Poetica Magazine

"Women in a Sauna" bronze

Artists are often asked to supply an Artist’s Statement in preparation for a gallery showing of their work. My statement, though applied to sculpture, applies also to my writing, and more broadly, might apply to any artist striving to “make sense of it all.”

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Artist’s Statement:

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My work is about people: how they look, how they act; how they endure hardship and celebrate joy; how they find meaning and truth in their lives. The landscape of people is a dramatic terrain, full of vitality, often funny, sometimes sad, but like the weather, always changing. I change too as I try to make sense of it all.

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Artists seem compelled to transfer their thoughts, perceptions and insights to some tangible material. As if the ephemeral nature of these things cannot be contained solely in the mind but must be transferred to object form: from the subjective to the objective and from self to others. Is this sharing of thought, perception and insight generosity or is it self-aggrandizement to believe that others care to receive these pearls of wisdom? I suppose conjecture of this sort is appropriate, but the truth is, the artist doesn’t have a choice. The sad (or brilliant) truth is that keeping it all to oneself is not an option for the artist. Options are cerebral matters. Keeping your options open is adult advice we’ve absorbed since childhood, choosing a college, a major, a career, a job, a mate. Creating art necessitates the cerebral but the process emanates from other sources, from inspection and introspection, from personal and vicarious experiences, from visceral feelings of pain and joy.

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And then there is the compulsion to produce. It is simply not enough to perceive and feel and intuit for these sensual and emotional energies wreak havoc upon you until they are transformed into a material essence that can be looked upon (and, if you are lucky, shared). The artistic process in whatever medium chosen requires physical and mental energy, commitment of time and resources, and priorities. No wonder so many artists end up badly. For all the while the grand rapids of this energy is coursing through you, you must maintain the time, resources and priorities to put it to use. And if you can’t and it tears at you and you’ve run the gambit of pinning your anger on others, you have no recourse but to blame yourself and we all know anger at oneself is the hardest.

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So why do we make art? The rewards offered by the world are few for all the time and resources spent. Recognition is hard to come by and the significant others around you give you no credit for creating pie in the sky when you should be changing the linens. But the printed words, the sculptural images, the choreographed dance, the painted still life emerging on the easel, each is testament to an original something that did not exist before you came on the scene. Indeed, what a life it is while artistic creation is in progress. What a spiritual gift it is to engage in this transference from subjective insight to objective productivity. No matter the energy spent, the resources needed and the every-day duties and luxuries put aside, no artist would choose to give it up.

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Not that they have a choice.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Judith Peck, Ed.D., Guest Blogger

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Judith Peck is a sculptor, author and full professor of art at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, NJ. Her sculpture is included in over 80 public and private collections including the Yale Gallery of Art. Recently four over life-size figures, titled “Ladies of Steel,” were displayed on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York. Dr. Peck is the author of several books on artistic activities, including Sculpture as Experience 2nd Edition, most of which are available at www.iapbooks.com.  Her sculpture can be viewed at www.judithpeck.com. Women, from youth through aging, comprise a large component of her sculptural themes. The feature “A Woman’s World” can be viewed at http://www.judithpeck.com/special_exhibit/special_exhibit.html  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Our children come to us factory installed with a remarkable set of natural endowments: a need for self-expression, lots of physical energy, and an extraordinary imagination. But guess what? Isn’t this the very same arsenal needed and used by the mature artist? Certainly this is so in sculpture, dance and dramatic arts, with mental energy overriding the physical in writing and painting. The connection between the natural attributes of childhood and the mature shaping of those attributes toward artistic productivity is not surprising. But add to this the extraordinary brain activity that takes place in childhood: multiple billions of neurons each of us is born with and multiple trillions of synapses, the wires that enable brain cells to communicate with each other, enough to learn just about anything. Moreover, the brain makes brand new neural connections among them all the time. Of course this is daunting. But isn’t it thrilling as well?

