Writing as Resistance
Andrea Palpant Dilley
I have what most writers would kill for: a home office all my own, a work schedule that allows me to write for three hours every afternoon, and uninterrupted solitude. No kids. No commute. No complications. I wake up in the morning, yawn a few times, ruffle my hair, soak down some cereal, and then wander down a five-foot hallway into my office, one wall away from where I just woke up. After five hours of work as a long distance documentary producer, I wander back into the kitchen, make myself tea and mark the end of work and the start of, well, more work.
I have Virginia Woolf’s “Room of My Own” but my room lacks something: a place to depart from, a place to push against. Here’s what I mean. TS Eliot went to work in the morning, spent all day at the bank lifting and sifting slim bills of money and then went home to write. He departed from somewhere and arrived somewhere else. And maybe like the rest of us, on his way home he bitched and moaned and muttered about his boss before he sat down to write Prufrock with the indelible line, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” and my other favorite, “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” I, on the other hand, inhabit the same space for work and writing which I have discovered is quite complicating mentally. I fight morale fatigue more often. I confuse writing with work and work with writing. I get lonely spending all day in solitude.
So if I had the chance, I might trade Eliot his writing life for mine. Writing is an act of resistance, not in the civil-political sense necessarily (although certainly it can be that), but in the most simple, psychological sense of pushing up against something. It puts a healthy sense of distance between you and everything around you. Now I will leave work behind and the boss with the grating voice and I will go home to my writing. This act of departing-and-arriving creates definition. Demarcation. A space to reflect. I imagine that it feels sort of like jumping off a derailing train—you leave behind the dirty locomotive of daily labor, and you land in the dirt on your own terms and your own feet. There is freedom to it. A sense of arriving at a certain kind of wilderness. It’s up to you, now, to mark the path home.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Swing Shift Series: Andrea Palpant Dilley
Writing vs. Editing
Andrea Palpant Dilley
When I was 23 I took a job at a local film company as a production assistant (PA), a starter position that involved stocking the fridge with soda pop, emptying the recycling bin by the copy machine, and buying Starbucks drinks for hot shot producers who wore tight shirts and talked on cell phones. I was a fresh college graduate with an English major and no technical know-how in the production business. My only relevant skill, my only remnant of dignity, was writing. I worked in the basement cubicle room called affectionately “the rat maze,” where once the CFO came down two flights of stairs to stand awkwardly by my desk and ask me to proof read his report. Writing had business value. I had something to leverage. So after a few years of writing and PA-ing, I worked my way into a producing position in the Nonfiction Division, where I started directing and editing documentary stories.
Director David Mamet famously said that a film happens in the edit room. It is arguably the most important part of the process, a very solitary activity that requires sitting in a dark room punching colored buttons for hours on end, not nearly as sexy a process as people outside the industry imagine it is. My editing in many ways is an almost opposite process to my writing. Writing is mostly a positive, constructive process of building up. Word. Metaphor. Plot development. Image editing is mostly a negative process of exclusion and cutting down, like sculpting. Cull. Cut. Splice. With writing I’m tethered to the internal life, laboring with memory and imagination. With editing I’m tethered to the external world, limited to what has been said and seen and shown. I can’t reimagine my characters, I can’t change the way they walk on camera the same way I can sift through verbs on paper, changing the lilt of things with a couple of key strokes.
I remember an old war veteran I interviewed for a documentary on Japanese American internment during WWII. He had been drafted to serve out of an internment camp, a formative, difficult experience which he detailed to me in an almost two-hour interview one winter day. Leaning forward toward the camera, he said to me before he said anything else, “I’ve never really talked about the war to even my family.” And then he told stories about young men trudging through dark forests in France, and it was the sort of thing I could never have written. It was meant to be told on camera. It was meant for the medium, the same way a poem is meant for the solitary white space of paper. The limits of the documentary medium made it singular and different than other mediums. The boundaries made it beautiful.
Andrea Palpant Dilley
When I was 23 I took a job at a local film company as a production assistant (PA), a starter position that involved stocking the fridge with soda pop, emptying the recycling bin by the copy machine, and buying Starbucks drinks for hot shot producers who wore tight shirts and talked on cell phones. I was a fresh college graduate with an English major and no technical know-how in the production business. My only relevant skill, my only remnant of dignity, was writing. I worked in the basement cubicle room called affectionately “the rat maze,” where once the CFO came down two flights of stairs to stand awkwardly by my desk and ask me to proof read his report. Writing had business value. I had something to leverage. So after a few years of writing and PA-ing, I worked my way into a producing position in the Nonfiction Division, where I started directing and editing documentary stories.
Director David Mamet famously said that a film happens in the edit room. It is arguably the most important part of the process, a very solitary activity that requires sitting in a dark room punching colored buttons for hours on end, not nearly as sexy a process as people outside the industry imagine it is. My editing in many ways is an almost opposite process to my writing. Writing is mostly a positive, constructive process of building up. Word. Metaphor. Plot development. Image editing is mostly a negative process of exclusion and cutting down, like sculpting. Cull. Cut. Splice. With writing I’m tethered to the internal life, laboring with memory and imagination. With editing I’m tethered to the external world, limited to what has been said and seen and shown. I can’t reimagine my characters, I can’t change the way they walk on camera the same way I can sift through verbs on paper, changing the lilt of things with a couple of key strokes.
I remember an old war veteran I interviewed for a documentary on Japanese American internment during WWII. He had been drafted to serve out of an internment camp, a formative, difficult experience which he detailed to me in an almost two-hour interview one winter day. Leaning forward toward the camera, he said to me before he said anything else, “I’ve never really talked about the war to even my family.” And then he told stories about young men trudging through dark forests in France, and it was the sort of thing I could never have written. It was meant to be told on camera. It was meant for the medium, the same way a poem is meant for the solitary white space of paper. The limits of the documentary medium made it singular and different than other mediums. The boundaries made it beautiful.
Andrea Palpant Dilley is a documentary producer and director and has completed In Time of War, an hour program on the Japanese American internment camps of WWII narrated by Patty Duke and broadcast nationally by American Public Television, as well as Sudan: The Path to Peace, a documentary on the current crisis in Sudan which premiered at the Amnesty International Film Festival in Victoria, B.C. Prior to producing Andrea worked as a freelance writer, interviewing among others NPR's Ira Glass and jazz legend Gunther Schueller. Andrea enjoys photography as a personal hobby.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Lenox & Hummel Blogs Continued
My Five-Year Plan
Stephanie Lenox
My grant money will soon be depleted, so while I’m trying to savor my last weeks of free writing time, I’m also trying to look forward and find a job that will fit my financial and literary goals. Job searches require a lot of introspection, and on top of the already high degree of reflection required to write poetry, I’m just about sick of personal pronouns and action verbs. I’m embarrassed by all the versions of my resume floating out there in the hands of strangers. I have the unique opportunity to be roundly rejected on all levels on a daily basis—fu-un!
