Recently in writers Category
Dear Hegemony, please tell me who I am. Please tell me how to see myself.
We've just been reading Wide Sargasso Sea in class, so my mind's on how a dominant voice--backed by money and the power of the metropole--can erase and madden someone else's truth.
And how generous Hegemony is with its answers! Here are just two that scratched their fingernails across my brain this week.
David Denby, reviewing Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer in the March 8, 2010 New Yorker, refers in passing--admiringly--to Olivia Williams "one of the rare actresses who seem more intelligent and beautiful as they get angrier." Just in passing, mind you. It's not his focus; it's an aside.
But pause. Let that sink in. So . . . the majority of actresses, then, seem more stupid and ugly as they get angrier? Do women in general, David Denby? (Is it any wonder that so many women have trouble expressing anger directly?) Is that true of male actors, of men?
On to #2. Nathaniel Rich, who turns all of 30 tomorrow, is perhaps surprisingly young to be the senior editor of fiction at The Paris Review, but then, he's had unusual opportunities. His father is Frank Rich, who writes for the New York Times; his brother Simon writes humor for the New Yorker. He grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Yale. He worked at the New York Review of Books straight out of college.
Hegemony. Money. The metropole.
Why does this matter to you, writers? Well, at the Paris Review, a most desirable publication venue for any writer, Nathaniel Rich serves as the decider, the gatekeeper. His taste determines what gets into the journal's pages.
So I found it rather fascinating to stumble across this window into his desires. It appeared in Canteen Magazine this January in what Rich's own website describes as "an autobiographical nonfiction piece." Its title, "Over Ernest," suggests that it's looking back at youthful folly; that the author's early infatuation with Hemingway is now outgrown. Still, its opening paragraph is fascinating:
Gentle readers, we recently read and discussed in class an excerpt from Madwoman in the Attic, that groundbreaking work of feminist criticism from the 1970s. The students were shocked by the wildly sexist things that the nineteenth- and twentieth-century male writers said about the blood-congested male drive they saw as essential to writing works of literary genius.
How backward, we all said.
Yet here we go again, in 2010. (Hey, it's working for Avatar.)
Okay, so Nathaniel Rich was young and oversexed when he fantasized about Hemingway. Okay, so surely the essay will later take his younger self to task--I couldn't tell, because Canteen only excerpts the first page. (Invited to read more--by subscribing, at $10 an issue--gee, I declined.) Okay, so it was 9 whole years ago.
But not as long ago as I'd like to believe.
We've just been reading Wide Sargasso Sea in class, so my mind's on how a dominant voice--backed by money and the power of the metropole--can erase and madden someone else's truth.
And how generous Hegemony is with its answers! Here are just two that scratched their fingernails across my brain this week.
David Denby, reviewing Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer in the March 8, 2010 New Yorker, refers in passing--admiringly--to Olivia Williams "one of the rare actresses who seem more intelligent and beautiful as they get angrier." Just in passing, mind you. It's not his focus; it's an aside.
But pause. Let that sink in. So . . . the majority of actresses, then, seem more stupid and ugly as they get angrier? Do women in general, David Denby? (Is it any wonder that so many women have trouble expressing anger directly?) Is that true of male actors, of men?
On to #2. Nathaniel Rich, who turns all of 30 tomorrow, is perhaps surprisingly young to be the senior editor of fiction at The Paris Review, but then, he's had unusual opportunities. His father is Frank Rich, who writes for the New York Times; his brother Simon writes humor for the New Yorker. He grew up in Manhattan and graduated from Yale. He worked at the New York Review of Books straight out of college.
Hegemony. Money. The metropole.
Why does this matter to you, writers? Well, at the Paris Review, a most desirable publication venue for any writer, Nathaniel Rich serves as the decider, the gatekeeper. His taste determines what gets into the journal's pages.
