CruelestMonth.com

Gwendolyn Brooks

Our company's scoff-inducing girth often steamrolls some of our more modest titles, which may, and does, lead one to believe that we're concerned only with golden-fleeced retrievers and the U.S. crime rate as related to abortion policy.  But it's not all pimp canes and Cadillacs.  Often tucked snugly in the downy folds of our list rests a gem like Gwendolyn Brooks's Selected Poems.  This collection includes A Street in Bronzeville (Harper & Row, 1945), her first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known; Annie Allen (1949), published one year before she won the Pulitzer Prize; and The Bean Eaters (1960), Brooks's fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of mainly poor urban blacks to the heroism and outrage of the early civil rights movement.  If you'd like a copy, I'm wililng to part with three of them.  So be one of the three by writing me at CruelestMonthPoetry@yahoo.com.  Now back to counting my money in the publishing industry's preferred denomination.

- MS

Light fare...

Don't ask me how I found this site.  Actually, you can.  CK told me about it.  Book Bags by Rebound Design.

And the latest Boldtype is up.  Glug, glug, you drunk bastard.

- MS

13 Ways of Looking at Humility

After witnessing many post-reading q&a's, I have come to see that there are 5-10 stock questions, guaranteed to come up.  There is some difference between the genres, for example, no one would ask a memoirist how he decided to have his three-legged dog get hit by a train.  But there's always a question about inspiration or the behind-the-book story, and one about which part is the author's favorite.  Then there are a bevy about how he writes: four hours at the page, everyday, holding a rubber ball, alone in the room, drunk, sober, high as a kite, in line at the supermarket on a tiny note pad, in crowded places, outline first, image first, on an empty stomach, before breakfast, after dinner, every three weeks, only on a new moon, when I can get out of bed, when I gosh darn feel like it. 

And, fellow audience members and writers alike, you can see yourselves there, can't you?  Feeling enlightened, enraptured, amused or smugly superior up until this moment, you suddenly find yourself leaning forward a little, listening more carefully: this is it--the formula, the spell that got this person from point A to point P, for Published, Podium, and Paid. 

For all the answers I'm sure we've all heard over the years, it's certain, if anything is certain about the writing process, that it's personal.  Nonetheless, one cannot deny the inspirational power of a reading, especially of hearing how another writer does his craft.  I think it has to do with knowing that there is a process, or at least a time line of semi-related events one could imitate. It's like a touchstone, or a kind of mantra, and hearing and then doing it have handfuls of benefits--best of all, you might get something done.

But seeking this particular kind of muse is tricky. Upon hearing the very personal story of an author and her craft, I have been tempted to take the advice word for word as greater, infalliable truths, probably because I believed, in my own vanity, that going to a reading and hearing this very appealing advice had to be some sort of divine incident, and these words were more like messages from some higher power rather than one other person's own experience.  Writing has always just seemed a little bit more profound to me--I get a touch mystical.

Now, I don't think Jane Smiley would call her experience "mystical."  But as someone who beat through a terrific bout of writer's block by reading hundreds of novels and then writing a 600 page book that "attempts to isolate the novel's essence," and ultimately function as a guide to reading and writing,I have to say I think she and I might have a thing or two to talk about. (Should we ever be fated to cross paths or what have you.)  In the Times Literary Supplement is a review of Ms. Smiley's new book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel and Michael Dirda's Book by Book. The review takes issue with the breadth of Smiley's book, saying that she really only comes up with "explanation" rather than "comprehensiveness," and in the end, her generalizations just don't do (and by definition can't do, I would add) justice to the very specific and highly personal nature of reading and writing. 

The reviewer goes on to champion Dirda, for his book highlights this very personal nature exactly.  And while I completely agree with the reviewer, I have to say I understand, at least the interest in finding those general truths about writing, and distilling them from all the material around us.  The reviewer bristled at the arrogance that this collection is built on--clearly you have to think something of yourself to narrow all the hundreds of critical perspectives on the novel to a whopping 13 (although I'm sure the Pulitzer Prize helped a little with that)--but it seems to me that seeking a model and an answer in the works of other writers is not only smart, but also, in a way, humble.  Why can listening to another person's thoughts on writing be so inspirational?  Perhaps because the distance that separates you and the author is large enough for you to be in awe, and short enough that it is most certainly attainable--the combination has always made me feel humble, like I am part of something much larger.

