Category Archives: Blog

Richard Bader On Recovery

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Richard Bader

One reason I like seeing my work in the r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal is that it looks so good here, artfully placed and presented and accompanied by actual art. Another is that I feel so at home. I seem to be unable to write a story without “recovery” playing a starring role. Recently I’ve written stories featuring frogs, parakeets, bowling, a woman on death row, and, in this latest issue of r.kv.r.y., people on a bathroom break, and recovery themes are everywhere. Recovery has been a major force in my life, so this makes sense.

But just how deeply embedded in fiction is the idea of recovery? Or to put it a different way, if you take away all fiction containing the theme of recovery, isn’t the body of work you’re left with deeply and sadly diminished?

“Recovery,” my online dictionary says, is “a return to a normal state of health, or mind, or strength.” The struggle for that “return to normal” has an impressive track record of making fiction compelling that extends at least as far back as Homer. Beautiful woman is abducted from her homeland. Homeland seeks to “recover” her. Beautiful woman’s face launches a thousand ships. Armies collide. People die horrible deaths. Heroes are made.

The Iliad.

In Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” poor insectified Gregor Samsa may fail in his effort to “return to a normal state of health,” but his struggle in that direction is heartbreakingly present. And his eventual demise signals a “return to normal” for his family, for which they’re grateful. They recover from him.

In what’s arguably the most studied short story ever written, Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” Robert, the narrator’s wife’s visiting friend—a friend who earlier has helped the wife recover after an attempted suicide—may be physically blind, but he’s the one who guides the narrator past his own narrow-minded blindness about life toward new insight and awareness, and in doing so brings them both (aided by alcohol and pot) to a state of grace. “Recovery,” in other words. Or, if not precisely recovery, since it’s debatable whether the narrator ever had the qualities he gains at the end, at the very least a sort of uncovery.

The driving force in Moby-Dick is recovery’s darker cousin: revenge. Ahab can’t recover the leg he’s lost, but he can try to get even with the creature that took it from him, and it’s his lust for revenge that drives the plot. Score settling becomes its own kind of recovery.

Or, to move away from fiction studied in college classrooms and toward the fiction of best-seller lists, take Stephen King’s The Shining. Jack drags his family to a mountain hotel where he’s been hired as caretaker for the winter, seeking recovery from both his alcoholism and his flagging writing career. And OK, things don’t work out so well for Jack, but the theme is there, in Jack and in his wife and young son, who struggle toward what stands for “normal” in a Stephen King novel.

Just how prevalent is recovery in fiction? “Normal” makes for lousy fiction, so it makes sense that upsetting the normal, and struggling to return to it, would be common. But is recovery in most fiction? Is it possible to find it in all fiction, if you dig hard enough? Or is recovery simply one of those things that once you start thinking about it, you see it everywhere, like Ford trucks when you’re considering buying one?

All of this points to another reason I like being published in r.kv.r.y.—it puts me in such good company. And maybe that’s the neat trick of this publication. While appearing to narrow, it in fact opens up whole vast worlds of the fictional universe.

 

Richard Bader‘s fiction has been (or is about to be) published by the Burningword Literary Journal, SN Review, and National Public Radio. This is his second story for r.kv.ry. He lives and writes in Towson, Maryland.

Interview with Kevin Winchester

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Kevin Winchester

Eugene Cross: Your story “Like Juliet and Romeo” is such a quietly moving piece. So much is left unsaid and I felt that contributed to the overall power of the prose. Can you talk a bit about the inspiration for, or origins of this story?

Kevin Winchester: Thanks. This story emerged from a couple of different places. I wrote another story a year or so back, “Waiting on Something to Happen,” and the main character, Joe, is trying to find his way in the world after his wife passes away. I approached the revisions of that story with the idea of Keats’ negative capabilities in mind. I understood how his theory applied to poetry, how the poets employed it, and the challenge of integrating that into fiction intrigued me. Sure, doing that in fiction is nothing new, but it wasn’t—isn’t—something that was in my writing tool box, so I wanted to explore it. And in “Waiting…” Joe very much seemed to be a man not only “capable of being in uncertainties,” as Keats put it, but a man convinced that all was uncertainty. And yet, as a character, he was a very pragmatic man, a man who tried to live his life based on fact and reason, which made it even more challenging for me. I finished that story and it turned out okay I guess—it won the 2013 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Award, which kinda implies the story was finished—but I had a hard time moving past it, something about it wouldn’t leave me alone. Joe’s wife, Patty, wasn’t in the first story in any corporeal way, only a brief and vague flashback, a memory at best, nothing that gave her much of a physical presence. But, she was real for Joe, and for me, too, I suppose. I worked on some other pieces, toyed with some ideas, and I noticed most of those ideas revolved around characters that felt oddly familiar. I began to see the possibilities for linked short stories. Thematically, I thought I “had it,” thought I knew what I was doing, but I couldn’t generate much momentum in the other stories. Finally, I saw that what really linked the ideas was Patty, the themes, setting, stories, all of it; without Patty, there was no connection. I stopped drafting the other pieces and focused on Patty. I didn’t want to move back in time, back to a period when she was alive, because I found how everyone else lived with her absence much more compelling—their recovery, in a manner of speaking. As the comics say, death’s easy, you know? I eventually saw the obvious—Patty speaking as an absent narrator allowed me to explore negative capabilities even more, which led to “Like Romeo and Juliet.” My hope then, at least in regard to my hopes of achieving that negative capability, was that the authority of Patty, the unnamed, absent, yet vaguely omniscient narrator, would enhance that sense of power. And, I had to let her tell a part of the larger story before I could move on to the other pieces. Likewise, she needs to have this conversation with Joe so he can move on, too.