So I found it rather fascinating to stumble across this window into his desires. It appeared in Canteen Magazine this January in what Rich's own website describes as "an autobiographical nonfiction piece." Its title, "Over Ernest," suggests that it's looking back at youthful folly; that the author's early infatuation with Hemingway is now outgrown. Still, its opening paragraph is fascinating:
While being fellated by a native woman.There was a time—not as long ago as I’d like to believe—when I imagined all novelists as Ernest Hemingways, hero-adventurers who shot tigers, fought in wars, seduced wild-eyed women, gambled their life savings at high-stakes poker, won duels, lost duels, and wrote frantic bursts of prose while standing upright in their rented rooms in Havana or Saigon or Beirut. I didn’t fully understand the standing-upright part, but I had read that Hemingway worked this way. At first I figured it had something to do with the immense ferocity of the act; surely he was too wired with genius to sit down at a desk. The more I thought about it, though, it occurred to me that the reason Hemingway wrote standing up was to allow a woman (his muse, no doubt) to more easily “inspire” him while he was in the midst of his demanding labor. This image—of the great writer madly scribbling masterpieces while being fellated by a native woman—haunted me. If this was the writing life, who wouldn’t want to be a writer? . . . I had just turned 21 years old.
Gentle readers, we recently read and discussed in class an excerpt from Madwoman in the Attic, that groundbreaking work of feminist criticism from the 1970s. The students were shocked by the wildly sexist things that the nineteenth- and twentieth-century male writers said about the blood-congested male drive they saw as essential to writing works of literary genius.
How backward, we all said.
Yet here we go again, in 2010. (Hey, it's working for Avatar.)
Okay, so Nathaniel Rich was young and oversexed when he fantasized about Hemingway. Okay, so surely the essay will later take his younger self to task--I couldn't tell, because Canteen only excerpts the first page. (Invited to read more--by subscribing, at $10 an issue--gee, I declined.) Okay, so it was 9 whole years ago.
But not as long ago as I'd like to believe.
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My beautiful, funny, and generous friend Lorraine López, about whom you've read on here before (multiple times), has just been catapulted into the national limelight! Her latest book, Homicide Survivors Picnic, a collection of short fiction, has been named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The other finalists are Barbara Kingsolver, Sherman Alexie, Colson Whitehead, and Lorrie Moore. (Thanks to Tayari's blog for the heads-up.)
Always modest, Lorraine says she's still stunned and ecstatic. It's going to be a whirlwind until March 23, when the winner is announced. Wow!
Regarding the issue of representing latinidad, Lorraine says that she "intended to produce stories for [the colllection] that would shift the focus from the performance of ethnicity that essentializes cultural experience. . . ." The L.A. Times includes a lengthy passage from a lovely 2-page interview, which you can access in full at BkMk's webpage for the book:
In the meantime, lift a glass to Lorraine!
Always modest, Lorraine says she's still stunned and ecstatic. It's going to be a whirlwind until March 23, when the winner is announced. Wow!
Regarding the issue of representing latinidad, Lorraine says that she "intended to produce stories for [the colllection] that would shift the focus from the performance of ethnicity that essentializes cultural experience. . . ." The L.A. Times includes a lengthy passage from a lovely 2-page interview, which you can access in full at BkMk's webpage for the book:
Lorraine's also co-editing a new collection, The Other Latino, that addresses this very issue--the expected performance of Latina/o ethnicity--from multiple perspectives. It's due out next year from University of Arizona Press.Q: Your collection has many Latino characters, and they all interact with characters from other backgrounds. Did you intend this bicultural or multicultural dimension of the book from the start, and do you think Latino writers face any special challenges in writing about Latino characters and culture for today’s varied literary audiences?
Lopez: This is a complicated question, and I thank you for asking it. For me, I did not set out to do more than explore characters beyond their cultural definition. As mentioned, I wanted to avoid that performance of identity that essentializes cultural experience. I am not interested in providing the usual themes, characters, and props that many associate with Latino literature. These do not characterize my experience as a Latina, so why should I artificially simulate such things to validate stereotypic notions? I can think of no reason to do this, except to gratify expectations of others....
I am not out to give anyone (including myself) what he or she might be expecting. In speaking to other Latino writers, I find that we similarly resist gratifying expectations that our characters perform in culturally expected ways, say, rolling tortillas, bopping around the barrio, or gathering wisdom from a sweet abuela. More and more, Latino literature is evolving away from such stereotypes, and becoming more interesting and challenging in the process.
In the meantime, lift a glass to Lorraine!
