Department of Instastories

Picture # 32
She drove herself 45 miles south, 5 miles west, for no particular reason. Then she moved over into the passenger seat. She sat there for a while. What was she doing here? She watched a green pickup roar by, watched a crow pick at a little mass of feathers of dust at the edge of a field. She turned on the radio and landed on a throaty country singer, a woman with a hoist the beermug kind of voice, a wise cracking voice, sing I'm a git on the road gal. That's what she was doing here. The sun streamed in. Godrays fell into her lap. She moved back into the driver's seat, and drove them back, 5 miles to the east, 45 miles to the north.

On reading with a poet

I'm reading with the poet Iris Litt at the Woodstock Poetry Society (6/9, at 2). Aside from the question on regional writing (still avoiding that one), I get asked whether or not I identify at all with poets. The question is levied, sometimes, after I've read a shorter piece, and the reader/listener is forced to make the same leaps as she might in certain poems. The answer is kind of yes. The truth is that I love poets. For one thing, some are very good at adding that reverent "w" sound into the word poet or poetry: so it sounds like poe-wet, or poe-wet-tree. JJ Wilson does that as smoothly as she mentions another remarkable moment, her darlng, literary repartee that makes her guests all feel part of our own marvelous moment. The "w" gives the words a shamanistic, native-esque kind of resonance. Maybe it's from living in Tucson, where poetry filled the air, and listening to a poet like Joy Harjo, or Leslie Marmon Silko (and thar goes regionalism on its strawhatted way), and feeling, Now here is someone who really does know the importance of the dust, the bush, the laugh lines in the sky.



For another thing poets are sometimes experts at economy, and allowing their imagination only certain roads: like an exclusive gps system, and for another thing they often seem to be able to merge work life and poetry life very well. Even the grand edgy conundrums take 10 words, not 140, and that is a model for living in any ilk, at least to me. But I use the use "seem" because these kind of generalizations, of course, are really, really wrong. Poets seem better at sipping, not gulping whiskey (with a nod to Dylan Thomas,

who gulped so that others could sip). Poets seem better at small talk. Maybe poets are just more fun. Everything does not seem like a terribly ironic, disturbing, enervating situation; an occasion where a bad mood might trigger that golden first line of that remarkable story about chucking it all and going to work in a cannery and falling in love with the foreman.

Or maybe that slightly distracted manner some of us have is just the awareness that time is clutching at our sleeves to sit back down and get back to work. Because writing fiction takes a long time.

The way poets treat language may have to do with it: bending rules to make language swing, refuting morays of copy style for the urgencies of line music, rhythm, that mental beat, the mindset or the narrative or narrator. But many fiction writers do this anyway. Many--the ones I love.

We're not as far away from each other as you might think, I'll say next time.

Just got asked if I thought of myself as a regional writer.

Note to Harley

Harley, the lines you were looking for were from Why I Got Fired (p. 71 in the book or online at sporkpress):

Stopped mid-dip just staring out at the voice in the room. Stopped and let myself think. Amazed under the lights. Thinking, there it is. What I've been missing. My launchpad, my gatecard, my carkey, my doorbell. A reason to fight.

Russian Lover and Other Stories

That below, as well as in proximity, is the book cover. The book is out--very soon. It's collected short stories. They were collected, but that sounds as if they were tucked here and there in a tidy old house. They were more like rounded up, some just needing some grooming and a good meal, others a whole new way to go. Some are very short (Tremor), and others quite long (Russian Lover, the title story, written as a series of letters). For an interesting review of Tremor, see Dan Wickett's litblog, Emerging Writers Network.

I previewed the book with a reading and symposium in California to about 100 students and assorted devoted reader people at NorthLight Books, a great indie bookstore in the tradition of such institutions. To all my wonderful ginea pigs, smart as they come, thak you. Thank you Sonoma State, and Hutchins School, and Barbara Lesch McCaffry with no e. And marvelous JJ Wilson, the Virginia Woolf Scholar, who laughed at the jokes and later, had a dinner, and made the most astounding, intelligent salad. The greens seemed to want to bite back--but playfully. I have never seen my father, veteran of 2 wars, enjoy bean soup quite like that.