And that sentiment, in and of itself, is perhaps what would make Smiley's book worthwhile.  In the end, of course, there is more than one, more than 13 ways, of looking at it.

-AH

Coming Soon: David Barber on Cruelest Month

Next week, a mere handful of days from now, we'll have an interview with David Barber, poet and poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly.  He'll be discussing his new book, Wonder Cabinet, published just this spring by Northwestern University Press.  Praised by Linda Gregerson as a collection of poems that "are built on wonder, and beautifully produce it," the book reaches out across history for curiosities, muses, and moments, all brilliant and compelling, but so diverse, that I can only imagine that fate must have had a small hand in bringing them all together.  And in a short time, we will hear what Mr. Barber has to say on that. 

In the meantime, here are links to two poems in the collection.  The first, "Bambino Sutra," was published this year in The Atlantic Monthly.  At the site, you can also listen to Mr. Barber read the poem himself. The second, "Shades of Alexandria," was published in Ploughshares in 2001: "Creeping hours, turning leaves, cracked spines and paper cuts—/Here you spoke in whispers, and history held its breath." 

Enjoy, and look for more from David Barber coming soon!

-AH

Is this article trying to convince me of something?  Should I love this book?  Should I cover my bed with its pages and roll in its seductive importance?  "Verse to lull you and to wake you up."

- MS

Present Tense: Literary Artists & Performers Engaging Chaucer with Caroline Bergvall, Wendy Steiner, Susan Stewart.  Hosted by Charles Bernstein.  Friday, July 28th, 7pm.  @ Lowenstein 12th Floor Lounge, Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus.  113 West 60th Street, btw Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.  Admission Free.  Directions and Information can be found here and here.  (Courtesy of Poets House)

An Interview with Reb Livingston and Molly Arden of No Tell Motel

It's with great pleasure that I introduce Reb Livingston and Molly Arden.  Together they edit the online poetry magazine, No Tell Motel and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel , a collection of passionate poems published annually.  They met in 2003 while attending a luncheon for contributors of FU: An Anthology of Fuck You Poems.   

Reb's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2006, Coconut, MiPOesias and The Carolina Quaterly.  She is the author of two chapbooks, most recently, PTERODACTYLS SOAR AGAIN (Whole Coconut) and forthcoming, WANTON TEXTILES (No Tell Books), a collaboration with Ravi Shankar.

Molly's work has appeared in The Melic Review, Pen15, Front Range, and Big City Lit.  Her translations from Catullus have appeared in Classic Literature in Translation.

They were both kind enough to answer a few questions.

First question: who read the promotional spot for The Bedside Guide?  I mean, that was sexy.  I felt inappropriate listening to it at work.  Do you guys really talk like that?

Molly: I'll let Reb handle that one.  She's usually the one doing the handling anyway.  I hardly ever read like that.  I like it hard and tight and spoken in tongues - good for some spots but not so good for promotional ones.

Reb: Oh, I wish I sounded like that!  The promotional spot voice is Alice Ruvane, an actress living in NYC.  The spot was produced by Charles Orr and Maury Alamin did sound.

That was inappropriate for you to listen at work - tsk tsk.  It's probably obvious, but the spot is an homage to late night phone sex commercials.  I'm an insomniac and have been exposed to thousands of them.  If you stay very still and quiet you can hear my subconscious singing Pick up the phone.  I'm all alone.

Moving on.  I'm guessing that your experience editing The Bedside Guide was a pleasant one, because, after publication, you were inspired to launch your own press - No Tell Books.  Was the experience indeed pleasant?  And what can we expect from No Tell Books?

Molly: Again, here I have to give Regina (see Melinda) the praise she is due.  Other than a few minor editorial duties, my job was to finger the submissions and to fashion a rejection letter that was less kind than the version Reb had originally written.  Our introduction was a true manage a deux.

