it's important to acknowledge the roll my poetry friends have influenced me as well. I have gone on at length about Dave Lee, Bill Kloefkorn, and Gary Short, but I owe a great deal to people like Mary Biddinger, Collin Kelley, Kelly Madigan Erlandson, and so many more. Each of them has given me far more than I could ever repay, and I sometimes embarrass myself trying. Then there are all of the other poets I blog with and talk to via Facebook. I mean it. I have learned so much from these people about writing, about reading, their contributions cannot be quantified. The literary canon has its place, but I think a portion of credit belongs to those writers who are contemporary to us. This is different from young writers who refuse to read the canon. That is a totally different situation. The established writers of our literary tradition should not be ignored, but the effect of those writing next to us needs to be acknowledged.
I am inspired by a lot of things. I can't pick up a book of poems without being inspired by a poem, and I can even be inspired by a turn in the road reminding me of some past experience. I think it's a matter of choosing what we are going to be inspired by. Right now, I am inspired by two different histories written about my home town because that's what I am writing. In a week or two, my attention might shift and I could be distracted by the idea of presents for my birthday. I wish I had a better answer for you, something about ideas or conceptual inspiration, but I am very much a creature of spontaneity when it comes to writing my poems. They very often catch me off guard or sleeping at the switch.

6. Along with being a writer, you are also a teacher? How does one influence the other?

Not very well, I'm afraid. It's complicated. I do my best writing when I am busy, overbooked for time, but the teaching day is so full of interruptions that if I get any writing done, it's because I was able to sneak it in on the sly. As a teacher I get to talk about a lot of the things I love, but I am rarely inspired by my conversations to write a poem.
What I have come to believe is that my peripheral mind is constantly working, and when the rest of my life gets to be too much, that part of my mind gets pressured, and spits out an idea for a poem as sort of a release, a stress reduction tool. Because my normal pattern is that I don't write too often, I don't ever have a lot of poems out there at once and it's difficult to recognize what patterns are emerging until I am well into something. Being a teacher clouds my perceptions even more because I need to be focused on so many other things.
Finally, I am not teaching a group of people who are anxious to be in the classroom. No offense, as you are one of the exceptions, but out of a class of 25-30, I am lucky to have 3 students who really want to learn about literature and/or writing. Most of my students are there to do the bare minimum or only interested in whatever gets them a grade their parents will admire. Real learning, work, and grades are not always the same thing and it's amazing how many students want good grades but don't believe in doing any of the work to get them.

7. What do you hope to accomplish with your writing, and life? What would you like to do, or see happen, that you have yet to do/see?

Wow! What a big question. I think most poets are always looking for that one poem, the best poem they can write. Most of us believe we have our best poem still inside of us, and that's a good thing. I really hope that I can become the poet I need to become in order to write that poem. I know that for the book project I am writing now, I am going to be heading into unfamiliar territory with narrative poems. So, on the immediate level, I want to learn how to write narrative poems. In the long term, I want to create a body of work which I can look back upon and feel as if the time I spent creating it was time well used.
In life, I have already accomplished so much and come a long way from where I started. Still, I think myself pretty much the same as most other people when it comes to what I want. I want my wife and sons to be happy. I want them to be successful, and I want to be a part of their lives as they grow up. I want to continue teaching, and I want to travel with my wife. I want to be a source of support for my friends and family. All in all, pretty simple stuff, but I never did buy into the idea an artist's life needs to be full of turmoil and suffering.
I would like to do a few things. I mentioned traveling with my wife. When I was in the army, I got to see parts of the world I never would have at that age. I want to be able to take my wife to places she wants to see and experience. I would like to collaborate on a few books of poems, maybe edit an anthology or two. Again, pretty simple stuff.

8. The Internet is becoming a very important tool for writers, for promotion and communication. How do you feel about this transition?

It's absolutely essential for me. I live in the rural desert of Nevada, more than 100 miles from a Wal-Mart. If it wasn't for the internet I would have no writing community and very little contact with the poetry world. I am happy and I feel fortunate to have come along at the right time. I can e-mail a press and get some information at the touch of a button, instantly. I can connect with hundreds of poets at a time. In fact, more than 100 of my Facebook friends are writers, and they represent a key network for me to pass on word of a project or publication, or ask for help. I am not nearly as savvy as some of my poet friends, and I have never really enjoyed the act of promoting my own work, but it is an absolute necessity. I am a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to one other thing: The book. Call me old fashioned, but I believe in the absolute necessity of real books. I can accept many things, but I will never accept the idea of books being obsolete. Even if they become limited art pieces, I will still need to have books, real books I can hold.

9. What advice do you have for writers, of any age?

Read. Oh, I know every writer says that, but it is true. When I edit my on-line journal, it is painfully apparent who reads enough and who doesn't. It's reading that will get you there. You also need to write. You need to write every day. Even if it's e-mail or a blog, a writer needs to write every day. Compose. Get the words down, but always make time to interact with the text and make it better. It isn't writing until you think about it and interact with it.
So what else? Listen. Listen to language as it's spoken. Learn the difference between formal and informal, proper and colloquial. There is a difference between them, there is a right and wrong time to use each of them, and every writer should be concerned with those subtleties.
Vocabulary. Learn the words. expand your vocabulary. Don't be passive about learning vocabulary---actually spend time at it. The average reader will only remember 15 of every 100 new words encountered. You need to actually seek out opportunities to learn new words.
Start calling yourself a writer. It's going to be hard enough on you with the rejection and the frustration of not getting something right, without you adding to that the idea you aren't a real writer because you haven't published anything or because you don't feel as f you are doing your best writing. The fact is, nobody will take you seriously as a writer unless you do, and more accurately, some people will never take you seriously. From friends and family to total strangers, you are going to meet people who do not think writing is a real thing because they all had to write in school, and if they can do it, then what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that what they were doing was only the fundamentals of writing. They weren't elevating it to an art, which is what writers do. You being a writer makes them uneasy, nervous, and unsure of how to relate to you on that level. You need to make it as easy for them as you can, and it begins with being confident in yourself as a writer. Further, do not attach publication to your identity as a writer. Publication is the last part of the writing process, and should never be the goal of a good writer. A good writer may or may not want publication, but never solely writes in order to be published.

Summer Reading

2011-06-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Hello, Blogger. If you have not already realized, about 50% of the things I post on this blog are filler. Sometimes I post book reviews, and occasionally interviews, but mostly I come on here and write about things no cares about expect me, and apologize for not having a review. Sometimes I don't even care about these things, but still, I write.
Today's filler is my summer reading list. Not pictured in the photo below is my actual summer reading book, whose title I will reveal to you in a matter of paragraphs. Here is a picture of me, books, and my closet.

I am about to start reading Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes, because a friend of mine essentially told me that I do not know the meaning of life unless I have read this book. I would really like to know that, so I checked it out. I also owe the public library system of Massachusetts 28 dollars, but that isn't important.
Said friend also gave me Racing Hummingbirds by Jeanann Verlee. I like her name, and also the press that published the book. Hopefully I will like her poems, as well.
Following that will be Other People We Married by Emma Straub. I am beyond excited to read this book. Emma Straub is one of the coolest people in the world. And the world is big, so good for her.
Next will be You Must Go and Win by Alina Simone. I've read bits and pieces of this already, and they made me laugh out loud, so I have high expectation for this. Because Alina Simone is also very cool, I know she will more than deliver.
The following 4 books I all bought over the weekend. To make the long story short, I was in the Paper Store with my mother, I found the bargain section, and drooled all over the floor. These were the books I was drooling over. Because my mom knows how much I love her, and does not want that to change, she bought me the books above- Monkeys by Susan Minot, Look At Me by Jennifer Egan, Lit by Mary Karr, and Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro. The story was not that long in the first place.
And finally, The Making of a Poem by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. I have yet to begin this book, but I would like to over the course of the summer. There is a lot about form in this book, which I should probably learn more about. I will let you know.
Oh, and my summer reading book for school is Jane Eyre, but we don't have to talk about that.
I will see you soon.