 

EC: From the changing of the seasons to sunset in Florence to that arresting image of the hawk striking the rabbit, the natural world plays heavily in your work. How does setting and nature affect your writing?

KW: The old saying is “write what you know,” and that’s pretty much all I know. I’ve tried to step out of that sensibility occasionally, but I just can’t do it. I’ve probably spent more time outdoors than inside over the course of my life. It’s where I’m most comfortable. For me, moving away from the natural world dampens the senses, blurs the lines, reduces everything to shadow or silhouette. I find a sharpness in Nature that provides clarity. I used to rock climb— combining a vertical granite face, three or four hundred feet of exposure and gravity will make you see things pretty clearly. And too, I’m a Southerner, a Southern writer (whatever that means anymore). It all starts with a sense of place, both on the page and in my life. So, I suppose you could say that setting and Nature affect all aspects of my writing, or at least, it informs all aspects of my writing. For instance, when story ideas first come to me, I see a character. Most times, that character is either outside, in nature, literally, or is being affected by natural forces.

 

EC: I really loved the point of view in “Like Juliet and Romeo,” that direct address to the narrator’s distanced love. What led you toward this?

KW: It started with that idea of experimenting with negative capabilities. But more directly, I knew that the narrator was Patty, Joe’s wife from the other story, and I knew she was dead. The other character in “Like Juliet and Romeo,” the one the narrator speaks to, is Joe, and obviously, he knows she’s dead. But, nobody else knows that. I realized the challenge would be getting the story to work on its own merit through the absent narrator whether the reader knew the first story or not. Also, I wanted the story to be successful, to carry the same—or more, power, whether the reader realized the narrator was dead or simply somewhere else. In the early drafts, the POV was a more traditional 3rd and it didn’t work. Walker Percy used a type of second person POV in Lancelot, one of my favorite novels, and I drew on that work. I kept tinkering with that in mind, and eventually, this pseudo-2nd person POV emerged, the voice clicked in my ear, and I knew I had it. It was completely different than Percy’s narrator, it’s still a 3rd person POV, but it was his work that started me in this direction.

 

EC: Elvis, Maybelle Carter, a German band playing American rock and roll. What role does music play, not just here, but in your work as a whole? How does your life as a musician influence your life as a writer and vice versa?

KW: Music influences my writing as much as Nature does, probably more. I come from a musical family; music has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember. There’s always a song of some sorts playing in my head, I hear a rhythm in everything, everything— dialogue, water flowing, typing my response right now… While most of my story ideas first appear with a character outside, in Nature, the ideas never move beyond that until I hear the main character clearly. The way they speak, the cadence, the rhythm, the melody of their syntax establishes a soundtrack and everything rises from that. I hear the soundtrack thing in my head as I write. For me, everything about Voice is rooted in my musical sensibilities, whether it’s a character’s dialogue or the overarching voice of a piece. The relationship is more direct, too. The idea for the story I mentioned earlier, “Waiting on Something to Happen,” came from a line in the Shovel’s and Rope song, “Keeper.” The line described a guy who was “waiting on something that hadn’t happened yet.” That line stuck with me, I kept wondering what he was waiting on, and eventually I had the story. And vice versa? An old story of mine, “Baby Boy,” nagged at me for a couple years after I finished it. Eventually, I wrote a song called “Elijah” that explored the theme and character from the story in a completely different way. And in general, I’m always striving to write stories the way Jason Isbell, John Prine, Guy Clark, Darrell Scott, Robert Earl Keen write songs, and I try to write songs the way Ron Rash, Denis Johnson, Chad Simpson, Claudine Guertin, and you write stories.

EC: What’s your creative process like? Any favorite spots to write, talismans or rituals you utilize?

KW: Hmm, my creative process? Who knows? Mule-headed-ness helps. It’s work, you know? Every day, sit down at the computer, turn it on, start pounding the keys, guzzle coffee, swear, doubt myself, keep putting words on the page, keep herding sentences into little paragraph-like piles and hope they’re worth revising later. During semesters, I usually write for about an hour or so early mornings. Summers are better. I spend mornings outside, trying to coax vegetables from almost an acre of red clay, then write for several hours in the afternoon. I usually write at home, where I have a small office. It’s really more a cluttered closet stacked with books, notes, my computer, and room enough for me and Cooper, my dog, but it works. Sometimes I’ll go in early and write at work. Talismans or rituals? Hmm, again. Not really. Okay, I’ll admit I have minor OCD tendencies, all the light switches in the house have to point downward before I can begin, but I’m not that superstitious and don’t put much store in that sort of thing. Well, except Voodoo, ‘cause, you know, Voodoo is real. But, that’s such a demand on your time, what with all the rituals, incantations, and chickens, so I usually stick with the light switch thing. Other than that, for the most part, it’s just: sit down and write.

