On Not Attending That Meeting

As I retreat farther and farther away from normal activity w/r/t writing, the web sure is a big help. In an attempt to be involved in that thing called the outside world ( meet with writers, readings, Rogers Park, Chicago) I’ve “joined” several Meetup.com groups, maybe left a tiny scrawl on the message board, then chickened out when the event time rolled around and didn’t go.

I attended a single meeting of a local writer’s group. And had a great time and met some people and learned their names. And then I chickened out and didn’t go.

I pass the Mess Hall almost daily and see a sign for the Next Objectivists Poetry Meeting. And I am joyous and excitement abounds. And then I’m too nervous to go into a room with people I don’t know and just imagine walking in and sitting down and desperately wanting—as I always do in new spaces—ask the Captain Obvious question “Is this the [insert name of event going on] meeting?” Well of course it is! But that is the only ice breaker I can conjure. I wish I had better ice breakers. (How much does a polar bear weigh?)

Yes, indeed, I am only hurting myself. Yes, indeed, I’d like to retreat into anonymity. But abandon the perks onymity has to offer?

If you search the internet, scour it enough, I bet you’ll find the traces of places where I’ve been but never went.

Can Experimental Cultural Centers Replace MFA Programs?

Dr. Ben Bernacke, Mrs. Katherine Grayson, Mrs. Agnes Jones

With the establishment of my university identification at the university offering me health insurance, comes the Recycled Email That Has Been Used Many Years Before. With this privilege comes spam emails intended for the One Who Came Before. Apparently, this Lindsey person subscribed to St. Paul's Ordway Theater newsletters and updates from YouGoGirl.com (get your spunky back-to-school tips here!). In time I'll be able to offer an elaborate profile, clues culled from the remaining newsletters trickling to my inbox. She enjoys local theatre, may have a tween in the house (or did at one time). It also seems she may be a sympathetic philanthropist.

A coincidence it is not that suddenly Dr. Bernacke (Fed Chairmen, thankyouverymuch), Mrs. Grayson (cancer survivor) and Mrs. Jones (of the South African Lottery Federation Corporation yadda yadda) have all welcomed me into the fold with correspondence. They want to talk to me!

Yes, Dr. Bernacke, I would love to claim my federal refund you're holding for me! I mean it comes as no surprise you'd like my social security number & bank account information. You run the banks, after all. Sent!

Mrs. Grayson, I am so very sorry to hear about your struggle with cancer. What? You want to donate 13 million dollars from you and your church to...me?! Say it ain't so. You need my reply very soon? Okay!

And, Mrs. Jones. I cannot believe my fortune. I will absolutely claim my unclaimed money. Immediately. Why don't more people know about this lottery you speak of?

How did all these lovely individuals know I sit at my desk, spreadsheets and Word documents galore, awaiting the opportunity to run away to a faraway island with loads and loads of money. Oh, if deception did exist not. The scams are growing as desperation over a dismal economy grows.



Also, in anticipation that was the horror to be had in the upper Midwest this weekend, here was Friday's Chicago-area weather advisory on The Weather Channel. Yes, usually we do have time to acclimate... It's like the weatherbots that usually seem to author the advisories grew a heart and sympathized with the sweltering masses:

"WHILE THIS KIND OF HEAT AND HUMIDITY IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR IT HAS BEEN A RARE EVENT IN THE AREA THIS SUMMER. ONLY ONE EPISODE OF 90 PLUS HEAT HAS OCCURRED AND THAT WAS A MONTH AND A HALF AGO. SINCE THEN IT HAS BEEN UNUSUALLY COOL WITH ONLY A HANDFUL OF DAYS WARMING INTO THE MID 80S. TYPICALLY BY THIS LATE INTO THE SUMMER WE HAVE HAVE HAD TIME TO ACCLIMATE TO THE MORE TYPICAL VERY WARM AND OFTEN HUMID CONDITIONS THAT THE REGION NORMALLY EXPERIENCES."

It might be over, but it ain't over (Chicago world edition)

Well, swine flu's here.

The Tribune covered the departure of the current managing editor at Bookslut.com. Chi-town is out of "energy".

And Chicago, like the rest of the country, sure could use some more bad news!

But--wait--first female poet laureate in the UK.

Michael Chabon: Secret Poet

Michael Chabon is a poet. He revealed all last night at his presentation/talk/discussion/lecture at Northwestern U, when introducing his audience to his personal obsession with Edgar Allen Poe.

E.P., he pointed out, was one letter away (“t”) from having a very meta last name.

M.C. knows that when asked straight out “Do you write poetry?” to kindly—against instinct—answer “well…I used to dabble in high school and college.” What he really wants to scream is “Yes, yes I do! I do it every time I write a sentence.” It turns out he can’t resist E.P. for just that reason. He's obsessed with language. I love it.

M.C. spoke at length about and quoted E.P.’s poem “Ulalume” (you can enjoy Jeff Buckley’s reading here) to frame his discussion about the use of "horror" in his work. What instills horror in an adult reader is not the talking hearts, the cannibalism or the messy tombs but the ambiguity of a narrator’s feelings (and I’m freely paraphrasing here)

1. against and simultaneously for a beloved (revulsion/adoration)
2. of disdain for someone else who exhibits the same qualities the narrator dislikes about him/herself
3. about whiling away time without completing or being scared of accomplishing the remarkable or conquering a fear to avoid disappointment and/or regret and/or more fear.

In addition to the content of his discussion, there were ample environmental conditions to remark on.