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

2011-06-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

I bought 4 books yesterday. I have a stack of books I want to read over the course of this summer, and I will probably tell you about them soon. I am considering making myself promise not to buy any books, unless I am going to a signing, until I finish the ones I have and haven't read. This will not happen, but I am considering it.

My grandparents are here, from Florida. My sister is going to see Taylor Swift tonight. I had pancakes for breakfast. It has been raining for days.

I am glad gay marriage is now legal in New York. I am lucky enough that it has been legal in Massachusetts for quite some time. I am still too young to get married, though. I would like to be someone's husband.

Have a great weekend, friends.

My sister bought this book when she was in high school, and gave her copy to me a few years ago. It has been sitting in my bookshelf since then, and I have not picked it up. I can tell that I’ve had this book for years, because I peeled away most of the plastic from the cover. Because of that, the cover image is more vibrant in places than others. It has more clarity. Certain parts of the girl’s body have been peeled away, while others still shine though. When I finally started reading this book, I found myself staring at the cover. I thought, “This is what depression feels like.” And then I read.
This book took me some time to read. I loved it, at times. I hated it, other times. I wanted to stop reading it. I couldn’t stop reading it. I read in 5-page increments, or whole chapters. I skimmed much of the last few chapters, and watched the movie.
This book has a large following. Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote it at a young age, and she had it published at a young age, and she very quickly became American Depression’s Female Image. She has now been called “the Courtney Love of contemporary literature.” Her writing is controversial, and honest, and frustrating, beautiful as much as it is childish. There seemed to be potential in this book, so many things that could have worked better than they actually did. It was ‘full of promise.’ It was exactly what a memoir should be.
Prozac Nation is Elizabeth’s story. It is not an overview of what depression does to a person, but more what depression did to her. A person’s experience with depression is a singular experience. Each individual circumstance plays a different part. Each form of treatment must be executed a different way. Elizabeth had the childhood and upbringing that, unfortunately, many children experience. But she wasn’t lucky enough to get out relatively untouched. She couldn’t escape herself.
The book follows her from childhood, through adolescence, to college. She bares all, no matter how horrible it may make her or the people involved in each story look. She reveals the identities of her parents, and how they affected her, and the boy she loved in college, and how he affected her, and the therapist who just about saved her life, and how that affected her most of all. Along with the book, the depression follows as well.
Elizabeth Wurtzel is a wonderful writer, which is evident throughout the entire book. She explains situations with startling detail, telling each story with such precision that you can nearly physically feel it yourself. But that is also one of the problems I had with this book. There was so much detail, so many stories to tell, and the book just seemed to go on, and on, and on. The movie did the opposite, revealing next to nothing. If there was a balance between the two, I would have nothing negative to say about this book at all.
A common criticism of Prozac Nation is that all Elizabeth does it talk about herself. But she is the core of this book. Depression of this book. Elizabeth falls in love with her depression, and can’t imagine a life without depression. It doesn’t matter if she alienates all of the people around her, who only want what’s best for her, because she’ll still have her sadness. This doesn’t seem to have much logic. It is easy to get aggravated with Elizabeth throughout the book. But when you ask yourself, “Why am I getting myself so angry?,” the answer is obvious. You know exactly what she’s talking about.
Towards the end of the book, Elizabeth begins to tie things together by commenting on the world’s current dependency on antidepressants. She adds in her two cents. What I enjoyed so much about this book was Elizabeth’s intelligence. She is so smart, and so gifted, and so unhappy. Some people don’t understand this. But again, it is because they are struggling with the same things. Elizabeth writes about how impatient we are, herself included. We cannot ride our sadness out, and fight it ourselves. We are certainly fighting it ourselves, because the sadness resides inside of us, but we have some assistance. She feels sorry about this. Elizabeth Wurtzel is a human.
I understand why this book has such a large following. Elizabeth Wurtzel tells a story with this story that is universal. We all experience sadness. We all have troubles, and worries, and secrets. And we are all searching for a balance. At the core of this book, besides Elizabeth and her depression, there is also something else. That something else is this- we are all fighting the same fight; when are we going to realize we don’t have to do it alone?
Elizabeth Wurtzel is a genius.

Interview with Lenore Zion (author of My Dead Pets Are Interesting)

2011-06-21T05:27:00.000-07:00

I have my Chemistry final today. Tomorrow, I have Geometry. After that, school is over, and I am free, until September. I watched the series finale of The United States of Tara this morning and cried a little. I love summer.
I've been writing a lot. I finished Prozac Nation, and am reading a few different things right now. I met Alina Simone last night. That was cool. She is cool. Life is cool.
Further proof that life is cool, I have an interview to post. A few weeks ago, I reviewed Lenore Zion's forthcoming essay collection, and then e-mailed her. We are now Facebook friends, and The Nervous Breakdown (the book's publisher/awesome awesome awesome website) linked to my review on their home page. I am a lucky boy. There was a giant insect in my kitchen this morning.

1. Why did you write My Dead Pets Are Interesting? How long did it take you to put the book together?

I didn’t actually realize I was putting together a book. Some of the essays in the book were originally part of my master’s thesis (though they were edited significantly), and I finished that at the end of 2004. Most of the other essays in the collection were written for publication on TNB, and then about eleven of the essays were written for the book itself. As far as why I wrote the book...well, I think I’m funny. And I think the lit world takes itself way too seriously. So frequently, I see stacks of “serious” books in people’s homes, and I think, my God, don’t these people ever want to laugh? Or do they really want to come home after work and lose themselves in a book about the Great Depression, or a book about some wretched terminally ill kid and his family? There’s definitely a place for the horrendously depressing literature out there, but I myself want to laugh. In my fantasy, my book makes reading fun, removes the masochism.

2. Along with being a writer, you are also a therapist with a doctorate. Does psychology tie into your writing, and vice versa?

Being a therapist is about being an emotional voyeur. So is writing. They’re really similar. That said, I would never in a million years take the private lives of my clients and use them in my writing. I think that would be a huge violation – those stories belong to them, and it’s a privilege that they share them with me. It’s really something special, to be given a front row seat to another person’s most private thoughts. So I don’t think that my writing has much to do with my work as a therapist. However….

I think it’s impossible for me not to let psychology inch its way into my writing. Psychology is a fascinating subject. It’s the study of human beings, and I am both a human being and writing about human beings, so it comes in handy. I also happen to be the kind of person who wants desperately to know everything about every single person in the universe. I want to know what they’re thinking, why they’re thinking it, how they came to think the way they do. I want to know about everyone’s childhood, I want to know what everyone dreams about each night when the subconscious is in control. Being curious about other humans is what causes me to speculate about them in my writing.

3. It seems that a lot of ridiculously hilarious things happen to you. I kind of wish my life was your life. How do you get yourself into all of these awkward situations?

First things first: much of what I write is fictional. Some of it is entirely true. I’m not going to tell you which things are which, but even taking the fictional things into account, I am still a person existing in a never-ending series of awkward situations. And this is how I explain my tendency to be at the most awkward place at the most awkward time: I am easily thrown by people who keep an emotional guard up – for me, letting it down is involuntary. I’m not just “not good” at small talk – I’m almost entirely incapable of engaging in it. People ask me things like: “How are you enjoying your weekend?” or the standard “Are you loving the nice weather?” and as I respond I am practically jumping out of my skin. I’m wondering why the hell they’re interested in my responses to these questions, how they can possibly stand listening to me as I answer that “oh, my weekend’s been just lovely, thank you,” or “it’s beautiful, isn’t it?! I think I’ll go on a walk!” I get nervous, then my volume control goes out the window and I’m whispering or I’m screaming. “IT’S PERFECT BEACH WEATHER! DO YOU LIKE THE BEACH?” I don’t think two people having this conversation are even listening to each other. They’re not even being human. Tell me about the things that humiliate you, and then I’m ready to spend some time with you.