I recently read a slick magazine article about getting what you want. The inspirational writer said that you must have a vision of what life will look like when you achieve your dream. And then you must work backward from that vision to the present. It seemed like a good idea, so I tried it. My five-year plan happens to involve having my first book published and working happily in a career that involves writing. The vision is clear. I can see it. So what happens just before I achieve this dream? Someone other than myself decides I’m worthy of a book contract or a career position. As a writer (read: control freak) I have a really hard time with that.
It’s easy to get side-tracked by the rejections and absence of control that is a part of the writing life. I try to get by with what I can direct: every day that I write, I am a writer. I don’t need someone’s seal of approval to feel like I’m moving forward in that goal. And soon, hopefully, someone will have the common sense to hire me. In the meantime, I need to keep my poems and resumes out there.
Multi-Tasking
Heather K. Hummel
As a person that must eat, and likes luxuries like organic salad, I work a lot. I’ve averaged two jobs at a time since I was twenty. Right now, I technically have four jobs. Wait: I accepted new contract work today: let’s make that five. So, writing is something that goes with me, everywhere. I revise poems while on the treadmill at the gym. They say iambic pentameter is like a heartbeat; perhaps my meter is always going haywire because I work on it during my cardio routine. I could never be a good formalist; I tried once—I didn’t complete a single poem.
My dedication (or dogged persistence, depending on whom you ask) means that I work on poems at the airport. I routinely work on poems as I sleep. For me, it isn’t a matter of finding more hours in the day to write; I multi-task, and take it with me, always. On road trips, I take notes in my journal about historical markers, native plants and birds, what my family says; these bits and pieces will soon show up in my writing, no doubt.
If you were to surprise me and conduct a strip search, you’d probably find in my pockets: keys, a protein bar, a pen and a poem that is in process and covered in illegible scribbles. You’d rarely find cash.
Once, my brother, a visual artist, told me I was lucky: to make my art, all I need is a pencil—he pointed out that I can write on menus or napkins if I need to. And I try to keep that in mind: my “work”—the work I do to pay the bills and eat—is utilitarian. I will do it as much as needed, but my brain-space is mine and dedicated to writing. And if the rhythm and essence of my poetry is imbued with everything I am up to (running, love-making, cooking dinners)? So be it.
Stephanie Lenox
My grant money will soon be depleted, so while I’m trying to savor my last weeks of free writing time, I’m also trying to look forward and find a job that will fit my financial and literary goals. Job searches require a lot of introspection, and on top of the already high degree of reflection required to write poetry, I’m just about sick of personal pronouns and action verbs. I’m embarrassed by all the versions of my resume floating out there in the hands of strangers. I have the unique opportunity to be roundly rejected on all levels on a daily basis—fu-un!
I recently read a slick magazine article about getting what you want. The inspirational writer said that you must have a vision of what life will look like when you achieve your dream. And then you must work backward from that vision to the present. It seemed like a good idea, so I tried it. My five-year plan happens to involve having my first book published and working happily in a career that involves writing. The vision is clear. I can see it. So what happens just before I achieve this dream? Someone other than myself decides I’m worthy of a book contract or a career position. As a writer (read: control freak) I have a really hard time with that.
It’s easy to get side-tracked by the rejections and absence of control that is a part of the writing life. I try to get by with what I can direct: every day that I write, I am a writer. I don’t need someone’s seal of approval to feel like I’m moving forward in that goal. And soon, hopefully, someone will have the common sense to hire me. In the meantime, I need to keep my poems and resumes out there.
Multi-Tasking
Heather K. Hummel
As a person that must eat, and likes luxuries like organic salad, I work a lot. I’ve averaged two jobs at a time since I was twenty. Right now, I technically have four jobs. Wait: I accepted new contract work today: let’s make that five. So, writing is something that goes with me, everywhere. I revise poems while on the treadmill at the gym. They say iambic pentameter is like a heartbeat; perhaps my meter is always going haywire because I work on it during my cardio routine. I could never be a good formalist; I tried once—I didn’t complete a single poem.
My dedication (or dogged persistence, depending on whom you ask) means that I work on poems at the airport. I routinely work on poems as I sleep. For me, it isn’t a matter of finding more hours in the day to write; I multi-task, and take it with me, always. On road trips, I take notes in my journal about historical markers, native plants and birds, what my family says; these bits and pieces will soon show up in my writing, no doubt.
If you were to surprise me and conduct a strip search, you’d probably find in my pockets: keys, a protein bar, a pen and a poem that is in process and covered in illegible scribbles. You’d rarely find cash.
Once, my brother, a visual artist, told me I was lucky: to make my art, all I need is a pencil—he pointed out that I can write on menus or napkins if I need to. And I try to keep that in mind: my “work”—the work I do to pay the bills and eat—is utilitarian. I will do it as much as needed, but my brain-space is mine and dedicated to writing. And if the rhythm and essence of my poetry is imbued with everything I am up to (running, love-making, cooking dinners)? So be it.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Lenox & Hummel Blogs
Time=Money?
Stephanie Lenox
In the introduction to In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, Annie Dillard gives no-nonsense advice to new writers, which includes this injunction: “When you are writing full-time (three to four hours a day), go in the room with the book every day, regardless of your feelings.”
Her introduction contains a lot of good advice, and I recommend reading it and the book in its entirety, but what really grabbed me about this statement was that Annie Dillard considers full-time writing to be three to four hours a day! Here I’ve been working on my book and sitting down for eight-hour stretches with my laptop and my brain, putting in a solid work day when Annie (a real writer) recommends half that. My first response was, What does she do with the rest of her day? I guess that’s not important. Like anyone, she probably has a day job, laundry, meals, relationships, social obligations, research, mail.
While examining my response to her statement, I’ve realized that I’ve been needlessly applying a corporate model to my writing work. Why do I need to put in an eight-hour day? Why should I treat myself as a slacker employee if I’d rather read a book or go to an art gallery? Why should I equate the stack of words I produce with success?
Simply put, it doesn’t work that way. Writing, for most people, is not a profitable business. I’ve received a grant to defray the costs of living while I write, but I am not being paid by the hour or the word. Like Robert Graves once said, “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money either.” So, I’m trying to stifle my inner-Puritan and learn to write and enjoy living without a paycheck.
Work Uniforms
Heather K. Hummel
Sometimes, being a writer feels like I have a body covered in tattoos that are barely hidden by the limits of my clothes. When I dress to go to the college where I teach, there is a thin guise of conservatism and banality, but underneath are illustrations of my entire life philosophy—including the drunken and better-left-forgotten exegesis, in indelible ink no less. Aren’t all writers naked, but camouflaged?
I knew a boy in college that had a smiley face tattooed on his chest; someone somewhere probably recalls that I once wrote an ode to guacamole. “For posterity’s sake” always seemed like such a silly concept to me. As I get older, I can more about each sentence that I write, each image in every poem I make; writing has the power to reveal deep and hidden things, and those things can hurt or heal.
As I write now, it is a bit of a strip tease: those tattoos are being revealed, one shimmy or shake at a time. Paradoxically, my dance with writing is simultaneously more restrained and cautiously executed, and more filled with abandon and utter joy. This is a short life; I’d like it to be densely rich and true. If I pray about my endeavors, it is for that. Then, I sit down to work, and my fingers begin to tap a new rhythm.
