Hey amazing mammals–I just wanted to open up a space for discussion about any of the readings and thoughts from this weekend. And if you want more links or strange things, drop a comment. Or tell me what you’re thinking.
I, for one, am still thinking about how Andrew Nadeau tweeted the following, giving us a sentence structure that feels like the beginning or the end of a story:
“If you wear a falconry glove to the park and frantically look around the sky everyone with a small dog will leave.”
I love writing so much. And I love reading yours.
Hi Alina. I did tack on a bit too much response to your comments on my Day 1.
I love Diane Willliams and am addicted to my puzzlement over her writing, as what she does is so unique and unquantifiable, it is fundamentally alien. It is that kind of new that gets called ugly at first, then seeps in behind the ears when one nods off. It may be a disguised form of conversational collage about all that one already ‘knows’ by sideglances and nonverbal cues and therefore does not have to express. I have been reading her side by side with Rosmarie Waldrop. Rosmarie is one to think about. “Curves to the Apple”, “Driven to Abstraction”, “Dissonance –if you are interested”. On another stack on the other side of the desk sit Krazhnahorkai and now, thanks to you, Sokolov. It is all too much and not enough, just like this workshop. Thanks for stirring things up.
…Nadeau’s fertile tweet seems like it *is* the story and needs nothing.
Great way to describe Williams, Len. I seek her out and study her. And I love NOON, the journal she founded so much, because it tends to carry that kind of writing.
Love Waldrop as well–as both a translator and writer and theorist. Grateful to stir things up and will do it till I die. š It’s a joy to know you’re similarly committed.
Alina, I’ll try to be Len from now on, but those are shoes I can’t fill.
Hi Alina. Thank you for the rich references. I love Herta Muller – “In the Land of Green Plumbs” has been in a special place in my bookshelf for a long time. Haunting, as is a video of her made after the Nobel Prize. I’m not sure whether it was on YouTube or where I saw it, but her relationship to words, to no words, her depiction of a life alien to writing, to thinking in words, and then to the thousands of words cut from paper and scattered everywhere in her room in Germany after escaping Ceausescu’s regime Romania– a singular writer! Thank you for the references that are now on my list of “musts.”
Yes…. speaking of Muller… this video is so timely Martha.
Hi All – loving the readings and wanted to recommend Judith Schalansky’s book “An Inventory of Losses” – it’s the sort of cabinet of curiosities approach to literature that feels harmonious with our discussions and writing. An excerpt from the Preamble (itself a wonderful word to position a prologue):
While I was working on this book, an archivist at New York’s Shaffer Library found in an almanac dating from 1793 an envelope containing several strands of gray hair belonging to George Washington; a hitherto unknown Walt Whitman novel and the lost album “Both Directions at Once” by the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane came to light; a nineteen-year-old intern discovered hundreds of Piranesi drawings in Karlsruhe State Museum’s collection of works on paper; a double page of Anne Frank’s Diary which had brown paper pasted over it was successfully deciphered; the world’s oldest alphabet, carved in stone tablets 3,800 years old, was identified; image data were successfully reconstructed from photographs taken in 1966-67 by the Lunar Orbiters; fragments were discovered of two hitherto unknown poems by Sappho; ornithologists recorded several sightings, in a Brazilian tree savanna, of blue-eyed ground doves which had been presumed extinct since 1941; biologists discovered the wasp species Deuteragenia ossarium, which builds multichamber nests in hollow tree trunks for its young, placing a dead spider ready in each chamber as a source of nutrition; in the Arctic the wrecks of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror from the ill-fated 1848 Franklin Expedition were located; archeologists in Northern Greece unearthed an enormous burial mound, the final resting place of probably not Alexander the Great, but possibly of his companion Hephaestion; Mahendraparvata, the first Khmer capital, thought to have been the largest settlement of the Middle Ages, was discovered close to Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia; archaeologists working in the necropolis of Saqqara happened upon a mummification workshop; in the Cygnus constellation, 1,400 light years from our sun, a celestial body was found, in a so-called habitable zone, on which the average temperature is similar to that of Earth, meaning there may or may once have been water there, and hence also life, such as we imagine life to be.”
Longtime fan of Schalansky’s inventory…a ruinscape after my own heart.
And here’s one more that you might like, Adrian.
Adrian, Thank you for the above recommendation. As you say, the preamble alone worth a cabinet of curiosities. Judith Schalansky’s work to my “to read” list. And John, I am always taken with your reading recommendations. Thank you.