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Experience of the world in the early years is largely gained through the senses—vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste—and perception is enhanced with artistic enterprises that connect one thing to another. Arts such as creative dance allow the child to incorporate all three of those natural endowments mentioned (physical energy, need for self expression and imagination) while using and reinforcing synaptic brain connections. Drawing (scribbling by the age of 2 years) allows the young child to control and master space and motivates experimentation on the page—and while you’re at it, add markers, clay, some creative construction materials and the sounds of classical music. Behind all of these endeavors is the promotion of self-confidence, the basic necessity for achievement.

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As parents or educators our duty is to shape those endowments and use that brainpower by encouraging perception of the outside world and the mental stimulation that follows. Sadly but inevitably, these remarkable connections decline depending on environmental adaptation needs and the mental stimulation a child receives. When connections are used, they are reinforced; otherwise, they are weakened or discarded.

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As an artist and parent, before there were PET scans and peeks inside the brain, and largely, I confess, to keep my children out of mischief, I set up a studio table for them, provided some basic art materials, gave them some direction and then did my own thing. I also taught creative movement and in doing so, made the discovery that all children seemed to be gifted creative artists. This discovery led to my book, Leap to the Sun: Learning through Dynamic Play, and later to another, Smart Starts in the Arts. Whether this early exposure helped my children’s intellectual and emotional development can’t be proven, but all four of them are now leading happy, productive lives and contribute to society in their respective careers.

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Although neural connectivity is greatest in early childhood, another surge occurs in adolescence, which may account for what is seen as adolescent rebellion and general teenage weirdness. All the more reason to build a foundation in early childhood in the arts, sports or academics. Then, with self-confidence and a fascination with the world, those neural adolescence energies will have a natural boost to lift off into mature achievement.

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The good news for those somewhat older than teenagers? This “Brain-Art Connection” can continue at any age. Brain cells can rejuvenate and synaptic connections continue to be made throughout life.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Judith Peck, Ed.D., Guest Blogger

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     * Recommended viewing: “The Secret Life of the Brain,” 2001,  

     Thirteen/WNET New York, distributed by PBS Home Video  

      www.pbs.org, and Inside the brain: revolutionary discoveries of how 

      the mind works by Ronald Kotulak

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Dr. Judith Peck is a sculptor, author and full professor of art at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, NJ. In addition to sculpture and drawing, she teaches Art as Therapy and trains students to teach art in jails, mental hospitals, facilities for abused children, battered women’s shelters, and veteran centers. She is the author of Smart Starts in the Arts, Art Activities for Mind and Imagination, Artistic Crafts, Leap to the Sun: Learning through Dynamic Play, and Sculpture as Experience all of which are available at www.iapbooks.com. (Poetica subscribers are invited to use the discount when ordering). Her sculpture can be viewed at www.judithpeck.com - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Over dinner one night two years ago, a friend revealed to me that the great love she had left her husband for was no more than a roommate now. For the last year, they had been pretending in front of family and friends to be a couple, but really they slept in separate bedrooms and rarely spoke. Now here I stood, on the downtown subway platform awaiting the number six train to take me to the man whose love I had been resisting for months. On the train, filled with fear and anticipation, nausea and love, I began my first sonnet.

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As a playwright, I have always favored formal poetry over free verse because the boundaries and rigidity of formal poetry mirror the structural limitations of plays. The word sonnet means “little song.” Here is my first little song about love, in the Elizabethan mode:

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Sonnet for a Heartsick Friend

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We met in P.J. Clarkes, a famous New York haunt,

And we slurped down oysters and drinks with rum,

You leaned forward, silencing the restaurant--

Not really—but I sensed bad news to come.

You told me the love you had was over,

You’d been living a lie, a sham, an act,

And oh, who the hell wants to be sober

When you’re talking of a heartbreak like that?

--Waiter here! bring a round, and make it strong—

You said, “Never again will I love or trust,

And I’ve cried myself empty way too long.