So, because I seem to have difficulty existing in polite society, where people respond to queries appropriately, with social grace, I carry with me the dark cloud of interpersonal unease. I don’t find myself in awkward situations; I am the awkward situation. And of course, an awkward situation is magnetic. Where there’s one, there’s another zooming towards it at lightening speed. People like me, we’re train wrecks waiting to happen, so people start gawking, rubbernecking, and thus, the awkwardness is increased exponentially. You’d think I’d have a social phobia, but the irony is that I’m so accustomed to making an embarrassing spectacle of myself that I now think it’s hilarious and I’m encouraged to be even more social so I can laugh at the situations I find myself in – and in exposing the world to my gaucheness, I probably plant the seeds of social phobia in others.

Or, I dunno. Maybe I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot.

4. My Dead Pets Are Interesting was published by The Nervous Breakdown Books. You also write articles for The Nervous Breakdown. How was putting together the book different from just writing column after column?

Writing a book is an exercise in isolation. You just sit around, day after day, hour upon hour, writing this thing that may well never see another set of eyes after yours. You’re ignoring the real things in your life so you can really focus on this thing that doesn’t exist. It’s not for everyone. But when you write columns for a publication like TNB, there’s a social aspect to the writing. You write it, post it, and then you talk about it in the comment boards with lots of fun and interesting people, and as you do that, you forge relationships with these people. It’s socially enriching. And the immediate feedback on your writing is reinforcing. You can’t help but react to the fact that people have actually read something you’ve written, and that makes you want to write more. I wish the comment boards were even more active – a lot of the writers at TNB get emails from people who don’t want to say anything on the boards, and I always encourage them to participate. It’s really a lot of fun to be a part of that community. And TNB in particular is so welcoming. We love new readers over there. All perspectives are wanted.

5. What is the strangest thing that has happened to you in the past 24 hours? If there is more than one, feel free to list them all.

Gosh, that’s a short window. Nothing really that bizarre has gone down, but I’ll walk you through my day and maybe something will come up.

Nothing happened until around lunch time, at which point I walked across the street to this place that gave me, my boyfriend, and my parents food poisoning a few months ago, causing me to vomit for the first time in 15 years. I got two veggie wraps, because I’m still hungry after I eat just one, and as I was waiting, I accidentally tripped an older gentleman with a cane. I almost cried because I felt so bad, but he was very nice about it and seemed uninjured. Then my two meals were ready and I went back to my apartment with the bag of food. A delivery guy from the restaurant I got my food from got in the elevator with me – he was delivering an order, obviously. I stood there uncomfortably, thinking something should be said about the fact that I had walked to get the food and there he was delivering it, but in the end nothing was said. Then I ate both of the veggie wraps, felt guilty about eating like a sumo wrestler, and then started answering these questions. Maybe the old man with the cane? I’m not sure.

The last thing I can remember happening to me that was truly bizarre was when I was driving back to my apartment a few days ago. I was stopped at a red light and a girl in the passenger seat in the car next to me made this huge effort to look at me and smile at me and wave. She was at least twenty, so it wasn’t the excusable friendly nature of a child. She did it in such a way that I was left with the impression that she knew who I was and was surprised and elated to see me next to her. I didn’t recognize her, which is not unusual because I never recognize anyone – I’m terrible with faces – but I don’t think I’ve ever met her. I think she was insane. Possibly dangerous. But she represented the kind of danger that could potentially be disarmed with a lollipop. She was either that, or the kind of danger that appeared to be easily dealt with, but upon the introduction of the lollipop, she might shed her layer of human flesh and then eat your toes while she held you down with her alien talons. I couldn’t tell, and that’s what made her so bizarre to me. But all it really looked like from the outsider’s perspective was a girl waving at another girl.

6. What inspires you? Do you have any advice for other writers?

The best advice I can give to any writer is to stop reading and writing so damn much. I mean, don’t stop altogether, obviously, but go out and live your life, go have experiences. Otherwise you won’t have anything to write about. And if all you do is read, you’ll still have nothing to write about because those stories have already been written. Go do weird things, put yourself in strange situations, make weirdo friends, go to a new place. Allow yourself to experience the entire range of emotions you’re capable of. Get super depressed. Let yourself become furious about something. Get manically happy. Stop being ashamed of yourself, and definitely stop being embarrassed when you look stupid. You don’t look stupid. And if you do look stupid, that’s awesome and it’ll be a funny story soon. Don’t be too hard on yourself. An obsessively crafted story is only one kind of story, and some of those are so damn boring. Learn to love a good hot mess. Embrace uncomfortable feelings, don’t run away from them. Then you’ll really have material, you’ll really be inspired. That’s what inspires me. Having experiences, living my life, looking stupid, and learning.

7. What are your plans for future life/writings?

Oh my. I don’t think I can tell you what my future life plans are. Those change depending on how much food I’ve had to eat. I’d like to teach creative writing somewhere in LA, and I wouldn’t mind if I got to live in New York City at some point. I’d also like to travel at least two months out of every year. I want to learn everything about the history of violence in human beings. And I want to develop psychic abilities. That’s a top priority. I want to hug the people I love at least a trillion more times before I die. That’s even more important than the whole psychic abilities thing.

Future writing is an easier question to answer. I have a novel that my agent, Meg Thompson of The Einstein Thompson Agency is about to submit to a bunch of places. It’s called Critter in the Corner and it’s funny and disturbing and I can’t wait for people to read it. I hope people read it. I suppose I hope it gets published, otherwise people won’t be able to read it. But I am extremely proud of it. It’s about a girl who winds up, after a series of unfortunate life events, being raised in a fictional cult.

I’m also working on a new novel. It’s in its infancy, so other than the fact that it, too, is a funny book, I won’t say anything about it. I’ve learned that everything changes up until the moment it’s actually printed and sitting in a bookstore, so it’s best to keep your mouth shut.

8. You went through a period of watermelon obsession, which I have been in for all of my life, and followed that with a period of obsession with white cheddar popcorn. What are you currently obsessed with?

Oddly, I do not currently have a food obsession! The lack of a food obsession has become an obsession, though, and I now find myself wandering through the convenience store across the street from my apartment, aimless, unsure of which guilty pleasure I wish to activate, on a daily basis. I’ve been searching for a white cheddar popcorn replacement for months, and nothing. I don’t want the popcorn anymore. I’ve tried to get back into it, but you can’t go back. You can never go back. I’ve tried to make beef jerky my new thing, but it’s not sticking because I keep finding that one sorta yucky piece in the bag. You know what I’m talking about? The one with the loose webbed fatty attachments holding it together? You pull it out of the bag and think “this one is different, and why does it feel wet?” but you eat it anyway. And nothing bad happens, but you just don’t feel right about it for a few hours.

I think maybe my new obsession, when I find it, might not even be food-related. Maybe I’ll start to teach myself about this history about human violence, like I mentioned before. Maybe I’ll try to get rich somehow. Or develop psychic abilities. Most likely, though, I’ll just keep cautiously eating beef jerky until I consume a piece disgusting enough to really deter me.