JJ, by the way is heavily involved in the Sitting Room, a remarkable center for reading and women writers. Worth a visit, and I'm due for one myself.

The cover of the book is a painting by Steve SAS Schwartz--the other half is on the back.
and the design is by Patricia Fabricant.

Both great talents and wonder to work with.

There are blurbs on the back: one by the great Sam Lipsyte, one by the indomitable Lydia Millet. Thanks to them. Beyond thanks. I have been compared (see the VerseChorusPress page) to writers like TC Boyle and Margaret Atwood. Someday everyone wants another writer to be compared to them, not the other way around. Or not. How I wound up in such amazing company is like pondering the great primordial blessing, the proverbial horse's mouth, like looking at the teeth of Blue Hors Matine. More on that, the wondermare, another. SAS has always used mare as in nightmare, one of the best shorthands I've ever heard. I retain my faith in people to concoct their own language. I remain a convert to the written word.

After she died I lost my voice. Maybe she was my muse. Or someone to fight against. Maybe it was the process of finishing a book so quickly. She was in the hospital, out of the hospital, I was down in the city, back up here. It is months later. 7, going on 8.

Time, someone said, is so inhuman.

I am coveting a vintage fringed suede jacket in superficial moments, of which there are about 1 in 170 right now. Many moments are remembering the white room, the white light. One of the stories will have to bathe its pages in that light. And meanwhile Cabela's is selling a cowgirl jacket for 70 dollars and the tough thrifter in me has a moment herself and says, I think 20 would be right.

When he walked in, I sneezed.

People of the morning: Michael P. Nordberg (Tucson), Mary Schwab (NYC Brooklyn), Nancy Martin (NYC Brooklyn). Endeavors: Eric Sanko's puppet show. Richard Siken's everything. There is a difference between an artist who soaks everything up and spits it out in her own color and the person who is a sponge and can't stop. You can see where this might go on those self=doubting days.

The sun on the wet road this morning was worth soaking up. The scarlet berries of the wahoo bush outside. The particular grin on the old dog's face in the photograph as she pants, happily, her paw on the log she just spent the last hour fetching.

And my mother being very very sick, as I am getting the book done, as she is reading it, as she warns me: some people may not like this, you know.

Books by the following would help the desert island situation:
Richard Siken, Elaina Ganim, Sam Lipsyte, Joy Williams, Hugh Steinberg, Alf Evers, Lydia Millet, Denis Johnson, Mike McGonigal, Harold Martin

People sometimes ask how I write. I'm working on the Perforation story, started as a prose poem, and then life got in the way as it often does, in the form of this need to populate, explain, depict, breathe in oxygen and not just language. All the doctors in the story are real doctors, but I'm sure someone's going to say something like, "There are no doctors like this."

First real snowfall, 8 inches, fell fast. The road I live on lies in a bona fide hollow between two mountains, and it's about 300 years old. Up this way there are about 10 houses and a trailer spread out over about 3 miles to the end of the road, which used to continue all the way up through the pass, but now it's a hiking trail.
A few families lived on this road for hundreds of years, though few are left, among them my closest neighbors. Some of his older brothers and sisters were born in the house I live in. The birthing room was where the kitchen sink is now.
When the snow stopped everybody came outside who could, comparing notes on the snowstorm. How many inches, 6, 9? Near a foot? My closest neighbor said, Not even winter yet. His wife said, Just so long as I don't wind up in the hospital. Too many people in the hospital these days. She said she hoped 2006 be a better year for everybody. Turned to the mailorder catalogue she calls her wishing book, pointed out snowboots for $14.95.
Everyone's got their wishing book. And there is no question that there are ghosts around here just as there is no question there are bears around here. The ancestors watch over the living just as the snow falls in the hollow. Sometimes a name will slip into conversation when it has no business in there at all, but the oldtimers say that's just so-and-so, tapping on your shoulder.

photo: Marcus Leatherdale

Clinton for president again.

December 7, Miami: Luggage belonging to Rigoberto Alpizar, 44, is blown up after air marshals shot and killed Alpizar on the runway at Miami International Airport. Bullets were used on the human,
a bottle of water was used on the luggage.
No bombs were found.