 

EC: Is this story part of a larger collection in the works? What future projects are simmering for you right now?

KW: I think so, hope it will be. I’m working on other short stories with the idea of them being part of the linked collection I mentioned. It’s still in the early stages, getting to know the other characters and such, and I’m certain there are several stories yet to be written. Hopefully, over the next year or so they’ll emerge and the collection will hold together. I have a novel manuscript completed, but I ended my last agent relationship, and I’m only casually looking for a new agent for that manuscript. I’ve also joined in a new, collaborative music project—an Americana band we’re calling the Flatland Tourists (Yes, you can follow us on Facebook! Thanks for asking.). I’m writing and co-writing material for that project. We’re hoping to get a CD out in the world late this year, early next year. We have material now and we’re just starting to go out and play those tunes around locally, but it’s new and fresh and I’m really enjoying writing with these folks, so new material keeps coming. Between that and the short stories, I have plenty of writing projects to keep me busy for a while.

 

 

EUGENE CROSS is the author of the short story collection “Fires of Our Choosing,” which was long listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and was named the Gold Medal winner in the Short Story category by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His stories have or will appear in Glimmer Train, Narrative Magazine, American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callaloo, among other publications. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as fellowships from Yaddo and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He can be found online at www.eugenecross.com

Interview with Monica Wendel

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Monica’s three-part prose poem The Lightning appears in the January issue.What is your biggest challenge as a writer?Not falling into despair. Is that melodramatic? I get overwhelmed easily.Are these poems part of a larger work?Yes — they are part of a series of five prose poems, which are forthcoming in my chapbook Pioneer (Thrush Press). I wrote them in Florida, about Florida. The three you see in r.kv.r.y. I wrote at the hotel pool with my boyfriend, his father, and his stepmother. 

What did you think of the artwork selected to illustrate your piece? Did it have any special meaning for you?

Pairing representational art with my poems was unexpected. I live with abstract artists and am more likely to find myself surrounded by shapes and colors rather than landscapes and people.

That said, I loved how the painting was dramatic and universal, since watching (and listening) to lightning is both of those things. It seems that anyone can relate to those moments of fear and anticipation, and the painting is another way of entering into that experience.

What is your writing process? Do you have one?

Since January 2013 I’ve lived in five different places, and it’s hard, if not impossible, to find a process amidst all that change.

Still, I write best in public, around the noise of people and music and espresso machines. Usually writing invokes waking up early and drinking coffee, then rewarding myself with a walk or a run. Normal stuff. Writing is boring and hard work, just like anything else.

And finally, what does recovery mean for you?

Again, back to this idea of the boring. That recovering, from a breakup or an injury or addiction, just means that you can go back to the hard work of everyday living. That you have to pick up your dog’s shit and be nice to the telemarketer and make rent and buy groceries. It can be disappointing to move out of crisis — like there should be a different person waiting at the other end. But of course, you only end up becoming yourself.

Discussion with Alexa Mergen

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Alexa Mergen

I live with journalist Matt Weiser. We talk about books and writing a lot of the time. Lately we’ve been comparing notes on how the process of writing straight news contrasts with composing poems and essays. Below is a piece of the conversation from Sunday, February 2, 2014. 
~Alexa Mergen, author of Cells of Solitude

Alexa: It’s Sunday morning and news broke on your beat. You spent much of the day writing a story for The Sacramento Bee. What’s it like as a writer to turn an event into a story within hours?

 

Matt: Even though I have a deadline, I have to forget about that. Worrying about how little time I have will just be a preoccupation and get in the way of everything I have to do.

What’s it like for you to work without an event, and produce a poem without a deadline?

 

Alexa: Events for me occur in a moment: an image of a neighbor looking at a bird, or a line that lands from nowhere in my ear. I have to allow these things to ripen in their own time. Some poems, the rare ones, are written in hours. Others have taken me decades.

In a decade, you write thousands of news stories reaching millions of people. What’s it like to have so many readers? We poets are fortunate if a few see our words.

 

Matt: Sometimes it feels like a big responsibility. It’s also a privilege. But it also feels very anonymous at times. That’s because with the kind of writing I do I don’t really form a personal bond with the readers. Instead we bond around these news events that affect us all but are often kind of fleeting.

When you’re writing a poem, how do you come up with images that are lasting, and how do you make them resonate for your readers?

blue-and-green-music-(Cells of Solitude)

Alexa: Actually writing a poem is a tiny part of the process of making a poem. Most of the work is preparation. I intentionally make myself permeable so that my senses are heightened. The images end up being both particular and universal, hopefully lasting, because of this willingness to feel. Through practice, you learn the skill of how far to stretch an image in the poem and how images work together.

