In Six Words

I've had an eventful morning, to say the least. While working out, I read my Time Magazine, which contained a short sidebar column about a new book, Not Quite What I Was Planning. In this book, people sum up their life story in 6 words. My favorite that Time excerpted was Joan River's quote, "Liars, hysterectomy didn't improve sex life!"

Being the good little blogger I am, I thought: What a great concept! This would make an interesting post. So, I started thinking about what my 6 words would be. Visions of my six word sentences drifted in and out of my head while I finished my push-ups. Even while I was making my breakfast of a cinnamon raisin bagel, I was still pondering the six words.

Until the knife slipped and a flap of skin opened on my left thumb tip. Then, of course, language left me. I went to the bathroom, washed off the cut -- still blooming with blood, and called my husband to tell him I was going to the clinic. Luckily, the clinic is two blocks from my house (yay city living), and the doctor stitched me up within an hour.

The nurses and doctor laughed at me/with me when I told them that I had worked at a bagel shop during college. This was also the summer that I had the worst accident record at the bagel shop, and got stitches on my thumb, during my vacation at Winnipeg Folk Festival when cutting an apple. (The cut was so deep I saw what fat looked like when it is inside your body. Kind of like cottage cheese.) It was then, in that moment of giggling, that I came to my six words, which sum up my life:

Some stitches, not too many scars.

So what are your six words? And how has your morning been?

A Not-Too-Precious Novel About Poetry

When I was bookless at the beginning of this week, a dire circumstance in my life, my husband strongly urged me to read Carol Muske Dukes' latest book, Channeling Mark Twain. He had read it for school and we had gone to see her read at his school, and I just didn't feel like reading it. I liked her reading/interview, but I was resistant, probably because it was a semi-autobiographical novel about her youth as a poet. I was afraid it was going to be self-indulgent and pretentious, and as a younger poet, I was concerned that it would hit too close to home.

I was incredibly mistaken. I mean, there are points when I did want to smack the narrator for her naivete, but it was authentic and accurate. And you don't really read the book for the narrator, but for her experiences. Muske Dukes centers the story around her experience teaching poetry and Rikers Island penitentiary, during the seventies. She eventually created a successful writing in prison workshop called Writing Without Walls, which extended for several years.

The novel follows several inmates as they learn to express their experiences through poetry. In fact, each chapter is divided by poems from the inmates (although actually written by Muske Dukes herself). Through this conceit, the author creates an argument for writing poetry in order to chronicle and decipher one's life. The argument is political, as the inmates are in some ways products of their poverty, gender, and race. But it is also personal, as these are women trying to define themselves on their own terms. The narrator herself is able to interpret her life as she slowly composes a poem throughout the course of the book. The book also provides an interesting insight into the art and practice of writing poetry, in all of struggles and moments of clarity.

The book is a fluid and easy read and I would strongly urge anyone interested in the life of poetry to give it a try. I burned through it in less than a week, and now sadly, I'm bookless again.

A Crafty Challenge

My husband has decided to start a reading challenge on his blog, The Soulless Machine Review. I think it's pretty brilliant and I am going to join.

It's called The Art of Series Challenge. He is challenging people to join him in reading books from "The Art of" Series, published by Graywolf Press. (You may recall that I fell in love with Donald Revell's Art of Attention a while back.) The series explores issues of craft in poetry and prose, and each book is written by a famous writer, like Revell.

Although most reading challenges take a year, this challenge may take longer, because some books are unpublished as of now. As each book is "due," a discussion post will go up, so that members can compare notes.

Here is the current reading schedule, as posted on my husband's blog:

Out Now:
The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye by Donald Revell (Read by Feb. 28, 2008)
The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter (Read by April. 30, 2008)

Out Dec 26, 2007:
The Art of the Poetic Line by James Longenbach (Read by June. 30, 2008)
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts (Read by Aug. 30, 2008)

Planed but not Published Yet:
The Art of Narrative by Howard Norman
The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber
The Art of Description by Mark Doty
The Art of Endings by Amy Bloom

If any of these books are as good as Revell's, members are in for a treat.

Minnesota Poetry

This week, I just finished reading Kirsten Dierking's second book, Northern Oracle. The book is lovely, spare, and very Minnesotan, in a good way.