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Many thanks for the kindness of Anne, Faye, and others whose steadying words are helping me think and feel my way through the strange crux of my grandfather's passing.
The late, great Lucille Clifton left us this:
And from "Knowledge" (which, unfortunately, isn't available online), from an 1864 drawing of four Victorian men dissecting and studying a naked female corpse:
Today I meet with the four grad students who've chosen to do teaching internships with me. They're great women (is it a coincidence that they're all women?), but I have to say it's pretty weird being observed, class after class after class. We meet regularly to discuss pedagogy and professional issues. They keep journals; I read them. They notice everything. I've never done this before, and it's a little unnerving. I hope it all turns out to be useful to them.
The late, great Lucille Clifton left us this:
For bracing, unflinching honesty about the self and others, check out Natasha Trethewey's two new father poems in the latest issue of New England Review. From "Elegy," addressed to her father, about fly-fishing together:why some people be mad at me sometimes
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine
I can tell you now
that I tried to take it all in, record it
for an elegy I'd write--one day--
when the time came. Your daughter,
I was that ruthless. What does it matter
if I tell you I learned to be?
And from "Knowledge" (which, unfortunately, isn't available online), from an 1864 drawing of four Victorian men dissecting and studying a naked female corpse:
I love the way both poems go to the mat, and I love the way they jostle together an uneasy mix of feelings with such clarity and precision.. . . how easily
the anatomist's blade opens a place in me,
like a curtain drawn upon a room in which
each learned man is my father
and I hear, again, his words--I study
my crossbreed child--
Today I meet with the four grad students who've chosen to do teaching internships with me. They're great women (is it a coincidence that they're all women?), but I have to say it's pretty weird being observed, class after class after class. We meet regularly to discuss pedagogy and professional issues. They keep journals; I read them. They notice everything. I've never done this before, and it's a little unnerving. I hope it all turns out to be useful to them.
Gentle readers, I have not the gift of gab. Only when I'm very comfortable with someone--a true friend (or--strange fact--a class full of students after the first few weeks)--can I rattle on comfortably. And when someone I admire is in the vicinity, I get so tongue-tied that I might as well be a twelve-year-old kid with a bad crush.
So tonight, after readings by Prairie Schooner Book Prize winners Kara Candito (Taste of Cherry--which Tracy K. Smith calls "poised and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet") and Anne Finger (Call Me Ahab--PW: "brisk, inventive, and intelligent"), I was walking with a good friend toward the parking lot, and we were joined by . . .
an icon. Seriously: a poet and editor I've admired since I was a callow grad student. (If I included her name, you would say, "Oh, her," in a tone of warm, hushed admiration.) So naturally, my brain stopped making words, and I walked in silence like a dullard, until this iconic poet and editor, who also happens to be a gracious and kindly person, asked how my new place is. Can't think. Can't think. No words coming. How does she know I have a new place? Don't ask. Act casual. Still no words . . .
In desperation, readers, I pulled a Mr. Collins*: my brain, grasping for something to say, pulled a phrase right off this blog and re-used it. (Because sitting here alone, imagining the friendly faces of those of you I know, I'm completely comfortable, so sentences just tumble out easily, as if we're having an intimate chat. --And if they don't, I can log out.)
"Oh," I said lightly, giving the phrase as unstudied an air as possible, "it has all the ambience of a parking garage," as if such phrases sprouted effortlessly on my lips all the time. Readers, I quoted myself.
Not that big a deal, you say? We all recycle verbal formulations? If we didn't employ useful favorites and well-worn catchphrases to help us get through the day, we'd all fall down exhausted by the sheer effort of experiencing things freshly and phrasing them in original ways?
Yes. Quite right you are, and practical, too. And very grown-up about things. Generally, I agree. I try to tamp down that part of myself that always feels queasy repeating used things as though they're fresh. One performs. One must. It goes with the territory.
But this warm and lovely writer and editor, whom I've admired for, lo, these 20 years now, says (in the friendliest of ways), "Yes, I read that on your blog."
Busted.
Readers, talk about mixed emotions. Talk about feeling 1) shocked, 2) wildly flattered, and 3) like a perfect idiot, in precisely equal proportions.