I’m done, I’m finished, and it’s been a bust.”

              But me, I vow to play loose with my heart.

              Here comes the hammer to smash it apart.

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Two years later, the love I was so worried about, has lasted. For two years, I have been deeply in love. Yet love has not made me happy. It has tormented me and bent my mind so that I live in fear of losing the beloved. I want to lock my heart, guard the precious. I decided to consult an expert on love - William Shakespeare. What could a man who’s been dead four hundred years know about love? A lot. After all, he wrote 154 love sonnets, not to mention some pretty great plays on the subject.

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I began to explore Shakespeare’s sonnets, to unlock their wisdom and find relief from my worry. Some of the sonnets have brought me great comfort; others have not. Even Shakespeare doesn’t know everything about love. Still, there was a lot of great beauty, if not enduring wisdom, in the poems. I decided, in an act of monumental foolishness, to write my own responses to each of the 154 sonnets.

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Shakespeare’s last two sonnets, 153 and 154, both deal with Greek myth. In these two linked sonnets, Cupid falls asleep in the woods, and a chaste nymph of the goddess Diana steals his torch and douses it in a cold fountain. The fountain is thereafter supposed to cure lovesickness when a lover bathes in it. But in Sonnet 154, the final sonnet in Shakespeare’s collection, the speaker finds that after bathing in the water, he is not cured of his passion, and he leaves us with this couplet:

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Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love.

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In other words, there is no hope for the hopelessly in love. Here is my response to Sonnets 153 and 154:

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So, Aphrodite, my lovely dear friend,

You need to shield me now from my own fears,

Because the beautiful man you did send

Penetrated my fortress with his…spear.

And the bitter rushes in with the sweet.

All of the hurts and the ghosts of the past

Are trying to deal me a bruising defeat,

Kicking me, yelling that love doesn’t last.

I want to be untouchable, hard, aloof,

Protected from heartbreak, so please make me

Solid, indestructible, bulletproof.

Too late—Cupid has already shot me.

              Faithful Hera will say love's never sure

              But often a flower grows from manure.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Robyn Burland, Guest Blogger

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Robyn Burland is a playwright and drama teacher living in New York. Her plays have been produced in New York and regional theatres around the country. She is chair of the drama department at Bronx Performance Conservatory, and artistic director of Skipping Stones, a theatre company for city teens that deals with contemporary issues. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Writing ideas don’t come by FedEx or stork. Almost all ideas, whether for fiction or nonfiction, spring from experience, observation or the experience and observation of others, that is reading, conversation and gossip. Fiction draws on still another source, imagination, when writers ask the question: What if?

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Some of my own essays draw on experience: At the age of twenty-two, I wed a photographer. From that marriage came an essay, THE IDEAL PHOTOGRAPHER, which tells how to turn a nice child into a successful photographer.

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When I took pictures myself, I realized I could not conform to the Cartier-Bresson model of a photographer, an invisible gray man who melted into the background. I was a woman, and women draw attention. That perception led to THE INVISIBLE GRAY GIRL.

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After the divorce, I traveled a good deal. My unfamiliarity with European sizes became the nugget of THE GIRL WITH THE 85 BRA.

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By entertaining friends, I learned that it was more important to have a gourmet kitchen than to be a gourmet cook. From this thought came the piece, HOW TO BE THE MOST SNOBBISH COOK IN TOWN. I also ate out a good deal, thus inspiring two essays, HOW TO READ A MENU and JOUSTING WITH A FRENCH WAITER.

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Some of my essays drew on observation: After reading Readers’ Digest I devised a parody, HOW TO BE HAPPY IN 93 SECONDS A DAY.

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Experience played no role in inspiring my essay, HOW TO GIVE THE PERFECT ORGY because I had attended only one orgy, and I was a wallflower. Neither did observation since I forgot to bring glasses and had only a fuzzy glimpse of a bed covered with writhing arms and legs. Reading came into play. The editors of women’s magazines ran instructions on how to do everything so I used the same approach with a bacchanal. From then on imagination dominated the picture.

