Young Bright Things

What I Read On My Summer Vacation

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The hot July issue of Word Riot includes Kirsty Logan, Adam Moorad, Michelle Reale, Greg Gerke, and others. Aaron Burch is interviewed by Timmy Waldron in the same issue and talks about How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew.

Greg, by the way, is having a week because he also has stories in Annalemma and Necessary Fiction.

Ocean Vuong and Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz are featured in Muzzle.

At the Flip Collective, enjoy the awesome The Spin Class and Other Egocentricities by Brian Oliu.

Sean Lovelace brings some drug talk to Metazen.

On the Best American Poetry blog, Kathleein Heil writes about how Spain is different.

The new issue of Writer’s Bloc, with its impeccable design, includes writing from Robert Swartwood, Greg Gerke, and Tia Prouhet.

Frigg has debuted the beautiful Summer 2010 issue which includes Ethel Rohan, Tim Tomlinson, and Jeanann Verlee.

Congratulations to Valerie O’Riordan who won the 2010 Bristol Prize.

Melissa Broder’s The Poet is a Scarecrow recently appeared at The Huffington Post.

In the new issue of The Newport Review, Meg Pokrass has a story and some poems.

Canaries, by ZZ Boone, appears in the Summer issue of Lit N Image.

At Fried Chicken and Coffee, Give Up and Go Home, Jasper, by Charles Dodd White is up.

This week, Matchbook brings very short fiction and critical thought from Greg Gerke, with The Iron.

The 2nd July issue of The Foundling Review has a story from Andrew Roe.

Issue One of the Coming Envelope includes prose from Lily Hoang.

You can read Carrie Murphy’s e-chapbook, Stick Pink, at Gold Wake Press.

Kyle Minor has a really wonderful essay at The Rumpus about the Church, sexuality and so much more.

David LaBounty’s Answer appears at Everyday Poets.

GREASE STAINS

Don’t forget you can pre-order Mel Bosworth’s Grease Stains, Kismet and Maternal Wisdom, out soon from Aqueous Books.

Kirsty Logan’s Renfield at the Stereo Bar can be read at Flatmancrooked.

Jesse Bradley has a book coming out and that book has an awesome cover. Check it out and get hyped:

bradleybook

Museum Appetite 6: Getting To Know You

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Last weekend, I visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology again.   I live only a few miles from the museum, and I absolutely love it, so I usually end up visiting once a month.   My first visit lasted three hours (I wrote about it here) and I’ve stayed that long again, but most of my visits are brief, 45 minutes to an hour.   This is how I get to know a museum.

Getting to know a museum is like becoming romantically involved with someone.   You spend time learning everything about them; you investigate their nooks and crannies.   The first date will give you a general idea of who they are, but it’s the subsequent dates — the conversations not just about growing up in New Jersey but about the bowling alley they frequented during high school — during which you actually learn who they are.   Visiting once allows the museum-goer to see an exhibit, but it takes a bit longer to actually get to know the museum   behind that exhibit.

When I visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology, I always head straight towards the back, to a half-hidden dark hallway that leads to an exhibit called “The World is Bound With Secret Knots: The Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher.”   During my first visit, I wandered into the darkened Kircher wing while it was otherwise empty.   I passes a piece called “A Magnetic Oracle” that replicates Kircher’s device for “magnetic hyrdomancy” “in which small wax figures, embedded with magents and suspected in water filled globes, could be made to spell out specific messages or forecasts from symbols and letters printed on the surface of their vessels.”   After peering into the creepy water-filled globes, I walked down a short and still very dark hallway to the largest of the Kircher rooms.   I was surrounded by strange pieces presented with non-traditional viewing apparatuses, and directly above me was a wheel of bells suspended from the ceiling.   The sound of the tinkling bells filled the room as the wheel rotatated, moving slower and slower with each rotation, until it stopped.   A few moments passed and the bells stilled.   Then, with a sudden lurch, the wheel jerked forwarded, rotating again, the bells clanging loudly.   It doesn’t sound scary now, but the first time I stepped into the dark Kircher room alone, I was creepied out.   When the wheel started again, I jumped.   I’ve never felt the sense of uncanny mixed with wonder in that room again, but I love the Kircher wing and I go there first during each visit, trying to recapture or relive some of the room’s magic.