Sigh. Am I actually becoming more hilarious as I get older, or am I just learning to laugh at myself more? (At least my clothes stayed on.)
In other news, the husband is currently in New Orleans, supposedly checking on his elderly parents (during Mardi Gras--terribly coincidental, I know) but also gambling with the longevity of our marriage by texting me such tidbits as, "64 degrees here. Love you," and, "Eating oyster po-boy in the Quarter. xoxo." I'm saving them as evidence. They may be grounds.
While he's gone, I thought I'd hang curtains (in said apartment with said ambience), just as a practical matter. It's one thing to wander around, visible to all of downtown, when there's a brawny fellow walking around with you, but as soon as his plane left earth, I suddenly thought of every creepy stalker film I've ever seen, and felt very, very backlit.
So there I was, duct-taping our old Indiana curtains up this past weekend. (Our other apartment had blinds.) I also painted some of the sad cabinetry in the kitchen--you know, the kitchen where the 70s went to die? I'm painting the cabinets "Dragonfly," which is a sort of dirty turquoise, bit by bit, late at night. Our above-and-beyond realtor gave us a gift card to Home Depot when we sealed the deal, so we bought a bunch of those little sample bottles of paint colors. I'm using those paints and a 50-cent sponge brush.
Between the fresh coats of dirty turquoise and the duct-taped curtains, the apartment was looking downright homey.
Alas, when I got home this evening from my excitingly overanalyzed interchange, the cat had single-pawedly managed to pull down all the curtains. He lay there rolling guiltlessly on the rug while I re-duct-taped them back up in the dark (so that no stalkers could see me duct-taping and thus intuit that I was alone--you see the extent of things).
So I'm 42, and I'm duct-taping curtains and painting my crappy cabinetry with paint samples. Just typing that sentence makes me laugh out loud here. Is it any wonder I don't feel like I've arrived?
The cement floor under my feet has duct tape marking off where my office will be. Someday. Someday.
Oh, readers, a wild patience has taken me this far. And a sense of humor that's apparently getting jollier by the day.
Happy post-Valentine's Day. Love the ones you're with--and love them hard. It goes by so fucking fast.
So tonight, after readings by Prairie Schooner Book Prize winners Kara Candito (Taste of Cherry--which Tracy K. Smith calls "poised and raw, hard-knuckled and siren-sweet") and Anne Finger (Call Me Ahab--PW: "brisk, inventive, and intelligent"), I was walking with a good friend toward the parking lot, and we were joined by . . . an icon. Seriously: a poet and editor I've admired since I was a callow grad student. (If I included her name, you would say, "Oh, her," in a tone of warm, hushed admiration.) So naturally, my brain stopped making words, and I walked in silence like a dullard, until this iconic poet and editor, who also happens to be a gracious and kindly person, asked how my new place is. Can't think. Can't think. No words coming. How does she know I have a new place? Don't ask. Act casual. Still no words . . .
In desperation, readers, I pulled a Mr. Collins*: my brain, grasping for something to say, pulled a phrase right off this blog and re-used it. (Because sitting here alone, imagining the friendly faces of those of you I know, I'm completely comfortable, so sentences just tumble out easily, as if we're having an intimate chat. --And if they don't, I can log out.)
"Oh," I said lightly, giving the phrase as unstudied an air as possible, "it has all the ambience of a parking garage," as if such phrases sprouted effortlessly on my lips all the time. Readers, I quoted myself.
Not that big a deal, you say? We all recycle verbal formulations? If we didn't employ useful favorites and well-worn catchphrases to help us get through the day, we'd all fall down exhausted by the sheer effort of experiencing things freshly and phrasing them in original ways?
Yes. Quite right you are, and practical, too. And very grown-up about things. Generally, I agree. I try to tamp down that part of myself that always feels queasy repeating used things as though they're fresh. One performs. One must. It goes with the territory.
But this warm and lovely writer and editor, whom I've admired for, lo, these 20 years now, says (in the friendliest of ways), "Yes, I read that on your blog."
Busted.
Readers, talk about mixed emotions. Talk about feeling 1) shocked, 2) wildly flattered, and 3) like a perfect idiot, in precisely equal proportions.