Sophomore Year

2011-06-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

Last night, instead of going out with my friends and celebrating the end of the school year, I came home. I ate leftover macaroni and cheese, and cake, from my birthday. I tried to finish "Prozac Nation," and couldn't. I started watching a Charles Bukowski documentary on Youtube and couldn't finish that, either. I have a party to go to today, and a rehearsal. I cannot hide in my room forever.
Yesterday was the last full day of school. Now, I have only finals. Now, I am a junior. This year has been hard. I'm glad its over. I'm glad the summer is finally here. I am making plans.
Thursday, I turned 16. A lot of people wrote on my Facebook wall and gave me hugs. It was a good day. I can drive a car.
I sang these two songs yesterday with one of my best friends, to an empty room--

I can't wait to laugh like this again--

Interview with Kieryn Nicolas (author of Flawless Ruins)

2011-06-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

I skipped school today, Internet. I am telling you in hopes that none of the administration at my school reads this blog. I'm pretty sure they don't, though you never know. I have eaten nearly all of my refrigerator today, and am watching Its Complicated for the umpteenth time. I'm a sucker for Meryl Streep. I would be in Computers right now.
Last night, I went into Brookline and met Emma Straub. I bought her book, and am going to be reading and reviewing that as soon as possible. She told me I have the best hair in Boston, and covered my book in hearts. I love her a lot. I did tell her I was internet stalking her, though, so I probably need to stop doing that.
I am reading Prozac Nation. I'm having trouble getting through it, but I'm trying, and there are a lot of "A-ha!" moments, and also a lot of "!?!?!?!?!" I'll finish it eventually, though, and get back to you.
My sixteenth birthday is tomorrow. Friday afternoon, I will be a junior in high school. Not counting finals, unfortunately. Right now, though, I am going to introduce you to another junior in high school. This junior has also just released her second book. In fact, it officially comes out today. Friends, here is Kieryn Nicolas.

1. Where did the idea for Flawless Ruins come from? Why that title?

The idea for Flawless Ruins sparked from me complaining about books/movies where the love interest is always “perfect.” At one point during my monologue I said “Do these characters know what would have to happen for someone to be perfect like that?” Right there I stopped and the idea machine snatched up that sentence. I was storyboarding the next day. The title (which my friend Natasha accidentally came up with) expresses how in this world, something that appears great (flawless) might actually be something totally…well, not great (ruins).

2. Was the experience you had writing this book different from writing your first, Rain?

Definitely. I was older when I wrote FR, and my interests and knowledge and experience (as a writer and a person) had all expanded. Also, I had way more people to bounce chapters/ideas off of while writing (which also led to way more changes and revising, all for the better).

3. How does writing factor into your daily life? Or, what is a typical day in the life of Kieryn Nicolas?

Luckily it’s summer now, but a typical day would probably include school. So: Wake up. Stay in bed for about five minutes refusing to accept that the day has begun. Finally get out of bed. Go to school. Think about writing/stories literally (yes, literally) fifty-or-more percent of the time. Get home. Check emails. Do author-media-activities. Homework. Go to taekwondo or go for a run. Shower. Hopefully have time to write after dark (which is when I do my best writing anyway).
Summer: All of the above minus school and homework. YAY. Plus more hanging out with friends, working, and WRITING.

4. Something I love about your writing is that you combine suspense with character so seamlessly. Your stories are suspenseful and your characters are wonderfully written and depicted. How have you developed your writing style? What advice do you have for other young writers?

Thanks! My writing style has developed in that I’ve now tried many different styles. I have an idea for a story written in a vignette-ish style, and my WIP alternates between a sarcastic/confident and vulnerable/lost tones. Other young writers: WRITE. And share your stories with others!

5. What comes next for you?

Well, the Flawless Ruins release. I’m excited to share this one. And I’m currently writing a…well, I think it would a contemporary YA, for lack of a more specific genre. It’s incredibly fun to write. The main character is MEAN. Which is also fun because somehow, even though I myself am not a mean person (or I hope not), I love writing mean/know-it-all characters. (Who eventually become nice. Or, nice-ish.)

6. What inspires you?

Everything! Reading, watching movies, and people-watching are a few surefire sources of inspiration. My friends often provide material for stories just by being…"unique." Even a lecture in school can trigger the idea machine.

GO BUY THIS BOOK! AND HER FIRST! They are just as great as she is.

Town for the Trees by Justin Evans & My Dead Pets Are Interesting by Lenore Zion

2011-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

This blog has been getting an insane amount of foot traffic the past few days. I'm not sure where you're all coming from, but I'm glad you're here.
I'm turning 16 in less than a week. I edited poems this morning, and wrote a new one, and hope to finish outlining the story I want to work on over the summer. I have 4 days of school left before I'm a junior. Finally. That's actually really scary.
I'm feeling nostalgic, and kind of unhappy. I'm not sure why. I'm going to a party later today, and I'll get to spend time with a lot of people I lovelovelove, so I'm sure that will cheer me up. I'm also about to share two books with you I really enjoyed, which will probably cheer me up, too.
Sophie Klahr, who I am kind of obsessed with, posted about this documentary yesterday. A fun fact- I wrote a poem about Francesca Woodman many, many moons ago. It sucked.
Also, John Irving is speaking at the college one town over from where I live in September. I haven't read any of his work, but I'm thinking about going. We shall see.
HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND! Smile.

Town for the Trees is a collection of poetry by a man who has quickly become one of my favorite poets. I read a lot of poetry on the Internet, in as many places as I can find, but I am ashamed to say that I rarely ever buy poetry. I don’t buy that many books at all these days, actually. So I was really glad when I e-mailed Justin and he offered to send me a copy of this book. I’m really glad I sat down and read it, and sat with the poems, and gave the words time to sink in. Because they did, and they are still inside of me.
I read each poem at least twice. I read them aloud, to myself, tracing my fingers along each line, before moving to the next. The poems made me think, and I made myself think, and I let myself think as I read, almost dissecting each poem, trying to get to the center, or the separate parts. That is something I love about poetry. There are so many different ways to interpret a poem, or a stanza, or a book as a whole. There are so many different ways to look at a single line, so many different things it could mean. Reading this collection, I tried to find all of them.
Nature is prominent in most of these poems. Justin writes a lot about landscape, and each poem reads like a narrative, even if the reader isn’t entirely sure who the narrator is. Each poem is bursting with imagery, and meaning, and beautiful language. The poems flowed. They were easy to read at times, difficult other times, but always precise, and frank. Justin Evans is a brilliant poet. He knows how to write.
I spent a lot of time wondering about each poem. Along with nature, a lot of these poems seem to be about youth, or innocence, or the loss of innocence, or the gradual (or not so gradual) change from youth to whatever comes after. What fascinated me was how, even when the poem was just about a mountain, or a lake, it wasn’t just those things. It was about those other things, too, and they quickly became more than just things.
I have been flipping through the book as I write this review. Some of these poems captured me more than others, but they moved in a collective arc. The book does come together as a whole. The nature becomes innocence, and youth, and time. Many of the poems take place where Justin grew up, as he looks back, as he documents his childhood, and the things he saw, and the people and places he loved. That’s what this book is, a documentation. It is a flawless one. This is a slim collection, but many of the poems seem nearly effortless, just simply so present and alive. These poems are anything but slim. Justin Evans is so gifted that he has the ability to say what takes some people a lifetime in one single poem, and it will not go unnoticed.
My favorite poem was “Outside My Grandmother’s Window.” I want to carry it in my pocket.

