Continuing my extremely casual exploration (see also “What is Flower?”) into what people are really reaching for when they reach for a reference to “poetry,” I came across an article about the Queensboro Bridge in yesterday’s New York Times. The piece is mostly about how said bridge turns 100 today, but in it, architectural historian Barry Lewis says, “Who lives in Queens? You’re going to have your newsstand guy, your doorman, the guy who runs the store around the corner, they all live in Queens. The people who live in Queens are really the people who make the city run in a basic, gritty way, and the bridge is exactly that. It’s not a bridge that you write poetry to.”
What is Mr. Lewis getting at here—do unassuming things not inspire poetry? Do “basic” and “gritty” people not read or write poetry? Is poetry not “gritty”? Also, Ploughshares blog readers, are there any poems out there that have been written to the Queensboro? Does all the ink get spilled on the Brooklyn Bridge instead? What are your favorite bridges and bridge poems? Or, since F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the Queensboro Bridge ("The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.") what are your fave writings on bridges generally?
March 30, 2009
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene
March 26, 2009
Orange You Glad...
that the 2009 Orange Prize longlist has been announced? Of course you are. This year, the list includes Ploughshares contributor Allegra Goodman and six of the longlisted books are first novels, which is way cool.
subject of Ploughshares Quickie Interview 34, has won the Young Lions Fiction Award for his novel The End. Congrats, Salvatore!
March 24, 2009
Glut
I participated in 2006, writing two poems a day, and it nearly did me in. I hadn’t done a marathon like that since my undergrad thesis, when I had to write 32 poems in a month in half (all of which are now extremely defunct) during the fall semester, and then again during the spring semester. The latter-day NaPoWriMo was a lot more exhilarating: 40 minutes for two rough drafts in the morning, 40 minutes to revise them in the afternoon. I’d say that it’s nice to know I can do it if I have to, but I fail to come up with even one hypothetical situation in which it would be necessary. Revision, maybe, but that’s different. Poetry is easily the furthest afield of any of the written disciplines from such pressures, as our product is only minimally economically successful, and the market is blessed with a surfeit of practitioners. (Only the demand for skilled phrenologists is lesser, frankly.)
This year, you can participate in a pledge drive. This makes me feel obscurely disheartened. ("Money and poetry! A combination no one’s ever thought of!") I notice that NaNoWriMo has a Wikipedia entry, but NaPoWriMo has none. Fie. See earlier comment about marketability.
I’ve been trying to think of similar triathlon-style events in literature. I’m sure that somewhere out there are haiku marathons, and some kind of infinitely recursive sestina competition. (This has nothing to do with anything, but a “tanka” always sounds to me like some kind of explosive device.) Like everything else on the web, the mere absence of such things is often enough to serve as the catalyst for them. The internet is nothing if not a physicist’s wet dream of biofeedback.
March 20, 2009
New Voices: Fan Wu
What about writing in English? I've noticed an interesting rhythm in your stories, a kind of sharp, almost formal rhythm--it's so hard to explain these things. Are you conscious of this? I have wondered whether it comes from having Chinese as your first language? Sometimes writing in a second language seems to create such beautiful, surprising rhythms.
I began to write creatively in 2002, five years after I came to America, and I chose to write my first novel in English because I thought it could help me learn my new language.
Yes, I’m very much aware that my English has certain formality in it, which presumably resulted from my paying great attention to wording, grammar, sentence structure, etc., as non-native speakers tend to do. Also I was trying to learn English from writers whose styles seemed most accessible to me, such as Naipaul, Hemingway, Salinger, Alice Monroe, William Trevor, to name a few. I’m very attached to Chinese so even when I write in English, Chinese is always in the back of my mind and it can intervene with my English. That may explain certain surprising rhythms. I have to admit that writing in English doesn’t come natural to me and sometimes I’m maddeningly frustrated.
Both, sometimes in Chinese, other times in English. It depends on which language I’m writing in at the moment. These days, I’m writing a novel in Chinese, so I think mostly in Chinese. I tend to dream in English, don’t know why, but when I dream of my family, especially my late grandma who raised me, they usually speak Chinese.
Picador Asia is backed by its parent company Pan Macmillan, an effort to publish Asian writers in the global market. In the past, many Asian writers were mainly read locally and their books rarely gained international readership. Of course, translation was a big challenge (it still is and will always be), but lack of marketing also hampered their successful reach outside Asia. Picador Asia has opened a new territory in the publishing industry in Asia, and hopefully many more Asian voices will be brought to the world in the years to come.
Do you have readers that write to you from China?
Yes, some are Chinese, some are foreigners living in China. A reputable Chinese publisher called Hua Cheng is going to publish February Flowers in China, which I’m very excited about.
You translated February Flowers yourself. What was that like? What were the greatest challenges? Did the rhythm of the sentences change?
