A Cambodian Reflection on Virginia Woolf
In 1929, Virginia Woolf rallied that women need a room of their own, not just to be a writer but to be free. Free here is used loosely. Freedom has more to do with creativity and empowerment, which may ultimately be what “freedom” means. I just want to differentiate between “freedom” in the constitutive or religious or new age definitions and what I mean.
I first read Woolf when I was eighteen or nineteen. In the most cliché ways, she totally rocked my world. Back then, I was some suffering, struggling poet—and a very bad poet too! Since then, I make it a point to teach her to my first years, hoping she’d inspire them to think critically, in the same ways she’s inspired me. And she did inspire me: I believed her. I believed I needed a room of my own to write, to be a good writer.
But driving through the Cambodian countryside—countryside here being a very poor translation. Here’s the problem with language, yeah? I say countryside to many Westerners, 
and they (WE) think of pastoral cowfields or quaint little bed & breakfasts—I’m reminded of Woolf and her call for a room. See: the houses in Cambodia sit on stilts (which is utterly irrelevant to my point, more of a cool observation) and they don’t have any doors, or rather, if they do have doors, they’re never closed. Driving by, anyone can see straight through the houses, which are more like shacks. They’re small, no bigger than my two bedroom apartment, and there aren’t even walls to differentiate personal, individualized space.
Birds LLC
Check out Birds LLC, a new publishing collective run by poets Dan Boehl, Justin Marks, Matt Rasmussen, Sampson Starkweather, & Chris Tonelli.
Their first two titles are now available for pre-order,The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert & The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli which you can now get both or a steal at $20.
Birds looks to be a strong new press, and with the arrival of Tonelli’s collection, without fear of the stigma that comes with self publishing.
Which makes me ask – how do you feel about self publishing? As a reader does it change your perception at all?
There Are Dry Tiny Horses Running in My Veins: Mourning Barry Hannah
Below are a few eulogies, remembrances, encomia, etc. for the late Barry Hannah. No introduction needed. Thank you, Barry.
Jeremiah Chamberlin (editor at Fiction Writers Review):
I experienced both sides of Barry’s honesty when I was a student of his in 2003 at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. The day of my workshop, we moved around the table in usual fashion–what’s working, what isn’t. Janet Peery was co-teaching the session, and among the group were writers such as Ben Percy, Lisa Lerner, Dave Schuman, Dave Koch, Forrest Anderson, and John Struloeff. I was giddy to be in the room with one of my literary heroes. And while the others were offering feedback on my writing, I stole the occasional glance to see how Barry was reacting. Most of the time he spent flipping fairly idly through my pages. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been a surprise when, upon his turn to speak, he began gutting the opening paragraph of the prologue to the novel I’d been working on. Sentence by sentence, word by word, he worked like a butcher, cutting back the fat. Let’s just say that there wasn’t much meat left when he got down to the bone. Or, rather, he showed me that there hadn’t been much muscle to begin with. Would it be too much to say I felt eviscerated along with my work?
Yet it wasn’t cruel. It was honest. And when the furnace of my face cooled I saw that he was mostly right.
Threadbare Von Barren by Nicolle Elizabeth
Nicolle Elizabeth’s chapbook of flash fiction from the perspective of a teenager diagnosed with infertility, Threadbare Von Barren, will be available Friday from Achilles Chapbook Series. Go here to order.
From syntax to ego to erasing Rauschenberg
Whoa, wikipedia’s bracket illustration totally brought to mind de Kooning’s Woman series, in which the female figure is broken into a kind of provocatively aggressive male syntax. This post is not an invitation to the feminist angle, however called for, as the gestural implications are obvious; this just got me thinking about “Erased de Kooning Drawing,” (1953) by Robert Rauschenberg, who, then a young artist, asked the patriarch if he could erase one of the latter’s drawings, who, in the spirit that marks a great man, said yes. The result is beautiful on all counts, and proves that ego is never destroyed, only transferred from one artist to another. I see my surname in his, so in the spirit of self-abnegation, Mr. Rauschenberg, I ask if I may erase you?
Nick Antosca—
Macy Halford at The New Yorker Book Bench blog rips off (oh, okay, perhaps we’re talking parallel development here, as they say in the movie business) HTMLGIANT’s Haut or Not feature in a new thing called The Subconscious Bookshelf. In fairness, the Book Bench feature seems more oriented toward analysis, while HTMLGIANT was just plain old judging you. Anyway, I think HTMLGIANT readers (and contributors) should submit to The Subconscious Bookshelf…could be very interesting. What are you waiting for?
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Live Giants #2 Tomorrow @ 9 Eastern w/ Dorothea Lasky!
Don’t forget tomorrow, Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern (that’s 6 on the west coast!), Dorothea Lasky will be reading live here on HTMLGIANT from her soon forthcoming second book Black Life (which I read this weekend, and good god), so be sure to come and tune in, in your living room, or wherever!
During the reading, Wave Books have kindly offered half price copies of her fantastic first book AWE, and we’ll be giving away two free advance copies of Black Life. In the meantime you can still subscribe to the 2010 Wave Books Package, full of magic and new. Go! Then come back tomorrow at 9 Eastern!