This week’s Last Words feature comes from an article written by Heriberto Yépez, about the indigenous Mexican poet and curandera Maria Sabina. You can find the full article here, and another Yépez article that explains Maria Sabina in more depth here.

Recently I have been thinking about healing. My maternal grandmother was a witch/faith healer (both she and my mother would prefer “faith healer”, for witches are a different thing; and yet, like pharmakon, the poison and the cure can occupy the same space), my mother is a nurse, my father was a surgeon, two of my brothers and nearly all of American cousins are nurses or nurses-to-be. I was an extremely sickly kid. For most of my life, nearly the entire surface of my flesh was a constant unhealed wound, which was only occasionally, and never wholly successfully, obscured through the use of immunosuppressive drugs. I’m now growing out of it, I think, very slowly and still very painfully. (Which is to say, those wounds are now becoming scars; sometimes even disappearing entirely.)

In any case, there was never any shortage of medicine in my life. As a result, I’ve long been hateful (with the hatred shaped by intimacy) towards the hospital, the doctor, the nurse, the faith healer. Hateful towards the medical and the miraculous, the entire industry of care, such that I now find myself at a bitter distance from healing itself. As a concept, as a possibility.

And I have especially resisted the idea of any relationship between writing and healing. Just the opposite: I looked to writing for all the vital sicknesses. Young, I cherished Kafka’s Ungluck: that writing should affect us like a disaster, should grieve us deeply; like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into the forest far from everyone, like a suicide. (All this comes before the more famous, but less powerful line, at least to me: “axe for the frozen sea within us.”)

(And I still want all the vital sicknesses.)

So when it came to writing and healing, I found myself doing the thing that I resent and criticize the most: protecting writing from “contamination.” I’ve never liked the chastity fights surrounding writing; that privileging of the neutral and universal Good Writing—whatever that so disingenuously means—in defense against, well, what, everything I love: writing that plainly doesn’t aspire to universality, neutrality or the pure and hypoallergenic Good; writing that engages with representational issues; sloppy confessional writing, obtuse writing, vulgar writing, cheesy writing, writing outside holy artfulness, writing outside even literacy, writing before writing.

But here I was, doing more or less the same thing: protecting writing against the contamination of what I thought of as the nutritional, the constructive, the prophylactic. I was suspicious of the industry of optimism, rehabilitation, and resilience. I still am. I was opposed to the idea that writing could or should be in any way “good” for me; that writing could or should heal me. Me, or anyone. Writing was not part of the prescriptive sphere. It did something else, made something else. I love a porous and mutable writing practice, the kind of writing that means everything is a writing, and life a writing gesture; but the only thing I ever made sure to leave out of mine was healing. I would not make a medicine out of writing. Just give me one place where I’m not trying to be cured, I thought. Wound, not scar. I believed, and still believe these things.

And yet, and yet. Recently I have started to think about healing in writing as a possibility. Healing as a radical gesture. Difficult, painful, revolutionary healing.

I can’t say I totally feel it yet. Still committed as I am to sickness, decay as survival, fungality and revenge. I think I always will be. Though I should probably clarify that I think of sickness and decay as being in grotesque continuity with health and life, not opposed to it.

But I’m starting to think about outright healing. Not only sickness that redresses by virtue of its audacity and exposure, the sick body as furious subversive shield (a position I love and know best)—but healing healing; the frank desire to heal and be healed. And about writing that can live in those healing and healed places; writing where it becomes compromised, beholden, ruined, impossible, and even help-ful: full of a hard and sore kind of help. When Yépez suggests that “removing pain from others” can be one of the things that happens in writing, I am embarrassed by how much this simple phrase holds me. I even feel stupid, since obviously this is nothing new, many people have all kinds of stories about how writing saved their lives, about how writing through and about trauma was able to heal them and help them.

Now I tentatively realize it isn’t simple at all, or that its simplicity is its guts. It’s stark and risky and naked. To remove the pain from people. To not only put your hand on the infected wound, but to actually will it, will it, will it to mend.

China Miéville in an interview: “I got very interested in scars because of the fact that scars are not wounds. They are ugly and they don’t look like our conception of our healthy, unblemished selves—but they are about healing. We are all a mass of scars. And I like the idea that healing isn’t about smoothing over the traumas that happen but growing over them, so that you’re still shaped by your traumas, by your wounds, but that you are also ok, healed. There is no core “I” to which damage is done—we are all the sum of our damage.”

