More Proof

Over at Fors Clavigera I've shared a bit about the secret joy of receiving the proofs of a book. Today, reading an interview with Farrar, Strauss & Giroux publisher, Jonathan Galassi, I was encouraged to learn that even for someone for whom books are their business, the same thrill holds. As Galassi shares:

"The second great moment is when it actually becomes a book—a physical thing. I always feel that when you put a book into proofs it gets better just by virtue of being set in print. I know a lot of writers feel that way too. It takes on a kind of permanence. And then it's even more satisfying when it becomes an actual book."

As I've said before, I'm not entirely convinced by that last claim (post-publication depression seems comon, like post-dissertation depression), but I share the sentiments about page proofs.

Shouts & Murmurs: Book Club: newyorker.com

Shouts & Murmurs: Book Club: newyorker.com

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What I'm Listening To: Ryan Adams

I've got a 20 gig iPod that's full and yet everything was sounding flat to me. Neither Josh Ritter nor Patty Griffin nor John Coltrane seemed to bring my music to life. And then I found that, at some point (when?), one of the kids bought Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker. It was like finding buried treasure right here in the house! I'd only listened to Adams' more recent stuff (and, of course, can't forget that music video filmed on September 7, 2001, with the Twin Towers in the background). Like Josh Ritter, Adams lyrics also stand up as poetry. And the alt-country sound taps strings deep in my rural soul. Great stuff to (re)discover.

Dorothy West on Writing

"When I was seven, I said to my mother, may I close my door? And she said, yes, but why do you want to close your door? And I said because I want to think. And when I was eleven, I said to my mother, may I lock my door? And she said yes, but why do you want to lock your door? And I said because I want to write."

~in Jill Krementz, The Writer's Desk (a tantalizing, moving collection of photographs of writers at their desks, with a delightful introduction by Updike), p. 39

"My Childhood," by Coleson Smith

Way back in 2005, when he was just 10 years old, I posted a short "onomatopoeia" poem by my son, Coleson. Now, four years later, I'm happy to post another by this emerging poet. In fact, we're very proud that his poem, "My Childhood," just won the Fine Arts Competition in 9th & 10th grade at Grand Rapids Christian High.

My Childhood

By Coleson Smith

My childhood was white.
White like the moving trucks that took our lives from new beginning to new beginning.
White like the paint in my apartment room in Philadelphia.
White like the sand on the beach in Los Angeles.
White like the first snow of Grand Rapids.
White like the airplane that flew me to England.
White like the salt flats in rough red Utah.
White like aunt Jesse's wedding dress.
White like the snow at the cemetery.
White like the hair of my aging family.
My childhood was white,
white like all of the things that made me who I am today.

Ending Poetry Month with Updike

Today marks the end of National Poetry Month. Treat yourself by taking the time to listen to John Updike read one of his early poems, "Seagulls" (scroll down the page a bit for the audio button).

Seagulls

A gull, up close,
looks surprisingly stuffed.
His fluffy chest seems filled
with an inexpensive taxidermist’s material
rather lumpily inserted. The legs,
unbent, are childish crayon strokes—
too simple to be workable.
And even the feather-markings,
whose intricate symmetry is the usual glory of birds,
are in the gull slovenly,
as if God makes too many
to make them very well.

Are they intelligent?
We imagine so, because they are ugly.
The sardonic one-eyed profile, slightly cross,
the narrow, ectomorphic head, badly combed,
the wide and nervous and well-muscled rump
all suggest deskwork: shipping rates
by day, Schopenhauer
by night, and endless coffee.

At that hour on the beach
when flies begin biting in the renewed coolness
and the backsliding skin of the after-surf
reflects a pink shimmer before being blotted,
the gulls stand around in the dimpled sand
like those melancholy European crowds
that gather in cobbled public squares in the wake
of assassinations and invasions,
heads cocked to hear the latest radio reports.
It is also this hour when plump young couples
walk down to the water, bumping together,
and stand thigh-deep in the rhythmic glass.
Then they walk back toward the car,
tugging as if at a secret between them,
but which neither quite knows—
walk capricious paths through scattering gulls,
as in some mythologies
beautiful gods stroll unconcerned
among our mortal apprehensions.

Michigan Poetry from Bill Hicok

The poetry night at Literary Life was a wonderful evening, not least because of Heather Sellers--writer, poet, and professor at Hope College--who served as judge for the poetry competition and also offered a reading of her own work. Sellers is not only a witty, observant writer, she's also an outstanding reader (those two things don't always happily reside in the same person). I thought this was demonstrated most powerfully by how well she could read the work of others. In particular, I'm deeply grateful that she introduced us to this wonderful poem by Bill Hicok (from the New Yorker)--and did so with a reading whose cadence and charm made the poem come to life.

A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we’re not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.
It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn’t ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. “What did we do?”
is the state motto. There’s a day in May
when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.