Sitting in the last row in an auditorium filled with at least 1000 people affords you either a welcome break from scrutiny aimed at your neck or heightens the attention paid to all the fidgety students ahead of you. There was hair twirling. There was the person who played with the bottom of their boots—that is, fingers picked at the tread of the boot. Yes, that part that touches the ground when one walks… There was the student obsessed over a blackberry, using facebook, google and I’m pretty sure some kind of stock tracker all while making eye contact as M.C. spoke AND, it turned out, waiting “patiently” for Significant Other to get there to take the saved seat, a seat saved with not just one paperback of M.C.’s but two (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). This person was clearly a big fan, so I'll let it slide.

I digress: When I chose nearly the backmost seat (row three or four, in this case) for the Myopic bookstore poetry reading earlier this month, Donna Stonecipher entreated us lackeys (generally and without eye contact—in the most nonoffensive way, really) to move on up front to close the gaps in the seating area. She said she felt too much like a teacher in that case. Well…that made me the student prone to text messages and reading the school newspaper in class. No such accommodations were possible last night. M.C. packed the house.

Maybe this makes me a bit rude. Nevertheless, I think it illustrates a common occurrence in large groups. You’re largely anonymous and you sure can get distracted by all the cuticle chewing and hair twirling. For any given 30 min. period, I’d say 7 minutes are zoning out minutes. Sorry. It's true.

While M.C.—as ANY reader might have—would lose a few listeners here and there to the suddenly captivating little nick in the plastic of the seat back directly in front of the lost listener, this large audience was with M.C. all the way. He had rehearsed the subtle laugh lines and the audience responded immediately. This speaks, too, to M.C.’s enviable reading voice. He made “Ulalume” sound exactly what it is—lush and beautifully metered verse. He spoke at length about E.P.’s prose, the successes and failures as an awkward adolescent (M.C.’s and E.P.’s alike), and publishing when publishing meant survival. And how that's a wee bit scary.

Speaking of which: Edgar P.'s first novel only sold 100 copies its first run.

literary event!

The Poetry Center of Chicago hosted a reading by poet Li-Young Lee last night. He read for a majority of the hour-long event, evoking such image as "wings and the shadow of wings". It was his 15-min "interview", taped and recorded for radio broadcast, that was most enjoyable. The interviewer introduced Lee as "someone who lives and works as a poet-- his vocation is 'poet'; he is a teacher and writer..." Lee did not directly respond to this intro; I'm not sure if he even considers himself only a poet--or a poet in this restrictive sense--when talking about "what he does for a living". Indeed, I can't count the number of times someone follows up with the phrase "what do you do with that here?" after asking what I studied in Montana. Lee's on my side on this one.

Lee then explained the spiritual, and specifically yogic, functions of poetry writing. He mentioned lyric poetry as confronting the causal nature of the universe (and by "universe", I suppose I mean the totality of human interaction with time/death, etc.) and bringing a "unified psyche" to bare on language, in order to create a world view of synchronicity.

That is, lyric poetry refuses to acknowledge that the world is ruled by only cause and effect. Instead, the poet sees and attempts to describe one thing that happens to be "in sync" with the other thing. The poet describes parallels; and then implores the reader to seek out the connection there by means other than logical cause and effect. This, Lee reminds us, is a transcendent and meaningful experience.

The Duende Abides

Chicago is full of people and mounted police. Sometimes, you can catch an officer and his horse running the length of Michigan Avenue Beach. And it's weird. Sometimes, someone who is touched will post this on a dumpster in Logan Square: "Mama No Bred / Buy Gold to Eat / I Will be a Good Nun..."



An unseasonably warm weekend, I spent Saturday biking the Lincoln Park/ Michigan Beach/Loop trail with visitors, winding up on the BP bridge of Millennium Park. We stumbled across a amateur tour guide who informed us the bridge spans 900 ft. This, to traverse a 200-ft. distance. I mention this because, well, metaphors are comfortable. Maybe there's some "troubled water" down there. Who knows.

A few weeks ago a friend worked her magic to score a follow up at a Chicago-area university to my long-pending, lost-in-the-ether temporary employment application (entered, oh, in July). And this was my single most-developed lead in the job front up to this point. I'd managed one interview in person for college comp. teaching and one phone interview for an editor gig. Nothing. Following this, I immediately received a call, came in the following day for an interview, and was hired for an assignment to start the following Monday.

Now. Three weeks later. I've got the hang of a hour+ commute on one bus, one train, one 1/2 mile of walking x2 each day. I've identified--but still cannot speak or make direct eye contact with-- those fellow passengers that have the same weekday schedule, working their way from bus to train, taking stops before and after me.

The job itself is that 900 ft. of bridge, where 200 ft. will do. The paycheck, on the other hand, is that cultural value of the bridge-as-participatory-art-piece. We like it. We're glad for it. Even when it doesn't make any logical sense. Nor does this bridge advance my artistic goals. My goal for survival is met. My duende is not happy until I get back to the couch at the end of the day.


I still have the satisfaction of participating in some specialized, technical aspect of language, as a freelance editor. This reminds me that not everyone puts the Elements of Style under their pillow. And yes, the maddening level of attention I grant to ensuring gnarled syntax and diction in my poems allows me to identify and know when language is being used unconventionally and how to ungnarl it. Luckily, convention still rules my life these days, with proper sentence structure essential to ensuring that supplementary paycheck.

Writerly social endeavors, lack-thereof:
Saw Junot Diaz at the Chicago public library a couple weeks back. Proceeded to obtain book signature and fawning fan photo. Social outings to consist of celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with literature-minded friends. Projected ratio of beer drinking to conversational asides about elliptical poets: 10-to-1.