Sigh. Am I actually becoming more hilarious as I get older, or am I just learning to laugh at myself more? (At least my clothes stayed on.)
In other news, the husband is currently in New Orleans, supposedly checking on his elderly parents (during Mardi Gras--terribly coincidental, I know) but also gambling with the longevity of our marriage by texting me such tidbits as, "64 degrees here. Love you," and, "Eating oyster po-boy in the Quarter. xoxo." I'm saving them as evidence. They may be grounds.
While he's gone, I thought I'd hang curtains (in said apartment with said ambience), just as a practical matter. It's one thing to wander around, visible to all of downtown, when there's a brawny fellow walking around with you, but as soon as his plane left earth, I suddenly thought of every creepy stalker film I've ever seen, and felt very, very backlit.
So there I was, duct-taping our old Indiana curtains up this past weekend. (Our other apartment had blinds.) I also painted some of the sad cabinetry in the kitchen--you know, the kitchen where the 70s went to die? I'm painting the cabinets "Dragonfly," which is a sort of dirty turquoise, bit by bit, late at night. Our above-and-beyond realtor gave us a gift card to Home Depot when we sealed the deal, so we bought a bunch of those little sample bottles of paint colors. I'm using those paints and a 50-cent sponge brush.
Between the fresh coats of dirty turquoise and the duct-taped curtains, the apartment was looking downright homey.
Alas, when I got home this evening from my excitingly overanalyzed interchange, the cat had single-pawedly managed to pull down all the curtains. He lay there rolling guiltlessly on the rug while I re-duct-taped them back up in the dark (so that no stalkers could see me duct-taping and thus intuit that I was alone--you see the extent of things).
So I'm 42, and I'm duct-taping curtains and painting my crappy cabinetry with paint samples. Just typing that sentence makes me laugh out loud here. Is it any wonder I don't feel like I've arrived?
The cement floor under my feet has duct tape marking off where my office will be. Someday. Someday.
Oh, readers, a wild patience has taken me this far. And a sense of humor that's apparently getting jollier by the day.
Happy post-Valentine's Day. Love the ones you're with--and love them hard. It goes by so fucking fast.
*[Mr. Collins, at dinner with the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice:]
". . . Her ladyship seemed pleased with the idea, and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. -- These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.''"You judge very properly,'' said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?''
"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.''
Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.
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My writing it, your reading it--or it would be part of the problem, according to Virginia Woolf, if she were around. Prepping for class, I came across this passage by scholar Alex Zwerdling:
Nonetheless, if I report that Camille Dungy's lecture here at UNL about editing Black Nature was excellent, you are hereby advised to ignore me and go immerse yourself in the strenuous art of reading it for yourself.
Insinuated between writer and reader--it sounds far more sly and kinky than I generally feel when I'm typing up these little bulletins.[Woolf] hated any form of publicity . . . because it transformed the strenuous art of reading into the easily digestible pap of "interviews with the author," reviews of, lectures on--everything but the thing itself. She felt that serious reading was gradually becoming extinct, to be replaced by forms of communication designed by a new class of cultural middlemen who had insinuated themselves between writer and reader.
Nonetheless, if I report that Camille Dungy's lecture here at UNL about editing Black Nature was excellent, you are hereby advised to ignore me and go immerse yourself in the strenuous art of reading it for yourself.
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You probably remember Chris Anderson's breakthrough notion of the long tail, the idea that the future of retail lies in selling unique items in small quantities. Well, one week ago today, when the snow was thick and the sky was gray (again), I received the loveliest surprise: an email from a woman who'd been on the editorial staff at Quarterly West 15 years ago, when QW published my little flash piece, "In Theory."
Currently teaching college workshops in creative writing, she wrote: "I have managed to always keep a copy of that issue close-by so as to teach it, but somewhere in one of my moves, I misplaced my copy." She wondered if I had a spare I could send.
Who knew? You see, you might think your work falls into a pool and just lies at the dark bottom of the pond like littering leaves, rotting away, but somebody somewhere might have been teaching it for 15 years! You just gotta keep the faith.
Well, I made Sophia a pdf file of "In Theory" for her classes, and it's also now here on this website, available to all and sundry.
Thank you, Sophia, and hurray for the long tail!