Stephanie Lenox
In the introduction to In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, Annie Dillard gives no-nonsense advice to new writers, which includes this injunction: “When you are writing full-time (three to four hours a day), go in the room with the book every day, regardless of your feelings.”
Her introduction contains a lot of good advice, and I recommend reading it and the book in its entirety, but what really grabbed me about this statement was that Annie Dillard considers full-time writing to be three to four hours a day! Here I’ve been working on my book and sitting down for eight-hour stretches with my laptop and my brain, putting in a solid work day when Annie (a real writer) recommends half that. My first response was, What does she do with the rest of her day? I guess that’s not important. Like anyone, she probably has a day job, laundry, meals, relationships, social obligations, research, mail.
While examining my response to her statement, I’ve realized that I’ve been needlessly applying a corporate model to my writing work. Why do I need to put in an eight-hour day? Why should I treat myself as a slacker employee if I’d rather read a book or go to an art gallery? Why should I equate the stack of words I produce with success?
Simply put, it doesn’t work that way. Writing, for most people, is not a profitable business. I’ve received a grant to defray the costs of living while I write, but I am not being paid by the hour or the word. Like Robert Graves once said, “There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money either.” So, I’m trying to stifle my inner-Puritan and learn to write and enjoy living without a paycheck.
Work Uniforms
Heather K. Hummel
Sometimes, being a writer feels like I have a body covered in tattoos that are barely hidden by the limits of my clothes. When I dress to go to the college where I teach, there is a thin guise of conservatism and banality, but underneath are illustrations of my entire life philosophy—including the drunken and better-left-forgotten exegesis, in indelible ink no less. Aren’t all writers naked, but camouflaged?
I knew a boy in college that had a smiley face tattooed on his chest; someone somewhere probably recalls that I once wrote an ode to guacamole. “For posterity’s sake” always seemed like such a silly concept to me. As I get older, I can more about each sentence that I write, each image in every poem I make; writing has the power to reveal deep and hidden things, and those things can hurt or heal.
As I write now, it is a bit of a strip tease: those tattoos are being revealed, one shimmy or shake at a time. Paradoxically, my dance with writing is simultaneously more restrained and cautiously executed, and more filled with abandon and utter joy. This is a short life; I’d like it to be densely rich and true. If I pray about my endeavors, it is for that. Then, I sit down to work, and my fingers begin to tap a new rhythm.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Welcome to the Swing Shift Writers Series
To kick off the Swing Shift Writers series, the editors of Blood Orange Review give their own thoughts about their personal struggles and tricks with balancing work and writing.
You’re not the boss of me!
Stephanie Lenox
Stanley Bing has recently come out with a new and revised version of his book Crazy Bosses, which was first published in 1992. Since then, he has honed his experience by becoming the boss himself, which has allowed him insight into the insanity of leadership. In the book, he pinpoints five different kinds of crazy bosses:
The Bully
The Paranoid
The Narcissist
The Wimp
The Disaster Hunter
After receiving a project grant that allowed me to quit my job and focus on my writing for several months, I thought my scheduling woes and work frustrations would be over. Now that I’m in complete control of my days, I have had to figure out what kind of boss I’m going to be. Enter: new boss. Same as the old boss.
During the months I’ve worked on my project, I’ve been both micro-manger and absentee leader. I have timesheets and reading lists and submission goals and spreadsheets. I’ve torn myself down to the point I thought about quitting altogether. I’ve managed to write some work I’m proud of, but it is never enough. I’ve had the opportunity to exercise my craziness in many unproductive ways.
Bing explains that “there is a limit to the effectiveness of rationality.” He later recommends that readers “aspire to the most potent level of craziness you can personally achieve in your lifetime.” The key is the word potent. While the above crazy types can be a drain on achievement, there are certain kinds of craziness that can serve the greater good.
In my remaining weeks, I’m trying to hold tight to a different kind of insanity in order to push my writing to the next level. I’m reading more and staring out the window more. If I don’t write, I’m trying to be nice about it. I leave the house at least once a day and make sure to have a conversation with someone other than the cat. I’m trying to remind myself why I write and why I’ve worked so hard to have this time to concentrate on my work. Through it all, I’m remembering the words of my teacher: “If anything, you should have fun.”
I’m a horrible, crazy boss. But I’m trying to get better. I’m trying to love my words enough to revise them. I’m reading more than I have in years—out loud for hours on end. I’m trying to remember that there’s never a perfect time to write—I will never have enough space, leisure, money, and time. I’m trying to counter fear and paranoia (an occupational hazard) with generosity and patience.
Work Benefits
Heather K. Hummel
One of my most helpful writing tricks is the happy side-effect of a job that I do part-time: I am a yoga teacher. I started practicing yoga because I had too much stress in grad school. But I've continued to practice, and then teach yoga because it clears the clutter from my day and makes me focus, really focus on the thoughts in my head.
After searching high and low for "inspiration" I realized that I usually have plenty of inspiration to keep me busy writing, but it's hidden under distracting, jumbled thoughts about what I needed at the grocery store, and what tasks I need to finish at the office before the weekend comes.
Early yoga practitioners did not "do" yoga like so many people do it these days, as calisthenics. Early yoga practitioners considered that it was a way to get the restless body (and mind) to settle down enough so that the practitioner could meditate. And isn't writing a form of meditation? We sit down and focus, and then explore some image or metaphor very intently, much like one might stare at a candle flame or visualization during a meditation.
So, why do I teach yoga, and not just "practice" yoga if it is a preparation for my writing practice? Well, it is often said that teachers teach what they most need to learn. I'm still learning how to get all the useless clutter out of my brain so I can see the poetry underneath. And teaching yoga gives me a couple hours a week where I have to practice, no excuses: I'll get fired.
You’re not the boss of me!
Stephanie Lenox
Stanley Bing has recently come out with a new and revised version of his book Crazy Bosses, which was first published in 1992. Since then, he has honed his experience by becoming the boss himself, which has allowed him insight into the insanity of leadership. In the book, he pinpoints five different kinds of crazy bosses:
The Bully
The Paranoid
The Narcissist
The Wimp
The Disaster Hunter
After receiving a project grant that allowed me to quit my job and focus on my writing for several months, I thought my scheduling woes and work frustrations would be over. Now that I’m in complete control of my days, I have had to figure out what kind of boss I’m going to be. Enter: new boss. Same as the old boss.
During the months I’ve worked on my project, I’ve been both micro-manger and absentee leader. I have timesheets and reading lists and submission goals and spreadsheets. I’ve torn myself down to the point I thought about quitting altogether. I’ve managed to write some work I’m proud of, but it is never enough. I’ve had the opportunity to exercise my craziness in many unproductive ways.
Bing explains that “there is a limit to the effectiveness of rationality.” He later recommends that readers “aspire to the most potent level of craziness you can personally achieve in your lifetime.” The key is the word potent. While the above crazy types can be a drain on achievement, there are certain kinds of craziness that can serve the greater good.