Thinking about the wound-scar transition as life. That first splitting of the cell. Wound-making, scar-making.

Heriberto Yépez says of Maria Sabina: “She was trying to go beyond. She wanted to open the book. Maybe trying to open the book too much was the reason why her own book fell apart.”

Open the book. Open the book. More. More. Even if it falls apart. Open the book. Even when one is failing, especially when one is failing. More. More. Even when it is impossible, especially when it is impossible.

Heriberto Yépez, “Re-reading Maria Sabina”:

Sabina represents a critique on those who believe (like Paz and most mainstream poets) that poetry is a voice that comes from nowhere, “inspiration” or the unmediated unconscious, an ahistoric otherness, those who consider poetry is an individualistic practice by essence or solitary compromise, she challenges those who find the idea of having just a single identity possible, of who try to produce a voice without a context, an impossible purity.

But Sabina is also a critique on those who believe there can be radical experimentation without healing, or see the poet as a sophisticated specialist whose social role is just writing, those who act in the mere sphere of literature, and who don’t break up the boundaries that separate the different domains of their own culture. “Poets” without radical wisdom, wisdom that comes from the roots; “poets” who don’t go to the roots of society, to cure ignorance, sickness, injustice and poverty.

Sabina was without a doubt a poet. She was not only a poet, but more importantly poetry’s wholeness. Her activity’s goal was totality. She reached for the impossible. Searching for a book-beyond-the-book. Having a new poetic body. Breaking the differences between writing, reading, chanting, talking, dancing and silence. Removing pain from others. Fighting for the survival of a great culture. Investigating sounds, meanings and languages. Increasing wisdom. Teaching. Being radically self-critical, recognizing when one fails, when one is dying.

Being a writer is easier.

This week’s Last Words feature comes from an article written by Heriberto Yépez, about the indigenous Mexican poet and curandera Maria Sabina. You can find the full article here, and another Yépez article that explains Maria Sabina in more depth here.

Recently I have been thinking about healing. My maternal grandmother was a witch/faith healer (both she and my mother would prefer “faith healer”, for witches are a different thing; and yet, like pharmakon, the poison and the cure can occupy the same space), my mother is a nurse, my father was a surgeon, two of my brothers and nearly all of American cousins are nurses or nurses-to-be. I was an extremely sickly kid. For most of my life, nearly the entire surface of my flesh was a constant unhealed wound, which was only occasionally, and never wholly successfully, obscured through the use of immunosuppressive drugs. I’m now growing out of it, I think, very slowly and still very painfully. (Which is to say, those wounds are now becoming scars; sometimes even disappearing entirely.)

In any case, there was never any shortage of medicine in my life. As a result, I’ve long been hateful (with the hatred shaped by intimacy) towards the hospital, the doctor, the nurse, the faith healer. Hateful towards the medical and the miraculous, the entire industry of care, such that I now find myself at a bitter distance from healing itself. As a concept, as a possibility.

And I have especially resisted the idea of any relationship between writing and healing. Just the opposite: I looked to writing for all the vital sicknesses. Young, I cherished Kafka’s Ungluck: that writing should affect us like a disaster, should grieve us deeply; like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into the forest far from everyone, like a suicide. (All this comes before the more famous, but less powerful line, at least to me: “axe for the frozen sea within us.”)

(And I still want all the vital sicknesses.)

So when it came to writing and healing, I found myself doing the thing that I resent and criticize the most: protecting writing from “contamination.” I’ve never liked the chastity fights surrounding writing; that privileging of the neutral and universal Good Writing—whatever that so disingenuously means—in defense against, well, what, everything I love: writing that plainly doesn’t aspire to universality, neutrality or the pure and hypoallergenic Good; writing that engages with representational issues; sloppy confessional writing, obtuse writing, vulgar writing, cheesy writing, writing outside holy artfulness, writing outside even literacy, writing before writing.

But here I was, doing more or less the same thing: protecting writing against the contamination of what I thought of as the nutritional, the constructive, the prophylactic. I was suspicious of the industry of optimism, rehabilitation, and resilience. I still am. I was opposed to the idea that writing could or should be in any way “good” for me; that writing could or should heal me. Me, or anyone. Writing was not part of the prescriptive sphere. It did something else, made something else. I love a porous and mutable writing practice, the kind of writing that means everything is a writing, and life a writing gesture; but the only thing I ever made sure to leave out of mine was healing. I would not make a medicine out of writing. Just give me one place where I’m not trying to be cured, I thought. Wound, not scar. I believed, and still believe these things.