Last weekend, I also got the chance to delve deeply into the exhibit called “Bernard Maston, Donald R. Griffith and the Deprong Mori of the Tripiscum Plateau” that may or may not describe actual people, actual events, and an actual bat captured in a block of lead.   I’d passed by the exhibit and lingered with it briefly on past visits, but never got the chance to read all the information on the plaques or listen to the exhibit’s narration.

Most museums have far too much art and information to take in on even a very long visit.   Major museums with hundreds of rooms and galleries and exhibits can’t even be conquered in full day if you stay from opening to closing.   I don’t have the desire to get to know every museum I come across, but the ones I love, I want to go back to. Each visit feels different from the rest, so there is no danger in feeling like I’m repeating myself unless I stay too long in an exhibit I’ve already fully taken in.   Once a museum draws me in, I have to return.

—

Catie Disabato lives 2.3 miles from the Museum of Jurassic Technology.   She has written essays and conducted interviews for The Millions and The Rumpus and writes about music for Venus Zine.

the unfirm line – The Dears

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Most people are saying you’re wrong,  I know you’re on to something. I think the world of you.

The Dears, Meltdown in A Major

There is a piano solo intro that I try on my piano. It sounds similar but no so sad. Sometimes I try with the lights off and sing. With the angels above, this is the best song in the world. I feel lucky when I hear it.

My favorite band bonus:

“You stood there and you said nothing, and that’s what shattered my heart to bits.”

The Dears, There Goes My Outfit

Matt Bell’s How They Were Found: A Review by Troy Urquhart

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No matter what I write here, I cannot tell you how great this book is. In fact, I’m not even sure I know how to write a review that will  do it justice. So let’s just agree on this point from the start: however great you think Matt Bell’s new collection might be after reading this review, it’s better.

As I’ve read and re-read the stories in  How They Were Found over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself telling everyone who will listen about it. These stories are infinitely compelling, poised exactly on the brink of explosion, the perfect balance of potency and control. The other night, I passed my copy over to my wife Melissa, wondering if her reaction to it would be anything like mine. When she finished the first story, “The Cartographer’s Girl,” she turned and looked at me, wide-eyed, and I knew I was not the only one to see: this book is breathtaking.

In this first story, a cartographer searches for his lover, who has disappeared. He makes maps, traces their relationship on paper with a system first of complicated symbols and then of words, which prove to be an equally complicated set of symbols. Despite his careful mapping, these marks he makes on paper lead him nowhere, reveal nothing to him except his own desire:

    No matter how hard he tries, the cartographer cannot keep to ground truth, cannot render the streets and landmarks in precise relation to each other. No cartographer can.

This problem of representation is, perhaps, one of the central issues of the collection: the symbol cannot ever accurately describe the thing it claims to represent. Characters in these stories are searching, trying to make sense of their past, to make meaning in their present, but the symbols are inadequate at every turn.

In “Her Ennead,”  for instance, a short piece in (appropriately) nine sections, Bell explores language as a way of representing a child from conception to birth. The unborn child is “a joke,”  “a seed,”  “a bird,”   or “a knife” becoming at last “a possibility, or, rather, a string of possibilities and potentialities”.

And in “His Last Great Gift,”   the protagonist struggles to understand his own writing, which he believes to be divinely inspired:

    When he reads over what he has written, he recognizes that the blueprint he has been given is something that could not have originated from within him. He can barely comprehend it as it is now, fully formed upon the paper…

But it is not simply that, not simply a matter of trying to make things make sense. It is also a problem of obsession: over and over again, we see characters return to these symbols, these imperfect manifestations of what has been beautiful or tragic–but mostly tragic–in their lives. The narrator of “Mantodea” puts it this way:

    I swallowed hard, and when I didn’t die I went back for more.

And in “Ten Scenes from a Movie Called Mercy”  the narrator tells us:

    Guilt is a loop of footage repeated ad infinitum.