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Some of my ideas for books and essays originated with reading: I read about the early French rulers of what is now Quebec running out of coins and paper money and using playing cards as a substitute. That became the first chapter of my children’s book, FROM CATTLE TO CREDIT CARDS.

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Conversation has always been helpful. A friend of two photographers remarked that whenever their toddler son took a tumble, he waited before picking himself up giving them time to focus and trip the shutter. This inspired THE GENTLE ART OF KIDNAPPING.

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Earlier, imagination or asking what-if was the culprit behind THE YEAR PROSTITUTION WENT PUBLIC, where a new MBA returns to her mother’s sex ranch and sets out to make the enterprise more profitable. She installs time clocks, uniforms for the prostitutes and blue sanitizing bands on the beds between customers. The business goes public and, after a while, it also goes bust.

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Writers won’t run out of ideas if only they remember to experience, observe, read and ask what if, or to put it more simply, live, look, read and imagine.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Carol Schwalberg, Guest Blogger

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Carol Schwalberg's stories, poetry, articles and essays have been published on all six continents. She lives with her husband in Santa Monica, California. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

“Dear sir or madam, would you read my book?

It took me years to write, won’t you take a look?”

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I have a serious case of writer’s block. Not the ordinary kind — I’m not struggling to find the perfect couplet to finish off a 14-line sonnet, nor am I wrestling with a plot-line that seems to have struck a dead-end. I’m not chalking up sleepless nights staring into the black abyss of an impending deadline. My block is not about any of these things.

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You see, I recently completed a novel, and now it is time to trot it out before the admiring world. Only ... to do that, I need an agent. And to get an agent, I need to compose (shudder) a query letter.

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This is where I’m stuck. That query letter is crucial, it overshadows the effort of writing the novel itself. If the agent can’t get through my query letter, she isn’t going to read my synopsis, let alone the first few chapters of my book. And she’ll never ask to see the entire manuscript.

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“This should be easy,” I tell myself. “You have a strong product — it’s controversial and current, it has convincing characters and a compelling plot. All you need to do is sell it.”

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This is what I tell myself. But it’s not working.

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Each evening I come home and sit before the keyboard, resolved that this will be the night. I’ll knock that query letter out and have it ready to send off to the scores of agents I’ve already researched. Oh, but first, let me check my e-mail. And Facebook. Oops, now it’s dinner time. And wait, here’s an article in the paper I really must read because it’s all about electronic books being the wave of the future. Look at the time! On second thought, too late to look, the time has flown. All right, this weekend, then — this weekend I’ll buckle my socks and get down to the business of writing that query letter.

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But before the weekend even arrives, it’s booked. There’ll be a show or a concert I absolutely must see, friends who want to go out to dinner, a jam session across the park, and how can I turn any of this down? I call it “gathering material”, because you never know how any of these experiences might turn up in your work, sooner or later. Your work that will never be published, because you will never find an agent for your book, because you never sat down and wrote that query letter.

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The Greeks had nine muses — but the muse I need is the muse of queries. And she refuses to sing. That’s the problem. I expect too much of her. A query letter is a business proposition, not an opera. A query should be straightforward and succinct. Perhaps John Lennon said it best — “Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?” Actually, he sang it, didn’t he?

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I’m beginning to think I’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. The challenge is not writing a query that will stand out -- it’s sending out a query often enough, to enough agents, that it will beat the odds. Any novel worth reading has likely been rejected hundreds of times. No matter how fine the book, no matter how compelling the query letter.

