Help Tuscaloosa: Brief Essays from Michael Martone and Wendy Rawlings
One week ago, a massive tornado tore through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, home of a vibrant writing community associated with the U of A’s esteemed MFA program. Brevity has been gifted with stellar essays from Tuscaloosa students and alums over the years, and their next issue will feature essays from Michael Martone and Wendy Rawlings.
Martone’s essay was written just days after the deadly tornado touched down, killing at least 40 individuals and leaving many, town and gown alike, homeless; Rawlings’ poignant look at her Tuscaloosa neighborhood was written before the storm, and sat in our submissions queue on the evening the tornado turned the city’s neighborhoods inside out.
Brevity has decided to extend the reach of their Tuscaloosa benefit by releasing these two essays one week early: MARTONE ESSAYand RAWLINGS ESSAY. Please spread the word via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, or whatever method you choose. These beautiful essays deserve as wide a readership as possible, and the editors of Brevity hope that after reading them, you will make a donation to Give Tuscaloosa tornado relief or to the West Alabama Food Bank.
“Dance in America” by Lorrie Moore
One of the first times I heard Kenny Loggins, I was probably pretty young. Top Gun came out in 1986, so I was probably six years old or so when I first heard “Highway to the Danger Zone.” My father stood in front of the television when they showed Goose dead in Maverick’s arms.
My mother had a cassette tape of Celebrate Me Home and a cassette tape of Loggins and Messina, both of which we all listened to in the car on the way to school.
Many people don’t know this about me, but when I was in 5th grade, I actually saw Loggins in concert. My family was visiting Chattanooga to look for houses, as we planned to move there within the next year, and we visited during the summer when the city has a festival called Riverbend. Loggins performed. I don’t remember much of it, sadly.
Seam Ripper
If you haven’t already, check out this amazing series over at Delirious Hem, curated by Kate Durbin & Becca Klaver called:
SEAM RIPPER: Women on Textual & Sartorial Style
which includes superlative material from Kate Durbin herself, Jackie Wang, carina finn, Danielle Pafunda, Elisa Gabbert, and many others…
Bill Knott Week: First Step toward a New & Selected Poems
Another Knotty thing worth snagging for your e-reader: Bill Knott is offering (again, for free!) what he’s calling a “first step” toward a long-awaited New and Selected Poems edition. From the introductory note:
This volume is a selection of poems I’ve written through
the years, from 1960 to the present.
the years, from 1960 to the present.
My choices are personal, though in some instances I’m relying on what other people have indicated they liked,
deferring to their judgement.
Farrar Straus & Giroux marketed my book “The Unsubscriber” in 2004, and then foolishly, considering what a critical and financial failure that book was, proposed to publish as a follow-up my Selected Poems, and suggested I should prepare a 240-page ms. for that purpose. Luckily wiser heads prevailed, the Selected was quashed and never appeared.
This is the shadow version of that stillborn book.
Not A-Z, but I-Me
There’s a scene in that movie High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby book, I guess, which I didn’t read) where John Cusack’s character reveals to Dick, his record store employee (played quite brilliantly by Todd Louiso), that he (Cusack) was in the midst of reorganizing his record collection–in autobiographical order.
I’ve always loved that idea. READ MORE >
Bill Knott Week: A Knottian Contribution from Jeremiah Gould
photograph and photograph preparation by Jeremiah Gould
Bill Knott Week: mythkitty
Bill Knott, perhaps in response to a suggestion on this site that he make his already-free digital editions of his books available as text files for convenience of e-reader types, published a first draft of mythkitty, a new selection of his poems, on his blogspot site. I copied it immediately to a text file, and sent it to my Kindle.
From Knott’s introductory notes to mythkitty:
Philip Larkin urged poets to refrain from rummaging in what he called the “myth-kitty” and to instead take their themes and images from the immediate daily life around them, as he himself did so brilliantly and with such genius.
“The Mnemogogues” by Primo Levi
The opening story in Levi’s The Sixth Day and Other Tales, “The Mnemogogues,” was my introduction to Levi. In it, Dr. Morandi, a young physician, arrives at his outpost in a small town in order to take the place of the aging Dr. Montesanto, who speaks to Morandi “about the defnitive prevalence of the past over the present, and the final shipwreck of every passion, except for his faith in the dignity of thought and the supremacy of the things of the spirit.”
Bill Knott Week: An Anecdote from Steven Breyak
"quote from Pasternak (if the poet's chair is not empty, beware)," Bill Knott, 2009 (media unknown)
Steven Breyak lives in Osaka, Japan. He writes:
Late in the summer of 2006, I had finished my MFA and was drained from it. With the last of my thesis off to the printers and no agents or potential employers calling, a long empty future seemed to lay before me and my art; it had seemed that we’d lost purpose for each other and it was best I consider a career change to reader. Then Bill Knott asked me if I would rent a car in Boston and drive out to the Poconos to pick him up along with a few of his belongings. In a desperate attempt to establish myself in some medium, I decided to buy some professional recording equipment (on credit) and interview Bill on the drive east. READ MORE >
“Disagreement” by Lydia Davis
Three months ago I sent in the final version of my manuscript to Amanda and Joseph at Caketrain. To celebrate this accomplishment I bought a PS3 and a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which I played for nearly every day until about a week ago when hackers completely shut down the Playstation Network, suddenly dumping me back into reality.
In the resultant silence, I returned to books, reading in two days the entertaining Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, which I recommend. I read In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan during two consecutive lunch breaks at work. And then I reread a favorite, Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz, to finally recharge myself.