The book is framed in two ways. Most importantly, she is exploring her Sami ancestry, so she uses quotes from the Sami poet Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa as epigraphs for each section. These quotes inform the reading of the entire section. The second framing device is a tacit relationship with nature.

Her four sections move from a deep relationship with nature outward to the material world and back again. The Animist and Fragile Organics, the first two sections, are rooted in natural imagery, weather, animals, plants. The third section, "Unstable," speaks to the experiences after 9/11 and how the country (and the narrator) have changed. The final section, The Path Homeward, speaks to the narrator's home life and how she integrates pain, change, tragedy and personal nature.

I like two things about this book. Often there are some poets who seem to stretch for vocabulary, to awe you with their understanding of Really Big Words. Dierking is not from that school of thought. In fact, she uses the common simple words really well, pulling on their physical resonances to craft her images. Secondly, this book feels very Minnesotan. By that, I mean there is a conflicted relationship with nature within an semi-urban environment that seems very appropriate to the subject matter. Sometimes, us Minnesotans like to write about how tough we are in relationship to weather and how lucky we are to have these extreme conditions. Dierking shows the beauty in nature and how integrated it is into our modern lives. This is so hard to do without sounding folksy or fake.

I think this book needs a second reading and after a few months, maybe when winter sets in, I'll revisit it. However, my first impression is that I love it and that it should be read. So go buy it!

Local Book Love

There are so many reasons why I love living in Minneapolis, but one that sticks out this weekend is the Twin Cities Book Festival. My city is incredibly literate -- we are often ranked in the top two in the Top Literature Cities in the US. (Stupid Seattle dethroning us this year.) We are also host to several notable independent presses and noteworthy journals. All of those organizations, plus many local writers and book artists converge upon Minneapolis Community and Technical College to showcase their wares this weekend. My husband and I walked down this morning and had an awesome time.

My three highlights were the books I got, of course.

I met Kirsten Dierking, the author of One Red Eye, which I loved when I read it earlier this year. I bought her new book, Northern Oracle, and got it signed. She was totally gracious and chatted with me for a moment while signing it, because we went to the same grad school.

I also bought The Art of Attention: The Poet's Eye, by Donald Revell, because it looked really good. It's part of a series, edited by local author Charles Baxter, by "important writers on the craft of writing." (Quote from the back of the book) The other one that has been produced so far is The Art of Subtext by Baxter.

The last book was a freebie from MNArtists, an organization I belong to, called What Light. It's an anthology of Minnesota Poets.

I also collected a lot of promotional material from a bunch of cool organizations, presses, and journals. So here's me passing along the info, to help support my awesome local literary scene. I've gotta keep the publication karma positive, if you know what I mean.

Organizations

Professional Editors Network
Laurel Poetry Collective
Minnesota Center for Book Arts
Minnesota Literacy Council
Minnesota Literature

Journals

Midway Journal
Minneapolis Observer Quarterly
Dislocate
Water~Stone

Independent Presses

Blueroad Press
Red Dragonfly Press
Coffee House Press
Spout Press
Scarletta Press

If you are a budding writer who lives in Minneapolis metro area, I would strongly encourage you to visit the book fair this weekend. It's a great networking opportunity and a good resource for local publication venues.

The Books That Are Left Behind

I have been haunting the bookstores lately, as I am in between books and searching hungrily for the next one. It's a panicky feeling, having no book to read. I keep scanning my bookshelves, looking for something to catch my eye. I struck out at home, so I ventured to the two big bookstores, looking for something new.

It had been awhile since I had ventured into the big box bookstores. I've been hanging at my local independent bookstores, and striking out, so I've been to two larger bookstores in my area, to try them on for size. Rather than notice what they had, I was busy noticing what they didn't have.

My first beef: the lack of poetry sections.

When my husband worked at a big box chain, they had a kick-ass poetry section. It could have been due to the neighborhood, or due to the diligence of their workers. But it rocked -- it had old stuff, new stuff, local stuff.

At one of the big-boxers-who-shall-remain-nameless, I wandered for 20 minutes to find the poetry section. When I finally asked an employee, she guided me to a section adjacent to the sex books. It was only 1 eight foot tall book shelf high. That wasn't even the worst part.