Currently teaching college workshops in creative writing, she wrote: "I have managed to always keep a copy of that issue close-by so as to teach it, but somewhere in one of my moves, I misplaced my copy." She wondered if I had a spare I could send.
Who knew? You see, you might think your work falls into a pool and just lies at the dark bottom of the pond like littering leaves, rotting away, but somebody somewhere might have been teaching it for 15 years! You just gotta keep the faith.
Well, I made Sophia a pdf file of "In Theory" for her classes, and it's also now here on this website, available to all and sundry.
Thank you, Sophia, and hurray for the long tail!
An excerpt from Camille Dungy's 2006 collection What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison:
Thursday, February 4
3:30-5:00 p.m.
"Editing Black Nature"
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL
and later that evening,
7:00 p.m.--Camille's reading from her new collection, Suck on the Marrow
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL.
Four days ago, the dogwood was a fistCome out and hear her for yourself.
in protest. Now look. Even she unfurls
to the pleasure of the season. Don't be
ashamed of yourself. Don't be. This happens
to us all. We have thrown back the blanket.
We're naked and we've grown to love ourselves.
I tell you, do not be ashamed.
Thursday, February 4
3:30-5:00 p.m.
"Editing Black Nature"
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL
and later that evening,
7:00 p.m.--Camille's reading from her new collection, Suck on the Marrow
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL.
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Seriously: Camille T. Dungy's book Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry is a major, major intervention in nature writing, and I cannot wait to hear her talk about it next week. The introduction alone is brilliant, and the poems and essays are a treasure-house. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers interviews Camille about the book.
(FYI, those who plan to join us for wining and dining: Camille assures me that tippling around her is no issue.)
But on a less joyful topic: Academia's endless judging is working my last (raw) nerve, and it has to do with judging. "There is no reason, no need, to make a contest out of anything," writes Zen Buddhist Cheri Huber. Sufi mystic Rumi wrote something like, Out beyond good and bad, there is a field. I'll meet you there. "I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver," writes Thoreau. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Yes, the soul replies.
But academia, required to fetishize the cleaver of intellect, makes a contest out of everything. Right now, we're furiously judging all kinds of folks: a multitude of job candidates, a record-breaking number of graduate application files in English (due, sadly, to the recession), et cetera . . . The mind can do that. Yes. But the mind needs rest. The mind needs to loaf and invite its soul.
I'm craving downtime, nature, and peace. And my pace of blogging on here has dropped; sorry. I should just declare a January hiatus. The pace of work is always ridiculous in January.
And judgments, I'm guessing, will only get more stringent. UNL's chancellor today announced that he'll be looking for ways to cut an additional $5.2 million from the budget this spring. Cue mirthless laughter.
Obama's address this week was kick-ass, though. That was a cheery 70 minutes of telling it like it is.
Uh-oh. The heat shut off in my office building--it does that automatically for the weekend--and I can feel it getting colder in here. I'd better bundle up and head home. Stay warm, sweet people. Keep writing.
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Dear and gentle readers, we (here in Lincoln) will soon be graced by a visit from the lovely and amazing poet Camille Dungy, author of two books and editor of two more. Mark your calendar, Star City Sceners:
Thursday, February 4
3:30-5:00 p.m.
"Editing Black Nature"
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL
and later that evening,
7:00 p.m.--Camille's inaugural reading from her brand-new collection, Suck on the Marrow
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL.
Her edited anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, is especially exciting for anyone who's noticed that nature-writing anthologies tend to be not only green but white. (Seriously. Scan your collections' TOCs now.) At the 3:30 presentation, she'll talk about the process of gathering the poems and shepherding the book through the editing process at University of Georgia Press.
At 7:00 p.m., she'll read from her own work--particularly her new book Suck on the Marrow, a collection rooted in 19th-century history, which Natasha Trethewey calls "[p]lainspoken and unflinching," marked by "restraint and wry wit." She'll then be happy to chat and sign books, which will be available for purchase after the reading.
I first heard Camille read in 2004 at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She was a Bread Loaf Scholar, and of course all the Scholars are solid, but when Camille began to read, the air in the Little Theater hushed. Folks didn't even cough. The poems--and her riveting delivery--were knockout. I can't wait to hear her read from her new book. (And I can't believe she's gotten 4 books into print since then! Makes me feel laaazy.)