And yet, and yet. Recently I have started to think about healing in writing as a possibility. Healing as a radical gesture. Difficult, painful, revolutionary healing.

I can’t say I totally feel it yet. Still committed as I am to sickness, decay as survival, fungality and revenge. I think I always will be. Though I should probably clarify that I think of sickness and decay as being in grotesque continuity with health and life, not opposed to it.

But I’m starting to think about outright healing. Not only sickness that redresses by virtue of its audacity and exposure, the sick body as furious subversive shield (a position I love and know best)—but healing healing; the frank desire to heal and be healed. And about writing that can live in those healing and healed places; writing where it becomes compromised, beholden, ruined, impossible, and even help-ful: full of a hard and sore kind of help. When Yépez suggests that “removing pain from others” can be one of the things that happens in writing, I am embarrassed by how much this simple phrase holds me. I even feel stupid, since obviously this is nothing new, many people have all kinds of stories about how writing saved their lives, about how writing through and about trauma was able to heal them and help them.

Now I tentatively realize it isn’t simple at all, or that its simplicity is its guts. It’s stark and risky and naked. To remove the pain from people. To not only put your hand on the infected wound, but to actually will it, will it, will it to mend.

China Miéville in an interview: “I got very interested in scars because of the fact that scars are not wounds. They are ugly and they don’t look like our conception of our healthy, unblemished selves—but they are about healing. We are all a mass of scars. And I like the idea that healing isn’t about smoothing over the traumas that happen but growing over them, so that you’re still shaped by your traumas, by your wounds, but that you are also ok, healed. There is no core “I” to which damage is done—we are all the sum of our damage.”

Thinking about the wound-scar transition as life. That first splitting of the cell. Wound-making, scar-making.

Heriberto Yépez says of Maria Sabina: “She was trying to go beyond. She wanted to open the book. Maybe trying to open the book too much was the reason why her own book fell apart.”

Open the book. Open the book. More. More. Even if it falls apart. Open the book. Even when one is failing, especially when one is failing. More. More. Even when it is impossible, especially when it is impossible.

Heriberto Yépez, “Re-reading Maria Sabina”:

Sabina represents a critique on those who believe (like Paz and most mainstream poets) that poetry is a voice that comes from nowhere, “inspiration” or the unmediated unconscious, an ahistoric otherness, those who consider poetry is an individualistic practice by essence or solitary compromise, she challenges those who find the idea of having just a single identity possible, of who try to produce a voice without a context, an impossible purity.

But Sabina is also a critique on those who believe there can be radical experimentation without healing, or see the poet as a sophisticated specialist whose social role is just writing, those who act in the mere sphere of literature, and who don’t break up the boundaries that separate the different domains of their own culture. “Poets” without radical wisdom, wisdom that comes from the roots; “poets” who don’t go to the roots of society, to cure ignorance, sickness, injustice and poverty.

Sabina was without a doubt a poet. She was not only a poet, but more importantly poetry’s wholeness. Her activity’s goal was totality. She reached for the impossible. Searching for a book-beyond-the-book. Having a new poetic body. Breaking the differences between writing, reading, chanting, talking, dancing and silence. Removing pain from others. Fighting for the survival of a great culture. Investigating sounds, meanings and languages. Increasing wisdom. Teaching. Being radically self-critical, recognizing when one fails, when one is dying.

Being a writer is easier.

Yesterday I felt like I edged ever near a nervous breakdown.

I had one of those in college, you know, a near-nervous-breakdown and began seeing a shrink and took meds, the whole thing.

My primary fear, always, is I’ll become incapable of raising my son, and there’s no one else to raise him but me, so I don’t give up. Will power, I’ve got it in spades.

Except yesterday I felt fragile and cried in the bathroom at work then came home and just managed to clean up dog shit in the backyard and order a pizza.

Tonight is Thursday. I transmit from a cottage in Republican country. This week has been a long one.

Maybe you’re like me, an over achiever. I try to be good at what’s important to me, and what’s important is being a mother and being a writer. I try to be good at both. Top priorities. Meanwhile, I keep a job to pay the bills and must remain good at that to keep it. I work hard. And customer service can leave little left. Energy, I mean.

Yes,   I’m lucky to have a job when so many people don’t, not to mention I chose customer service. Also, I’m lucky I have arms and legs when there’s so much else to do like picking up dog shit and doing laundry, dishes, and grocery shopping, all the housework.