How do you make a news story lyrical so that the writing flows even as you are conveying facts ordered logically?

 

Matt: I remind myself to include details that can be felt by the senses. That means how something looked, what the weather was like or something about a person’s behavior. And I also use direct quotes from the people I interview to convey emotion and convey the fact that these are real people speaking.

You are a heavy reader of news stories. What is it about writing essays and poetry that makes them different lyrically from journalism?

 

Alexa: In writing essays and poems, I’m not at all bound by linear time. Both essays and poems can occur as spirals of recursive ideas or, as in this r.kv.r.y essay, “Cells of Solitude,” like strung beads. Sound, rhythm, pattern, images and connotation link ideas together in poems. Whereas when I read a news story, I want all the information to be firmly grounded in the present of current events and situated in a historical context.

Featuring Ann Hillesland

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Ann Hillesland

“Singing is like meditation—you breathe in and out, you have to be in the here and now.  And yet performing is something more.  I think of it as projecting my energy outward to the audience.  Here is my love of this music, the emotion it brings out in me.  Please share in it too.

Writing is like both of these aspects.  When you are in the zone, writing is like singing, the eternal present.  But it is also projection to the audience.  In fiction, I’m hoping that people will understand and care about the characters as much as I do.  In nonfiction, I’m putting myself and my emotions out there and hoping that people understand me and that they won’t be bored.

Because this piece, “Wunnerful, Wunnerful, Fabulous,” combines these two interests, singing and writing, it possesses a kind of duality—doubly in the moment, doubly projecting outward—that’s strange for me, like out-of-alignment binoculars.

If you’ve already read the essay, you may have formed an idea of what the singing group, the JewelTones, is like.  Now you too can experience a duality—your vision of the JewelTones can come up against the real thing.  The following short video was produced by a local public access video group about the JewelTones.  The videographers filmed us mostly at typical gig: a 90th birthday party in a carport on a hot day.  We are costumed for the 40s (not in our fabulous long red dresses as in the essay) and singing songs from the 40s and 50s.  Here are the real JewelTones, sweating on a makeshift stage.  Here is our love of this music.  I hope you enjoy it.”

–Ann Hillesland

Interview with Margot Taylor

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Margot Taylor

Joan Hanna: We were so excited to have your Short “The Knock Down” in our October Issue. Can you share with our readers a little about your writing process?

Margot Taylor: I try to write most days – just like with physical exercise it gets harder the longer I go without doing it. Even so, facing the blank page, I often have to tell myself it’s okay to write badly, much better than not writing at all, and I can always bin the result. Then I usually write quickly and without thinking too much about it. If I find I have something I like I’ll do an edit, put the piece aside, revise it again, sometimes many times, far too many times, so that the revision stage also becomes a sticking point for me! Despite all this I love writing, especially when it’s going well.

 

JH: Can you talk a little about how this story came about?

MT: I wrote it for one of Zoetrope’s weekly Flash Factory gigs. The challenge was to write a story in less than 500 words to include the words ‘blood orange, wend, frosted, guppies and raw’. ‘Wend’ made me think of rivers. We’d just come back from a sailing holiday in which we’d spent a lot of time up rivers or tied up in port as the wind had been so strong. One day a small sailing boat came in with a young couple on board who were very shaken, having had a knock-down out at sea. Despite being cautious sailors my husband and I talk about setting off one day across the Atlantic. So the story is based on our sailing experiences and dreams, but the prompt words forced me to take that imaginative leap away from telling it exactly as it happened. All the prompt words ended up in the fantasy blogging section, although I later edited out one or two.

 

JH: I was so fascinated that this story is as much about disintegration as it is about acceptance. Can you go into a little more detail about this couple?

MT: Sarah had a wrong idea about the sort of person her husband was. He too had a wrong idea about who he was. It’s tough when you realize that your personality may limit what you can achieve, so John’s the one I feel for more. However, I was writing from Sarah’s point of view, and she copes with her disappointment in him by creating a fictional version of their life together. It’s not the most honest coping strategy, but we all reassure ourselves with partial truths, mini-fictions about our lives, about who we are or were or might still be. I get the feeling she’s really quite happy living on a boat up a river as long as she can keep up the pretense to everyone at home that she’s crossing oceans.

JH: Please include any links to your website, other publications or other links you would like to share with our readers.

MT: I have another sailing story at www.pulp.net. I find the online writing forum Zoetrope Virtual Studios very helpful as a place to post stories and get feedback, also just as a place where people chat about writing.

 

JH: Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your writing process and your story. Can you answer one final question? Can you discuss what recovery means to you?

MT: For me at the moment recovery will mean starting to write again. Recently we had our old dog put down. When I started looking for a replacement the search for the right puppy obsessed me, and our new puppy, now she’s arrived, obsesses me. There’s a story about Philip Roth, how he was given a kitten to look after and he played with it all the time and didn’t do any writing, and so he gave the kitten back after a day or two. I’m not planning to give the puppy back! All I’m doing each day is tugging on tuggy toys and cleaning up little accidents and reading dog training manuals and trying to make sure she gets lots of experience of life while she’s still young – she’s been on buses and trains and, of course, our boat. Maybe having to concentrate for long enough to answer these questions will be the start of getting my life back. Recovery after a true crisis, personal or international, is a similar process. At first all normal activities are suspended, then, as you adapt to the changed circumstances or the crisis starts to resolve, one by one they get added back in.