I am kind of obsessed with Lenore Zion. After I finished Justin Evan’s book, I rushed to begin reading this one. I spent all week reading everything about her that I could on the Internet, including her professional website, which contains all of her credentials and also a biography. Along with being one of the funniest writers alive (this is something I am sure of), Lenore Zion is also a therapist. I think I am obsessed with her because she is everything I want to be (though I am quite alright with my masculinity). Like I said, I kind of love her.
My Dead Pets Are Interesting is a collection of stories and essays. I brought this book around school with me, and a lot of my friends (and even people who are not my friends) continuously picked it up and asked me what the book was about. I pointed to the cover and said, “What do you think?” And then I would read them the titles of some of these stories. Some people understood better than others. At times, I wasn’t even sure I understood. I’m not sure what I was expecting, going into this book. I expected to laugh. I expected to furrow my eyebrows and sarcastically shake my head. I did not expect to relate to every single thing Lenore Zion wrote. But I did.
On the surface, this is a collection of ridiculous stories about absolutely nothing. They follow Lenore from her childhood to her present, from throwing jellyfish guts at her brothers to being chased through a gas station by a midget. And by absolutely nothing, I mean absolutely everything. This book made me laugh out loud, which I do a lot, but rarely from books. Part of me wonders if all of the things in this book are 100% true. Part of me wonders if it matters at all.
As I said before, I didn’t expect to relate to this book. Beneath the surface, this is a collection of stories about a girl becoming a woman, and what it has taken for her to get to where she is. The book is shock humor. Some of the things Lenore says, and some of the things Lenore thinks, are so insane, and so funny. Other things Lenore says are profound, and wise. Sometimes she is all of these things in one sentence. That is some good writing. These are some good stories.
The book is separated into parts. Part One, “I Hate Myself,” has stories about Lenore Zion’s current life, and all of the awkward situations she finds herself in. She eats bananas, and buys too many watermelons, and flashes her breasts to an elderly man who she then plays dress-up with. Along with being a writer and a therapist, which are two things I am hoping I become, Lenore Zion also likes watermelon. Maybe we’re soul-mates.
Part Two, “Just a Bunch of Kid Stuff,” is about Lenore’s childhood. This includes dancing to Joni Mitchell, compulsively lying, flashing more senior citizens, and fur coats. And casseroles. Along with being a writer and a therapist and watermelon, Lenore Zion dances to Joni Mitchell. I’m not sure how I feel about the fur coat. She didn’t know better.
Part Three, “I’m Not Entirely Certain,” is the shortest section. This section includes the story in which Lenore gave a midget some change at a gas station and proceeded to flee when they asked for a ride and began harassing her. This was one of my favorites. Lenore has a lot of miscommunications with midgets.
The final part is called “Dead Animals,” which contains the title story. It also contains the jelly fish story, and pig carcasses, and baby birds. These stories span the entirety of Lenore’s life. The book ends with an interview about pie and cheese and gorillas. These things relate more than you would think.
There are many reasons to read this book. For one thing, you will cry from laughing so hard, and possibly choke. You will also contemplate the meaning of life and proceed to plan how you are going to make yourself happier. You will check your bed for bedbugs. You will reminisce about your childhood. You will wish you were as cool as Lenore Zion.
Like I said, I’m kind of obsessed.

#YAsaves (a love letter)

2011-06-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

I am eating watermelon. You are not the first place on the Internet I have told so far this afternoon, and I'm sure I can find somewhere else to tell. I love watermelon. I love summer. Or, I love air conditioning. How are you? Is it as warm where you are as it is here? It is supposed to be in the nineties tomorrow. I will be in school, as always. I have an early release on Friday, though, so no complaints.

For the most part, this post is going to have no purpose. Ever since I read the WSJ article (more on that in a moment) and ever since I began following the Twitter hashtag (more on that soon, too), I knew I wanted to post about it. The title of this post appeared in my mind not long after. But besides a few ideas, I'm not sure what I'm going to say. This is just something I need to do.

Before you read this post, read this. Look at this. There are 119 comments on the article. I haven't looked at them, but I'm sure there's some good conversation going on there. The Twitter hashtag has also calmed down quite a bit, but over the weekend it was BURSTING with love, and it was beautiful. You're going to have to trust me on that. I hope you do.

First of all, I love YA. I have been reading YA books for as long as I can remember, and reviewing them for over two years. I have been following/stalking authors on Twitter, and Facebook, and on their blogs. I have been e-mailing authors and telling them how much I loved their books, sometimes interviewing them, always spreading the love. That is why I write these posts. My bookshelves are full of YA books with bent spines and yellowed pages, and they are beautiful. The people who wrote them are beautiful. The people who read them are beautiful. #YAsaves is beautiful. Everyone came together, and fought back. Its all we could do. And more.

I read YA for many reasons. One of the main reasons I can think of is because being a teenager kind of sucks. High school kind of sucks. You can have a great family, and a lot of friends, and good grades, and it can still suck. You can be the exact opposite of alone and still feel that way. You can try as hard as you can not to get attached to the people around you, but you will. Love is all over the place in high school. Unfortunately, so is hate. Unfortunately, it isn't always the best environment. But sometimes it is.

YA reflects that. Adult fiction reflects on the adult world, or certain parts of it, and that serves its purpose for the people who read it. YA does more than that. YA has always done more than that for me. Everything I mentioned in that last paragraph, all of that second person, could've easily been first. I have a great family. I have a lot of great friends. My grades are not so bad. I am not alone. I am very attached. There are a lot of feelings all around. And it kind of really sucks.

I began reading YA to escape. I began writing YA to escape as well. I can escape into Poetry, and I do. I can escape into Fiction, and I do. YA is separate from those other two, same as they are separate from each other. I could write a love letter to Poetry, and a love letter to contemporary Fiction, but that is not the purpose of this post. This is about YA. I continue reading YA for the same reason I started.

YA gives teenagers something to relate to. This is something that has always been pretty exclusive to YA for me. It is easy to relate to a lot of characters in Young Adult books, more so than people twice my age in Fiction books, and certainly more so than a tree. YA takes horrific situations, significant traumas, and heavy subjects, and makes them relatable. YA takes love, and heartbreak, two things that are probably just as heavy, and makes those relatable, too. So parents can be ignorant and have books banned. So the Wall Street Journal can write a nasty, ill-informed article. But there are always going to be writers, writing YA, to maybe understand their teenage years a little bit better, and to help current teenagers understand as well. There are always going to be kids like me, writing about YA, because it is a lot easier for me to sift through my thoughts when they are displayed in front of me, and why not do it in a public place? People are always going to try to ruin that. The best thing about all of this is that they're simply going to fail.

I don't read as much YA as I used to. I didn't end up going to that book signing last night, because it was just too far away. There are always so many books to read, and so many new authors to stalk, and so many signings to rush to. There are always going to be so many. I'm never going to stop reading YA. I'll hopefully never stop writing YA. Maybe I'll even get to put something out there, for the next generation of teenagers. Time will tell. Time is telling me things everyday.

I have been blogging here for 2 years. I completely spaced the anniversary a few weeks ago, and I've continued to space it as I've posted. Thank you, for everything. You, as in everyone. Thank you to all of the writers who have written books that have changed me, YA or not. Thank you to all of the readers that have read with me. Thank you to everyone for answering my questions. Thank you to everyone for being my friend, and letting me have this space to always yell into. This is a great community, this world of YA, this world of books, this massive corner of the Internet. I'm glad its growing. I'm glad the Wall Street Journal published that dumb article. If they hadn't, #YAsaves would've never come about, at least not at the time it did. I wouldn't have written this post. The world is strange, and hilarious, and beautiful. Like you. Thank you again.

Interview with Rosecrans Baldwin (author of You Lost Me There)

2011-06-04T05:51:00.000-07:00

Happy weekend, friends. I know I usually write a lot more before I get to the actual posts, but I don't have much to say right now. I am turning 16 in less than two weeks. I went to Senior Prom Thursday night. Things are coming together. I hope they are for you, too.
I have an interview with Rosecrans Baldwin I am about to post. I reviewed his debut novel, You Lost Me There, a few weeks ago, and I'm really glad he let me ask him a few questions. Read his book. You need to. Here's a link to his website, and The Morning News. Enjoy.

1. Why did you write You Lost Me There?

I don't really know. I don't mean that to be glib. The answer is probably tied to why I write at all. I enjoy writing, even when it's difficult -- at least afterwards. Writing is a refrigerator—it cools the mind. And it's the best method I've found to think, which is queer, thinking by itself is probably enough for most people. But writing is a way toward truth. I enjoy the way it exhausts me. Afterward, I find myself empty and wrung out and pleasantly dippy. And then I go do some grocery shopping.

2. Memory plays a large role in the book, and people's differing perceptions of a single event. What led you to write about that subject, and look at it from a more analytical perspective? I found it fascinating that, though Victor spent so much time researching memory and Alzheimer's, he avoided his own memories at all costs.