The worst part was the books that it contained -- past their prime anthologies in the "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul" style, aging rock/pop stars' books, and the "classics." Oh, and the "how to write poetry" books. This selection (or lack thereof) brought to mind two issues: first, why would anyone want to write poetry with these books as their only examples? Secondly, isn't the best tool for learning to write poetry reading current poetry? Grrr...

My second beef: remaindered books

While I am all for cheap books (who isn't?), the variety and depth of both chains' remainder section was astounding. It felt like the reject wall at a junior high dance. A Mary Cheney memoir sat next to a Hilary Clinton bio, special edition selections of Dostoevsky slumbered with their Jane Austen cousins, bargain priced art books gathered dust in the corner. I felt bad for the books, with their embarrassingly low prices and their precariously over stacked piles. But at the same time, I didn't want to buy them. I was lured by their prices, but then turned off by their content.

These two beefs lead me to a question: what does the publishing industry value? It seems, with these two highly unscientific case studies, that there is a value of quantity over quality, conformity over diversity. Of course, publishing is a business, and a not very lucrative one at that, but this side of the business is unseemly. Rather than print zillions of "hot for the moment" memoirs that will eventually be remaindered and forgotten, why not publish quality work that people will pay to read?

50 Years of Wandering

In the New York Times Book Review, it is Jack Kerouac week, thanks to the 50th Anniversary of the publication of On the Road.

The first article is a review of the published version of the "original scroll" that Kerouac typed back in 1951. It's interesting because the version we're used to is a fictional work, while Kerouac wrote it is as a memoir. The reviewer compares the two works as separate works and finds the scrolls, in some ways, are better.

The second article is another review, this time of John Leland's book The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think.) This sounds like an interesting book, since it seems that in the past 50 years reading On the Road is like a rite of passage of American adolescents with brains.

The final article is a rumination of On the Road's place in our culture, as a touchstone. This is where our co mingling of Kerouac as writer and Kerouac as character and icon becomes apparent, in the ways we elevate and idealize the character, while forgetting about the writer. Surely, Kerouac himself encouraged this "branding" (in modern marketing parlance), but it also caused him much difficulty (and infamy) in his later life.

I am one of those brainy adolescents who discovered On the Road when I was 19, and decided that for me, too,

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

It wasn't until I got older that I realized for myself how scary, seductive, dangerous, and important it was to surround yourself with mad ones. But sometimes, it's like you need to shrink away from their light.

What's Next?

Before I left for vacation, I asked for help in finding the perfect summer reading material for my vacation. Mary-LUE, from So-So Cal Cinema and Life, the Universe and Everything, suggested that I pick up Jasper Fforde. When I read her comment, I recalled one of my former student's presentations on his Thursday Next books and decided to read pick up the first two books in his Thursday Next series. I instantly fell in love.

How can I possibly describe Jasper Fforde's writing? He's a bit like Douglas Adams, in that quirky and ironic sci-fi style. Like Adams, he follows one main character as she engages in a series of mystery capers that have an element of the fantastic. But unlike Adams, he is able to create an emotionally interesting main character who grows and changes throughout the series.

The Thursday Next books(The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten) follow the titular main character's adventures in a slightly futuristic 1985. (In this version of 1985, cloning and time travel are possible.) Thursday Next is a veteran of the endless Crimean War and a member of the SpecOps agency, kind of like the Secret Service. She investigates crimes against fiction. Throughout the series of books, she falls in love, realizes that she can jump inside the BookWorld and change novels for the better, and loses her loved ones to her arch nemeses.

If you are a fan of high and low literature, you should read Jasper Fforde. His books are sly, funny, and engaging. I finished the second book in the series while at the airport in Atlanta and immediately had to purchase the third from the only bookstore. (The book gods were smiling down on me that day.) I've just started the fourth book in the series, and I am already counting down the days until the release of the fifth.

Dana Gioia Done Good

A friend of mine sent me this article from CNN.com about a new NEA program. Dana Gioia, the second term chair of the government agency, has created a new program called "The Big Read." In over 400 cities across the country, the NEA is providing grants for spreading specific works of literature. Click here to see what book is being used in your community.