Interview with Orlaith O’Sullivan

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Orlaith O'Sullivan

T. L. Sherwood: I fell in love with your story, “As Time Goes By,” during the first read though.  Humphrey Bogart and his movies are woven into the story so deftly, so I have to ask–what is your favorite Bogart movie?

Orlaith O’Sullivan: Tough question! I really love his whole body of work, but if I had to choose one… it would be The Big Sleep. Such a superb film noir, and watching Bogart and Bacall spark off each other with that razor-sharp script – it’s a gem!

 

TLS: Great choice. It’s one of my favorites, too. Now, the grandfather in your story is a wonderfully vivid character, but Susan is just as sharp. Did these characters come to you first, or was the ending where the story originated?

OO: I think it began with the grandfather in his sickbed, certain of all his beliefs, and then I panned out from there, and explored who else was in his life, and how they experienced his illness. The ending was a surprise to me too! Sometimes when I’m writing, there are connections forming that I’m not consciously aware of – I remember writing this story, and thinking ‘we just need a key lime pie, some feathers and a goat’ – I realised that the narrative had been building towards this all the time.

 

TLS: It is such a good ending! Do you have any writing rituals? A favorite place to write?

OO: It’s a mix for me – in regular out-and-about life, I jot down a lot of short moments; it might be a turn of phrase or a colour that strikes me, so I’m very happy to sit in a coffee shop and scribble out thoughts long-hand. At home, I’m grateful to have a super light laptop, so I can curl up and tap away. There’s a lot of flexibility around writing: sometimes I’ll fill the place with music, if a story resonates with a particular album; other times the environment is quite quiet. I can always tell when momentum has built beautifully because when I’m sleeping, I dream that I’m writing – just typing away, working out a story, enjoying the words as they appear.

TLS: Is there anything you could share about the novel you’re working on? Are any of the characters in “As Time Goes By” going to be in it?

OO: It’s a literary thriller, about the museum world and the underbelly of antiquities smuggling. It’s inspired by a story I wrote a few years back called “Gilt.” To my knowledge, none of the “As Time Goes By” folk appear, but I’ve thought that before and been proven wrong!

 

TLS: Who (or what) is the biggest influence on your writing?

OO: I get inspired by daily life – the voices and colours, the stories people share. “As Time Goes By” arose from the experiences of several of my friends: relatives had suffered strokes, and they were re-forming relationships and coming to understand the new landscape they were in. I also enjoy random bits of information that turn up along the way – in the story, there’s mention of the man who invented the saxophone surviving several assassination attempts – that’s true!

 

TLS: What does recovery mean to you?

OO: Ending with a tough question! Hmm… I think for me, recovery isn’t necessarily about getting back to where I was pre-illness. It’s about acknowledging the suffering that I feel from being ill, and somehow transforming that to the point where I’m not feeling incomplete or less than my pre-illness self. For me, that means I can have a sense of wellness and wholeness, even though there is illness or pain in my body or mind.

 

TLS: Thank you so much for your answers, Orlaith. It’s been a pleasure to chat with you.

Interview with Meg Tuite

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Meg Tuite

Joan Hanna: We were so excited to include your poem “Relics” in our October Issue. Can you share with our readers how this poem came about?

Meg Tuite: I was thinking of all the things that we swallow in a lifetime, including our words, our rage, our pain. I started working the poem from there and found many items that speak of different periods in my life.

 

JH: I love that this poem is filled with things that are at once ordinary and yet definitive of the stages of growth. Can you discuss how you chose these images for the poem?

MT: Yes, definitely images that came from different periods of life. I thought of the wild freedom I had as a kid, a teenager, all those things we think we love, want to hang on to and yet don’t understand. Lost love, jealousy, drugs, sex and all those bugs that dive in some of that life outside of ourselves. A kid on a bike is a beautiful thing and I spent my childhood on a bike, as close to flying as I could get. Then the high school years when experimentation of drugs, sex, make-up and glitter were prominent. Once again, ‘yesterday’s gems…’ Okay, I haven’t really given up on any of those, except maybe the glitter? NO. The glitter, too.

 

JH: What did you think of the image used to illustrate your piece?

MT: The artwork by Elizabeth Leader, “Auto Grave,” with the girl diving down in the water and the wreckage below says it all. “Auto Grave” and the poem are a perfect match. Thank you so much for that collaborative beauty, Elizabeth.

 JH: I find it fascinating that all of the objects in your poem have some sort of an oral context. Can you expand on that imagery?

