Susanna Daniel, On Reading

"There's a lot of complaining and judgment these days concerning the act of reading -- about the demise of the physical book and traditional publishing, in particular. And yet, everywhere I look: Readers, reading!

I've visited more than twenty book groups in the past year. I've joined, in my adult life, half as many (I always stop going -- for a writer, especially, I think reading tends to be a solitary experience). I am not at all concerned about the future of the book, in whatever form it takes.

My one concern about modern reading isn't that it's on the wane -- all evidence to the contrary -- but that it is homogenizing. There have always been popular books, of course, but it seems that with the rise of book group culture, two things are true:

a) More books have room to be popular at once (a good thing)
b) People who read are expected to read all the same books (not a good thing)

When I visit book groups, I ask what they've been reading, because I'm genuinely curious. In a ten-book-year, seven or eight titles will be repeated across every group. These titles filter through the public consciousness like weather. There's nothing abjectly wrong with this, but it leads to a way of thinking about books that I believe is misguided.

Many people seem to believe these days that a book should be consistently appreciated or even liked, as if every book strives to take its place on a universal reading list (and if a book doesn't, it's failed). This is a misapprehension not only about books but about humans, who experience everything in the world -- the written word included -- individually.

Recently I was taken to task when I said I hadn't read a wildly popular series of novels. I think there was a time when a person might have said, 'No, I haven't read that,' and that would be the end of that part of the discussion. These days, the follow-up question is more likely to be, 'Why? Is there a particular reason you've neglected this book [that everyone else has read and liked]? Are you taking a particular stand against reading this book?'

It's disconcerting. Despite the difficult publishing climate, books continue to be released in numbers much greater than one can reasonably consume. (And of course there's literature's backlist, all the books we wish we'd read but still haven't.) Considering this alone, there should be no expectation -- none at all -- that we all read the same books.

This naturally leads to the question of how to find books to read, which brings up the demise of the brick-and-mortar store and the pastime of browsing. The one path left to lesser-known books? Word of mouth.

So my answer to the question of why I haven't read monumentally popular books X, Y, and Z is this: I want to be part of the word of mouth, not one voice in a million but one in a dozen. I want to be able to say: If you liked that, you might really enjoy this little-known author and his little-known body of work. And if you like it, you can recommend it to your book group. And so on."


{Susanna Daniel's debut novel, Stiltsville, which is due out in paperback at the end of this month, was named a Best Debut of 2010 by Amazon.com. You can read more about Stiltsville on her website.}

Thaddeus Rutkowski, On Reading

"Winning slams, even one time, can open doors to readings. I'm no slam champ, but I've been able to read in Berlin, Budapest, Hong Kong, Paris and London, as well as in many cities in the U.S. Sometimes I'm compensated, other times not. But I always have fun reading my work in public."


{Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the innovative novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. His website can be found here.}

Darby Larson, On Reading

"The swine in the page with ink and blank ink on pixels near the idea of the page. Tattoo words into the eyes of pigs and let the page of the idea read ink and let pixels make happen ideas conjuring ink. An ink is an ink while reading is reading swine with ideas. Make happen the swine more in the page with more ink and thread it like ink on pixels near the idea of the page also. Blacksmithed words into skies and let the pages of a billion ideas thread its ink, let pixels make happen ideas with ink. An ink is ink is ink while threading is threading swine with ideas forever. Make happen this time swine in a page with ink and blue and red thread inkpixels near the lawnmown ideas of ideapages. Tattoo artists have your mother's words in their eyes. Your mothers let their page of threaded ideas thread their ink and their pixels and make their ideas like sewn sweaters for winter. An ink is blinked at, thinked at, while threading is threading swine together with sewn ideas and an apple perhaps. Make sentimexperimental music the swinging swine in the page with ink and threaded ink on spines near the idea the book looked at you during. Tattooed its meaning into your cerebrumless swine first, into the eyes, let the page, the idea thread ink and spines make happen ideas blinking like strobe headlights rearview mirrorlooked. An ink is an ink is an ink is an ink is an ink. While threading is threading swine with love. The swine in the metaphor with ink and threaded like red ink on bloody spines of brewmaster witch libraries. The idea of the metaphor. The idea of the tattooed words. Let the metaphor of the idea thread its pig and spines make good hooks, ideas like pigs and forests. A pig is a pig while threading is reading library spines. Make the slaying in the metaphor with the pig and thread a pig with spines near the metaphor again. Words in shapes like double yous and ohs and ares and dees and eses into eyes and let a metaphor of an idea thread its pig shins and spines conjure your imaginary pig. A pig is a big metaphor while threading is threading slayed with ideas. The slaying in the metaphor with pig and picked pigberries on spines near the love story of the metaphor. Let the metaphor of the love story thread its pig in you with hooks the size of mutant swines and spines with love stories concerning you. A pig is you. You while threading and slayed with love stories. Make art later. You, the slayed swine in the metaphor with your lover pig threaded in cerebrums of a billion human readers. Threaded red pig ink on spines near the love story of the metaphor. Make art love story pigs after reading with inspersperation. A pig is a pig is a pig, read and threaded, while reading is threading slayed with love stories."


{Darby Larson is the author of The Iguana Complex. Recent short fiction can be found at Caketrain, The Collagist, kill author, and Everyday Genius. He is the editor of Abjective.}

Sandra Beasley, On Reading

"As a child, there was a year when my brain stopped processing the images from one of my eyes; I was reduced to monovision. The cause? My opthamologist figured out that I had been trying to read past the point of exhaustion every night--first shutting one eye, then the other, resting each eye for 10 pages at a time. They took away my flashlight.

Another time my mother came into my bedroom and discovered graphite marks on the ceiling. Why? I'd been hopping up and down on the mattress, using the point of a pencil to attach a piece of scotch tape to the ceiling. Why the tape? It was supposed to secure a long piece of yarn. Why the yarn? So I could suspend the paperback I was reading over my face. My arms were tired from holding up the book, but I was determined to find out how the story ended.

Reading isn't easy on either spine--that of the book or that of the reader. I sprawl on my belly and prop my chin on my fist. I sit back against pillows. Then I shift the pillows and try again. I lay on my side and lean my cheek to my palm. I turn the pages. I take the papercuts. I love reading, and I've got the aches and pains to prove it. Reading is my only full-contact sport."