Q: with a fledgling draft of a 3-objects piece submitted, a question occurs to me: do you ā does anyone hereā have compelling sources to do with writing what Iād call āextended spacesā? I have quite a few in mind, but would be pleased to learn of other such dwelling places for uncanny writing. Kafkaās āThe Burrowā is one, or āInvestigations of a Dogā; others occur plentifully in early Beckett, scenes breaking off from the through-line of the Molloy-Malone Dies-The Unnameable trilogy, and I can see it in Krazhnahorkai but canāt pinpoint because I havenāt yet read enough. These tend to be obsessive spaces full of rolled-up and unscrolled prose with an essentially poetic energy. Itās the between-space I generally write in, a poetry that is ālengthenedā until it looks like prose, or, a possessed prose so concerned with a single, extended, rhythmic breath that it is indistinguishable from poetry. As distinct from, say, the āprose poemā.
Yes. Ander Monson does this in his essays as well.
I did something *like* it–but not quite it–in this short hybrid about Kierkegaard, though its more narrative and not quite what you’re alluding to, but it’s a list form with the energy of a poem?
Alina, Thank you for mentioning Ander Monson. Haven’t visited his work in a long time, but will now.
He has a book of essays that is really really interesting!
oh yes, I know your K piece. Ashamed to say I know nothing about K, more than what Wikipedia delivers (though somewhat familiar with H and W and S and D). Rummaging around trying to discover what the hell “ahoretia” could be, stumbling on Constantin Noica was inevitable, and wondering if there are translated portions around of his “Six Maladies of the Contemporary Spirit”.
I will also be on the lookout for Ander Monson. I think some of Nathalie Sarraute could come into my search.
John, Take a look at Anne Carson’s “Float: Variations on the Right to Remain Silent.” It’s series of pamphlets. No words for the wonder of it. And maybe Clarise Lispector’s, The Smallest Woman in the World,” and some of the shorts within the story, “Dry Horses.” Let me know if any of these fit, especially the Carson.
Thank you, Martha!
Alina, I have posted three pieces, a day 1, and 2 day 2 pieces no response but one, for one of them. Would you mind glancing at them, if you have time? Nonetheless, the ability to correspond here as well as the work given by you and the work of others here has been inspiring. Thank you.
Dear Martha, I’m moving through each in order of posting. I’m trying to take the time to think about them. I think I did comment on your post from yesterday and I’m currently working on today’s. Sometimes I’m a faster thinker and sometimes I mull. š
Here is a very slow writer and constant, obsessive muller (also an instrument, often made of glass, for grinding pigments). But to genuinely and carefully give something to another’s writing, doesn’t it have to be?
Alina,
I have no questions but my brain is both full and now expanding with your teaching, prompts and feedback. I’m thrilled to have this reading material along with your commentary, as I haven’t done an MFA.
This has been a brilliant experience. I understand the site will be up for a few days so I can spend time reading the work of other participants and downloading the material.
Thank you,
Lisa
Yay so glad it will be up. š Weekends fly I think.
To everyone: thanks! I’ve had a great time, though the way it started off I thought I’d be attending my own funeral. Seems it’s often like that, but with all your help I’ve been able to swim back to the surface. Help you didn’t even know you’d given, eh? (Hint: it’s in the words). I’m sorry I’m not going to be able to get comments to all of you in the second round, but I’m fading, fading. If these stay up, maybe I’ll be able to over the next couple of days. Hope to ‘see’ you ‘around’.
thought I would leave this if anyone needs to contact me outside of the community page here: john.van.wagner@gmail.com; ig: @johnvanwag; twitter: @johnvw_sf.
I have pretty much decided I am not going to be submitting my writing for publication anywhere, (I’d rather just write) but I am building a website as a repository for the bodies: past, present, and future. That site is johnvanwagner.com and currently shows only a cheery “Coming Soon!” I am working on it.
I enjoyed this weekend so much – I too feel like there is so much to soak in that I am looking forward to rereading and revisiting. Alina thank you so so much for this wonderful adventure, I am really looking forward to reading more to many new to me authors and also the prompts – so generous! Thank you!!!
I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was sharing this space with everyone these last few days. I hope to get the time to read and comment on everyone’s work these next few days, as well as catch up on the rich reading material Alina has prescribed. If anyone wants to stay in touch, feel free to follow me on Twitter @toddclaystuart. Also, I have a link on my website that lists a bunch of upcoming flash/poetry websites put on by a variety of well-regarded writers. Thank you all!