It's going to be an honor and a pleasure to have her here. And readers, I happen to know happy news: she's pregnant! So there'll be no wining with our dining, but we do intend to have fun.
On the home front, James and I are now cosily ensconced in our new place--which feels, after two and a half years in a smaller apartment, practically palatial. Its sweeping vistas of 1082 square feet and its blank white walls seem all Dr. Zhivagoesque to me--you know, those wide snowy plains with the tiny troika gliding along?
Now, as I've mentioned, the floors are bare, unfinished concrete, so it has roughly the ambience of a parking garage, and the appliances are from the 1970s. (The refrigerator shelves proudly proclaim "Spacemaker Door," as if it's a radical new invention, and the scary microwave has more knobs and dials than a cockpit.) Since we haven't been able to paint yet, the plaster from the refinished (popcorn-be-gone) ceiling sifts down in a fine white dust, coating everything.
But it's home, and it's ours, and we're happy.
Many thanks to Sandra and Cindy for their recent notes of encouragement and congratulations; to Ingrid and Douglas for the bread and salt, which is an old German custom of housewarming; and to Susan and Linck for the wine. We hope to be having some of y'all over soon.
Thursday, February 4
3:30-5:00 p.m.
"Editing Black Nature"
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL
and later that evening,
7:00 p.m.--Camille's inaugural reading from her brand-new collection, Suck on the Marrow
Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, UNL.
Her edited anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, is especially exciting for anyone who's noticed that nature-writing anthologies tend to be not only green but white. (Seriously. Scan your collections' TOCs now.) At the 3:30 presentation, she'll talk about the process of gathering the poems and shepherding the book through the editing process at University of Georgia Press.
At 7:00 p.m., she'll read from her own work--particularly her new book Suck on the Marrow, a collection rooted in 19th-century history, which Natasha Trethewey calls "[p]lainspoken and unflinching," marked by "restraint and wry wit." She'll then be happy to chat and sign books, which will be available for purchase after the reading.I first heard Camille read in 2004 at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She was a Bread Loaf Scholar, and of course all the Scholars are solid, but when Camille began to read, the air in the Little Theater hushed. Folks didn't even cough. The poems--and her riveting delivery--were knockout. I can't wait to hear her read from her new book. (And I can't believe she's gotten 4 books into print since then! Makes me feel laaazy.)
It's going to be an honor and a pleasure to have her here. And readers, I happen to know happy news: she's pregnant! So there'll be no wining with our dining, but we do intend to have fun.
On the home front, James and I are now cosily ensconced in our new place--which feels, after two and a half years in a smaller apartment, practically palatial. Its sweeping vistas of 1082 square feet and its blank white walls seem all Dr. Zhivagoesque to me--you know, those wide snowy plains with the tiny troika gliding along?
Now, as I've mentioned, the floors are bare, unfinished concrete, so it has roughly the ambience of a parking garage, and the appliances are from the 1970s. (The refrigerator shelves proudly proclaim "Spacemaker Door," as if it's a radical new invention, and the scary microwave has more knobs and dials than a cockpit.) Since we haven't been able to paint yet, the plaster from the refinished (popcorn-be-gone) ceiling sifts down in a fine white dust, coating everything.
But it's home, and it's ours, and we're happy.
Many thanks to Sandra and Cindy for their recent notes of encouragement and congratulations; to Ingrid and Douglas for the bread and salt, which is an old German custom of housewarming; and to Susan and Linck for the wine. We hope to be having some of y'all over soon.
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It's an evil winter wonderland out there, with crazy 22-below-zero wind chills and walls of horizontally blowing snow. Our apartment building is so old--with its original 1905 windows semi-intact--that I woke up this morning with a breeze blowing across my face. This is not the kind of holiday chillin' I hankered for.
All of our books are gone, already hauled in boxes over to the new (better insulated!) apartment, and our art is down, so the walls even look nude and cold here. Just our furniture, clothes, and computers remain. We move on Saturday the 16th.
Classes start Monday, and as I prepare for the first week of the semester, I'm taking heart from the words of Anatole France: "Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good flammable stuff, it will catch fire."