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In the end, persistence is what counts. Believe in your project so strongly that you can bear to see it fail, again and again. Each failure brings you one step closer to the goal.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Luther Jett, Guest Blogger

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W. Luther Jett is currently working to complete a query letter for his novel, And This I Know Is True. He has seen numerous poems published in various print and on-line journals. Some of his work can be seen at http://www.lutherjett.com . His blog is at http://lutherjett.livejournal.com/  – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

It's next to impossible to rid my mind of haunting Holocaust imagery. The fact that these images opened the gate to creative writing is a mixed blessing. There is this compulsion to pull from the library shelves anything that has to do with that tragic time in history. I have gone on to write poetry with more light-hearted themes, but in order to depart from that painful topic I found I needed a coda - an ending, a final note.

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After serving several years as a volunteer at the Red Cross Holocaust Tracing Center in Baltimore, I found my emotional in-box full to bursting. Either I had to give up my efforts or find an outlet for the horrific imagery indelibly imprinted on me from those soul-rending cases. And so I took pen in hand. Actually, it is the computer that has fostered any artistic expression I may have, since this wonderful enabler allows my creative voice, such as it is, to be heard. Without the computer to unscramble my thoughts and decipher my scribble, I would have remained mute.

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The result was several Holocaust themed poems circulated among my colleagues at the Center. “You should send them to Elie Wiesel,” they said. In the innocence of a first time writer who has yet to fear baring his soul in public, I did so. He wrote back telling me, "I was touched to read your words - I am not a poet, but I think your words are moving and will do much to make sure that those who were lost will not be forgotten..." Can you imagine, Elie Wiesel infers I am a poet?

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I wrote the following poem in an effort to find an answer to an unanswerable question.

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I BELIEVE

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Where was He when evil swept

Through villages where innocents slept,

Faithful to commandments kept,

Did David's shield protect them?

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Gott mit uns in another tongue

Damn them all, the old, the young

It's from the Jews our ills have sprung

Death for them is in ordnung.

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Useless were their tears to quench

The fire, as was their blood to drench

The Almighty's sacrificial bench.

The search for His existence in vain.

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If we are made in His image,

If mercy triumphs over rage,

If all is written on one's own page,

Was infinite wisdom forsaken?

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The millions marched to certain death,

Shouting His name with final breath,

Their ashes greening mother earth...

Where was G-d? Why omit the "o"?

                  Ani ma'amin,

                              And yet I omit the "o."

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The oft repeated remark, "anyone is a poet who thinks he's a poet," still gives me pause, as does finding my name among the others listed as poets in an anthology. I'd like to think I deserve the appellation as well, but I am still startled when a jumble of thoughts rattle around my brain in the early hours of the morning, then appears as if by magic on the clean white page later in the day in some semblance of order and meaning.

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Thank you for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Jerome Shapiro, Guest Blogger

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Jerome Shapiro writes from Naples, Florida and Baltimore. Another of his Holocaust-themed poems appears in the current issue of Poetica Magazine's Mizmor L'David Anthology,The Shoah - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor.

“The poet disappears behind his own voice, a voice which is his because it is the voice of language, the voice of no one and of all. Whatever name we give this voice - inspiration, the unconscious, chance, accident, revelation - it is always the voice of otherness.” Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire.

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I don't understand inspiration, but I know it is real. A consequence of relinquishing my understanding of this process is that it removed every ounce of arrogance. How can I be proud of something I had nothing to do with except to be available? This knowledge helps me to walk humbly and to review the end result as a miracle that I have had the privilege to participate in.

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After this, of course, the real work begins, but the muse is ever present.

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Inspiration is like being struck by lightning. Lightning cannot be controlled, and when it strikes, it strikes without warning, making the sensitive writer into an oblivious lightning rod walking in the rain during a roaring thunderstorm. When lightning strikes he knows it, where it came from he doesn't. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was willing to take a chance that his preternatural gift would manifest itself and that he would be given an opportunity to harness, to a degree, the power inherent in the creative pistons firing in his brain, similar to the movement of the muscles in his body. I don’t understand lightning or the lightning of inspiration.