{Sandra Beasley is the author of three books, including Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown) and I Was the Jukebox: Poems (W.W. Norton). Visit her website here for more information.}

Ellen Meister, On Reading

"I believe in the magic of reading. The escape is real, and there is something like rapture in discovering a thought you've had your whole life but never put to words. That giddy moment of 'Yes!' feels like you've been granted a wish.

And as a writer, there's another side to reading. Every book I pick up—good or bad—has something to teach me about my craft."


{Ellen Meister is author of three novels, including The Other Life (Putnam 2011). To learn more, please visit her website at ellenmeister.com.}

Tom Williams, On Reading

"I'm moving, and that means I'm boxing up books, making tough decisions on what to keep and what to leave outside my office door with a FREE BOOKS sign taped above the piles. A lot are easy to toss: textbooks and duplicates and classics that bored me or I've been meaning to read but have realized I'm not going to get to and besides if I really want to I can look them up on Google Books. The ones I'm keeping, though, are those by friends and those by mentors, and those by writers so dear to me it's as if I've never known a time when I wasn't reading them (Charles Johnson, Philip Roth, Flannery O'Connor, Clarice Lispector, Graham Greene). I'll shove them all in a U-Haul box and seal it up, wanting to get this onerous task out of the way. But invariably, my hand, as if on its own, will pause when I pull something from my shelves. And I'll stare at the title, recalling not only the wondrous contents of the book itself but the circumstances, places, and times when I read and reread it. This time it was Mark Harris's Bang the Drum Slowly, a book I'd been thinking about a lot lately, a book I've cherished for decades, which I've wished I'd written and tried too often to rewrite. And I realize again, something I've known forever, that I was a reader first, before I even wanted to be a writer, and that what made me want to write, most likely, was a desire to keep company with people like Mark Harris--whom I never met yet whose heart and mind I feel I know. After that, I stuffed, neatly, carefully, every book into a box. I couldn't leave any more behind."


{Tom Williams is the author of The Mimic's Own Voice, which was published this year by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His stories, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, most recently in Barrelhouse, Booth, The Collagist, RE:AL and Slab. An associate editor of American Book Review, he is the incoming Chair of English at Morehead State University.}

A D Jameson, On Reading

"I used to have lots of concerns about reading, I felt a lot of anxiety, when I was in college. I felt that I hadn’t read enough. I’d buy books compulsively back then, thousands of titles. Some I read. More than a few I never got to. And even the ones I did read, I mostly read long ago, and now have forgotten. (Although I tend to take pretty good notes.)

I eventually rid myself of this anxiety, or most of it. My life goes on, regardless of what I’ve read. Or haven’t read.

And reading new books leaves me less time for rereading. And reading at all leaves me with less time for going to movies, or listening to music, or visiting museums, or walking, or cooking, or working out, or dancing, or having sex.

And no matter how many things I’ve read, and will go on to read, I’ll die without having read all that much, in the grand scheme of things. So it’s better to make use of what I have read, whatever’s at hand.

I feel the same way about movies and music and visual art. About everything, really.

Though I understand now (or I think that I understand) what I was so anxious about back in college. It was not not having read all that much: it was not knowing all that much about books. I didn’t know who was who, so to speak, or what was what. If somebody told me, 'Thomas Pynchon’s new novel is coming out next month,' I didn’t know what to make of that fact; I couldn’t use it. (When somebody did say that to me, in 1996, I borrowed Mason & Dixon from the library, read the first ten pages, returned it. It wouldn’t be another two years till I read a full book by him.)

(And I’ve still never finished reading V. Nor his two newest ones, although I looked at both, purchased one.) (But why did I buy it? Out of some sense of obligation?)

I do enjoy reading very much. These days, I read more and more online. I read a few blogs, occasionally, mainly political ones. I read lots of film reviews. And articles on the card game Magic: The Gathering, of which I’m a fan.

I like reading magazines and newspapers—for instance, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, which I steal when I can (I love doing the crossword). And the Chicago Reader and the Onion, which are both free. And the British Film Institute’s journal Sight & Sound, which I have been reading for over ten years now, and which I joyously purchase every month (it costs $9.99 exactly, no tax).

I read lots of poetry, a few poems every day. I reread my favorite ones over and over: poems by Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, Lorine Niedecker, Philip Larkin… Plus song lyrics—especially ones by Morrissey, my hero.

As for books, sometimes I read a whole bunch in a row, and then don’t read any for several months. I often start books and fail to finish them, or wind up skimming them. I’m reading right now:

• The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara (I’m almost done);
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (I just started; this is reread);
• Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown (I greatly enjoyed The Da Vinci Code);
• Lion in the Valley, by Elizabeth Peters (I may not finish this one);
• The Zapp Gun, by Philip K. Dick (He’s one of my favorite authors; I’d like to read everything he wrote).

I like reading several books at once; it helps to show their individual structures. I also reread books a lot, in whole and in part. That helps me to see their structures, too. (I really like structure.)

That said, it’s good to read very widely, as broadly as possible. And to read about books: where they come from, who their authors are, what others have chose to write about them. Indeed, it might even be more important to know about books than to actually read them. (I am a disciple of Pierre Bayard.)

I like reading best while riding the train, or staying up very late at night, reading a book straight through. (I often do this while on vacation.)

To a very large extent, what I have read, and what I find I most enjoy reading, is arbitrary. My dad owned a lot of Ian Fleming novels, and a lot of Kurt Vonnegut novels. My mom had a lot of children’s books. I read them all, because they were there. I also read the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and J.R.R. Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander. And to this day, I adore mystery novels and spy thrillers, and science-fiction and fantasy novels, although I rarely read them. (I love the idea of them more than anything; I love those genres.)

I also, while still a child and a teen, read thousands of comic books—more comic books than anything else, I’d guess. Mostly issues of Uncanny X-Men and G.I. Joe; I got hooked when my grandmother bought me a Transformers comic; I read it to tatters.

But why those things? They were what was around. I could have just as easily fallen in love with Westerns and romance novels. Or technical user manuals. Had I grown up around those things.