MT: We ingest so many things in life and I often wondered if we could look back at all of those relics, would they tell a story like swimming through the debris of a shipwreck? Memory is a strange gnome. It only gives us minute details of any moment and yet we write memoirs and stories to wrap around those feelings and visuals we still carry like a package. I think of all the things I’ve swallowed and that’s a lot of crap “slugged back with saliva.” And once again the words, feelings, ideas, rage, sadness and pain that are never unleashed, taken inward and float around clinging to internal organs for how long? I’ve heard it takes seven years to clear your lungs from smoking, but what about cigarette butts, or a condom in the digestive tract? If we could just strain out each organ and find out what it still carried, we’d be back in the womb.

 

JH: Please include any links to your website, other publications or other links you would like to share with our readers.

MT: My websites: megtuite.wordpress.com and www.megtuite.com
Also www.magnanimousportraits.com a site with over 150 different collages of writers, artists, musicians and innovators screened on to t-shirts) Hope you check them out.

I have two new collections out right now. “Bound By Blue,” (Sententia Books) is a collection of short stories. (The above link also includes a video of me reading a story from the collection at my book launch in Santa Fe.)

“Her Skin is a Costume,” is a long chapbook (80 pgs) published through Red Bird Chapbooks. It is a linked tale that follows a family through flash pieces.

 

JH: Thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your poetry and “Relics.” Can you answer one final question? Can you discuss what recovery means to you?

MT: I love your questions, Joan. I’m trying to squeeze the fog out of my cells so I can find something worthwhile to say. Recovery is finding that I’m still not ten or twelve emotionally when I go back home to see my Dad. Recovery is breaking through some fear that held me prisoner for a damn long eternity. Recovery is writing what I need to write and letting my voice speak and not swallow itself anymore.

 

Interview of Erica W. Jamieson

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Erica Jamieson

Barbara Straus Lodge: I’m sitting here with Erica Jamieson at one of our favorite writing places, The Funnel Mill in Santa Monica, California. We have written together for years. Erica, did you ever think I’d be interviewing you about a recent publication?

Erica Jamieson: I’m just so thrilled that we’ll have our names in the same literary journal at the same time! I hope it’s a precedent that continues! Should we order our Chai Masala before we get started?

 

BL: Oh yes, and in fact, I read somewhere that in Ayurvedic medicine the main ingredients in chai are described as “sattvic” – known to revitalize and simultaneously help clear the mind and calm the spirit. A perfect beginning to our meeting. Let me begin by telling you how deeply moved I was by your most recent publication, Hope Like Blue Skies. Will you explain your inspiration for this most beautiful, poignant short story?

EJ: I wrote this piece in response to a short story contest in which we were asked to take a picture off of the internet and use it as a prompt for a story. I searched through the public pictures on Picasso and found a photo of an old ice cream truck with the word “Waratah” printed on the side. When I started writing the story, the only thing I had in mind was a broken down truck and a couple. I felt somehow the truck was going to be symbolic of something broken in them.

Netta was based very loosely on someone in my family who’s spirits never faltered despite some significant challenges in her life, including miscarriage and giving birth to a stillborn child. As this story took shape, I saw the ice cream truck balanced against this kind of grief. I created the husband character, Rex, to reflect upon the profound effect such grief might have on a husband as well as a wife. I pictured him as having just gotten stuck in his own sadness, the same way a broken down truck would become immovable. I played with the notion that Netta would have an innate understanding of time and healing and the hope a new pregnancy would bring.

 

BL: In much of your other work like Angels In The Wind, (Spittoon Magazine, December 2011), and All That Remains of Etta, (Lilith Magazine, Spring 2013), you use nature, especially wind, as a metaphor. Will you expand on that?

EJ: Okay, that’s astute. I hadn’t noticed I do that, and it’s not intentional from story to story but now that you bring it up, wind and/or the change in weather is something present in a lot of my work. I don’t write much about weather, but I do see wind and change as powerful elements that interact with characters either as catalyst for reflection or as a some sort of guide. I grew up in the Great Lakes Region so sudden bursts of inexplicable weather was very common. I remember so much of my childhood as centered around these drastic changes in weather and that I was extremely sensitive to them. One of my strongest memories from camp was of standing on the porch to our cabin and feeling a storm roll in over Lake Charlevoix.

There would be wind, than rain, than sudden blackness, then sunshine! We’d stay in the cabin for the hour or so it lasted playing Jacks or cards, but the best part was standing on the porch being part of those extreme natural forces.

 

BL: You were so young to have had an awareness of being part of something much bigger than yourself. No wonder you are so wise! And how do you see your work as a reflection of incorporating this sensitivity to nature in your work?

EJ: So, In Angels there is a scene where Eloise goes to the window and watches great gusts of wind bending the trees so they appear to be dancing in circles, then bowing down to the ground and rising again. It’s that moment that she understands the depth of her grief over both her loss of her husband and her assistance in his suicide. Years before I wrote that story, I woke to loud Santa Ana winds in the middle of the night and I watched this swirling of tree tops out of my window. By the time I turned to wake up my husband, the wind had stilled and the night was quiet again. I always wondered why I saw that, if I really did! I felt like there was a message in that wind, and for Eloise at the moment she has tried to erase some of Eli from her body, the angels speak to her and tell her it won’t be that easy.