It’s the inescapability of an often tragic past that drives many of these stories. The protagonist of “Dredge” tries to recover the memory of his mother through acts that simultaneously disgust and fascinate me. The ex-lovers in “The Leftover” re-live the early parts of their relationships. And the characters from “Wolf Parts” play out their roles compulsively, in every possible permutation, each devouring the other again and again.

And perhaps what I mean when by this feeling of disgust and fascination is that this collection also confronts the reader with a crisis of identification. Like Kafka, like O’Connor, like Nabakov, Bell presents characters in a manner so compelling that they are intimately human, even when performing the most inhumane of acts. The narrator of “Hold on to your Vacuum” says:

    The line between voyeur and participant blurs.

And it’s true. I not sure whether I’m watching these characters with a sort of sick fascination, or if I’m identifying with their struggles, with their pain, and even with their actions.

These stories are so perfect in their narration, so finely crafted, that I finish each of them with the thought, “I could write a story like that.”  But of course, I haven’t. And, if we’re being honest here, I don’t know that I ever really could.

All the while, I know that Bell is there, behind the curtain, pulling strings and levers to make these stories come to life, but there’s never a slip, never a gap in the curtain to reveal his presence. Instead, I find myself fully taken in by the worlds he creates, startled perhaps by the bizarre turns that he sometimes takes, but always believing, always believing.

—

How They Were Found is out on the 5th of October from Keyhole Press; it is now available for pre-order.

Literary Los Angeles: Choosing L.A.

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I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about that article from New York Magazine.   This one, if you haven’t read it, but it’s likely you have.   It’s called “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting” and it’s about the daily drudgery of child-rearing (or at least one type of anxious middle-class child-rearing) as well as its ineffable rewards.

With respect to the author, Jennifer Senior, there’s not much new ground here — the article is more a synthesis of many pro- and anti-parenthood arguments I’ve heard and read elsewhere.   But clearly it struck a chord.   In the last week it’s been emailed, Twittered, linked on Facebook, shared on Reader, and otherwise passed on to me by more than a dozen of my friends, married and single, men and women, with and without children.   In fact I can think of no single link I’ve received so many times, or at least none that doesn’t involve Star Wars or the iPad.   Last night I sat down to coffee with my child-free friend Darcy and almost the first comment out of her mouth was, “Have you read that article–?” I cut her off.   “Yep,” I said. “I have.”

The article touches on so many aspects of contemporary parenting that I’m sure I’ll be mulling it over for some time to come, but one of the many lines that I keep coming back to is this one from psychologist Jean Twenge: “[Contemporary adults] become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.”

So how does this connect, however tenuously, with Los Angeles, this column’s ostensible topic? For me, it’s about choice.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, as I never tire of mentioning, though I spent some of my childhood in Tucson, Seattle, and San Diego.   Since graduating high school I have lived in ten dwellings in six cities on three continents and now at the age of thirty-one I am raising my daughter within walking distance of my old high school.   Frankly, it’s not the most imaginative choice.

I love Los Angeles for a lot of valid, well-thought-out reasons that I can explain at length (and will — try me).   I also love it for a lot of silly, sentimental reasons: the sad, scary mammoth statues in Hancock Park; that car wash on Sunset Boulevard where my dad would let me eat the complimentary sugar cubes.   And yet there are plenty of other places I’ve loved living, too, and plenty more I know I would have loved if I’d had the chance to live in them.

My husband and I are now in the process of buying our first house in L.A., a declaration that we’ll be staying here into the foreseeable future.   For more than two years we’ve debated, should we buy a house or should we continue renting? There are good arguments in favor of both, and the arguments keep changing as the economic landscape keeps changing.

Growing up, I never wanted to have children.   By my late twenties, I was highly ambivalent — absolutely dead-set against it one minute and excited about it the next.   The decision — the impossibility of making the decision — was exhausting and terrifying and led nowhere.   At last the choice came down to something like, “Oh, screw it, let’s just see what happens.”   It’s not the most well-reasoned argument in favor of forever altering your own future while engendering new human life, but it worked for me.

Many people know that they want to have children. Many other people know that they don’t—a choice they should be free to make without judgment or dismissal, without others telling them that they’ll regret it someday or that they’ll change their minds.   But many more people are like I was — they go back and forth and they just never know.