When I began to write, I was determined that I would write in both Chinese and English, a promise I later found naïve. It took me three years to write February Flowers, my first creative writing piece in English, and upon completion, I realized that my Chinese was getting rusty, so I then spent half a year translating it into Chinese to keep up with my mother tongue. It wasn’t a direct translation, but more a rewriting, which was inevitable because the two languages are utterly different, different flows, rhymes, ways of saying things. A language is not just about vocabulary and grammar; it’s about the mindset. A British translator, Esther Tyldesley, once said that translating Chinese to English is like “putting Chinese clouds into an English box.” Translating English into Chinese renders a similar dilemma.
By the way, I wrote my second novel, Beautiful as Yesterday, in Chinese, then translated it into English myself. As for my third novel, I'm also writing it in Chinese first.
I love the cover for February Flowers. How involved were you in the other facets of publishing?
I assume you mean the US version. I’m glad you liked the cover. I have to say I didn’t like it the first time I saw it. Too sexy, too feminine, and too commercial in my taste, though I thought it was a beautiful cover. The cover I had in mind was more of minimalistic Zen style, like a Chinese ink-brush painting. I told my editor so and she explained to me how marketing worked. I figured I’d better focus on writing and leave the marketing to professionals.
I was quite involved in the process of publishing, especially while I was working with Picador Asia/Australia/UK and Simon & Schuster. From editing, galleys, jacket designing, blurb soliciting, to publicity scheduling, I was always updated with the latest and my input was always considered. I was less involved in the book’s publication by regional publishers but I had good communications with my translators.
I read in an article once that when you came to America you could finally acknowledge your "rage." What kind of rage did you feel?
I actually don’t remember ever having said that.
You live in California and said once that you didn't have much contact with other writers. Do you wish you had more? What do you think are the pros and cons of writing groups?
I was working in a stressful high-tech environment for many years before devoting myself to writing, so it hasn’t been easy for me to find time to socialize with other writers. Also, writing bilingually means that I have to spend a lot of time learning English while keeping up with Chinese, a very difficult language and you get rusty very fast if you don’t use it. Yet another obstacle is that I live in Silicon Valley, where literature is probably the last thing on people’s minds. Yes, I do wish I could hang out with other writers more but I have to accept reality too.
I rarely go to writing groups, so I cannot say much about them. Based on my limited experience, I think they can be very useful if you’re lucky enough to meet good critics and you know how to take criticism. And of course, it’s always nice to be with likeminded people. Writing is a lonely passion, so support is very much needed. But for people with thin skin and who want to please everyone, writing groups can be damaging.
Have you ever had someone tell you something about your writing that you hadn't realized, or articulated, yourself?
I was told that my writing was poetic in English, which I wasn’t aware of. I was also told that February Flowers should be made into a movie, directed by either Ang Lee or Wang Jiawei (known as Wong Kar Wai in the west).
Do you plan your novels out beforehand?
Can you tell us about your revision process? How do you go about revising?
I typically put aside my manuscript for two to three months before I start the revision. But it stays in the back of my mind all this time and I jot down notes whenever I have any, questions about each character, each scene, each chapter, and of course, the beginning and the ending. The day before I start revising, I read the book from cover to cover in one sitting as if it were new to me, then I go through my notes to see if they still make sense. After I deliver a manuscript to my agent or publisher, they’ll send me suggestions and questions, which will become the foundation for the next round of revision.
With February Flowers, how much changed as you went through subsequent drafts? Anything you look for in particular?
I didn’t know anything about the publishing world until I began to seek representation. I approached many agents and got rejected many times, some telling me that though they liked the novel they didn’t think it would be viable in the US because it was too subtle. Stereotypes and ignorance (sometimes arrogance) towards foreign cultures, I think, are some of the biggest challenges minority writers face here. The situation has been improving though, which is encouraging. As for the writers themselves, staying true to self is always most rewarding.
At least one advantage I can think of: your work stands out because [of] who you are.
March 16, 2009
What is Flower?
According to Chris Suellentrop of Slate, it is a videogame “set in an asphalt city, inside a room where all that can be heard is the rush of the traffic outside. In this grim landscape, the blur of car lights on the road seems to be the only man-made creation that doesn't come from a palette of grays. Sitting on a table in the room is a splash of color: a yellow flower. The instructions are simple: ‘[T]ilt the controller to soar; press any button to blow wind; relax, enjoy.’ So you do.”
The game’s publisher, thatgamecompany, describes “Flower” as “another concept that challenges traditional gaming conventions” because of how “the surrounding environment, most often pushed to the background in games, is pulled to the forefront and becomes the primary ‘character,’” and explains that “hopefully by the end of the journey, you change a little,” which sounds kind of like a desirable effect of literature, too, no? Which is maybe why Kellee Santiago, the president and co-founder, says it is intended to be “the video game version of a poem.”
If it is in fact like a poem—which I am wiling to entertain because Santiago has pink hair and seems cool—then how and why? “Flower” sounds like something that would relieve stress in the same way that New Age music might, but also in the same way that Windows Minesweeper might. If that is an accurate assessment of the game, and the game DOES resemble poetry, then what does this suggest about poetry? It is interesting especially that Santiago does not identify herself as a poet necessarily, but reaches for poetry as a way to describe the thing she has helped make. What’s that about?