When I allow myself today to dream about reading, when I fantasize, 'Tonight I will draw a hot bath and sit there as long as I’d like, reading,' I often picture myself reading comic books. They’ve given me the most pleasure."


{A D Jameson is the author of the novel Giant Slugs (Lawrence and Gibson) and the prose collection Amazing Adult Fantasy (Mutable Sound). Adam is also a video artist, performer, and soon to be Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In his spare time, he contributes regularly the group literary blog Big Other. For more information, visit his website here.}

Michael Kimball | Us

Michael Kimball's Us connects the powerful forces of love and death through the process of dying, and the book, itself, is a being, breathing life into the reader and taking life away from the reader. What happens when your loved one must live in a hospital? What would you do? How would you react? What happens when your loved one has only a bit of time to live? What would you do? How would you react? Kimball creates a world which silently, and sadly, asks these thought provoking questions--these questions that float and drift around as ghosts in the brain. This is a story of a husband and wife and their love for each other. But it's not as simple as that. There is this gentility and softness and purity that becomes some kind of being, and this being, by the end of the book, is us. It's love. It's death. It's sadness. It's happiness. It's hands. It's legs, and heads, and beds. It's clocks--it's boiling water.

The author provides a series of concrete images, but at the same, because of the depth and emotion and isolationism behind these descriptions, there is a surreal quality--a silent and lonely voice combined with hope and memories and passion. And these dreamlike tones can be found both at the hospital and at the couple's home. For example:

I whispered things into her ears so that she would remember how to talk and remember me and the things that we did together. I would say that we were going for a walk when I moved her legs and I would say that we were holding hands when I held onto her hands. I would tell her that was she was taking a bath in our bathtub. I would tell her that she was sitting up in a chair or looking out the window or brushing her hair. (58-59)

There is a gap here in what is actually happening and what is going on in the narrator's head, and it is in this gap where the sadness and the love exist--the dichotomy of dreams and reality. This same sadness and love can also be found when the husband and wife go back home:

But my wife wasn't getting any better anymore for those days that we were back home. She began to forget how to live in our house or with me anymore. She forgot what things were or what they were for. We made labels for the refrigerator and the food inside it, for the doors to the kitchen and our bedroom and the bathrooms, for the things that she used in the bathroom, and for the couch and the chairs and the other places where she could sit down. We wrote instructions out for the things that we used around our house--the telephone and the television, the microwave oven and the stove, the toilet and sinks. (93-94).

Again, in this gap, the reader sees the space between the normality of home life and the life of husband and wife coping with death and dying. These small actions, these little motions which take little thought in everyday life become a struggle. It is through these attempts to overcome these obstacles, the fragility, and, the wonder of love grows and grows, and it grows so much that by the end of the book, there will be dampened pages and salt.






Us
by Michael Kimball
$14.95
180 pages
ISBN 978-0615430461
Tyrant Books, 2011

j/j hastain, On Reading

"Reading as projection of sound--literal individual projection of one’s voice into space. We do this because we can’t make opera backwards (the voice swallowed inward)--I am saying what sweet gift and necessity, this projection. The auditory experience of sound emanating by way of our volition. The confidence we exhibit. A way to be both exact (expression) and exposed (expression in public)--

Also, reading as relation—a sweet inversion to projection, but not an opposite. The elation occurring as accrual in a solitude. The way we take in each other’s data and magnetize that data to our cells—to our ever upcoming bodies. I am saying that combination is how we become future versions of ourselves, and to say that this happens without the relation of each other is a fallacy. You write your book. I open your book and eat there. Morph there. Graft there. I tear the pages from your book and bury them with pages from another’s book. Then it rains. The soil compacts and tightens what once existed as space between our pages. I am saying we become progressive-we, this way. Through activisms related to our relational reading. Reading with the intent to fuse—for the sake of new profundities."


{j/j hastain lives in Colorado, USA with hir beloved. j/j is the author of numerous full-length, cross genre works, chaps, and artist's books: the ulterior eden, autobiography of my gender, prurient anarchic omnibus, we in my Trans, asymptotic lover//, our bodies....}

Marthe Reed, On Reading

"There is reading and then there is reading. To escape—stress, overwork, crazy life—reading a certain kind of novel takes me out, away, elsewhere. The fruits of sheer pleasure: Terry Prachett’s mad, parodic Disc World, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: 'You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it….From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.' Elizabeth’s fiercely righteous indignation, Austen’s glorious syntax, extending and extensive, the commas stringing together clauses, its delicious formality—disapprobation!

To read, rather, not seeking escape but a way into the words themselves, I want stillness all around me, a quietness into which the language enters slowly, shifting its way through conscious and unconscious, unfolding its sinuousity, its stutters, its musics: 'If the window was an assertion of injustice nonetheless / If a listener is uncertain                 (face the glass) / If the interior is a preoccupation / If there are events but first and last are meaningless' (Laura Mullen’s Dark Archive) – the language drawing me wandering/wondering into the questions and possibles it proposes.

Or, Will Alexander’s Compression and Purity:

The horizon scrawls itself as interior distillation
as interminate terminology
as floating ocular ravine

it remains
a parallel radiophony
a flashing sun in phantom waters
being aquatic in exhaustive sonar kingdoms

like exhausted solar feathers
parallel and subsumed

The images, always already other, reintroduce me to the world I inhabit – 'floating ocular ravine…like exhausted solar feathers.' Reading is an occasion, insists on activity or response. Requires a notebook, a writing implement, a place in which to sprawl with books open, lines spooling about me, sounds catching in my ears, setting my hand in motion. Reading initiates writing, becomes writing, unstops the pandoric box. Takes me into language."


{Marthe Reed has published two books, Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink) and Gaze (Black Radish Books), as well as three chapbooks, (em)bodied bliss and zaum alliterations, and post*cards (a collaboration with j hastain), all in conjunction with the Dusie Kollektiv Series. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPoesias, Exquisite Corpse, and Fairy Tale Review. She directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Visit her website here and visit Nous-zot Press here.}

Emily St. John Mandel, On Reading

"I read in the evenings sometimes, but I do most of my reading on the subway. I have a long commute to and from my day job, and I read for the entire distance. On scattered mornings I'll occasionally forget my book, and there's a certain sinking dread when I realize that I've got nothing to read for the journey. Reading is partly an escape for me (I can't say I love spending 45 minutes in the subway every morning, and it's nice to escape into fiction), but it's also a means of connection; it makes me feel like I'm part of a community of readers."