One thing about children is, you can decide whether or not to have them (you can, in fact, agonize over it for years), but you can’t decide on which child you get.   You’re just assigned one, boy or girl, calm or cranky, sick or well, and that one’s yours.   And Beatrice is not the baby I would have picked.   If I could have picked the baby I wanted, I would have picked a baby much like the one I was: calm, obedient, serious, somewhat timid and shy.   I would not have picked Beatrice: outgoing, independent, hyper-kinetic, reckless, and impulsive.   And yet, all those unasked-for qualities are now the things about her I love most.   So I’m glad no one asked me my dumb opinion.

It’s 105F in L.A. today as I type this.   This heat, in turn, breeds a disgusting profusion of hideous insects that skulk around the sidewalks and sewers after the sun goes down.   There are power outages and earthquakes and patrolling police helicopters droning all night through the febrile, filthy sky.   Like the modern parents who’d enjoyed fifteen years of evening cocktails and Sunday crosswords before trading it in for diapers and sippy cups, I’ve been other places, I know what I’m giving up.   But for me it’s not about making the perfect choices, it’s about just making choices and loving the life to which they lead.

Breeding and Writing: Mother-friendly places to submit

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–

-by Tracy Lucas

 

Parenthood takes a lot out of you. (Today, for example, it took most of my time today, so I’m just now writing this.)

Between cooking, feeding, the subsequent and never-ending cleaning, bathing, reading, Band-Aiding, diapering–and oh yeah, squeezing the suckers out in the first place–there’s not a lot left at the end of the evening for mom and dad, of energy, nookie, or anything else.

It’s rather all-consuming.

But in that consumption, those of us who were writers before engaging our wombs in the “on” position have found whole new worlds of emotional and personal pleasure and baggage (yes, both) to be blessed and/or plagued with.

Add to that, motherhood can be rather isolating. Very few moms ever say what they really feel, because quite a lot of it is frightening, truth be known. Commiseration is a beautiful thing; thus the major-dollar, let’s-parent-together, hive mind sites like BabyCenter and CafeMom.

It makes more than a little sense, then, that mama-magazines would pop up to publish the diatribes of those who feel a little more literary.

Here are some of those, for anyone inclined, and what they want:

First, my personal favorite, Literary Mama.

They’re not just my favorite because they’ve published some of my poetry, either. They rejected me many more times than they accepted, believe you me. This mag is highly selective, always incredibly gut-wrenching, and the strongest of the bunch, in my opinion. (This is a blog. I get to give opinions, right?)

From the site:

Literary Mama features writing by mother writers about the complexities and many faces of motherhood. We seek top-notch creative writing: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction. We also publish book reviews, and profiles of mother writers and artists.

Literary Mama submission guidelines are here.

Another contender for your parental rants and poetic waxing is Brain, Child, which caters intentionally to intellectual mothers and fathers.

I’m not as personally familiar with this one, but in digging out the link for this blog post, I had no choice but to read ten or eleven articles on the spot. The titles are just that good, and the piece beneath each title are equally worthy.

They say:

There were plenty of outlets for child-rearing tips and expert advice, but not a source of smart writing that delved into the meatier issues of that life-altering experience: motherhood.

and:

[Essays] are the signature pieces of the magazine, the heart and soul of our endeavor. We’re looking for essays that share certain qualities–specificity and insight primary among them. These pieces should employ illustrative anecdotes, a personal voice, and a down-to-earth tone. We will avoid essays that fall back on big concept words–“magic,” “joy,” “wonder”–to get across the transformative nature of motherhood. Poignancy is fine; sentimentality isn’t. Humor is a plus. Important points to remember: We aren’t looking for how-to articles or essays that focus more on the child than on the parent.

Submission guidelines for Brain, Child are here.

Another, though less my style, is The Motherhood Muse, which focuses on “natural” earth-mothers types and offers essays, tips, and more.