Much of what became the story of You Lost Me There, at least until a few drafts were behind me, was unplanned. Which isn't to say that I didn't plan for it. Each time I start a book, I create a big package of notes before I begin writing in earnest. I try to get down as much as possible about the characters, their desires, relationships. Then I start and go, go, go, until the characters run further ahead of me and I need to create another package of notes before I begin the next draft. Victor led me to memory as a topic, but there are always many sources. My grandmother died of Alzheimer's. My own memory, at times powerful, can be horrible — loyal and present, or erratic and irascible. Like a dog. I'll find myself believing one thing for several years, then someone tells me it's false. When that happens, you know — well, the floorboards start popping up at the ends.

3. How would you describe the story of You Lost Me There? I wasn't sure how to do so when I was writing my review, and I'm still not quite sure how. What does the story mean to you?

God... You know, I appreciate the difficulty, because I'm not sure how to describe it either. Author of the book, he is the last person to ask. I intended YLMT to be many things; I like novels that are monsters with several heads. It's a love story. It's the story of a marriage. It's the story of a man. And it's about how people succeed and fail at connecting with one another. Succeed and fail at escaping the mind, too. People loving, changing, getting bogged down, envying each other—I wanted those things dramatized.

4. Music also plays a large role in the book, mostly instrumental. I read somewhere on the Internet that you listen to instrumental music while you're editing. What are you listening to now, as you are working on your next projects? Why did you decide to include music as much as you did in the book?

Right now I'm listening to the new Action Bronson record; my Carl Smith Pandora station (which I have gotten tuned just right, I think); and a lot of commercial R&B and reggae on the radio in the car. The music in the book just came from Victor. Sometimes I picture him as an old alligator in the bath, living through his radio. There's a line in the book about music, in Victor's mother's life, providing a passion lacking in her marriage. At least after Sara's death, it's true for Victor, too, to some degree, not in his marriage but in his daily routines.

5. Speaking of your next projects, I read somewhere else on the Internet that you are currently writing another book called Paris I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down. Anything you can share about that?

It's a travelogue/memoir about living and working in Paris, about how Paris of The Working Dude differs from Paris of The Mind and/or Postcards. It is nearly done, but it's driving me a little nuts. Right now it feels like a fork I'm sticking in my eyeball every morning. I need to put the cork on the fork.

6. What inspires you?

Everything.

7. You cofounded an online news journal called The Morning News in 1999. Why did you decide to do that, and why do you continue?

Andrew Womack and I started TMN because we love magazines, publishing them and collaborating with smart people. And that's why we keep doing it.

8. What advice would you give to an aspiring writer, if you only had 30 seconds to do so?

Read.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

2011-05-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

I always go as long as possible between posts. I apologize for being so sporadic and deadbeat. This past school week was dreadfully long. I have three weeks left of school, and then I am done. Until September, that is.
This past week was both the Evening of Spoken Word at my school, and the Spring Concert. At the Evening of Spoken Word, poet Rhina Espaillat came and spoke and had a workshop. That was great. Her and her husband were adorable.
Thursday, at the Spring Concert, it was hot and sweaty and sad, because all of the seniors are leaving soon, and that made me sad, because I love them, but I seemed incapable of crying. Since then, I have cried.
I ended up not being able to go to the Susane Colasanti signing. My dad got stuck at work, and my mom was watching my nephew, and we didn't have permission from my sister to take him, so I stayed home. Cross your fingers, Blogger, that The Universe has plans for me and Susane Colasanti to meet. It needs to happen.
June is going to be a good month. This coming week, I am singing at Baccalaureate with Vocal Ensemble and another small group, and Thursday night I am going to Senior Prom. ME, going to PROM. I'm nervous and excited and going to school Friday. I will be a mess. It will be funny.
The week after THAT, Maureen Johnson and Sarah Mlynowski and Sara Shepard are having a signing in Massachusetts. THREE AWESOME AUTHORS IN ONE PLACE AT ONE TIME ON A SCHOOL NIGHT. My mom said we could go. I will die of happiness.
I know you all want to hear about my month, so I'll continue. The week after that, I am turning 16. I am also going to meet Emma Straub. I am also going to meet Alina Simone. And the week after THAT, school is over. Enough about my hectic schedule. Maybe I should actually write that book review now?
WAIT. One more thing. Look at this picture. Look in the bottom left corner. Life is so good sometimes.

I bought this book at a yard sale. I remember the exact day, last summer. My mom and I went to a family friend’s house, and her driveway was full of clothes and knick knacks and toys and books. She said, “Take whatever you want.” So I did. This was one of the books.
Like a lot of the books I have, this sat in my bookshelf for months before I even considered reading it. I have too many books. I like to think its a good thing. Eventually, though, I picked it up, and put it on my bedside table. Usually, that means it is up next. It still took about a month before I actually started reading.
When I’m reading a book by an author I don’t know much about, I read everything about them that I can, on the Internet. I’m lucky, because in this day and age it is as simple as typing their name into the search bar. Hundreds of thousands of looks, reviews, essays, instantly there and for the taking. I went through as many of these as I could one day in Computers. This was my favorite.
The moment I knew it was time to start reading Revolutionary Road, I was in TJMaxx with my mom. I don’t like that store very much. I saw the DVD for the movie version of this book, which stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. I went home and watched the trailer for the movie. I think it was the next day that I started reading.
Richard Yates is one of the underdogs of contemporary literature. He wrote a handful of books, all of which critically praised, none of which bestsellers. Revolutionary Road was his debut, and it is understandable why it was noticed as much as it was. The past few years, with the reprinting of nearly all of his books, and the release of the movie adaption of this book, Richard Yates has grown in popularity. I hope that popularity continues to grow. I hope I find the time to read the rest of his books. Richard Yates is a genius.
Revolutionary Road is about Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living in 1950s America. April always wanted to be an actress. Frank always wanted to be. They fell in love young, married young, and had children young. Now, they are older. Now, the clock is ticking.
Plot-wise, there isn’t much here. The story unfolds slowly, over time, as the reader learns more about Frank and April Wheeler, and their relationships with each other and the world and themselves. There is suspense. There are multiple storms, and multiple periods of calm between. The writing is beautiful, and layered, as is the story. Plot-wise, every storyline is another storyline. This book, in and of itself, is a metaphor. If you were wondering why I called Richard Yates a genius before I even started writing the actual review, this is why.
I read somewhere that it is easy to dislike the Wheelers. I disagree. In more ways than one, I related to them. This book is about the American Dream. The Wheelers are the couple that everyone envies, that seem to have everything. They have a certain kind of light in their eyes, in their love for each other, and the other couples wonder how they got that way. But truthfully, the Wheelers have nothing. Revolutionary Road is the story of that light going out, that love disappearing. Maybe it was never there at all. Maybe there is no American Dream. Or, maybe we’re all just Dreaming the wrong things.
This book is about plans. The Wheelers plan to go to Europe. They think, “We can have a new life! We can be happy! We can be the people we’ve always wanted to be!” It is human nature to make plans, to create something to work towards. It is also human nature to set ourselves up for disappointment. Needless to say, Frank and April never get to Europe.
This book is about love. Frank and April Wheeler were two drastically different people, who met at the right place at the right time, and decided that they would spend the rest of their lives together. So they get married. So they have children. But April Wheeler never wanted that life. Frank doesn’t know what he wants. They stay together for their children. They stay together because they desperately want to be the people they seem to be. But that image is a silhouette. They have to stop pretending.
Revolutionary Road is long. It isn’t the most exciting book, or even the most riveting. But it is a work of art, complex and simple, the kind of book ever writer dreams of writing.
I lucked out, at that yard sale.

