SLS Contest 2014

I got some happy news yesterday. I was awarded another fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in either Lithuania or Kenya! I entered this year because Fence Magazine was one of the partners again, and they were the magazine I had luck with in 2011.

More on Irony and Distance

This is from Peaches and Penumbras, an article on BOOKFORUM. 

The last line of the essay hurts because it is true, but it doesn't have to be. 

"The poetry of our time is dominated by a deep and sometimes rich skepticism about the self. When Ginsberg was a countercultural hero in the '60s, such skepticism was embodied by the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, and W. H. Auden, among others. Its presence has grown only more pronounced during the last thirty years through the examples of John Ashbery (whose first book, Some Trees, appeared the same year as Howl and Other Poems) and Jorie Graham and a renewed appreciation of Wallace Stevens and George Oppen.

Ginsberg's strength was the evocation of vulnerability, a sensibility that could never accommodate skepticism because it grew out of his belief in the inherent innocence of the self. Frank Bidart writes in his contribution to The Poem That Changed America that, for Ginsberg, "within spirit itself there is no unresolvable dilemma, no dilemma inherent in the demands placed upon it by its own nature or the nature of being." The limitations or failings faced by the self are not native to it but planted there by an external force, whether that force is Moloch or Birdbrain or America. In turn, Ginsberg's dissatisfaction with the world often manifests itself as betrayal instead of despair. Ginsberg doesn't consider the world to be utterly indifferent to his fate; rather, the world singles him out and inhibits him from realizing his nature. Ginsberg's vulnerability is also at the root of his interest in visions: He hungers to be possessed and awed by the appearance of something miraculous in the world. The skeptic's experience of being overwhelmed by an inherent and insurmountable human inability to comprehend the world with any certainty is alien to him. And his vulnerability is what compels him to portray the body as a stage where cosmic dramas play themselves out, as with the wounded innocents in "Howl" who have "purgatoried their torsos night after night" in the hopes of experiencing metaphysical bliss.

The wounded innocents who populate Ginsberg's poems seem out of place, even alien, today, but that is no reason to declare smugly that the Age of Ginsberg is a closed chapter. "Howl" blew through an entire culture with fury and exuberance and eloquence and charm, and it was the work not of the guru but of the young poet. During the last half century, no poem, not even Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," has been able to match the prominence and resonance achieved by "Howl." These days, few artists, let alone poets, are hailed as heroic prophets, and no amount of cheerleading during National Poetry Month will change that. Instead, it's the gurus—scrubbed, smiling, and outfitted with respectable titles like "motivational speaker," "life coach," and "personal trainer"—who continue to mesmerize."

This article is so on the mark

Awhile back, I wrote about DFW's quote about how irony was hurting creativity by making people embarrassed to be sincere. He called for people to risk being seen as sentimental.

I have felt (still feel?) the pressure to write in that particularly current ironic voice-- especially when I write poetry. I fail. The sly jokes fall flat. The observations don't hit their marks.

If I write about a heartbroken, brutalized rhino, it turns out okay. I'm not saying I am the new anti-rebel, as DFW put it, but I don't do well talking through a cool, distanced wall. I am that heartbroken rhino. I am that grieving, angry mess of a beast.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/13/david_foster_wallace_was_right_irony_is_ruining_our_culture/

The two authors of the article also talk about the use of irony in contemporary painting. It really is a heartening piece of writing. It made me feel good and hopeful.

Necessary Fiction: Atlantic City

Hello!

Necessary Fiction picked up my piece titled "Atlantic City". I wrote it as part of Peter Markus's summer workshop, and with his insightful comments and keen ear, I was able to polish it up to this final story.


Atlantic City


If you know me, or know anything about me, you know that I grew up in South Jersey. I did work at a Texaco, too. It was strange to write a piece of fiction with true elements. I try to keep things entirely separate from real life, but it did feel good to have the permission, so to say, to write something that could be true.

Interview: Part Two

I was asked to interview for the second part of Land Beast.

Here is it: The Collagist Interview: Part Two

I talk about writing as a beast and the economy of bodies.