In Etta, I used the swirling snow at the moment the two woman meet to create a fugue state in which past and present might viscerally be blurred. There is a woman in a black coat that reminds her so much of her mother, and I think that happens, we blur memories sometimes, the past seems to get swirled and meshed with the present. I hope by infusing familiar sensibilities of the weather, readers get that visceral sense of change. In Hope, the virtual paralysis of both characters is plays against the hot, stifling heat, only to be broken by the storm that comes crashing wildly in with the understanding that Netta is pregnant again.

 

BL: That is so interesting to me, having been born and raised in LA without knowing dramatic weather. But I do love our version of wind, especially the Santa Anas…I feel their excitement and believe the wind carries, or at the very least, reminds us of the interconnectedness of all life. Your stories highlight how changes in nature can create awareness of both our internal and external words. I very much enjoy reading your insights. Now that we are talking about some of your other stories, you often address the theme of grief and recovery, why is that so?

EJ: Yes, well for a while I did find myself writing a series of stories about grief, Hope included. I seem to be breaking out of that now but when I started, I was inspired by people who survive — who go on with their lives and even thrive in the face of immeasurable grief. Their capacity to heal and grow through unfathomable suffering, even finding a way to live with joy and hope, is what both humbled and astonished me.

I haven’t suffered that kind of unexpected loss and my respect for the individuals who have has resulted in my creating these characters. I hope my stories do honor to the people who have suffered inexplicable losses. They were written out of reverence and a humble attempt at empathy.

 

BL: Well, I certainly compliment you on your courage to approach such tender, difficult topics. Your writing does what you intend and not only illustrates this kind of strength, yet also allows the reader to relate in an empathetic, compassionate way. And so, why the title, Hope Like Blue Skies?

EJ: I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I wanted to challenge myself to write a story that wasn’t necessarily all on the page, and of course that brings to mind Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. That was my inspiration for the how I originally approached this story and in earlier versions, I think the interchange between Netta and Rex was far more subtle making it difficult to understand how they had arrived at their current situation. I tried to write a story with grave undertones because I think that’s where we carry so much of real life, in those undertones. You know, we talk about the weather but we are really talking about what happened at the party last night!

 

BL: What are you working on now?

EJ: I’m always writing short stories and listening. When I’m at a coffee shop and overhear conversations, oftentimes, a line of that conversation wakes a character up in my head.

 

BL: That sounds intriguing! Go on….

EJ: Let’s say I’m somewhere and I hear something out of context….I can’t wait to create a world around the words I heard and try to guess what they might actually mean. My kids do that with me all the time. They point out a flamboyantly dressed person or an irate customer and they ask “what’s their story?” The more outrageous I get with telling the story, the more they love it. There’s inspiration everywhere. We just have to get out of our own heads and take note. So much easier said than done, though.

 

BL: Easier said than done is the understatement of the week! Describe for me your writing process.

EJ: I’m always writing starts to stories. I like beginnings. In fact, most of my published work has started with a beginning that I put away for a while and returned to years later. When I read those early beginnings with a more mature eye,

I take off into a story that might not otherwise have been there when I wrote them down before. Life experience helps. Another perk of aging. Currently, though, I’m turning my focus towards writing a novel. As I’m used to thinking in vignettes I’m really challenging myself to see a character through his or her full experience. In a novel, characters move into and out of experiences and I need to envision him or her handling new and different challenges. I need to get to know my characters deeply, inside and out, and hopefully they will then help me through those processes as well.

BL: I thought I was alone! I’ve always written personal essays for publication, short pieces with beginnings, middles, and ends…and now that I’m in the process of writing a much longer piece, my memoir, I’m faced with the challenge of consistently weaving the character’s personalities and changing life experiences throughout the book. It’s definitely different. Looking at both the forest and the trees can certainly be both daunting and enlivening, given the unexpected gusts of wind. Good luck with your novel. I know it will be fantastic. And thanks so much for taking the time away from getting to know your characters to talk with me, Erica. I look forward to writing together and reading more and more of your work.

The stories mentioned in this interview can be read at Erica’s website, www.ericawjamieson.com.

Interview with David Licata

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Jessica Roth: What, exactly, set “Wonder” in motion? When you finished writing it, had it carried you to the same place you thought it would when you began?

David Licata: I was at an artist residency (where we met, Playa Summer Lake) and on a 1,000-words-a-day schedule, forcing myself to produce first drafts to round out this collection of connected stories I’ve been working on for longer than I like to admit. I had the catalyzing event of the collection (the senseless murder of a valued member of a community) and I had the characters. I had completed several stories, published one in The Literary Review, but until I set “Wonder” down, I hadn’t written anything that explored the most intimate and immediate reaction to the event—that of the wife of the victim responding to the news that her husband has been shot. I knew I needed to write that story, but I couldn’t go there for a long time. I guess I felt safe at this residency. The thing that set the story itself in motion was the main image, the cart. I had that swimming around in my head for at least six years. I wasn’t hoarding it, it was just there. I didn’t have plans for it. But when I started writing this story, I knew that image had a place in it.