March 12, 2009
Flannery
Flannery O’Connor is one of the most visionary writers to ever walk the land, but there hasn’t been a major biography of her until now, with the arrival of Brad Gooch’s Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which I'm anxiously awaiting in the mail.
When I first read O’Connor, in college, I was knocked-out by her tragi-comic stories. I'd never read anything quite like it before and have read few things like it since. And behind her fantastically strange art, there was quite a peculiar life, one I’d known little about except for the more famous details: devout Catholicism, young death from lupus, love of peacocks. So I was happy to hear about Gooch’s book and also to come across a review by the ever-awesome Joy Williams in the NYT, where I learned that O’Connor sewed outfits for her chickens as a child, referred to her novels as “Opus Nauseous,” once sent Robert Lowell a five-foot long peacock feather, and believed “a writer with Christian concerns needed to take ever more violent means to get her vision across to them.” Those details alone were enough to make me hop over to Amazon and add Flannery to my virtual shopping cart.
March 11, 2009
This paragraph never happened
The recent discussion about the merits of public take-downs of poetry has put me in mind of a friend of mine who does music reviews for an online music company. His method of entertaining himself is to write the reviews of the CDs he doesn’t like in such a way as to subtly alert those who can read between the lines. I have idly read the blurbs on the back of poetry books for years in a like manner, searching for hints at the blurber’s true feelings about obligated blurbage. I think this aspect of poetry merchandizing would be more attractive if blurbs occasionally sunk to (or rose to) such heights:
As I said to my dry-cleaner, I, Correlative is so furiously irrelevant that it makes subatomic particles look torpid.
These poems took me back to my favorite dissociative episode with the surgical theatre soundtrack.
I predict that Metastic Chicken will have a longer shelf life than plutonium-infused jerky.
Postulate Agency formalizes head trauma and the power of its complicated oratory.
Never has the omission of personal pronouns been so electrifying.
The 3 and a half syllable lines of Five Quints have the delicate tint and ineffability of a Faberge egg executed in Silly Putty.
Nodule of Lower Forks gives gender all the subtlety and breadth of a Bazooka Joe comic strip.
The inverted ghazals of Tripoli Communiqué made me forget the sizzling line breaks of TV Guide.
March 4, 2009
Hatchet Job
A fair amount of debate on this blog has centered on whether or not it’s “worth it” to write negative reviews, particularly of poetry. “So many people don’t read poetry anyway,” goes the (kind of lame) argument of those who say it is NOT worth it, “so why bother telling them not to?” I think you bother telling them not to because an art that cannot judge itself in an honest and clear-eyed fashion can never be taken seriously. So that is why I had to share this, the best negative review I’ve read so far in 2009, and one of the most well-executed negative reviews I’ve ever read period: “The Anti-Whitman or Out of Many Me, Me, Me : Matthew Dickman’s All-American Poem” by Michael Schiavo over on The Unruly Servant.
Contrary to the title of this post, it’s not a hatchet job, really. The writer isn’t writing it because he has some kind of personal vendetta or because he gets off on being mean. Schiavo likes to like things. But from where he sits, “The phenomenon of the Dickman twins, Matthew and Michael, and specifically Matthew’s first book, All-American Poem, is too powerful to ignore. The collection is so very bad and the method by which the Dickmans have foisted themselves upon the American poetry establishment—and, in turn, by which the poetry establishment has foisted them upon the American public—should be looked at closely.”
Agreement or disagreement with his assessment of Matthew Dickman’s critically acclaimed book and career aside, I admire the way he articulates his belief not just that Dickman’s book—and his attitude toward poetry itself—is essentially offensive and dangerous, but also how and why it is this way, and how and why it is bad not merely in and of itself but Bad for Poetry in General. As one of the commenters, Matthew W. Schmeer puts it, “You know what I like about this review? That fact that you went to great lengths to essentially say ‘this is shit.’”
March 1, 2009
Pimping my friends
You know how sometimes when you're sad, you want to listen to sad music? Tonight when my Sunday blues hit but good, I decided to read some sad poems instead. And wow, were they ever sad. I'm excerpting below in case anyone else out there is in need of some cathartic crying. These sad, sad poems are from the elegiac Rising by Farrah Field and City of Moths by Sampson Starkweather, both of which I picked up at AWP (the books, not the authors). I highly recommend both in full (the books, and the authors).
Murder, An Ancient Mystery
[by Farrah Field]
What did you do today
and my self said my sister died.
A fist is a fist and blood spurts out the mouth
when the face is hit. I asked myself:
why does everything have to be about this.
Sonny said he'd rub my back. Sonny said
he thought it best not to say her name.
Grave markers don't come automatically.
There's a placard until the ordered stone
arrives with its ridiculous border
and raised words. Then it sinks enough
for a groundskeeper to mow it over without stopping.
from City of Moths
[by Sampson Starkweather]
The Queen's relationship with the King varies depending on the source of the story. In some, she loved him dearly. In others, she was portrayed as his unwilling prisoner in the Qua, or as a cruel, selfish woman who brought disaster to everyone around her. What we do know, is in the summer they met, they were constantly surrounded by water, a blessing, a gift, but of course it couldn't protect them from everything, unless, you think that it really could protect them from everything?