I like this very much.
But of course, I can't help but wonder if the notion that I can open minds by trying--that teachers do so, as we often tell each other and ourselves--is a kind of vanity in itself.
Rather: In what ways is my own mind still closed? How can I learn to open it? That seems like the more honest and gentle way to move forward. Teachers do succeed in opening minds--we hear about it from grateful students who write to say so. But I think it may be in ways we don't even anticipate, much less plan for. Students remember the most casual comment, dropped in haste. Small things make an impression. That's why teaching is such a careful business. It's good practice in mindfulness.
I'm teaching intro to women's literature--to women, for the first time!*--and autobiographical nature writing, which is a new course for me. In women's lit, we're beginning with fairy tales (widely understood by scholars to be the narrative products of women: mothers, nurses, the much denigrated "old wives") and then working through about 200 years of intertextual responses: Jane Eyre, The Yellow Wallpaper, A Room of One's Own, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bluest Eye, The Bloody Chamber, The House on Mango Street. Should be interesting.
In autobiographical nature writing, we'll be reading environmental lit--and writing, writing, writing. We'll go outside once the weather warms up, but before that happens, we'll be watching two documentaries, which I recommend highly if you haven't seen them: Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides and Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story.
Grey left. I did howl--quietly, at home. Parenting is such an ambivalent practice. One loves so passionately, so profoundly--yet really wants the kid to grow up and get on with life. I won't go into detail about the particulars of our situation. I'll just say this: I always face Grey's visits home (now that he's been away at college) with trepidation--there will inevitably be tensions, arguments, friction, as he defines himself and his life in a different way from ours (and lets us know that in no uncertain terms)--and yet, I'm always wrenched with sadness when he leaves. It took me a good 24 hours to recover after his bus pulled away. Are other parents laid so low? Is there a manual for this?
*Teaching women's literature and feminist theory at an all-male college is an education unto itself. I recommend it highly. For short periods.
All of our books are gone, already hauled in boxes over to the new (better insulated!) apartment, and our art is down, so the walls even look nude and cold here. Just our furniture, clothes, and computers remain. We move on Saturday the 16th.
Classes start Monday, and as I prepare for the first week of the semester, I'm taking heart from the words of Anatole France: "Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good flammable stuff, it will catch fire."
I like this very much.
But of course, I can't help but wonder if the notion that I can open minds by trying--that teachers do so, as we often tell each other and ourselves--is a kind of vanity in itself.
Rather: In what ways is my own mind still closed? How can I learn to open it? That seems like the more honest and gentle way to move forward. Teachers do succeed in opening minds--we hear about it from grateful students who write to say so. But I think it may be in ways we don't even anticipate, much less plan for. Students remember the most casual comment, dropped in haste. Small things make an impression. That's why teaching is such a careful business. It's good practice in mindfulness.
I'm teaching intro to women's literature--to women, for the first time!*--and autobiographical nature writing, which is a new course for me. In women's lit, we're beginning with fairy tales (widely understood by scholars to be the narrative products of women: mothers, nurses, the much denigrated "old wives") and then working through about 200 years of intertextual responses: Jane Eyre, The Yellow Wallpaper, A Room of One's Own, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bluest Eye, The Bloody Chamber, The House on Mango Street. Should be interesting.
In autobiographical nature writing, we'll be reading environmental lit--and writing, writing, writing. We'll go outside once the weather warms up, but before that happens, we'll be watching two documentaries, which I recommend highly if you haven't seen them: Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides and Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story.
Grey left. I did howl--quietly, at home. Parenting is such an ambivalent practice. One loves so passionately, so profoundly--yet really wants the kid to grow up and get on with life. I won't go into detail about the particulars of our situation. I'll just say this: I always face Grey's visits home (now that he's been away at college) with trepidation--there will inevitably be tensions, arguments, friction, as he defines himself and his life in a different way from ours (and lets us know that in no uncertain terms)--and yet, I'm always wrenched with sadness when he leaves. It took me a good 24 hours to recover after his bus pulled away. Are other parents laid so low? Is there a manual for this?
*Teaching women's literature and feminist theory at an all-male college is an education unto itself. I recommend it highly. For short periods.
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