Interview with Kim Culbertson (Instructions for a Broken Heart, Songs for a Teenage Nomad)

2011-05-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Blogger friends, life is not moving fast enough for me. I have a feeling that if life did start moving as fast as I'd like it to, I would change my mind. There is a lot going on, in school and out and around. I have taken MCAS for the past 2 days, this time for Math, and it has fried my brain. But it is over, and I will never have to take MCAS again. Now, though, SATs...
I've just gotten home from a rehearsal for a church choir I'm going to be joining next year. I am pretending to be a tenor. I would like to be a tenor. There are a lot of great people there, and it is a good place for me to be. Good hours like the past few hours nearly balance out the hours that aren't so good. I didn't write much of anything for weeks, and now the words are here again.
I am here to post an interview between myself and Kim Culbertson. I reviewed her newest book, Instructions for a Broken Heart, recently, and she got in contact with me. I like her. I like talking to real, live writers. It pulls me out of the black hole I've been spending so much time in.
Another interview will be up over the next few weeks, though I'm not sure when. I'm reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, but I might have to put that on hold while I read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver for my History class. Or I can find the time to finish both of them. This will most likely not happen.
ALSO, I'm meeting Susane Colasanti Friday night. I will post about that over the weekend, most likely, because I'm not sure if I'll have anything else to sure.
If I can pull myself out of my hole, so can you. Have a great week, friends.

1. Instructions takes place largely in Italy. Why Italy?

During my second year of teaching high school, one other teacher and I took 16 students to Italy for a spring break. At the time, I knew I’d want to set a book there someday. There is something about the light in Italy – it’s just different, so artistic and buttery. The landscape is just made to ponder (and we spent a lot of time on a bus pondering it!) Also, there is something about the rhythm of that kind of trip – it’s really tiring (lots of tours and buses and different hotels) but in that kind of whirlwind, I really felt free to think about the things in my life that mattered to me, mostly because someone else was taking care of meals, housing, etc. When you’re following a tour guide around, your mind does as much of the wandering as your feet. I thought it would make a cool setting for a book. When the idea for Jessa came to me, I knew Italy would be the setting for her story.

2. This is your second book. Your first book, Songs for a Teenage Nomad, was republished last year by Sourcebooks Fire, Instructions' publisher. How has it felt to return to that first book, to get it back out into the world? Which book are you more proud of? I know that's like asking you to choose your favorite child.

That’s true! I couldn’t do that. I’m not more proud of one over the other though they were two very different experiences. I wrote the first draft of Songs for a Teenage Nomad when I was teaching these really incredible hours – teaching English, directing shows, and I’d write Songs during breaks and over summers so it took me years to finish that book. Then I kept rewriting it until it was picked up by Hip Pocket Press, the small publishing house that first gave it a home in 2007. With Instructions, it was an entirely different process. I wrote that first draft over about six months. My daughter (who is now almost seven) was in preschool at the time and I was mostly home with her and not doing the teaching I was before; I still had to write in these little pockets of time when she was in school but the book got to be a bigger part of my daily focus. After I finished a decent draft of that novel, I got an agent, Melissa Sarver of The Elizabeth Kaplan Agency in New York, and she sold that book and the re-issue of Songs to Sourcebooks. So the whole process of Instructions was a bit more traditional. Sometimes, I open up Songs and read a few lines just to remind me of all those years I spent working on it.

3. You are also a teacher. Does teaching help you with your writing, and vice versa. If so, how?

I always like to say that writing is an extension of my teaching and it really, really is. Teaching high school completely informs my work. My students are really important to me and I want to share with them how much I love books. I truly think books can make the world a better place, make us more compassionate people, more insightful to the oddities of our fellow humans. My students like to tease me about all of that because I’m constantly telling them that. But I’m so grateful to my students because they keep me grounded, help remind me of what it feels like to be young and passionate and interested in things. Adults can really lose that piece of themselves, I think. The piece that says, “art matters!” I feel like I’m teaching much more now than when I was writing Instructions for a Broken Heart, but not as much as when I wrote Songs for a Teenage Nomad. I feel like I’ve found a really lovely balance between my writing world and my teaching world.

4. What would you like readers to take from Instructions? Why did you tell this story this way?

When I was in college I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and it really struck me as this amazing, shimmering piece of art – the language was so rich and even if I didn’t always understand it, it made me feel like it was a window to something special. And the idea in that book, that this young man has to make this huge decision between what is expected of him and what he really feels he is meant to do, well, I watch so many of my students go through that – I mean, I remember going through that whole feeling of “I want to do right by my future but I also love to stare at the ocean and write things.” I wanted to write about that and Jessa let me do that. Discovering that you see the world through an artistic lens is really affirming but it’s also really hard because so many people in the world don’t see the world this way. I wanted to explore the idea that sometimes it takes a major thing – a trip in the wake of a broken heart – to realize how we see the world around us.

5. What inspires you?

Literally everything. It’s a lame way to answer that question but I get totally overwhelmed with this world – with its beauty and sadness and inequalities and joy – and it’s this feeling of being overwhelmed that’s actually a source of inspiration. You see, it’s all in the tiny, simple details: a perfectly made hot fudge sundae, the light coming through rain, the way my dog wags her tail when she’s watching my daughter play with something, my husband’s laugh, the smell of pine. There is so much to inspire me – seriously, it’s exhausting.

6. You send out a monthly newsletter about writing, with different little projects for your readers to try and experiment with. If you only had one sentence, what would you tell a young writer?

Believe in your voice because it’s the only one like it in the world.

7. What's next?

Another YA novel. I’m really interested right now in this idea that we’re all built for something and that it’s saying “yes” to what we’re meant to do that brings us, and subsequently the world, joy. This doesn’t mean we have to get rich or famous at it – I think that’s a mistake that I see so many of my students making, attaching the idea that money and fame are what makes you a success. Doing what you love – even if it’s collecting cereal or making chalk drawings – will translate into happiness. This is something that I want to explore thematically in my next book – this idea of choosing love, choosing joy, without the need for it to be “world approved.”

You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin

2011-05-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

Today has been a strange day. This week has gone by so incredibly quickly. Last week was the same way. I have less than 30 days left of school. I am taking MCAS for the final time next week. Thursday was the AP test. I would tell you about it, but I'm sure the College Board would track me down and flog me. All I will say is this- it was hard.
Yesterday, I was here. I was excused from school, and instead took the train to Salem and a taxi to the place where my parents met. I saw this movie, went to two workshops, and remembered why I need to be a writer. I wrote three poems. Until yesterday, I hadn't written in my notebook in a month. We walked back to the train station.
I went to two workshops, and they were great. They writers who led the workshops were really cool, and I have decided to stalk them all on the internet.I also want to be this woman. The people who taught my workshops were Danielle Georges, January O'Neil, and Joseph Legaspi. Today, Elisa Gabbert and Mark Doty had readings. I missed them, and bought this book.
That is a lot of links. The festival was great. I hope they do it again next year. I hope that, in 10 or 15 years, I'll be teaching workshops to eager, awkward high school students much like myself. I feel like I'm never going to get out of high school.
Next friday, I'm going to meet Susane Colasanti. No link this time. Google her, if you don't know who she is. You should. Next month, I'm going to be meeting Emma Straub AND Alina Simone. I cannot wait for this summer. It cannot come fast enough.
Have a good day/week/etc. I'm glad you're here.