For the most part, the story did bring me to where I thought it would. Curiously, though, the starting point was very different in all but the last draft. In previous drafts it had a false beginning. I was trying to do a little misdirection, but really it was a last ditch attempt at avoidance.

 

JR: I remember reading an earlier draft of “Wonder.” What did your revision process look like? How is revising a short-short like this different from revising a longer piece of fiction?

DL: Usually I write a first draft and then put it away, just forget about it for at least six months. I might revise other stories or work on something else, but I try to distance myself from first drafts.

Then at some point I have an urge to work on it. I pick it up and take a deep breath, because reading my first drafts is torturous. First drafts try very hard to convince me to stop writing.

But if a couple of things glimmer in that first draft–an image, a sentence, a bit of dialog, an action–if there’s something redeemable in it, I will only despair for several days and look at it again and start cutting it. I’m generally one of those taker-outer writers. Cut, cut, cut. With the short pieces, under a 1,000 words, I find I work very quickly. My short pieces aren’t poetic in that flash fiction sense, so I don’t obsess over the language the way a poet might. Usually after six or seven drafts I discover that I’m not improving it anymore. That’s when I ask someone I trust if they’d give it a read. (Thank you, again!) Longer stories go through many more drafts and I put them away more often and for longer periods. Reading the first drafts of longer stories is exponentially more distressing.

 

JR: You already know that I am skeptical of hard, fast divisions between genres. Is there an autobiographical element to “Wonder”? In general, when you are writing, how do you navigate between factual truth and narrative truth–where does your allegiance lie?

DL: There are autobiographical elements to “Wonder.” The cart is based on an actual event. I was with my mother the day she took her last breath, by her bedside holding her hand. I went home that day, taking a bus from New Jersey into New York City. I live near Lincoln Center, and there’s a pedestrian passageway under the Metropolitan Opera, it’s a little bit of a short cut. I walked through it as I had many times, but this day there was horse, a cart, and a man and woman in what I think were Italian peasant costumes. I guess they were part of the opera that was happening that night and this was where they waited for their cue. But I had never seen anything like that before there. I thanked the universe for letting me experience a sense of wonder on that day. It was the tiniest glint of hope on the most despairing day of my life. Nothing like that glint would appear again for a year, though.

I’m not that interested in portraying factual truth. I am interested in portraying emotional truth. The same goes for my nonfiction work. Navigation is trickier there, though. I suspect I’ll be dealing with those waters for as long as I work in nonfiction.

JR: Okay, here’s the question we all love-hate: What is “Wonder” about? What do you want readers to be thinking or feeling when they reach the last word?

DL: Most of us will experience that call, the one we dread, the one that is unimaginable and inevitable. It’s about trying to make sense of that call. The descriptor on R.KV.R.Y is nice. It’s “about wonder in the midst of tragedy.” True. But I wanted the story to be emotionally true, and that’s why it doesn’t end with the character seeing the cart, it doesn’t end on a hopeful note. She loses the cart and she searches for it but doesn’t find it. She’s going to be driving in darkness for quite a while before she finds that wonder again. That’s how grief is.

I suppose I’d like the reader to feel a sense of the preciousness of life.

 

JR You’ve told me you are working on a short story collection. How does “Wonder” fit in?

DL: The collection is about what happens to a community when one of its citizens is violently removed. What happens immediately and over time. Chronologically, the death in “Wonder” is the first event in the collection. “Wonder” introduces us to a few of the main characters, either directly or indirectly. The wife is featured in many stories, prominently in some, less so in others. Same with the son, who is mentioned in passing in “Wonder.” The dead man’s absence is present in every story.

But I haven’t committed to the sequence of the stories. There’s no reason it has to be organized chronologically.

 

JR: You were first introduced to me as a filmmaker. Is there a relationship between that work and your work as a writer? If so, where do the two intersect?

DL: I like to think there is. They are different limbs sprouting from the same trunk. I seem to explore the same themes in the films and in the writing—mortality, legacy, continuity, community, the passing of time, the power of having a passion. My brain seems to like puzzles, so I play a lot with story structure. There are many points of view in the collection, told over an expanse of time. In the documentary I’m working on now, “A Life’s Work,” I’m focusing on four people who have dedicated their lives to projects they likely won’t see completed in their lifetimes. The film is told in several chapters, not three acts, and instead of Person A telling his complete story, Person B telling her complete story and so on, there is intercutting between subjects so the similarities and differences of these people becomes a huge part of the story.

The mediums fill different personal needs. I can be very social, that’s the filmmaker side, the side that likes to collaborate with a group of other artists to realize a project that can’t be undertaken by one person. But I also value being and working alone, and that’s the writer side.

It’s a bit schizo, but it seems to work.

 

 

Jessica Roth lives in Boise, Idaho, where she writes stories that should be poems and poems that should be stories, instead of working on her first novel. She is a graduate of Prescott College and a Frederick & Frances Sommer fellow. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Alligator Juniper and CT Review. She most recently received the Glenn Balch Award for her short story, “Mesquite.”