Ms. Urban said some of the more lavish [publishing] practices could not be sustained by a slow-growth, low-margin industry that can’t charge luxury prices. “Books can only support a certain retail price,” she said. “It’s not like you have books that can be Manolo Blahniks and books that can be Cole Haan. Books are books. A book by James Patterson costs the same as a book by some poet.”
back to Normal
never too early in the year for the tabloid material: Sam Shepard with a DUI in Normal, Illinois.
It’s all pun and games till somebody loses an eye…
The cover of this month’s CONSCIOUS CHOICE, a magazine I pick up at the yoga studio, has this headline:
WE PITY THE FUEL
I’ve probably told this story on this blog before, but the great thing about blogs is that, unlike people, they can’t stop you when you say “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” Besides, no one ever does. Stop anyone. So, when I was at Stanford, I thought it was a very important thing for me to be proficient in all forms of writing, including comedy writing, at which I have never had any particular skill.
I decided to audition to be a comedy writer for the Stanford Band’s halftime shows. I wrote a script which was mostly composed of rhyming and punning jokes, and won one of the three slots. I got into the writers’ room only to discover that my two co-writers actually knew about the other elements of comedy…timing, plot, delivery…and all I could do was puns.
I didn’t write a word of the remaining scripts in the season. I participated in the process, and helped be that person you bounce ideas off of, but except for a few occasions when a pun was needed, I was S.O.L.
Still one of the best times I’ve ever had, and made me appreciate the work of comedy writing so much more.
Once again (oh come on, you know you like it):
WE PITY THE FUEL
2 + 6 = 8
Good morning, 2009. In the category of things-you’ve-always-meant-to-do: today I stopped in at 826 Chicago, the Midwestern outpost of the Eggersian armada of tutoring organizations / oddball emporiums, to see if I could volunteer as one of their writing tutors. I would like to get back to working with kids more.
The SF branch 826 sells pirate implements, but this one is a spy supply shop. It has the same assortment of McSweeneys-published items, though, the same delicious magazines and books. I felt like I was back on Valencia.
The man behind the desk was another one of these Chicago transplants I keep meeting, someone who moved here in the last year, who chose this city, not for a particular job, but for its generally high quality of life.
I think it’s a good sign that this 826 is walking distance from my home in Humboldt Park.
I hope this is the year, for all of us, of doing the things we always meant to do.
and one more thing:
As for rituals, I try not to ever say, “I can’t go out. I have to write.” When I’ve said that in the past inevitably I’ve ended up watching four hours of Forensic Files while the person I’ve said it to ends up writing their magnum opus.
– poet Jillian Weise interviewed in Bookslut
nothing further to report: the last poem of 08
Joel Brouwer’s A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY, from the 12/06 POETRY. You can also hear him pick his seven favorite love poems , or read more of his POETRYies. I have nothing to add to it. It seems to me like a poem that cannot be improved. I can’t say the same thing about 2008 – but then, I have nothing to add to it, either. Perhaps in that respect it is perfect, in that it is complete.
A Report to an Academy
by Joel Brouwer
And so among the starry refineries
and cattail ditches of New Jersey
his bus dips from egg-white sky into shadow.
When he next looks up from Kafka a blur
of green sanatorium tile flows by
then presto, Port Authority, full daylight.
He has been cheated of the river, dawn,
a considered fingering of his long
and polished rosary of second thoughts.
Is it any wonder children are born
weeping? Out to Eighth Avenue to walk
twenty blocks home to her sleeping curve
beneath a sheet. He cracks three eggs into
a bowl and says to each, Oh you got trouble?
The yellow yolk is his, the orange is hers,
the third simply glistens, noncommittal.
Except to mention Kafka’s restlessness
before his death, his trips from spa to spa
to country house to sanatorium,
and that she’s awake now, sweet with sleep sweat,
patting her belly’s taut carapace and yes
hungry as an ape but first a kiss mister
how was your trip and what have you brought us,
and that the knowledge that dooms a marriage
is the knowledge prerequisite to marriage,
the poem has nothing further to report.
it’s hip to be square
A friend reminds me that 9 is 3×3. We decide this is lucky.
It’s time
for 09.
Happy New Year, Blog.
we’re off to see the wizard, er, snow
Today and yesterday we have been snowless, or unsnowed – a heavy rain melted it all away. So when one of my friends in Los Angeles told me about driving to see the snow with her family, I was able to, with some nostalgia, remember when we did the same thing.
We’d all get into the car – my memory has the Isuzu Trooper, when it still functioned – and go up and up and up and up and up into the mountains until we arrived at the snow, usually a small patch on the ground. We’d get out, step in it, take a couple pictures, and then descend down the snail-shell spiral of the same road, back to the Valley, where it would be about 80 degrees. I think it’s key for people who live in insufferably warm places to do this, so that when your children grow up and move to Chicago, they can say, “Oh, yeah. That.”
Good times in warm climes. Another friend, recently returned from LA, reports that the hipsters there are wearing fur hats with ear flaps.
It’s so LA to drive to see the snow – if only because you need your car to do it.
reverse psychology
I am amused by writing prompts that tell you what they’re not interested in hearing about. “Please write 500 words, not about X, but about Y.” They always make me want to write either:
a) Theory of X
b) else about something entirely other than both.
The best writing prompt is “Tell us something that will surprise us.” Or: “Tell us something interesting.” Or, better yet, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
belated boxing day / friday poem
The Parents Poem
It’s a good idea to figure what to do with parents.
One man I knew, after caring for them for years,
Led them across a busy street—two lines of traffic.
He started a lost colony for his parents.
He bought them big boots and pith helmets.
He sent his parents into battle. He dressed
Them in Austrian uniforms and gave them
Maps of Russia. No one ever saw them again.
Another man built a furnace and put his parents
Into it. He got some tincture, and tried to tran-
Substantiate his parents. It took a long time
And used a lot of heat, but there wasn’t much change.
A neighbor stored them in an empty cistern—the ladder
Is still sticking out. He took them to Kenya
And got his parents to take a walk with the elephants.
And they died all right . . . But by the end,
They knew for sure that they’d had children.
– Robert Bly, in the Fall 08 Paris Review.
This poem gets to me a bit – I almost wasn’t sure whether to put it up. The furnace, and all that. But I think if it gets under my skin this much, it must be good. It’s a good example of what a friend and I were discussing recently – how to write a poem about something depressing without writing a poem that depresses.
Dara Weinberg 