From the site:

The Motherhood Muse literary magazine and blog features original, brilliant creative writing that explores motherhood through the lens of nature, the female body, mind & spirit, and our children’s relationship with nature. We publish creative nonfiction essays, articles, fiction, poetry, columns and photos. The Motherhood Muse goes beyond a walk in the woods to rejuvenate our creative writing minds. We seek writing that explores the nature of motherhood on a deeper level to open our minds to the wonders of mother nature and our place in it.

Their submission guidelines esta aqui.

A fun one I’ve just seen for the first time today–but will certainly be visiting again–is errant parent. They go for the humor pieces, and apparently have just turned a year old. Go, them.

Check out this blurb:

Created in the spring of 2009, errant parent is devoted exclusively to irreverent parenting humor. We strive to be a welcome alternative to traditional parenting magazines (which usually aren’t funny) and online humor sites (which usually aren’t parenting-related). At errant parent, we know parenting is ridiculously hard. Or is it hardly ridiculous? Either way, most parents appreciate a good laugh.

Who is errant parent for? It’s for anyone who believes it’s barbaric to ask a toddler to whip up dinner — without first giving him a cookbook and a cute little butler’s outfit. It’s for anyone who dreads sitting next to a baby on a plane — especially if that baby belongs to you. It’s also for parents, or people who have parents, or people who once had parents. It is not, however, for pageant mothers or aardvarks or Nazis, as history has proven they typically have terrible senses of humor.

Submit to the funny gods here.

And of course, if you’re in it for money and not a Pushcart, you can always sell out to the national glossies and watch the dollars come rolling in.

I know I’d go yuppie in a heartbeat for the right chunk of change. Come on, try me. Please.

Oddly, fatherhood literary magazines seem to be missing from the picture entirely… but that’s another blog post for another day.

PANK Writers Bring It and Bring it and BRING IT

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Paula Bomer is a writer you should know about because she has fierce talent and style. You really should order her book, Baby, which is available for pre-order from Word Riot. Go here.

Janey Janey Janey Smith BRINGS IT to Everyday Genius. And by “brings it” I mean it has been broughten.

No really, go read Janey Smith before you contemplate doing anything else. I am feeling bossy, today.

Issue 12 of The Collagist is up, looks great, and has a nonfiction piece from BJ Hollars, another from Jonathan Callahan, and a short story from Ben Segal.

Lisa Aldin sets a Mood at Staccato Fiction. She is followed by John Haggerty and his story Best Beach.

At Sleep. Snort. Fuck, the righteous words of Tia Prouhet.

At the Rumpus, they are all about Neil de La Flor with a poem by him, a review of Almost Dorothy by Kathleen Rooney, and an interview by Megan Roth.

If you’re going to be in Nashville on 7/22 at 7 pm, check out Brett Elizabeth Jenkins  reading as part of the Poet’s Corner at Scarritt-Bennett. More info here.

Three poems by J. Bradley are up at Camroc Press Review.

The Son of a Man by Sheldon Lee Compton  appears in Divine Dirt Quarterly.

Everyday Fiction offers up a story by Kyle Hemmings.

JA Tyler has a story in Fringe.

At Leveler, Upon a Line by Michael Cunningham, by Doug Paul Case, is now live.

Sean Lovelace writes about The World Cup for Juked and has a flash fiction at Buffalo ArtVoice about stolen identity.

Issue 1 of Bestiary Magazine includes writing from Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Shappy Seasholtz, and Jesse Bradley.

Enjoy The Martyr by Andrew Bowen at Metazen.

Another oil poem by Eric Burke is at Short, Fast, and Deadly.

In Annalemma this week, Rae Bryant writes of Chinchillas.

This week, The Missouri Review is featuring Bruce Cohen and his poem,  The World Haywire.

There is a massive 30th anniversary double issue of Mid-American Review where you can enjoy the talents of Nick Kocz, Alan Stewart Carl, Gabe Durham, Lucas Southworth, Joe Wilkins, Bruce Cohen, and many, many more. You really want to buy this outstanding magazine.

Ocean Vuong writes about his experience as a non-MFA poet.

the unfirm line – T.S. Eliot

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“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

One of the hardest books I have ever read illustrated testimonies of men, women and children during the dust bowl. Horribly sad, dust pneumonia. I’ll never have a happy day in Kansas again.