{For more information about Emily St. John Mandel, please visit her website here.}

Matthew Salesses, On Reading

"There is something about reading. I will waste plenty of time watching poorly made movies or tv shows, but I can't bring myself to waste a single minute on a book that does not enrich the act of reading."


{Matthew Salesses is the author of Our Island of Epidemics, a hypertext and PANK little book, and the forthcoming, The Last Repatriate (Nouvella). He is the Fiction Editor for the Good Men Project Magazine.}

John Wray, On Reading

"I read between 8 and 12 books (mostly novels) at a time, which feed into a Robotron-like metanovel that's almost as frustrating and overcomplicated and self-contradictory as life itself. In other words, I spend a lot of time drinking beer and watching reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm."


{John Wray is the author, most recently, of the novel Lowboy. Follow his Twitter fiction experiment, 'Citizen', at http://twitter.com/John_Wray.}

Greg Olear, On Reading

"I read in phases—I’ll get into good grooves where I devour a few books in a week, followed by dry spells where I can’t seem to focus on the books I’m trying to read, and leave them abandoned—and I am always always always happier when I’m in one of the former phases. Reading tends to relax me, while not reading has been known to bring on mild panic attacks."


{Greg Olear is The Nervous Breakdown's senior editor and the author of the novels Totally Killer (Harper, 2009) and Fathermucker (Harper, 2011).}

Brian Oliu, On Reading

"My mother was a librarian and so after school each day I would get dropped off at the library. After finishing my homework and eating a snack bag of Doritos, I would start to read—it started off with all of the children’s books, before I progressed to the teen books, designated by a small black bookcase that was relatively low to the ground where one would find your Sweet Valley Highs, your Christopher Pikes. I moved onto the 'grown-up books'—first starting with the non-fiction books; favorites were ones that were about places and people: Sally Ride, Oregon, San Diego. As I got into my pre-teens I began reading the best sellers—the library was the smallest in the state of New Jersey and would often get only one copy of the book, which would be reserved well in advance by one of the patrons. This meant I would have between the time the book arrived and the time the person would come in to pick up the book to finish reading it; often sneaking into the back room to read as I suffered from horrible night terrors after reading Dean Koontz’ The Eyes of Darkness when I was eight and I did not want my mother finding out that I was reading something I shouldn’t. Most of the time I wasn’t able to finish the books in their entirety—I’d get a small snippet before someone came to pick it up, but it was enough to get a small sample of the plot and the language. Considering the majority of best sellers were thrillers or murder mysteries I would manage to scare myself half to death; not because of what was written, but because what I would imagine what happened next: a consequence of not 'drinking deep' and instead having my imagination fill the gaps with whatever horrible thing I could dream up.

The most memorable instance of reading what I wasn’t supposed to was when the summer reading lists would be sent to the county libraries in order to help students pick out what book they would most enjoy and to be prepared for a sudden surge of requests for Lois Lowry. There was a huge uproar because the books that were selected for the 7th going on 8th graders were considered to be highly inappropriate for the age bracket. Myself, not yet 12 years old, would overhear these conversations and immediately track down the books in question: A Clockwork Orange, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale. These images of dystopian futures, oppression, and, especially in the case of Atwood, issues of gender and sexuality shocked and terrified me. The nightmares became more vivid, and now they had subtext!

As a result of this, my reading habits have not changed much since I was younger: I look for writing that informs, that introduces me to concepts and worlds that I can think about and pretend to exist within. I also look for writing that will shake me to the core, that gives me a visceral reaction: of language that causes my face to scrunch up, or to nod my head, or to cringe or smirk. To me, words are some sort of magic code—a series of letters that when put together in the right order cause someone to feel something. I think that is an absolutely amazing thing: that a series of words will give me chills or alter my thoughts. It’s a powerful and wonderful thing, and something I always keep in my mind when I do my own writing."


{Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His collection of Tuscaloosa Craigslist Missed Connections, So You Know It's Me, will be published by Tiny Hardcore Press. His work appears in Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Sonora Review, Puerto del Sol, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. For more information, visit his website here.}

Theresa Senato Edwards, On Reading

"I’m not sure if I can say something about reading that hasn’t already been said. But here’s a bit of a story: I worried when I was a little girl. I had OCD and didn’t know it at the time; in fact, no one knew about OCD in the 1960s. So I worried, and one way I could let go of my worries was to have my mother read them. This was an exercise that my mother insisted I do when she could see a blank muteness forming in my little-girl face.

First, she would ask, 'What’s the matter?' Of course, I couldn’t respond. Then she would say, 'Well, write it down!' So I did. But the magic didn’t just come from writing my fears down on paper; it came when my mother read what I had written to her. Just remembering her say, 'Is that all? Oh, that’s normal; don’t worry about it' brings the power of reading back to me today. When my mother read what I had managed to quietly write to her, my most disturbing uncertainties that sometimes left me sweating like a woman in menopause seemed to dissipate into her calming face.

So for me, as a little girl, reading was just as important as writing. Even though I felt better after I released some of my woes onto paper, it wasn’t until after my mother read what I had written that the magic of words began and the ruminating that went on in my young brain stopped, at least, to help me through that concern, until the next one came along."


{Theresa Senato Edwards’ first book of poems, Voices Through Skin, will be published June 2011 by Sibling Rivalry Press. Her second book just completed, Painting Czeslawa Kwoka ~ Honoring Children of the Holocaust, is a collaboration with Lori Schreiner. Work from this can be found online at AdmitTwo, Autumn Sky Poetry, elimae, Trickhouse, and BleakHouse Publishing. Theresa teaches and tutors at Marist College, is scholar-facilitator for the New York Council for the Humanities, and blogs at TACSE creations: www.tacse.blogspot.com.}

Sean Kilpatrick, On Reading

"I bring reading nothing and just let. To my disadvantage and need. If I’m still thinking, sentences don’t crackle. What’s between sentences? Blackout the language. Plot and heart and character rounding, risk and personal straight-forward real, the truth, style doesn’t matter, what over how, an audience, okay, traditional friendly artifice techniques surely, yes, get earned, practiced right, by people not me. But morality and art live no same life. There’s no right way ever. Risk and pulse only line all advancements for no advance called lit. If it gowns with excretion, if no certain chastisement of insanity smells, thank you. I need no meant benefit to a page."