If life isn’t designed to accommodate a single mother, it certainly isn’t designed to accommodate a single mother writer.

Yes, of course I chose single motherhood. When I was eight weeks pregnant, I knew how my son’s father felt, and that was he wasn’t getting involved. Still, I didn’t want an abortion. I wanted my son. He’s my kid, the love of my life. I chose him.

When I was in graduate school, one of my mentors said single mothers don’t finish novels. He didn’t say single parents. He said single mothers. Perhaps single fathers finish novels at a higher rate. I don’t know. Maybe it was a sexist thing to say. Maybe my mentor knew the second someone told me I couldn’t do something, I’d do it.

Regardless, I’ve proven my mentor’s assertion true so far. I haven’t finished a novel.

Two night ago, I dreamed the actor, Benicio Del Toro, said I needed to suck it up and finish it already, my book. “Baby,” he said. “Confidence.”

Except I don’t lack confidence.

Every afternoon I come home from work, get all my chores done, and then write. It takes will power. It takes running on empty sometimes. If I don’t write every day, I feel like I’ve slipped further away from my dream. What is my dream? What is my purpose in life? What are my goals? The answer to everything is my son, my writing.

When I was in graduate school one of my mentors said, “After this, the only person left in the world who gives a shit if you write is you.”

Jesus, I was tired last night.   I felt defeated. Disillusioned. Fragile. I didn’t write. I barely did anything. I let it go. My son said, “Mom, why don’t you lie down and watch a movie?” So I watched this werewolf movie that made me cry. The movie was called Wilderness and got near some things I’m trying to do with my novel.

The movie asked a profound question: given the choice, what would you rather be, a woman or a wolf?

Last night, I chose wolf. The choice felt empowered, free, fearless, something.

Over pizza,   I shared this decision with my son, and he said, “Oh sure, unless you live in Alaska. Then Sarah Palin lets guys snipe you from helicopters.”

No life is without perils. It’s Thursday night. My son came down the stairs a second ago. “What are you writing, Mom?”

“My column.”

“Okay,” he said. “Good.”

Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there. Just kidding. How could I miss you—you’re in our lobby, for Christ’s sake.

Welcome to our ad agency, new account executive. Let me give you the dime tour one more time. Then I’ll take you to your office, which, since your last visit, we painted. It’s a color called, according to The Home Depot’s Behr color swatch, Plumber’s Crack.

Okay, follow me down this hall. As you know, you’ll be working on three accounts. You’ll deal with strategy, project management, opening jobs, all that. Your account coordinator will fill you in on all the details. His name is Janet.

This here’s the bathroom, and down the hall you’ll find our large conference room. I’m sure you already know this, but we have some cool extracurricular stuff around here, too. Pool table, dartboard, OB/GYN. There’s a basketball hoop outside near the parking lot.

Oh, real quick: this here is Larry, our color printer.

Yeah, so, where was I? Oh: you’ll write creative briefs, too, which describe the who, what, where, when, how, and why of a specific project. When you’re discussing new jobs with a client over the phone, make sure world fusion music is playing and your Job Birthing Candles are lit. And please remember to snuff the candles out before you faint. Last guy didn’t do that and the only way we could identify him was through his mother’s dental records, which wasn’t easy seeing how she’s been dead and buried for 25 years.

Crazy, old Larry!

Anyway, this is our creative department. Wave hello to them. I’m just kidding, put your fucking hand down. There’s the writer, the art director, barista, creative director, web guy. Sure they create the stuff, but they’ll also be in a lot of the meetings, helping you brainstorm strategy, etcetera. They’ll probably be there for the client SWOT analysis, too. I should tell you that, here, SWOT doesn’t stand for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, but rather Spiders, Weasels, Opossums and Titmice. What does any of that mean, you ask? Hell if I know. That’s why we’re having the meetings, you jamoke.

One more thing about the creatives: you can bring one of them—and only one of them—home.

This here is our production manager. You’ll be dealing with her a lot, which is to say you’ll be arguing with her about deadlines. Don’t forget to call her every day of the week and ask her, When can the client see the ad? She loves that. She’s pretty quick to respond, too. In fact, one AE asked her that and, as quickly as the next morning, he found the deadline written on his mirror in his own blood.

I’d show you the media department, but it’s on the phone right now.