In my remaining weeks, I’m trying to hold tight to a different kind of insanity in order to push my writing to the next level. I’m reading more and staring out the window more. If I don’t write, I’m trying to be nice about it. I leave the house at least once a day and make sure to have a conversation with someone other than the cat. I’m trying to remind myself why I write and why I’ve worked so hard to have this time to concentrate on my work. Through it all, I’m remembering the words of my teacher: “If anything, you should have fun.”
I’m a horrible, crazy boss. But I’m trying to get better. I’m trying to love my words enough to revise them. I’m reading more than I have in years—out loud for hours on end. I’m trying to remember that there’s never a perfect time to write—I will never have enough space, leisure, money, and time. I’m trying to counter fear and paranoia (an occupational hazard) with generosity and patience.
Work Benefits
Heather K. Hummel
One of my most helpful writing tricks is the happy side-effect of a job that I do part-time: I am a yoga teacher. I started practicing yoga because I had too much stress in grad school. But I've continued to practice, and then teach yoga because it clears the clutter from my day and makes me focus, really focus on the thoughts in my head.
After searching high and low for "inspiration" I realized that I usually have plenty of inspiration to keep me busy writing, but it's hidden under distracting, jumbled thoughts about what I needed at the grocery store, and what tasks I need to finish at the office before the weekend comes.
Early yoga practitioners did not "do" yoga like so many people do it these days, as calisthenics. Early yoga practitioners considered that it was a way to get the restless body (and mind) to settle down enough so that the practitioner could meditate. And isn't writing a form of meditation? We sit down and focus, and then explore some image or metaphor very intently, much like one might stare at a candle flame or visualization during a meditation.
So, why do I teach yoga, and not just "practice" yoga if it is a preparation for my writing practice? Well, it is often said that teachers teach what they most need to learn. I'm still learning how to get all the useless clutter out of my brain so I can see the poetry underneath. And teaching yoga gives me a couple hours a week where I have to practice, no excuses: I'll get fired.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Introducing the Swing Shift Writers series
Do you wish you could tell your boss to get lost so you can spend your time writing the next On the Road or Catcher in the Rye? Do you wake up at the crack of dawn to revise a poem for the fiftieth time? You are not alone.
Each week for the month of June, the Blood Orange Review blog will post field reports from working writers across the country who are performing the daily juggling act of writing and making a living. We wanted to hear about writers' day jobs and what it does or does not do for their writing. How do they make it work? What’s their writing schedule? Has their writing been changed by their experiences in the workplace? Would they continue to work if writing paid the rent?
Check in often to find new inside stories from daddy/poets, filmmaker/writers, nurse/authors and more.
Each week for the month of June, the Blood Orange Review blog will post field reports from working writers across the country who are performing the daily juggling act of writing and making a living. We wanted to hear about writers' day jobs and what it does or does not do for their writing. How do they make it work? What’s their writing schedule? Has their writing been changed by their experiences in the workplace? Would they continue to work if writing paid the rent?
Check in often to find new inside stories from daddy/poets, filmmaker/writers, nurse/authors and more.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Celebrating Our Writers
Blood Orange Review would like to congratulate the following writers who have been previously published in our journal.
Eileen Malone (v1.3) has been nominated this year for two Pushcart Prizes.
Jeff P. Jones (v1.1) won a Pushcart Prize this year for his non-fiction.
Amanda Laughtland’s (v1.1) chapbook I Meant to Say, inspired by “missed connection” ads on craigslist.org, is now available from overhere Press.
Bill Garvey’s (v1.5) chapbook The Burden of Angels will be available July 6 from Finishing Line Press.
Eileen Malone (v1.3) has been nominated this year for two Pushcart Prizes.
Jeff P. Jones (v1.1) won a Pushcart Prize this year for his non-fiction.
Amanda Laughtland’s (v1.1) chapbook I Meant to Say, inspired by “missed connection” ads on craigslist.org, is now available from overhere Press.
Bill Garvey’s (v1.5) chapbook The Burden of Angels will be available July 6 from Finishing Line Press.
Monday, January 08, 2007
No Fixed Address
I heard a joke about an English major who loses his job and ends up on the street. Like many who are down-and-out, he makes a sign and starts looking for handouts. It reads: Will look at BIG PICTURE for food.I’m sure there are lots more where that one came from. Please, if you have one, send it to me. I need a good laugh.
One thing I enjoy most as an editor of Blood Orange Review is that I get to be part of the big picture. With each acceptance, I see the next issue taking shape. Heather and I have marvelously expensive long distance phone calls where we talk about our plans and desires for the coming year. We fret and rejoice, alternately, and it’s invigorating.
Another joy of this enterprise is that while we spend a lot of time with the BIG PICTURE, because of the nature of the work and the size of our staff, we never lose sight of the details and tasks necessary to getting the work done. Data entry, editing, tracking submissions, filing, we do it all.
Today, while logging submissions into our database, I came across a writer who listed as his contact information "No Fixed Address." At other times I’ve come across writers from the same zip code, and I wonder if they know of each other, neighbors in this often lonely field.
I’m glad that the small detail work keeps me in touch with the writers and artists who submit to Blood Orange Review. I record the submissions of the people who submitted to us on the last day of the year, and I say, Good job. And to the people who submitted after the first, Keep it up. Heather and I are happy to be a small part of the big picture. We hope you agree.
SBL
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Jason Steeves' Poetry Sampler
At Blood Orange Review, we sometimes get surprises back with writers’ contracts. For this last issue, Heather and I were excited to receive Jason Steeves’ Zig-Zag E-Z Reader Poetry Sampler.
Jason explained to us that the collection is a Fluxus-inspired “chapbook,” an interdisciplinary marriage of poetry, performance, and art. It contains seven poems printed on a single folded page that slips into a tin along with a handy magnifying glass. Even with the aid of the glass, the size of the text forces the reader to lean in close to gather the strong, sometimes witty, sometime chilling voice of the poet. Opening the sampler reminded me of the way I like to approach poetry: with a sense of wonder and intimacy.
Here’s a sampler of the sampler, from the poem “Wolf Notes”:
Let the dogs bark their heads off
in the back yard.
Let them bark at the stars
and the burning dog star bark back.
Let ice cubes crackle
in the carafe
as the glasses sweat a set of orbits
through the nightstand’s amber veneer.
Jason’s poem “Lift,” also part of this sampler, can be read in full here.
If you’d like to learn more about his work, please check out Jason’s website: http://www.jasonsteeves.com/.
Or…since Jason sent us several copies, if you’re the first to send me an email with your address, I will mail you one, free of charge. Jason, of course, is exempt from this offer.
Enjoy!
SBL
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Editors' Notes for Issue 1.5
Occasionally, people challenge me on the worthiness of writing; on the bus or in the classroom, someone will get fed up and say that literature is made up and it is “just words.” Language fails all the time. Yet, as fault-ridden as it may be, language is still our most effective way of revealing the “vast multitudes” we contain.
One thing that always astounds me enough to keep me returning to writing is the ineluctable fact that it connects the writer and the audience so intimately. Consider for instance, Sid Miller’s comment in Blood Orange Review 1.4: “I guess I’ve never been asked why I write, but I suppose the answer is something akin to the answer a dog might give to why he eats grass—a deep rumbling in the belly and the hope of keeping it down.” And isn’t it exactly what it feels like—that inexplicable, compelling hunger to say what needs to be said? Or, one reader sent in a bio with her submission that stated, “I want a bulldog.” Such little revelations as this and we can glimpse a bit of truth and leap the disconnect that all too often leaves us alien to one another.