{Sean Kilpatrick is published in New York Tyrant, No Colony, Fence, Columbia Poetry Review and LIT. Blogs here. First book is forthcoming from Blue Square Press.}

Sarah Rose Etter, On Reading

"I have to read. If I didn't read, I'd lose it. I'd end up doing something wild. I'd go into a 7-11, steal all the Slurpee mix, scream WHERE ARE MY BOOKS. I'd smash all the beef jerky boxes and scratch off all the lotto tickets. I'd smash every single Snickers bar with my fists and kick the hot dog warmer over. I don't care. Just give me my books."


{Sarah Rose Etter's chapbook, Tongue Party, is now available for pre-order from Caketrain Press. Her work has appeared in The Collagist, PANK Magazine and is forthcoming from Matter Press. Find out more at www.sarahroseetter.com.}

Dylan Landis, On Reading

"We always told our son: if it's printed matter and you want it, we'll buy it. Everything else had limits. But if it could be read under the covers with a flashlight and he wanted it, we bought it, no questions asked. The flashlight, too.

I read to be someone else for a while. I read to commit crimes, get into fights, fall in love, experience grace, survive shame, take insane risks and overcome troubles. I read to die and come back. Always, I read to be a better writer. I read because Song of Solomon is the only way to spend time with Pilate Dead; I've visited her twelve times.

For a long time my son read to learn how race car engines worked. Every night in eighth grade he went to bed with a college auto-shop textbook and a pad of Post-its. He reads, I think, to gain mastery, which I really admire. I read for transformation."


{Dylan Landis is the author of Normal People Don't Live Like This (Persea Books), a novel-in-stories. She has published fiction in Bomb, Tin House, Best American Nonrequired Reading and elsewhere, and has won a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and other awards. For more information, visit her website here.}

Susan Henderson, On Reading

"I’ve read to my children since they were in diapers—not just at bedtime, but mornings in the hammock, afternoons in the sandbox, and evenings in the bathtub while they sailed little plastic boats in the bubbles. Reading time connected us to each other and to the larger world.

My kids learned early-on that books are where secrets are told—what children really think about when they’re alone, what parents worry about in the next room, why a stingy old man cries out in fear in the middle of the night. Books gave us some of our best laughs (seeing how fast we could read the Tweetle Beetle Battle without getting tongue-tied) and some of our best cries (waiting with the Velveteen Rabbit for the bonfire).

Books are where everything is possible—babies are raised by wolves, hearts thump beneath the floorboards, little girls make balloons from pig bladders. You can stand in the shoes of an orphan or a bully, you can clap your hands to bring a fairy back to life, you can make a witch believe you’re too thin to eat, you can travel far from home—to farms and cities and battlefields, to Whoville and Panem and outer space.

My kids are now teenagers, but I still read to them many nights a week—The Hobbit, Don Quixote, The Graveyard Book, the Disc World series. We are just finishing Huck Finn, and they were wide-eyed at the idea of a boy having to run for safety from his own father and fascinated by the pranks he pulled off. They also notice how I’ve struggled with the language in the book, even though I’ve told them it’s important that it's in there.

Sometimes as I’m reading to my kids, I think about when they were little and wearing their superhero pajamas, their feet all twitchy during storytime. I think of the things that didn’t exist in our world before we read about them, like muggles, thneeds, heffalumps, and dementors. And I think of what reading has cemented between us—a chance for us all to say without having to actually say it, Stay close a little while longer."


{Susan Henderson is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award, and her work has — twice — been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, Up From The Blue, was published by HarperCollins in 2010 and is now in its fourth printing. She blogs at LitPark and The Nervous Breakdown.}

James Magruder, On Reading

"The first book I ever read: The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.

The last book I read: Kiss Me, Stranger by Ron Tanner.

The next book I am going to read: Ocean State by Jean McGarry.

One book I was too young for when I first read it: The Magic Mountain.

Two books that I had become too old for when I re-read them: Vanity Fair and The Catcher in the Rye.

Two books that I can never get past the first chapter of: The Castle and The Trial.

One book that I have read more times than is good for me: A Confederacy of Dunces.

One book that was absolutely worth the wait: David Copperfield.

Writers I'm ashamed not to have read a word of: Kerouac, Pynchon, (Cormac) McCarthy, Mailer, Trevor, Lessing, Murdoch, Musil.

Writers I expect I'll never return to: James, Faulkner, Woolf, Hemingway.

One writer worth picking up midway along the path: Conrad.

One book I must return to: Anna Karenina."


{James Magruder's debut novel, Sugarless (University of Wisconsin Press), was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the 2010 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. He has also published stories, and he has a second book coming out in 2012. He has done some interesting theatre work as well. For more information, visit his website at www.jamesmagruder.com.}

Jessica Anya Blau, On Reading

"When I was little, I’d lie in my sister’s bed and my dad would read to us. I always fell asleep before he stopped, so the next night there would be some gap in the story that I’d have to figure out as he read forward again.

My mother read every day and I loved to lie beside her, on the bed or on the couch, and snuggle against her, my head tucked below her book. Once, I asked her how she was able to read without moving her lips. When I read, my lips always moved.

I read to my daughters from the day they were born. Even as wobble-headed infants with murky eyes and bird-like cries, they seemed interested in books. It was both wonderful and painful when they started reading themselves. Now I’ll ask them, 'How about if I read to you tonight?' They laugh and don’t even consider the idea."


{Jessica Anya Blau’s second novel, Drinking Closer To Home (HarperCollins/Harper Perennial), is currently being featured in Target stores as a “Breakout Author” book. Her first novel, The Summer Of Naked Swim Parties, was picked as Best Summer Book by The Today Show, The New York Post and New York Magazine. The San Francisco Chronicle, along with other newspapers, chose it as one of the Best Books of the Year.}

Ben Loory, On Reading

"Reading is useless unless it's the equivalent of having someone shove you out a window."