And finally here’s your office. There’s your desk, computer, filing cabinet, hamster, bookshelves. Your chair should be here by Thursday. As far as protocol goes, make sure you end all client phone calls with the word “lozenge” and always turn your drinking glass upside-down when you’re not using it. Mind the locusts, too. I know, basic stuff, but it’s best just to put it on record.

Well, I guess that’s it. Any questions?

Joseph Owens thinks we’re one of the top ten literary magazines! Thank you Joseph! These folks also say nice things about us! We love compliments. We thank you.

Molly Gaudry reviews Matthew Salesses’s Our Island of Epidemics which is on sale along with PANK 5 and subscriptions, in our store.

James Valvis has a poem in Eunoia Review.

Bluestem Magazine  debuts online with contributions from Liana Jahan Imam, Scott McClanahan, Sarah Rose Etter, Katie Jean Shinkle, BJ Hollars, Sean Doyle, Elaine Castillo, Mike Meginnist, Robb Todd, Amber Sparks, Brian Oliu, Sheldon Lee Compton, Matt Salesses, Frank Hinton, Sara Lipmann, Chelsea Laine Wells, Salvatore Pane, Brian Allen Carr, Kenneth Gurney, M. Bartley Seigel, Brad Green, Tracy Bowling, Ethel Rohan, Lauren Wheeler, Carrie Murphy, Alana Noel Voth and more.

xTx is interviewed by Used Furniture Review and you can also read a fantastic (of course) story from her there too. She has another story in the December issue of decomP. She is joined by J. Bradley, R.D. Parker , and others.

There is a new issue of Red Fez with work from Shannon Peil.

At Five Chapters, Ben Jahn. Be sure to read Parts Two-Five as well (see the sidebar).

You can read a story from Rion Scott in the Fall 2010 issue of Confrontation.

Matthew Salesses shares some reading recommendations.

New >kill author, this time dedicated to Dylan Thomas. This issue is jam packed with awesome including writing from Annam Manthiram, Heather Momyer, James Tadd Adcox, Jeanann Verlee,  Mark Cunningham, Micah Dean Hicks, and Mike Meginnis.

Northville Review has a new issue featuring Joe Kapitan, Alexandra Isacson, Heather Fowler, and J. Bradley.

In December Hobart, Leah Bailly.

The Dead Mule School of Literature has writing from JA Tyler. You can also find work from him in Heavy Bear where he is joined by Len Kuntz and Kenneth P. Gurney and in Smalldoggies. We have decided he is a robot who does not require sleep.

Another killer story from Chelsea Laine Wells appears in The Evergreen Revview.

Elizabeth Hildreth has five translations in Revista Consenso.

Here’s an interesting interview with Charles Dodd White.

Bodies, by Mike Meginnis is up at Abjective.

You can enjoy something from Gabe Welsch in Work Magazine.

Poemeleon has work from J. Bradley, Amorak Huey, CL Bledsoe and Melissa Broder.

Three poems by Bill Yarrow are featured at Used Furniture Review. And, by the way, they are looking for columnists.

Barry Graham is interviewed over at Dark  Sky whose interview series continues to impress.

Ramshackle Review #2 includes Bill Yarrow, Len Kuntz, Isabell Serafin, Meg Pokrass twice, and more.

Sherry O’Keefe guest blogs for her circle e-zine.

Consider making a donation to NOO Journal. You’ll get a rad poem in return and God will love you more. Well, one of those things is for certain, anyway.

Hart House Review is looking for some good writing.

Paula Bomer and Matthew Salesses make some reading recommendations.

Fancy fancy! Matthew Thorburn has a poem in The Paris Review 195.

If you’re going to be in Chicago this weekend, we’ll be selling PANK products at the Green Lantern Gallery.

This Friday’s Last Words feature is a last scene, one of my favorite last scenes in film. (This is an understatement; better to say, one of the scenes that crushes me the most, in the places that need to be crushed.) It comes from Park Chan-wook’s SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE. Unfortunately this Youtube video doesn’t have subtitles.

I’ve tried to write an essay about this film. I couldn’t. Too close. Even to write a short descriptive paragraph about it, here, was impossible. I did write an essay-poem about it recently; about it and an equally crushing-of-me film I saw recently, THE HOUSEMAID, by Im Sang-soo.

Here I can only say: I too am a girl who puts her face in the cake meant to redeem her.

Voiceover: “Lee Geum-ja made a great mistake in her youth. And used other people to achieve her own goals. But she still couldn’t find the redemption she so desired. Actually, because of this… I liked Geum-ja.”

(at the end) “Farewell, Geum-ja.”