Reb: Editing The Bedside Guide was gratifying on many levels from reading all the submissions, selecting pieces from No Tell Motel, working with the contributors, with our cover designer Robin Vuchnich-Salerno and Charlie Orr our promotional spot director.  Everyone involved was excited and supportive of the project.  So how could we not go back for more?

I'm doing No Tell Books as a solo project, although that's a bit deceptive because all No Tell Books authors come to us from either No Tell Motel of The Bedside Guide - and Molly is of course very involved in that.  I always wanted to start a poetry press, but wasn't sure if I could do it - so I decided to start with one book, an anthology, as a test.

It worked.  I'm hooked.  This fall No Tell Books will publish two full length collections, Elapsing Speedway Organism by Bruce Covey and The Attention Lesson by PF Potvin as well as two chapbooks, Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home by Rebecca Loudon and Wanton Textiles a collaboration by Ravi Shankar and myself.  In January there will be a new Bedside Guide and Shafer Hall's Never Cry Woof.  I have a stack of manuscripts I'm considering for fall 2007.  No Tell Books will not be doing any open calls for manuscripts or contests (yuck - save your $20 and buy poetry books).  If you want my attention, send work to the online magazine or anthology.

Reb, I read the interview you had with MiPOesias and discovered that people who throw trash out their car windows "bug the hell out of you."  This interests me because whenever I happen upon the type of base, inconsiderate bastard who blithely does his or her bit to trash the world, I tend to lose my head (if you couldn't tell).  And, well...I lost track of where I was going with this question.  If you caught someone dumping their trash in a stream, what would you do?  Or, better yet, what would you do to them?

Molly: It is my firm belief that the real trash is the highway or road or developed world itself.  The herds of sheep driving to National Parks in order to experience "nature" are the real travesty - not the litter they leave behind.  I am one of those cunts who throws her gum wrappers out the sunroof - but only when I'm in someone else's neighborhood.  If I'm local, I not only do not litter, I spend part of each day collecting other bastard's trash and have before called the 5-0 on a gentleman I found dumping garbage bags into the woods at the far corner of my property.

Reb: I really hate people throwing trash out their car windows.  Once when I was dating my now husband he threw a cup onto the highway and it was almost the end of our relationship.  He's never done it again.  At least not in my presence.  I suppose he could be sneaking around behind my back littering everyday on his way to work.  I don't like to make threats, so I won't here, but if I ever discovered his secret litter-bug nature, it would not be a pleasant time for either of us.

Back on track.  What books are you reading now?  Are they good?  Or do you not have time to read anything but submissions?

Molly: Poetry: Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man, by Jim Cummins and David Lehman - I've worked with both poets on a couple of projects and so I enjoy the work for personal reasons but also for the mellifluous and almost mysterious way the work moves from one poet to the other while never leaving the rigid mattress of the sestina.

I will always be reading Elizabeth Bishop.  Something of the inner librarian in me keeps her on the bedside year round.

Fiction: Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir, by Maryann Tirone Smith.  This book was recommended to me by a writer friend after a long discussion about James Frey.  Oprah's Pollyanna bullshit indignity and Frey's noble effort to explain and accept whatever load of forged shame she was attempting to discharge on him as a result of her overwhelming need to believe in fairytales was vivifying to me.  Modern culture is creative non-fiction.  I suspect that most memoir writers are probably guilty of some degree of Frey-ism but go undetected only because they fall under the Oprah-radar.  And thank God for that.

I read in bed.  So, if it's not good, I find something better to do.

Reb: Recently I read the eerily beautiful Vaudeville by Allyssa Wolf and was completely knocked over by it.  Alyssa was one of the first poets published from the No Tell slush pile back in 2004.  Right now I'm reading Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future by Jason Epstein for obvious reasons.

When I'm in doubt or feeling weak, I go back to Frank O'Hara.

When accepting work who is the good cop?  Bad cop?

Molly: I'm not sure that "Bad cop" even captures it.  I'm a wicked cop.

Reb: I'm a naughty cop.