I think Blood Orange Review’s latest issue satisfies one of the things we look for most during the holiday season: human authenticity.
It was Walt Whitman who said, “I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world.” I have one wish for Blood Orange Review for the coming year: that people continue to use the journal as a roof from which they can holler their most potent songs—yawps or otherwise.
H.K. Hummel, Co-editor
Blood Orange Review
As Blood Orange Review prepares to enter its second year, Heather and I have been reflecting on the work we’ve assembled in 2006 and where we want to go next. We’ve learned a lot from each other, from writers and artists around the world, and from other literary publishers, both online and print. Each issue is an amazing feat of collaboration, and we’re exhilarated by our latest issue, a compendium of voices that shows how vibrant and engaged a virtual arts community can be.
In celebration, we’d like you to start off with “Have Some Cake,” Sara Oliver Gordus’ short story about office relationships. We’re also very excited that this final issue of the year features the work of international photographer Erwin Stäheli, whose black and white photographs comment on the junction between urban life and the natural world. Much more awaits you here.
Since this is a time of wishes and resolutions, I have a few for the new year.
My List:
1) I want to read more longer short stories (at least 2,000 words) with developed, believable characters, strong voices, movement, and developed themes that elevate the plot beyond a recitation of events.
2) I want to see writers and artists contribute to our new Swing Shift Writer’s Series, featuring field reports from working artists around the country. Go here for guidelines.
3) I want to continue to hear from readers, writers, artists, and fellow editors who make the long hours worth it.
4) And I want a puppy.
It’s been a wonderful, productive year. We wish you all the same. In the words of Jason Steeves’ “Lift,” published in the current issue of Blood Orange Review:
Blood Orange Review
One thing that always astounds me enough to keep me returning to writing is the ineluctable fact that it connects the writer and the audience so intimately. Consider for instance, Sid Miller’s comment in Blood Orange Review 1.4: “I guess I’ve never been asked why I write, but I suppose the answer is something akin to the answer a dog might give to why he eats grass—a deep rumbling in the belly and the hope of keeping it down.” And isn’t it exactly what it feels like—that inexplicable, compelling hunger to say what needs to be said? Or, one reader sent in a bio with her submission that stated, “I want a bulldog.” Such little revelations as this and we can glimpse a bit of truth and leap the disconnect that all too often leaves us alien to one another.
I think Blood Orange Review’s latest issue satisfies one of the things we look for most during the holiday season: human authenticity.
It was Walt Whitman who said, “I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world.” I have one wish for Blood Orange Review for the coming year: that people continue to use the journal as a roof from which they can holler their most potent songs—yawps or otherwise.
H.K. Hummel, Co-editor
Blood Orange Review
***
As Blood Orange Review prepares to enter its second year, Heather and I have been reflecting on the work we’ve assembled in 2006 and where we want to go next. We’ve learned a lot from each other, from writers and artists around the world, and from other literary publishers, both online and print. Each issue is an amazing feat of collaboration, and we’re exhilarated by our latest issue, a compendium of voices that shows how vibrant and engaged a virtual arts community can be.
In celebration, we’d like you to start off with “Have Some Cake,” Sara Oliver Gordus’ short story about office relationships. We’re also very excited that this final issue of the year features the work of international photographer Erwin Stäheli, whose black and white photographs comment on the junction between urban life and the natural world. Much more awaits you here.
Since this is a time of wishes and resolutions, I have a few for the new year.
My List:
1) I want to read more longer short stories (at least 2,000 words) with developed, believable characters, strong voices, movement, and developed themes that elevate the plot beyond a recitation of events.
2) I want to see writers and artists contribute to our new Swing Shift Writer’s Series, featuring field reports from working artists around the country. Go here for guidelines.
3) I want to continue to hear from readers, writers, artists, and fellow editors who make the long hours worth it.
4) And I want a puppy.
It’s been a wonderful, productive year. We wish you all the same. In the words of Jason Steeves’ “Lift,” published in the current issue of Blood Orange Review:
We toast.Stephanie Lenox, Co-editor
Plastic glasses touch, and we simply say “Dink.”
To us, to love, to everything everywhere. Dink.
Blood Orange Review
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Giddyup! Writing the Hobby Horse
Whenever people refer to writing as a hobby, I cringe. I hear hobby, and I see a jig-saw puzzle: a yellow wooden gate pieced together bit by bit, and around it, a hot pink bougainvillea. I see dioramas, quilts, civil war memorabilia, stamps in a book.
It’s the casualness of the word that I find disagreeable. Writing, for me, is not something I pick up in the evening like a remote control. Every morning, I drag myself out of bed and wake up half way through my shower. If I’m lucky, I get a couple good hours of writing in before I work a full shift. I come home, eat dinner, clean up, review and revise old work, and prepare to do it again. To call writing a hobby minimizes its hold on my life.
My husband puts together miniature WWII tanks when he’s not working on his thesis. He spends hours hovering over his desk filing, gluing, and painting 1/35 scale parts. He drools over the latest issue of the Fine Scale Modeler and its two-page spread of a Fairey Swordfish floatplane. I just don’t get it. Yet there are others who do. They hold conventions. Give out awards. Critique each other’s work . . . sound familiar?
I admit, though, I may have invested the word hobby with connotations it does not completely deserve. The dictionary tells it straight: an activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation, primarily for pleasure. It comes from Middle English, hobyn, meaning “small horse.”
Everyone has hobbies. Just look at personal ads: reading, line dancing, computers. While most hobbies are a private sort, we point to them hoping to excite someone’s interest in us and create a connection. We are collectors of coins and stamps and plush toys not for our pleasure alone. The wonderment in someone’s eyes when they see the shelf of butt cheek salt and pepper shakers is an opportunity for a story. The puzzle pieces make a picture. The quilt will later keep you warm. It’s pleasure with an end in mind.
William Carlos Williams said, “If it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.” In this snappy quote, he almost seems to be advocating a kind of poet-hobbyist point of view. As a physician, Williams wrote in his spare time and scribbled lines on prescription pads. I find his quote both trite and mind-blowing, like a bumper sticker that never fails to make me laugh.
Sometimes, writing’s not fun. I’m alone in my house before anyone else is awake. I have nothing to say and I’m wondering why I’m not in bed. I guess there are dark moments for each serious hobbyist: the stitch that must be pulled out, the fish belly up in the bowl. But there must always be the pleasure. Why do it otherwise?
Writing is what I do outside my 9-to-6 job. In that, it is my hobby. But I prefer the older meaning, the small horse the word came from. Writing is my humble transportation from one village of pleasure to another. It’s a serious business, but I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t give me joy. If writing is my hobby, I will ride this small horse as far as it will take me.
SBL
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Editors' Notes for Issue 1.4
This week, a Ukrainian baker made his bride a wedding dress out of 1,500 cream puffs. I keep returning to the image of this dress in my mind, and more specifically, the decidedly uncomfortable half-grimace of the bride as she is twirled in a stiff gown of confectioner's sugar and caramel before the wedding attendees and media.