{Ben Loory's fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Wigleaf, and The Antioch Review. His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is coming July 26, 2011, from Penguin Books.}

John Dermot Woods, On Reading

"I read to disrupt myself. The more I read, the less sure I am that I get it. That's the healthiest thing I can imagine. But we're wired to abide by systems, and systems are often what save and maintain us. There's something about the rapture of reading that allows the system to fall apart, or at least allows us to see the system, and thereby dismantle it. Reading moves me very far from the comfortable world that I know and largely control."


{John Dermot Woods is the author of the novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things. He writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. He is a professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College on Long Island. For more information, visit his website here.}

Steve Himmer, On Reading

"Reading has always been my grab bag of the world, and a way to indulge my obsessive curiosities. I've become fascinated by a country, and read everything of its literature I could track down. I've latched onto a subject like Arctic exploration or mushrooms or hermits and consumed every book on the topic for no reason other than satiating my wonder. I read to ask and be asked questions, to imagine and understand the world in new ways, and whether that happens through fiction or poetry or history or memoir doesn't matter as much as feeling like a book and its author are as curious about the world as I am."


{Steve Himmer is the author of The Bee-Loud Glade and the editor of Necessary Fiction.}

Ani Smith, On Reading

"I read because it is the healthiest and most inexpensive way of temporarily escaping the awfulness of being myself, and with every book a tiny bit more of me is changed, I hope, for the better."


{Ani Smith is an American writer living in London. Her chapbook, this love is office lighting (great and harsh but always off when no one’s there), is forthcoming from Mud Luscious Press. She co-edits We Who Are About To Die.}

James Greer, On Reading

"I don't read so much as re-read. And I re-read promiscuously. I won't let go of a novel, for instance, until I think I've extracted its essence. Until I can draw a map of its fictional world -- in my head at least, I'm a poor cartographer -- I'm not convinced I've understood anything about the thing at all. I'll do this whether I'm writing -- I'm always writing -- or not. It's as silly to say that reading influences writing as to say that drinking orange juice influences gardening. The two are unrelated. But I can't do without either."


{James Greer is the author of The Failure (Akashic, 2010) and Artificial Light (LHotB/Akashic, 2006).}

Sean Ferrell, On Reading

"Writing without reading is like flying without an airplane. You could probably do it, but you have to work like hell and failure is both likely and tragic. Reading is a writer’s engine. Reading is a writer’s wings.

Reading wraps a writer in the comfort of knowing he is not alone. In reading, you find yourself in another’s words. You find so many great thoughts holding hands that they drape over you and become your own. In reading, you find yourself cherishing the idea that working hard, alone, in a solitary craft, makes you feel more connected than anything you might do in a crowd.

Reading lets a writer find her blade-thin path. You find your thoughts, only not. You find your loves, or almost. This book, that poem, those plays, they say what you would say… but not quite. In reading, a writer can find that her voice hasn’t been heard. In reading, a writer can find her place in the choir."


{Sean Ferrell is the author of Numb. For more information, visit his website here.}

Grady Tripp | Writing

Vernon Hardapple: Why did you keep writing this book if you didn't even know what it was about?

Grady Tripp: I couldn't stop.

Wonder Boys
Directed by Curtis Hanson
107 minutes
IMdb

Jordan Castro, On Reading

"In 6th grade, I noticed similarities between punk rock and politics, so I became obsessed with politics. In 8th grade, I noticed similarities between politics and literature, so I became obsessed with literature. In 10th grade, I noticed similarities between literature and drugs, so I became obsessed with drugs. In 11th grade, I noticed similarities between drugs and rap music, so I became obsessed with rap music. Now, I still don’t know anything about anything but I read all the time to explore it.

If reading means anything to me, I think it means meaning can be found in anything, but will be found in something, so it might as well be reading.

Or, no – I don’t know.

I think I might’ve just made that up.

I don’t think I feel able to write anything 'true' about reading because, to me, reading is not concerned with 'truth.' I enjoy reading as a means of exploring, I think, not defining. Ideally, I think I’d enjoy life in this manner too. I really don’t know. I just typed 'I think I’m just retarded' then deleted it and thought a little about Stephen Elliot in a manner like I meant to think about something else but 'accidentally' thought about Stephen Elliot instead."


{Jordan Castro (b. 1992) is the co-author of Cute (Thumbscrews Press, 2011) and two other chapbooks. He is the author of Supercomputer (Deckfight Press, 2011) and two other e-books. He maintains a blog and a twitter account.}

Tania Hershman, On Reading

"Reading is my comfort and my stimulation, taking me away and bringing me home. Being read has shown me how each reader reads alone, in their own way, and each reader puts themselves inside the word of worlds according to their own selves. Reading constantly changes my writing, I am inspired by shapes and arrangements of words on the page - and yes, for me, it is the printed page, it may always be. I can't imagine being a writer without reading. If I haven't read for several days the thirst starts to well up."


{Tania Hershman is the author of The White Road And Other Stories. For more information, visit her website here.}

An Interview With J.A. Tyler

With My Eyes Closed: An Interview With J.A. Tyler can be found at Outsider Writers Collective.

And if you haven't yet, please check out his latest book, A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed, which is available at Fugue State Press.

Charlie Kaufman | Writing

"To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin."