In all seriousness, our tastes do diverge a bit, but so far that seems to be a good thing.  Molly has really opened my eyes to different ways of approaching poems. There are a handful of poets we would not have published if it were entirely up to me and that would have been a big loss for No Tell.

Do you consider drinking alcohol while reading submissions unprofessional?

Molly: Yes.  However, reading them in the bathtub with one hand submerged is only marginally unprofessional.

Reb: My senses go flat when I imbibe and that's no good for considering poems or making out.

What two poets would you like to see in a fist fight?  Of the two, who wins?

Molly: I never want to see anyone in a fist fight.  I'd love to see Dylan Thomas and Charles Bukowski get drunk and rage together.  There are never any winners in games such as these.

Reb: Yeah, make poems, not war.

Are these questions ridiculous?  Wait, don't answer that.  Well, you can, but be kind.  Anyway, do you have any other projects that you can share with us?

Molly: The only ridiculous question that you haven't asked is what kind of tree I would be, were I a tree.  The answer to that question is a Sugar Maple Tree.  Anyone who really knows me will vouch that to get to my sugar you've really got to boil the shit out of my sap.  But I'm blazing hot in autumn.

I have a new project I'm working on with David Lehman involving classic literature in translation.

Reb: I'd be a tomato plant.

Aside from publishing poems in No Tell everyday and putting out a bunch of books, my only other project is my new poetry manuscript that I re-title about once a week.

Last question: If you were given the chance to say the last line of a movie, right before the picture faded black to the credits, what would you want the line to be?

Molly: "Madness!"

Reb: "Pick up the phone.  I'm all alone."

- MS

Hi Mom, It's Me!

Ok, now that I got that out of my system--being non-anonymous is so refreshing!

Anyway, one rainy night, several months ago, I fell into a conversation at a party with a young man. Our subject was contemporary poetry in the city of New York, and as we traded names and anecdotes, he edged our introductory chit-chat into an intellectual round of one-potato-two-potato. 

In my time in these coarsely competitive north-eastern cities, I have learned that never more than between a straight male and female of certain professional sets, when each player is of significant physical and/or mental appeal, is a game of name dropping and one-up-man-ship the ultimate recourse of conversation.  This may be because we all feel like frightened lambs, or because we enjoy competition, or because we've had one too many beers and we can't remember our manners.

Locking horns with him when he resorted to a patronizing and dismissive gesture towards my pride in my corporate publishing house (he, of course, is associated with a much nobler academic press), was very tempting. But, having been in his place, and realizing that this was an after school special about to happen, I backed-off, and asked him only about himself.

It turns out that he not only helps coordinate a poetry series at one of our favorite bookstores, McNally Robinson, but also is the bright and decent human being I suspected he was.  We exchanged email addresses and he put me on the list for his reading series--how thoroughly equitable and modern! The series looks great, though, and I suggest you check it out.  This is his blog, on which he posts the dates of the readings and a bit about each poet. I hope to be in attendance one of these nights.  Maybe we'll even get to chat about him...and poetry.

-AH

Checking in for a bit of housekeeping.  Both Abi and I have, until now, humbly neglected to leave a nom de plume at the bottom of each post. This modesty has confused our mothers and denied us the satisfaction of seeing our initials. So from now on, posts will be attributed to their author.  Like so...

- MS (glorious)

Two books, same alley

From Rain Taxi's review of Jim Goar's Whole Milk (Effing Press, 2006):

"This plainspoken surrealist fairy-tale could be a lesson in matter-of-fact nightmares, replacing Mother Goose with a bird flushed from spending too much time at the bar. Part dark Western, part Lemony Snicket, it’s the kind of story Russell Edson would tell his children before bed and has plenty of stark, black-and-white drawings by Josh Rios to make the experience authentically disturbing."

From some descriptive copy:

"This rediscovered collection of essays by Virginia Woolf was inspired by her favorite London walks. These six essential essays capture Woolf at her best, exploring modern consciousness through the prism of 1930s London, while simultaneously painting an intimate, touching portrait of this sprawling metropolis and its fascinating inhabitants."