By getting a community to focus on a singular book and a book event surrounding it, Gioia hopes to encourage literacy and the love of literature. I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of Gioia, but I'm a tremendous fan of reading. So, kudos for Gioia's creative approach to the spread of reading in America.

Fun, Sun, and ...Books?

In just a few weeks, I am going on vacation. Ten working days, to be exact, not that I'm counting. I'm a pretty type-A kind of girl and I have a feeling I will be needing some beachy entertainment.

So, I'm looking for some suggestions for summer beach reading. I'm looking for something both frothy and literary, if you catch my drift. For instance, I love literary biographies, especially if they involve scandal, like the recent Edna St. Vincent Millay biography, Savage Beauty. Or summery poetry, like, well, I can't think of summery poetry.

So I'm asking for help. If anyone out there has encountered some good summer reading, please leave me some suggestions. I leave on July 1, and I'm planning a library trip for June 30. Any help would be much appreciated!

Soulless Machine

My husband, Aaron, just started his own blog called Soulless Machine. On his blog, he'll post short reviews of short stories. It currently has a couple of reviews up now, mostly on science fiction/speculative short stories. I expect that he'll be branching out into other styles of short stories as well.

Are Book Reviewers Passe?

Another great article for evening reading, this time from the New York Times.

This article claims that the traditional newspaper book review section is dying a slow death. And it seems to be true, from the evidence they provide. Large national newspapers are decreasing and collapsing their book review sections. The trend could be a shame, since regional reviewers tend to critique regional writers. However, all is not a loss.

According to the article, literary and book reviewing blogs are growing. They claim to "democratize" the book review process, making it accessible to the common reader. The article lists several popular and well-established book reviewing sites, including Book Slut, Emerging Writers Network, and The Syntax of Things.

I am one of those anachronistic bloggers who still like the traditional newspaper book review, albeit delivered to my gmail inbox on Sundays. I feel that there's a bit of a romantic notion to the old-school book review. They tend to be written by experts, people who have studied the art of critique. Certainly, I have romanticized the people involved, as well. What a life, to hold the book industry in the palm of your hand, able to decimate it (or inflate it) in one swoop of your pen.

Yet, I can see the benefits of putting literary criticism on the web, especially since many people feel that they aren't good at critiquing literature. By making criticism accessible to discussion on the web, we are broadening the base of informed literary critics. We are creating a new culture of book love and book awareness, even if we're staring at our laptops instead of getting our fingertips stained with ink.

Poetry Book Club -- Read All About It!

I had an idea today, after reading this article by Neil on Poetry Thursday. The article talks about our reluctance and inability (to a certain degree) to comment on other people's writing. We instead leave a "Wow--insert your favorite modifier here" comment on everyone's blog. Personally, I think partially it's because we're out of practice on critiquing poetry.

So, I'd like to start a poetry book club on my site. This will help me read more poetry, because besides the stuff I teach, I'm slacking in that area. And it'll help me to remember how to critique the work and develop good critical analysis skills. (Wow I sound like a lit teacher!) Mine have atrophied a bit after graduate school.

Next month, I'll pick a book of poetry and then suggest a discussion date. I'll post a blog entry up for comments and hopefully, I can start a discussion about it. So, if you're interested in participating and would like to suggest a book, please leave suggestions on this post!

MySpace Saves Bookstores

According to this article from Publisher's Weekly, the social networking site MySpace has helped save a Chicago institution from closing.

Women & Children First Bookstore, a 28 year old feminist bookstore in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, used their MySpace page to discuss their financial difficulties with their patrons and friends. Even though W&CF is such a popular bookstore, their financial difficulties are a direct result of people buying books elsewhere. In fact many indie bookstores (and big box bookstores) are suffering, due to the widespread popularity of Amazon.com, among other things. The owners of W&CF posted this missive in their blog, to an overwhelmingly positive response. Their sales, both in store and online, improved considerably within a weekend.

Personally, I think it would be a shame if W&CF closed down. When I was in college, I drove down to Chicago to see Alice Walker read from her book on female genital mutilation in Africa. I was packed into this little tiny bookstore with over a hundred other people, and I got to meet Walker face to face. Without bookstores like Women & Children First to support them, independent and interesting writers may not have a chance to promote their work.