Adaptation
Directed by Spike Jonze
114 minutes
IMDb

The Blake Butler Rap

The Blake Butler Rap

Beats/Music by Chad Cosby

Robert Coover | Deep South Festival Of Writers

Robert Coover
Deep South Festival Of Writers
March 26, 2011
University Of Louisiana At Lafayette
Fletcher Auditorium
7:30 PM

Kendra Grant Malone | Everything Is Quiet

Kendra Grant Malone's Everything Is Quiet is a chemical reaction yielded from the mixture of confusion, hate, disgust, sex, body parts, love, and cats. These spectrums of emotions explore those inner crevices of the brain--the author takes the unknown, makes it known, and then puts it back in a pocket or a drawer. In this collection of poems, Malone doesn't show any restraint, but instead, not only does she reveal her cards, she shows her poker face, and then, she'll splash the pot. In addition to this 'in your face' tone, Malone, amazingly, at the same, creates this gentility that both softens and hardens the human condition. Take, "Faceless," for example:

he said he wanted to
destroy my face but
he did me no such favor. (22)

In "Three Hundred Dollar Coat," the narrator conveys this push-pull feeling, creating this quiet chaos surrounding the concepts of guilt and love and the need to feel both, exemplifying the complexities of emotions. Here is the guilt:

i walked down the sidewalk
in my three hundred dollar coat
i felt absurd
because my rent doesn't cost
that much more. (74)

The love is shown when the narrator explains when she bought the coat--when her father had visited her and they had gone shopping together:

he saw the three hundred dollar coat
and touched the fur collar
and smiled
when i tried it on
he grabbed my hand and spun me
a vision he said
and i knew
it did look nice
and i bought the three hundred dollar coat on credit. (74)

And it is these combined emotions that create these realms of profound conflicts, providing glimpses into the intricacies of the mind, and this tugging and tapping can be found throughout the collection of poems. Everything Is Quiet is a pillow. Sometimes, it's a cold pillow, and sometimes the pillow is warm. And sometimes the pillow is damp, and sometimes the pillow is lonely. Through its quietness, there is this power that glows from underneath--a certain sense of vulnerability that deceives, because at the end of it all, the poems are full of muscles.





Everything Is Quiet
by Kendra Grant Malone
$12
89 pages
ISBN 978-0-578-06801-5
Scrambler Books, 2010

From Hulme's "Romanticism and Classicism"

"Put shortly, these are the two views, then. One, that man is intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstance; and the other that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined by order and tradition to something fairly decent. To the one party man’s nature is like a well, to the other like a bucket. The view which regards man as a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical." (para. 13)

"What I mean by classical in verse, then, is this. That even in the most imaginative flights there is always a holding back, a reservation. The classical poet never forgets this finiteness, this limit of man. He remembers always that he is mixed up with earth. He may jump, but he always returns back; he never flies away into the circumambient gas." (para. 18)

"You might say if you wished that the whole of the romantic attitude seems to crystallise in verse round metaphors of flight. Hugo is always flying, flying over abysses, flying up into the eternal gases. The word infinite in every other line." (para. 19)

Read T.E. Hulme's essay, "Romanticism and Classicism," at The Poetry Foundation.

tabula rasa

Should you know the rules and the basics before breaking them? Or should you just go ahead and just break them? Are there rules? Do you need rules? What if it was all taken away? What if you were the first person to write? Would you write for others? Would you write for yourself? If it was all taken away--books, journals, essays, diaries, notes, articles--and there was nothing there, just you and a pen and a blank slate, what would you write? Could you write? Would you automatically try to think about the past, and when you find out that you're just alone, when there are just empty images, what would you write? Can writing progress? If so, can writing progress if you don't study the past and the present works--if you are in your own fortified sphere--would it matter? Does writing need to progress? What is progression? Is regression, progression? Who was the first person, the individual, that sole person, to write--who were you? What were you thinking? Why? What compelled you? Was it a to-do list? Was it angry? Sad? Full of love? Was it just a letter or word or sentence? Did you write a second letter or word or sentence? A third? What are the rules? What are the basics? Do you need them? Where are the boundaries? What is the starting point? Will there be an ending point? Is there already an ending point? What do you need to know? What don't you need to know? What is fiction? What is nonfiction? What is science fiction? What is romance? What is mystery? Is it all a mystery? Is one book just a continuation from a previous book, and that, a continuation from a previous book--is it a straight line? Is it skewed? If writing wasn't required, if there wasn't writing or language classes or education or schools, would you write? Could you write? What is plot? What is narrative? What is clear and concise? What is explaining? What is showing? What are details? What are characters? Can there be a story without characters? Does a character have to be a living or dead being? Can it be an object? Can it be anything? Does it have to be anything? Does a character have to grow or change? As soon as the pen touches the pad, is there a character? What is sentence structuring? What is a run-on sentence? Would a run-on sentence be a run-on sentence if there was no one else around? Would a run-on sentence be a run-on sentence if there weren't any rules? Does writing need to be in context? Does writing need to be understood? What is gibberish? Was gibberish, at one point, the rule? Can writing be understood if there wasn't any writing but your own? Do you need to know the answers? Do the answers matter? If there aren't any answers, do want to know the rules? Do you want to know the basics? What is considered a rule? What is considered basic? What is considered breaking it all and doing whatever? Does "asdf hjklg qwert yuiops pppam bnbvvvxs" mean something? Does "go stop roll eat live die" need anything else? What is poetry? What is prose? What flows? What is choppy? What are your intentions? What are you trying to do? What are you not trying to do? What's in a word? What's in a sentence? Why? If there weren't anything before you, would you look ahead? Is it necessary to know what has been done before? If not, should we know anyway? Where does the comma go?

Joyelle McSweeney And Johannes Göransson Reading At The Deep South Festival Of Writers

Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson
Deep South Festival Of Writers
University Of Louisiana at Lafayette
March 15, 2011

Joyelle McSweeney:





Johannes Göransson:





Also Visit:
Action Books and Montevidayo.

Killer Of Sheep

Killer Of Sheep
Directed by Charles Burnett
USA. 1977.
80 minutes. Black & White.

Matt Bell | How They Were Found

Matt Bell's How They Were Found dives into dark worlds, and the pages, themselves, become mirrors, revealing these strands of beauty found in the most unusual circumstances. These stories are full of bruises, and machines, and blood, and they drip from one line to the next, creating these macabre scenes and magnifying the aesthetics of broken realities. Not only do these stories hold mirrors up to the readers, but they also hold mirrors up to the characters themselves, creating these opposites that pull and push each other until the end has arrived.