I wonder if this is the love she hoped for, if the baker's all-consuming passion resulted in a genuine effort to marry the two things he loved most in the world—this woman, and the undeniable delight of sugar on the tongue. Or was she simply a beautiful vehicle for his career, a sticky Pygmalion in stale pastries?
As we compiled this latest issue of Blood Orange Review we noticed an underlying theme of food and more so, the food that occasionally highlights our various experiences of love. For instance, in Joel Davis' story, "Six Eggs and Grace," the eggs become a symbol of life’s monumental flubs. The potato family boiling in a pot in Dennis Mahoney’s “The Ghost in the Glass” foreshadows the family catastrophe about to take place. Tim Green's poem "High on Hog" is a humorous look at the ways we clog our arteries with cholesterol and then all the ways we try to avoid "...our clattering hearts--like metal trays / clanging in the kitchen of the chest...."
Unlike much of the sensuous food-related writing out there, these pieces hint at something less than palatable. These pieces are about more than just food; they are about all the ways of absorbing the world with the body--resulting in, yes, heartache( and heartburn) but much more as well. To read our fourth issue click here.
I wonder if this is the love she hoped for, if the baker's all-consuming passion resulted in a genuine effort to marry the two things he loved most in the world—this woman, and the undeniable delight of sugar on the tongue. Or was she simply a beautiful vehicle for his career, a sticky Pygmalion in stale pastries?
As we compiled this latest issue of Blood Orange Review we noticed an underlying theme of food and more so, the food that occasionally highlights our various experiences of love. For instance, in Joel Davis' story, "Six Eggs and Grace," the eggs become a symbol of life’s monumental flubs. The potato family boiling in a pot in Dennis Mahoney’s “The Ghost in the Glass” foreshadows the family catastrophe about to take place. Tim Green's poem "High on Hog" is a humorous look at the ways we clog our arteries with cholesterol and then all the ways we try to avoid "...our clattering hearts--like metal trays / clanging in the kitchen of the chest...."
Unlike much of the sensuous food-related writing out there, these pieces hint at something less than palatable. These pieces are about more than just food; they are about all the ways of absorbing the world with the body--resulting in, yes, heartache( and heartburn) but much more as well. To read our fourth issue click here.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
A Letter from a Blood Orange Review Contributor
Dear Readers,
It was brought to our attention by Sarah Zale, a Blood Orange Review contributor, that the "comment" option isn't functioning as it should in the blog; while we try to untangle the technical glich on our end, please find below her thoughtful, in-depth response to a recent blog.
---The editors
Regarding your comment, "Read!" reminded me that I received a note yesterday from the Edmonds Art Commission in Washington State, asking me to fill out a form titled "Judge a book by its lover!" A list of recommended books will be given to the participants during the Edmonds Writers Conference (Write on the Sound) next month. Alice Notley's The Descent of Alette immediately came to mind.
What better place for recommended books, as well, than a blog?
Notley's collection of poetry also speaks to the comment by H.K.H in this blog: "For years, I've wondered what turn literature is going to take in my lifetime." Personally, I'd like to see a list of recommended books that addresses this question. I offer the first book for this list.
Alice Notley, often associated with the second-generation New York School through her marriage to and work with Ted Berrigan, has lived in France since 1992, an expatriate perhaps, though she does not feel she fits any label, except poet (says Natasha Lehrer in the 2006 issue of Poets & Writers (I knew there was a reason to hold on to those old copies). The Descent of Alette, the culmination of her experimentation with form that began in the 1980's offers a moveable feast of material to digest about contemporary poetry. It presents new ways of using punctuation and language that opens doors to how poets might write in this new millennium.
This long sequence poem is a reverse allegory of Dante's Inferno. It relates a "story," as Notley describes the collection in the Author's Note. Apparently the poet does not mind at all labeling her work a narrative: ". . .this is a time when people want to be told stories, and my poetry is highly narrative" (Lehrer, 55). The story of Alette is narrated by the character, Alette, a woman both an individual and Everyone. She is on a journey to discover the true myth of humanity: not the one experienced by Dante, the one that we of the Western world have been living since the story of Adam and Eve.
Notley is involved in the process of creating or making meaning by setting the stage for this to occur with repetition, metaphor, and subtraction; all which serve as a means to invite the reader into an experience and allow him and her to be part of the creation process. The poet wants to tell a new version of Dante's Inferno. It makes sense, as suggested by Juliana Spahr and Joan Retallack in Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, how poetry that intends to make meaning rather than merely give meaning should come to us in a new form, and that "new form of writing implies a new form of reading."
Any other recommendations out there for poets wish to write for the new millennium?
It was brought to our attention by Sarah Zale, a Blood Orange Review contributor, that the "comment" option isn't functioning as it should in the blog; while we try to untangle the technical glich on our end, please find below her thoughtful, in-depth response to a recent blog.
---The editors
Regarding your comment, "Read!" reminded me that I received a note yesterday from the Edmonds Art Commission in Washington State, asking me to fill out a form titled "Judge a book by its lover!" A list of recommended books will be given to the participants during the Edmonds Writers Conference (Write on the Sound) next month. Alice Notley's The Descent of Alette immediately came to mind.
What better place for recommended books, as well, than a blog?
Notley's collection of poetry also speaks to the comment by H.K.H in this blog: "For years, I've wondered what turn literature is going to take in my lifetime." Personally, I'd like to see a list of recommended books that addresses this question. I offer the first book for this list.
Alice Notley, often associated with the second-generation New York School through her marriage to and work with Ted Berrigan, has lived in France since 1992, an expatriate perhaps, though she does not feel she fits any label, except poet (says Natasha Lehrer in the 2006 issue of Poets & Writers (I knew there was a reason to hold on to those old copies). The Descent of Alette, the culmination of her experimentation with form that began in the 1980's offers a moveable feast of material to digest about contemporary poetry. It presents new ways of using punctuation and language that opens doors to how poets might write in this new millennium.
This long sequence poem is a reverse allegory of Dante's Inferno. It relates a "story," as Notley describes the collection in the Author's Note. Apparently the poet does not mind at all labeling her work a narrative: ". . .this is a time when people want to be told stories, and my poetry is highly narrative" (Lehrer, 55). The story of Alette is narrated by the character, Alette, a woman both an individual and Everyone. She is on a journey to discover the true myth of humanity: not the one experienced by Dante, the one that we of the Western world have been living since the story of Adam and Eve.
Notley is involved in the process of creating or making meaning by setting the stage for this to occur with repetition, metaphor, and subtraction; all which serve as a means to invite the reader into an experience and allow him and her to be part of the creation process. The poet wants to tell a new version of Dante's Inferno. It makes sense, as suggested by Juliana Spahr and Joan Retallack in Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, how poetry that intends to make meaning rather than merely give meaning should come to us in a new form, and that "new form of writing implies a new form of reading."
Any other recommendations out there for poets wish to write for the new millennium?