Any Press is Good Press

In this week's New York Times Book Review, Derek Walcott's new edition of selected poems gets mostly savaged in this review. The reviewer, a poet and critic named William Logan, at times seems complimentary. He praises Walcott's use of landscape, mostly. But everything else is tinny, false, and didactic, in Logan's view.

Now Walcott is not one of my favorite poets. I like him, but I have never been able to delve deeply into his work. I liked his take on the Homeric epic when I read it in grad school, but a book of his is languishing on my shelf as we speak. So, it was interesting for me to read this review, simply because I've not seen a poet ragged on so completely in a review in recent times. I want to feel bad for Walcott, but Logan's critiques seems so pithy and apt.

For instance, Logan writes, "Overstuffed with images, his languid, occasionally lackadaisical style is more in love with words than with what they represent. He’s a better poet when just mulling things over, in a louche beachcomber-ish way — when he talks politics, the taste seems bitter in his mouth."

Or in another section, "The poet too often borrows the academic’s gassy editorials (“the politicians plod / without imagination”) and self-service sentiments (“poetry is still treason / because it is truth”). If he had not invented himself, academia would have had to invent him."

The review is so negative, that it is intriguing to me. I want to pick up the new book, just to see if Logan's right. This review should sell a lot of books, in only the way that a thrashing review can.

Bull#@$%!!

I'm teaching literature this term, and I sure hope that my students don't read (or skim) this article. Otherwise, I'm screwed.

Apparently, a Paris literature professor has written a book entitled How to Talk About a Book You Haven't Read? Pierre Bayard, the author, humorously dismisses the stigma surrounding not reading a book and then offers tips for how to navigate the subject. He suggests such techniques as using knowledge about the public opinion of the book, gossip about the author, knowledge about the genre, and using anecdotes from your own life to talk about the book without talking about it. You can also change the subject, of course.

As a literature teacher, these are all techniques I have used. Without fail, when I start literature class each term, a student (or five) will try to suck up by mentioning all the books they like. Sometimes I've read them, sometimes I haven't. If I'm honest and say that I haven't read said seminal book by random obscure author, they express shock and disappointment that a lit instructor hasn't read this greatest book of all time. Or I can let them talk about it, and then I pick up on the verbal cues and discuss. I know I'm going to hell, but it makes life a lot easier.

Maybe I should have written this book. But then, I'd be "out" and that would open up a new can of worms.

Shopping Frenzy in Mad City

My husband and I went to Madison, WI this past weekend to spend his birthday with a close friend (I'll call him Ox) from college. We had an awesome time seeing Ox's new house that he just bought with his girlfriend, playing board games, and catching up.

Perhaps the highlight of our trip, at least for confirmed bibliophiles like my husband and me, was our trip to Madison Central Library's book sale. As soon as we walked in to the special reading room crammed with cheap books ($1 for hard cover, $0.50 for soft cover), we begin making obsessive piles. We were hoarding books like pros, carefully hiding them from the random homeless and otherwise smelly people also there.

About twenty minutes into our browsing, the clerk announced that we had to buy our books now, in order to make way for the bag sale. Not really understanding what the clerk meant by bag sale, we purchased a full grocery bag of books for $10. Not bad. But then, the clerk mentioned that if there was more we'd like to buy, we should come back in five minutes, because we could then fill up a grocery bag with anything for $3. Grrr. Like the suckers we are, we filled up another bag of books. All in all, we cleaned up. 26 books for $13.

After we were done with our two bags, I had to literally pull myself away from the book tables, as did my husband. I think we freaked out Ox and his girlfriend a bit. And she's a librarian.

I'm so excited for my new collection that I put it on a separate book shelf in our home. Here are the highlights of my finds...

-- Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior (I somehow missed this in college, besides living in the Womyn's Center and taking Women's Lit classes in college.)

-- Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (Highly recommended to me by every professor in grad school)

-- An out of print book of Kenneth Rexroth's poetry (A friend of the Beats is a friend of mine)

-- Derek Walcott's book of essays What the Twilight Says

-- Camille Paglia's Sex, Art and American Culture (Includes her famous essay on Madonna)

-- Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning

There's more, including some very cool anthologies and travel books. I don't know when I'll find the time to read them, but like a true obsessive, just having them makes me happy.