Often times, I’ll open a Word document, sit down to write a review, and have no idea where to start, or go. I’ll ask myself, “How do you feel about the book?” and come up with nothing. But I always begin somewhere, and end somewhere, too. I am again at that point.
I don’t know how I feel about this book. I loved it, but not every part of it. I had trouble putting the pieces together. This book has gotten critical acclaim across the board, and though I had quite a few moments where I was more or less completely lost, all of that acclaim is 100% deserved.
You Lost Me There is Rosecrans Baldwin’s debut novel. I will start by saying that is one of the coolest names I have ever heard/seen/spoken in my life. So from the beginning, I was interested. The book also has a beautiful cover. I also have a soft spot for Riverhead Books, though I’m not sure why. Many things contributed to my anticipation to read this book. I think that may have done my reading experience a disservice. It wasn’t that the book didn’t live up to my expectations, but more that I was expecting the wrong things. And sometimes it is good to be proven wrong. In this case, I’m glad it happened.
You could easily sum up this book in one sentence, by saying, “You Lost Me There is a book about an Alzheimer’s researcher struggling to come to terms with his wife’s death, and finally having his long-delayed midlife crisis.” And that is what the book is about, but not completely. That is what I don’t like about short reviews. Even though my reviews are quite often much too long and much too rambling and probably ridiculously boring, they help me process my thoughts regarding a book, and also help me determine what my thoughts even are. That one sentence review up there did nothing for me, so I’m going to give you something else.
You Lost Me There is about Victor Aaron, an Alzheimer’s researcher who lives in small-town Maine, a man who spends all of his days doing all of the same things. Victor is in love with a woman who is young enough to be his daughter. He spends every Friday night with Betsy, his deceased wife Sara’s aunt. He doesn’t know grief. Or, not until before the book starts.
There are a lot of big pictures in this book, metaphors, and one of them is definitely grief. Another is memory. I could make a list, and justify all of them. In this book, Victor finds a stack of notecards in Sara’s office, notecards that explain in detail the moments she considered pivotal in their relationship. The book follows Victor as he realizes that he didn’t know his wife as well as he thought he did, and also himself. He realizes that his memories weren’t the same as hers. He starts to question his life’s work, and his life. He unravels.
I don’t think there is any way I could explain this book without handing my copy to you. The synopsis on the back of my ARC is true to the plot of the story, but misleading regarding the rest of the book. There was certainly a plot, which I attempted to explain above, but a portion of this book had nothing to do with plot. It wasn’t a complete character study either, or stream-of-consciousness. It was little bits of everything, which I both enjoyed and loathed.
Rosecrans Baldwin is a great writer. Beneath the plot were all of the characters, and the emotions they weren’t expressing. Below those emotions were the motives for why they weren’t expressing these things. And there was likely even more below those emotions, but there are no words left. Each metaphor, or big picture, took on a life of it’s own. Each character doubled as the replacement for another character, and also stood alone. Each event led to the next event, to the next event, to the next event, and they all had their purpose. But at the same time, I don’t think this book was meant to be about Victor Aaron at all, or Sara. I think this book is about life, and the things we think, and the things we do, and why, and why not. I think this story, these characters, are simply an example. They just so happen to be a pretty damn good one, and this just so happens to be a pretty damn good book.
I was lost, occasionally. I would be reading and think, “I have no idea what’s going on.” But then I would retrace my steps and continue. I read this book during school, all over my school, and all over my house. Sometimes I’m reading a book and I just leave it at home, purposely not bringing it around with me, but I brought this one.
At times, it dragged. Even though every little twist and turn needed to be there to lead to the end, I sometimes lost interest. When the book picked up speed, though, I couldn’t put it down, and that’s saying something.
Regardless of me losing my place, and the pace, I would recommend this book to anybody. Like Anne Lamott’s Imperfect Birds, which just so happens to also have been published by Riverhead Books, this book doesn’t have a suspenseful plot or 300 pages of joke after joke. But also similar to Birds, this book is a beautiful look into the life of a man who is finally letting himself feel. Birds is not about that, but I feel there are a few more parallels that could be drawn between these two books. I think it’s a fitting comparison.
The same way I wanted to e-mail Kim Culbertson, I want to e-mail Rosecrans Baldwin. This book had me going, thinking, writing. And for the record, I liked You Lost Me There quite a bit more than Chemistry.

Canada (and Instructions for a Broken Heart by Kim Culbertson)

2011-05-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

I have not posted in almost 3 weeks. I apologize. Life is busy. Life is so, so busy. Everything is moving too quickly and I am just chasing along, trying to keep up. It is working so far, I think. I am still chasing.
I’ve been relaxing this weekend, and I’m enjoying it. I’ve watched the entire sixth season of Weeds the past few days, and eaten more than I’ve eaten in maybe months, and walked for hours. I haven’t slept very much. But it is worth it. I’ll have time to sleep, eventually.
As you may remember, I was in Canada the week before this past week. I went with school, for 5 days, to Niagara Falls and then to Toronto, for competition and general touristy things. I enjoyed it, spending time with people I love spending time with, but was generally underwhelmed/upset and angst-y. We did go to Eaton Center in Toronto, though, and I did enjoy that quite a bit.
I was originally planning on writing a long, long post about my feelings about the trip and life in general right now. I decided not to write that, at least not today, for a few different reasons- my nephew is a matter of feet away from me, I am going to cook dinner for my mom with my sister, and I have a few other things to get done. But that will come, soon. I have a book to review.

Instructions for a Broken Heart was tailor made for me; I am sure of this. I have soft spots for many different kinds of books. This book, Kim Culbertson’s second, is one of those kinds. This is a book about travel (Europe, specifically), love, self-discovery, self-acceptance, and did I mention Europe? I love Europe. And self-things. This book has all of them.
I review YA books and love them as much as I do because of books like this. Instructions follows Jessa, and everything that happens to her in the weeks after she catches her boyfriend, Sean, cheating on her. The book follows her as she travels across the world, to Italy, with her school drama club, and with Sean. And of course, there are the instructions promised in the title, provided by her best friend Carissa. I will add in very quickly that, sometimes when I am writing book reviews, I remember that I have no idea what I am doing. Did I used to be better at this? I’ll continue.
So the book is about Jessa, and the questions she begins asking, and the things she begins doing. Kim Culbertson has written a magnificent book with a wonderful cast of characters, and a really great storyline. Stories like this have been told before, and they will be told again, but Kim’s version has something special. This is like Eat, Pray, Love for teenagers. But something else that I loved about this book was that it is not written for just teenagers at all.
Jessa changes. She starts to find the answers to some of her questions, and also comes up with a few more. She meets a boy, more than one boy, and makes friends with people she never thought she’d be friends with. She realizes that she may not be the person she always thought she was, the person she’s trying to convince herself and everyone around her that she is. She starts figuring out the truth.
I really, really enjoyed this book, if you can’t tell. It was an easy read, but it stuck with me. Jessa dated Sean for a year, and finds out that she doesn’t know him at all. She spends all of her time doing things for other people, and for her future, and finds out that she doesn’t know herself. She stops running after all of the things she thinks she wants and actually asks herself what she wants, and tries to accept that maybe its okay if she doesn’t know.
I related to this book. I think that’s why a lot of people read, or blog, or write. I think that’s why I read and blog and write. I read about people like me, or people in situations like mine, even if their life isn’t my life, and neither is their story. I read because I want to know I’m not the only one feeling things so much. I blog for the same reasons, and I write to create people for the same reasons. I’d like to give people something that they can relate to. Kim Culbertson has done her job very well. I’m glad I made the time to read this book. I’m glad I didn’t do anything else.
As I was saying though, I related. I’m not a teenage girl. I’ve never been to Italy. The farthest I’ve gone is Canada, which isn’t very far, and it took me 15 years of life to do that. I am sheltered. I am sensitive. I do a lot of things because I should, and for the future (college, life, stability). Sometimes I decide to stop doing those things. And even if I start again, at least I tried to stop. Jessa finally starts trying with a little help from her friends, and Italy, and herself. She opens up.
I was thinking about something as I was reading the book, a way I could end this review. I’d like to interview Kim, ask her some questions about writing and life and what she wants people to take from this book. I’d like to at least e-mail her, and thank her for this. I wanted to end the review by saying that I haven’t read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I also haven’t read Letters to a Young Poet. I have read Rilke, but not as much as I’d like to, and I know next to nothing about James Joyce. But for now, Instructions for a Broken Heart is my Portrait, my Letters. I’m thinking it may stay that way. I hope it happens for you, too. 

PS- I'm going to start posting more. I miss this part of me.