Speaking of luck (and we were), May is Short Story Month.
Fictions Writers Review is hosting the 2010 Short Story Collection Giveaway Project — meaning you could win free books.
You've gotta act fast -- the giveaway ends this week. Go here now!
April brought a bounty of good books and good luck my way. May has been unusually charmed, too.
Because my good fortune involves absolutely no skill, I'm not boasting. I wrote my name and hit 'send.' I like my wins without fret, frazzle or fear.
In honor of National Poetry Month, several blogs hosted Poetry Book Giveaways (thanks to mastermind & poet Kelli Agodon). I was happy to give away books, and even happier to win one.
I won Subject to Change by Matthew Thorburn. He writes in a wonderfully natural voice, while displaying a mind of complex and drifting associations. Thorburn crafts a solid collection of what one writer called post-postmodern poems. Line after line rings with insight and a knowing sort of humor:
. . . What is it with me and this small stuff,
anyway? I staple in quotes anything
you say, so it will stay. "What about those
for-instances?" I count them off
on my fingers. For instance, "Sometimes
things fall into place just so you can hear them
click." For instance, when I say "you"
I mean you. For instance, the dark
taste of fennel on the wet
little heart of your tongue. . .
from Friends Who are Married and Expecting More Babies
But wait, wait, that's not all! This week I won another blog-based drawing (really, really, I never win anything — until this last month). Dawn at She is Too Fond Of Books gave away several copies of Austin Kleon’s Newspaper Blackout. I’m a big fan of Kleon’s work and can’t wait to read more of his unique scratch-out-words poetry.
(Dawn, by the way, is a generous blog hostess, offering numerous book giveways. You can’t win if you don’t enter.)
Is there anything better than unexpected books? I'm feeling grateful and well fed. Thank you book writers, lovers & givers. Your kindness gives and gives.
Yachats, Oregon
sunday
the sign said
sit a spell
(so i did)
the sun broke
bells chimed
small birds sang
through a breeze
this is what
it means to
breathe
Birthday. Mother's Day. Graduation.
There's nothing better than giving, or receiving, a book. Lately I've been swimming (gratefully) in books. May I share a few of my favorites?
A book I bought for myself and want to give to everyone I know:
A beautiful restraint shines in Ghostbread, by Sonja Livingston. Written in 122 short chapters, Livingston tells the true story of growing up poor, hungry for food and love. Devoid of sentimentality, Ghostbread delivers a piercing combination of vivid detail and emotional control. In her preface, Livingston prepares us for the truth:
As a girl I never talked about how I grew up. It was complicated . . . Mostly I was certain that I was alone in a way that no one would understand. . .
I began to write. Of seven children who followed a mother as she flew around western New York live a misguided bird. How they flew and flew until they were sick from all the flying then landed flat and broken in the muggy slums of Rochester, New York. I wrote of living in apartments and tents and motel rooms. . . About sleeping in shacks and other people's beds . . .
A testament to survival, this memoir stands strong (and won the Award For Creative Nonfiction from the Association of Writers and Writing Programs).
I want to give Ghostbread to everyone I know, to those who recognize the pain and shame poverty can bring. And conversely, for those who believe poverty lives in the next town over, on another street, or church, or school, for those who can't see the struggling youngsters in their own backyard.
As Livingston writes at the book's end:
"How did you make it through?" people want to know. And I am not being humble or coy when I shake my head and can find no words.
I am not sure. . .
I celebrate and cry for those who still live in poverty's clutches: beautiful nieces, good-hearted nephews, hardworking siblings. I see with agonizing clarity from where I stand, and though I'd love to point them in new directions, there is not rope strong enough to pull someone from one life to another. And perhaps it is arrogance to try. Ideals and opportunities and social theorizing are just fine, but if you must understand only one thing, it is this: a warm hand and words whispered into the ear are what we want. Paths that can be seen and followed and walked upon are what we most need."
from Ghostbread
An unexpected gift:
Rick Campbell, of Anhinga Press, is a good friend to Seashore Family Literacy, where I lead writing groups. He sends us boxes of books and we dig in with Christmas-morning joy. A recent shipment contained some goodies, including Me, Them, Us, a novella by Meagan Ciesla. The story — a tight, sharp slice of poverty, choices and getting through — won first place in the Iron Horse Literary Review 2009 Novella Competition.
What I like about this work of fiction is — as with Ghostbread — its restraint. Characters are trying, ugly and mean. But instead of being written in broad strokes of bad, Ciesla writes with nuance to reveal effort, achievement and the gaps in between.
When it's been hard getting to know people your whole life, meeting someone who's easy to be with feels off. You start to wonder where the lies live, where the hurt is hidden. You hold your breath and wait for its end. Take your good luck as a warning sign that this can't last for long, that something's going to go terribly wrong.
from Me, Them, Us
How about you?
What books are you giving? or getting? Please share!
The skinny girl walking arm-in-arm
with her little sister
is wearing a shirt that says
TALK NERDY TO ME
and I want to,
I want to put my bag of groceries down
beside the fire hydrant
and whisper something in her ear about long division. . . .
From V, by Matthew Dickman
from How a Poem Happens: Contemporary Poets Discuss the Making of Poems
My new favorite thing: How a Poem Happens.
Without fanfare or fancy design, Brian Brodeur is a poetry illuminator. How a Poem Happens — the blog he created in 2009 — is an impressive collection of interviews with poets who discuss the making of specific poems.
Brodeur chooses one poem, asks the author to answer ten to fifteen questions about it, and posts the answers on the blog. The results are simple, significant and rapidly growing. The site features dozens of insightful interviews with heavy hitters such as Tony Hoagland, Donald Hall and Stephen Dunn, and lesser known but equally powerful poets such as Jennifer Chang, Adrian Blevins and Matthew Dickman.
"The project began in selfishness," Brodeur, the author of two poetry collections, said in an interview with First Person Plural. "I wanted an excuse to contact some of my favorite living poets and ask them how they wrote some of my favorite poems."
Brodeur's curiosity benefits us all.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 9:43AM