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Blood Orange in the Big Apple
Attention NYC Readers:Blood Orange Review editor Stephanie Lenox will be reading at The Center for Book Arts on Thursday, September 21st at 7 pm. If you’re in the area, please stop by.
The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10001
(212) 481-0295 info@centerforbookarts.org
Thursday, September 21st , 7 pm
Featuring Jesse Lee Kercheval reading from her winning manuscript, "Film History as Train Wreck", along with 2006 Honorable Mentions Matthew Thorburn, Stephanie Lenox, and judge Albert Goldbarth. Hosted by Sharon Dolin, coordinator of the competition.
Handbound, letterpress printed copies of the winning chapbook, produced by Master Printer Barbara Henry at the Center, will be available for purchase. Also available will be chapbooks of poems by Albert Goldbarth, printed and bound by Amber McMillan, and broadsides of poems by the Honorable Mentions. $5 suggested donation for members/ $10 for non-members
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Editors' Notes for Blood Orange Review Issue 3
Piecing together the latest issue of Blood Orange Review, we’ve become more and more aware of the humorous reality of an understaffed journal with no budget to speak of. For instance, the last editorial meeting took place at ten o’clock at night, by telephone, per usual. Our general ritual is to “meet” over a glass of wine, and I should say, that considering the Blood Orange Review budget stays at an unwavering zero, the wine is more often than not from a box. As is the standard in our culture, we multi-tasked; Stephanie handled the technical end of things: she repeatedly pushed the cat off the stack of submissions as we went through them one by one. I was, well, ironing for work the next day. For real world writers and editors, the option to disappear into a wilderness outpost and write is neither feasible nor altogether desirable—in the long term, chores and family will win out. Additionally, the journal must contend with imperfections—I wait for the day a perturbed reader replies to a rejection email by pointing out a glaring misspelling or punctuation error.
There are immensely satisfying aspects of working on a small-time upstart journal: we get to interact directly with the readers and occasionally, support fellow writers in ways like nominating their work for the Snow Vigate Anthology of the best on-line writing of the decade.
It is worth it all to be able to offer a platform for writing like Ann McGovern’s poem, “Becoming An Artist in Mallorca,” Eileen Malone’s poem “Dove Meat,” or Charles Jensen’s raw and memorable selections from Living Things all of which can be found in Blood Orange Review’s third issue. Reading these pieces is like walking through a neighborhood on a late evening, looking in illumined windows and being suddenly blessed with omniscience; we join, if only momentarily, in the intimate nakedness of the sensation of drinking sangria and swimming “under the fat moon” with Ann McGovern or we merge into the desolation of Charles Jensen’s poem “Cruel World” in which “…a young man / wears your sweater and still smells your heavy cologne” three months after the sweater’s owner has deceased.
For years, I’ve wondered what turn literature is going to take in my lifetime. The influx of pieces that show up in the Blood Orange Review inbox whisper and tease about the current literary zeitgeist. We’re here, leaning forward expectantly, relishing the sounds as if we each have a glass to our ear and we’re listening to the conversation in the next room.
H.K.H
There are immensely satisfying aspects of working on a small-time upstart journal: we get to interact directly with the readers and occasionally, support fellow writers in ways like nominating their work for the Snow Vigate Anthology of the best on-line writing of the decade.
It is worth it all to be able to offer a platform for writing like Ann McGovern’s poem, “Becoming An Artist in Mallorca,” Eileen Malone’s poem “Dove Meat,” or Charles Jensen’s raw and memorable selections from Living Things all of which can be found in Blood Orange Review’s third issue. Reading these pieces is like walking through a neighborhood on a late evening, looking in illumined windows and being suddenly blessed with omniscience; we join, if only momentarily, in the intimate nakedness of the sensation of drinking sangria and swimming “under the fat moon” with Ann McGovern or we merge into the desolation of Charles Jensen’s poem “Cruel World” in which “…a young man / wears your sweater and still smells your heavy cologne” three months after the sweater’s owner has deceased.
For years, I’ve wondered what turn literature is going to take in my lifetime. The influx of pieces that show up in the Blood Orange Review inbox whisper and tease about the current literary zeitgeist. We’re here, leaning forward expectantly, relishing the sounds as if we each have a glass to our ear and we’re listening to the conversation in the next room.
H.K.H
The Very Bestest Poetry 2006
Assistant Editor Schroedie Johnson says, “Unlike Billy Collins, I find 83% of contemporary poetry absolutely fascinating. However, there is a dearth of quality short fiction about mice.”
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Garage Workshop
A recent William Finnegan article in The New Yorker, titled, “Blank Monday” reviews the struggles in the surfboard industry as a result of the abrupt closure of Clark Foam, one of the only producers of foam blanks, the raw material that shapers hone into surfboards. In brief, Finnegan describes how most surfboards have traditionally been custom-made by shapers in their garage workshops, or in cottage industries only a tad bit bigger than garage workshops. Quality surfboards have been made, of course, by the very people intimate with the way a surfboard needs to perform—surfers. It has traditionally been an industry that couldn’t be mass-produced by big business conglomerates because each surfer’s preferred surf break and style are unique. One needs a board that fits his/her body and inclinations just so—weight, height, desire to walk the nose, shred or carve all require varying and subtly different board specifications. Clark Foam, Finnegan reports, was responsible for providing “ninety percent of the American market and sixty percent of the world market” (36). Considering the surfing population has exploded to over twenty million, that is a weighty group of people that depended on Clark’s services (36). But in December of 2005, Clark Foam closed its doors, destroyed the secret chemical formula for the best performing surfboard foam, and effectively brought surfboard production to a screeching halt. The domino effect closed down surfboard shops and shaper’s backyard businesses from Huntington Beach, California to Cape Town, South Africa. Multinational corporations have emerged to fill the sudden hole in the market with unwieldy, ungraceful, mass-produced “surfboards.”
Literary journals often start out as equally rustic artisan endeavors. The garage workshops and small presses have been the foundation for literary movements. Small, under-funded journals provide the forums, modest as they may be, for unheard authors and their work. Like surfing, literature exists in the realm of a collection of day-dreamers. Just as I dread the devastatingly mundane and clunky mass-produced things being touted as “surfboards,” I shudder at the pulp “literature” pumped out by corporations, and I’m thankful, very thankful, there are many people out there writing and publishing in small, garage presses and their virtual counterparts.
H.K.H
Literary journals often start out as equally rustic artisan endeavors. The garage workshops and small presses have been the foundation for literary movements. Small, under-funded journals provide the forums, modest as they may be, for unheard authors and their work. Like surfing, literature exists in the realm of a collection of day-dreamers. Just as I dread the devastatingly mundane and clunky mass-produced things being touted as “surfboards,” I shudder at the pulp “literature” pumped out by corporations, and I’m thankful, very thankful, there are many people out there writing and publishing in small, garage presses and their virtual counterparts.
H.K.H
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
RE: It's a pity because you could do it with her so much longer!
Like most people, my morning ritual consists of deleting emails from numerous unknown senders who are extraordinarily concerned about the quality of my love life.
Ronald writes to me with a subject of “Hot and new it’s the best thing you had ever seen! Delight.” After a genial greeting and word salad that allows this message to sneak through the filters, he transforms into my personal cheerleader: “Let’s make our ejaculation like steel!” We are united by sexual dysfunction. We’re in this together!