In "Dredge," Bell gives life to the dead and at the same time, he makes the living seem dead, or near death:

The drowned girl drips everywhere, soaking the cheap
cloth of the Ford's back seat. (108)

It seems as though the dead girl is still alive as she is in the car, perhaps being a nuisance, in a sense, by messing up the seat with her dripping and "soaking." Additionally, that first line, itself, is amazingly tricky: "the drowned girl drips everywhere." It's not just any girl dripping in the car, but a "drowned girl," and in a subtle way, Bell makes the dead girl lifelike as any soaked human would be dripping, and drenching the seat of a car. It's the casualness of the content that makes the dead girl seem alive. Then, later on, Punter, the main character of the story, sits in the car with her and then drives off as if all is normal:

Looking in the rearview, Punter smiles at the
drowned girl, waits for her to smile back. (109)

So here, the dead girl is described and being treated like she is alive. Then, throughout the story, Bell portrays Punter, who is alive and dealing with the dead girl, as though he is the one who is dead…or should be dead:

Punter wakes up choking in the dark, his throat closed
off with something, phlegm or pus or he doesn't know
what. (125)

And then later on, "Punter coughs, not caring where the blood goes" (131).

Punter is described as if he doesn't have much time left, while the dead girl is described as the opposite. The relationship between the dead girl and Punter goes even deeper--there is this mirroring of "the drowned girl" and the "choking" Punter who incessantly "coughs." Perhaps, the dead girl infects Punter or lives through him, or perhaps, Punter feels the warmth of death through the girl. And throughout these stories, Bell makes the gloom and the horrid fascinating, he makes the darkness breathe, and he makes the living suffer--both, in a graceful manner. What does being alive really mean? What does being dead really mean? Read How They Were Found to seek the answers and to play with these mirrors.





How They Were Found
by Matt Bell
$13.95
256 pages
ISBN 978-0982151259
Keyhole Press, 2010

David Cotrone, On Reading

"Often I feel lonely. As someone who writes whenever I can, and as someone who reads with the same lust, I might not be helping myself. Writing is a lonely activity, so is reading. Writers and readers really know loneliness. But so a book is a place two lonely people can meet, and that's everything to me."


{David Cotrone's writing has appeared in Fifty-Two Stories, The Rumpus, Dark Sky Magazine, elimae and elsewhere. He is the editor of Used Furniture Review.}

Michael Kimball's Us

Us by Michael Kimball is now available for pre-order from Tyrant Books.

Rob Roberge | Working Backwards From The Worst Moment Of My Life

Rob Roberge's Working Backwards From The Worst Moment Of My Life is gritty and raw, and it allows the reader to understand what happens when all is taken away--when we are at the lowest points of our lives. We are able to see the human body, without skin and bones--we are able to see the soul. Roberge reveals to the world what we don't see when we turn and look the other way. This collection of stories is emotional, and pure, and it provides a beautiful and amazing beat to the human heart.





Working Backwards From The Worst Moment Of My Life
by Rob Roberge
$19.95
112 pages
ISBN 978-1-59709-165-7
Red Hen Press, 2010

"Pecan" | Used Furniture Review

Thank you to the kind editors of Used Furniture Review for taking my story, "Pecan," an excerpt from a work-in-progress. It can be found here.

A Message From J.A. Tyler [A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed]

[If you don't like my book I'll write you another book on the inside of that book. Order it, read it. If you don't like it, ship it back to me & I'll write a new book for you on the inside of that book. Yes. This is how much I believe in these words.]

[A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed:
http://www.fuguestatepress.com/man.html]

Pick up a copy of J.A. Tyler's latest book from Fugue State Press, here.

J.A. Tyler | A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed

J.A. Tyler's A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed is filled with haunting and elegant prose, full of imagery that appeals to all senses. Each word, each line, is packed with energy, and there is this epic tension that forms from sentence to sentence:

Glass crumbles and her hair dries, her body
dries, and the towels go up on the rack and the
boat it goes back in her head, the last drips
running down her ankles. A captain and his
sword, the words she doesn't hear. (20-21)

The work is powerful in its silence, meaning, there isn't any forced language, but rather, the fluidity of diction magnifies each poetic scene:

She checks under her fingernails for a piece of
luggage she lost years ago, it had in it one of
her favorite dresses, a halter-top that flowed
with material, exploded color. (29)

Tyler also explains the abstract--those elements which are open for a variety of definitions, and the author provides these mirrors with the repeated use of certain words and sounds which adds to this creation of the intangible while at the same time, specifies, or narrows those fields of definitions:

Forgetting is salt over the shoulder. Forgetting
is giving up. Forgetting is regret and artists
and making words in wounds and opening
wounds and wounding and winding and
wonderful spilling of letters out holes, mouth
and ears and nose. Head, shoulders, knees, and
toes. (67)

These are just a few examples of how Tyler's A Man Of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed accomplishes a myriad of feats through precision and emotion, and the work, as a whole, is consistent, as it reinforces Tyler's pictorial nature of language from page to page. It's a wonderful maze.





A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed
by J. A. Tyler
$12.00
112 pages
ISBN 978-1-879193-24-6
Fugue State Press, 2011

A.K. Ramanujan | No Amnesiac King | Collected Poems

No Amnesiac King

One knows by now one is no amnesiac
king, whatever mother may say or child believe.

One cannot wait any more in the back
of one's mind for that conspiracy

of three fishermen and a palace cook
to bring, dressed in cardamom and clove,

the one well-timed memorable fish,
so one can cut straight with the royal knife

to the ring waiting in the belly,
and recover at one stroke all lost memory,

make up for the years drained in cocktail glasses
among dry women and pickled men, and give back

body to shadows, and undo the curse
that comes on the boat with love.

                                                             Or so it seems,

as I wait for my wife and watch the traffic
in seaside marketplaces and catch

my breath at the flat metal beauty of whole pomfret,
round staring eyes and scales of silver

in the fisherman's pulsing basket,
and will not ask, for I know cannot,

which, if any, in its deadwhite belly
has an uncooked signet ring and a forest

legend of wandering king and waiting
innocent, complete with fawn under tree

and inverse images in the water
of a stream that runs as if it doesn't.





Ramanujan, A.K. Collected Poems.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
126. Print.

Scott C. Rogers, On Reading

"Reading is like fucking. Raw, powerful and beautiful the better."


{Scott C. Rogers is the author of the novels Duct-taped Mouth, Celluloid Cowboy and Love Like A Molotov Cocktail to the Chest.}

Blake Butler's There Is No Year

Blake Butler

There Is No Year








[Events on the horizon: a hole, a box, a light, a girl.
Holes in houses. Holes in speaking. Holes in flesh.]

Blake Butler

There Is No Year