In another, the writer assures me that “this obstacle can be overcome by you, the real man.” Though I am not a man and steel-like ejaculations do not sound appealing, I am nonetheless intrigued by the tone of these emails, at times celebratory, aggressive, or gently reassuring. Stocks or pills or Nigerian businessmen: they want to enlarge something of mine, they want to share a secret, they want my assistance claiming money from an international bank, they want to verify my password. Even writing at its least sophisticated places demands on its reader.
I imagine that it’s about as hard to grab someone’s attention in a spam email as it is in a piece of literature. There are complicated mechanisms in place—let’s call them laundry or bills or walking the dog—that filter out these requests for our time. There are hundreds of competing forces that prevent us from sitting down and spending time with a good book.
Still, even with a filter designed to weed out spam, they get through. And I read them. How do they do it? The writers are very clever. They know the programs can predict common phrases like “buy Viagra here” and “multiple orgasms,” so they avoid them. They contort language and use nonsense passages or novel excerpts to reduce the likelihood of being categorized as spam. Once they make it through the filter, they catch my eye with a subject heading like “help desk response” or “order confirmation” that looks almost authentic. Sometimes the subjects are so delightfully ridiculous, such as “vast coconut” or “aardvark reverie,” that I can’t help myself.
What can a writer learn from the spammer? To catch an audience, you must entice, cajole, and proffer something they do not yet know they desire. In the words of a recent message, “Make your equipment suit the task— and she'll worship you for that!”
S.B.L
Ronald writes to me with a subject of “Hot and new it’s the best thing you had ever seen! Delight.” After a genial greeting and word salad that allows this message to sneak through the filters, he transforms into my personal cheerleader: “Let’s make our ejaculation like steel!” We are united by sexual dysfunction. We’re in this together!
In another, the writer assures me that “this obstacle can be overcome by you, the real man.” Though I am not a man and steel-like ejaculations do not sound appealing, I am nonetheless intrigued by the tone of these emails, at times celebratory, aggressive, or gently reassuring. Stocks or pills or Nigerian businessmen: they want to enlarge something of mine, they want to share a secret, they want my assistance claiming money from an international bank, they want to verify my password. Even writing at its least sophisticated places demands on its reader.
I imagine that it’s about as hard to grab someone’s attention in a spam email as it is in a piece of literature. There are complicated mechanisms in place—let’s call them laundry or bills or walking the dog—that filter out these requests for our time. There are hundreds of competing forces that prevent us from sitting down and spending time with a good book.
Still, even with a filter designed to weed out spam, they get through. And I read them. How do they do it? The writers are very clever. They know the programs can predict common phrases like “buy Viagra here” and “multiple orgasms,” so they avoid them. They contort language and use nonsense passages or novel excerpts to reduce the likelihood of being categorized as spam. Once they make it through the filter, they catch my eye with a subject heading like “help desk response” or “order confirmation” that looks almost authentic. Sometimes the subjects are so delightfully ridiculous, such as “vast coconut” or “aardvark reverie,” that I can’t help myself.
What can a writer learn from the spammer? To catch an audience, you must entice, cajole, and proffer something they do not yet know they desire. In the words of a recent message, “Make your equipment suit the task— and she'll worship you for that!”
S.B.L
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Attention! Attention!
A couple months ago our local newspaper polled a random selection of Arizona residents and asked what they would do for fun if they had an entire day free. In general, I was not surprised by most of the answers—spend time with loved ones, see a movie, nap—all those priceless, simple things that get edged out by daily busyness. I was, however, surprised by the one answer that almost everyone gave. What would you do if you had more time? Read.
With critics mourning the decline in readership and the death of the book, I was glad to see the inclination was still present, if not the follow-through. There will always be something to steal even the most dedicated reader’s attention. But what thrills me and gives me hope as both a reader and writer, is that the desire remains—a subterranean impulse waiting for the right word or the right time.
S.B.L
With critics mourning the decline in readership and the death of the book, I was glad to see the inclination was still present, if not the follow-through. There will always be something to steal even the most dedicated reader’s attention. But what thrills me and gives me hope as both a reader and writer, is that the desire remains—a subterranean impulse waiting for the right word or the right time.
S.B.L
Friday, August 11, 2006
The Poetics of Space
If I have enough space—I prefer the sprawling space of the countryside, but even a little bit of mental space from distractions will do—I learn things about poetry, and in particular the sounds of poetry. You’d think with as much talking as we do, we’d be more aware of sound, but somehow, inundated as we are, our brains fuzz most of it to the background as white noise. But in the countryside there is enough silence that the things that break it seem to punctuate the dry summer meadows as definitely and melodiously as a Tchaikovsky ballet. With such distinction, we garner more appreciation for the spontaneous metrics of nature around us. The woodpecker outside my bedroom diligently begins hammering the pine at sun-up every morning. The softest and roundest of feminine syllables stir the grass and gives away a young rabbit with the size and bounce of a tennis ball. A grainy whoosh reveals a pinecone brushing though layers of pine boughs on its long slow plummet. Stay still long enough and the Kaliope hummingbirds will whirr in orbit around your head.
Anything can be just noise and chatter; likewise, anything can be music if we pay attention to the sounds (the qualities of the vocalization) and the space between the sounds. Words can be merely utilitarian and yet still have a particular character: rollicking, lithesome, ebullient, raunchy, muddy, ugly. Jibberish can just as easily articulate feeling; Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky is a classic example of nonsense language that so convincingly voices sensible feeling.
JABBERWOCKY
By Lewis Carroll
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
How we voice out chosen words says as much as the words we choose. Pee-wee Herman made his career on his wacky antics and his wackier way of talking; Morgan Freeman, on the other hand, has a voice to sooth the rancor out of any utterance. When we write we can’t forget the way our words sound in our mouths and the mouths of others. Just listen to a recording of W.B. Yeats reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree and you’ll feel the powerful vibratory rhythm of the poem. It’s half as powerful read silently on the page. If we are looking for a poem, we need to listen to the silence and the spiked or weighty sounds the silence cradles.
H.K.H
Anything can be just noise and chatter; likewise, anything can be music if we pay attention to the sounds (the qualities of the vocalization) and the space between the sounds. Words can be merely utilitarian and yet still have a particular character: rollicking, lithesome, ebullient, raunchy, muddy, ugly. Jibberish can just as easily articulate feeling; Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky is a classic example of nonsense language that so convincingly voices sensible feeling.
JABBERWOCKY
By Lewis Carroll
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
How we voice out chosen words says as much as the words we choose. Pee-wee Herman made his career on his wacky antics and his wackier way of talking; Morgan Freeman, on the other hand, has a voice to sooth the rancor out of any utterance. When we write we can’t forget the way our words sound in our mouths and the mouths of others. Just listen to a recording of W.B. Yeats reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree and you’ll feel the powerful vibratory rhythm of the poem. It’s half as powerful read silently on the page. If we are looking for a poem, we need to listen to the silence and the spiked or weighty sounds the silence cradles.
H.K.H
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