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I have been writing since 1969, and I have often considered and questioned the origin of inspiration as it relates to creativity; in my case, how it relates particularly to writing poetry and other fiction. I can, to a degree, agree with Edison who said genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration because I believe most good writers are driven and they hone their craft with significant rewrites and revisions sometimes toiling endlessly to get it “just right.” I think this is a given, and I can attest to laboring to secure the right word, phrase or sentence.

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However, just as I do not believe there are “born losers,” I don't believe there are “born writers” or born “anything” other than human beings with unlimited potential.

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Writing is hard work and requires persistence, diligence, and a host of other positive attributes and, these attributes are part of the creative process. Yet I find myself more intrigued by inspiration, and where it comes from.

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Where do creative thoughts about a particular subject come from, those creative stimulants that can not necessarily be specifically identified, stimulants to our senses that later may become a work of art, or, in my case, a poem? I realize that a writer might see be so powerfully impacted by a particular event that he writes a poem about his experience, but when he puts his pen to paper he cannot necessarily identify the end of the thing, and just as the end of a thing may produce the beginning of a thing such as a poem, the whole, which has become the sum of its parts, remains largely an unknown.

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“A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry,” said Shelly. “The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café

Richard Ilnicki, Guest Blogger

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Richard Ilnicki is the author of six books of poetry, his latest of which, The Hatchetman, is currently in the library of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library in Washington, D.C. He has written two unpublished novels as well, Mr. Monstriparity and The Bibliophile. An avid supporter, defender, lover and contributor to the state of Israel, the book deals almost exclusively with the Holocaust experience. Mr. Ilnicki lives and works in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

I write in the dark, comfortably supine, using pencils on unlined paper and my stomach for a desk. I write on spiral notebooks during the countless bus-rides I take because I do not drive. I write at the kitchen table, with ink-filled pens on beautiful stationery. I write at my personal computer  – and that is where FreeCell and e-mails do their best to distract me.

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My version of a paperless office is both my night-time dreaming, and the writing I do in my head when my eyes glaze over where it would be bad form to whip out a ballpoint. Sometimes these words do not get to the physical point, but as far as I am concerned, they’re written anyhow.

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I breathe because I write. I scrawl ideas on the margins of newspapers and the backs of envelopes and receipts.

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I write because I breathe. A letter, a poem, a haiku, or an opinion piece may be written on impulse, but I have to knuckle down for deadlines. Yet I have no “routine” as such; I would never be able to write one thousand words before breakfast.

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People fascinate me. Family, friends, and even perfect strangers often thinly disguise themselves and gate-crash my fiction. For non-fiction I have to keep half an eye on the libel laws. With Malta being such an insular place, this is especially pertinent.

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Credibility is something I treasure. I always get my information from the source. I do not like censorship; yet I do not like people showing that it exists by depicting gratuitous vulgarity, or sex, or violence that are bound to be censored, either.

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Sometimes, a column or a poem write themselves. I have never stumbled over the hackneyed writers’ block; perhaps that’s because I tend to procrastinate since I know I work best under pressure. So, if you want me to write for you, never say “no hurry”. I have always made deadlines (albeit sometimes with seconds to spare) come hell or high water, births and deaths, illness and travel.

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I’m a stickler for using the correct terminology; and since the phrase “editors reserve the right to edit for length or clarity” covers a multitude of their sins, this has given rise to many heated discussions. I have no beef with writers who insist upon being paid for every word they pen; but I am not averse to donating articles (or poems or puzzles) to publications of worthy causes, without being credited – since this would defeat the “donation” principle.

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My writing is eclectic; so I slant my work according to the demographics of the readership of each publication or site. I do insert a couple of “difficult” words in children’s stories in such a way that, even if they are not looked up (as I hope they will be) the tale will not lose anything. I try to get my values across in anything I write, be it a television critique column or an interview with a celebrity. I like puns, alliteration, and idioms. But unless the feature is deliberately meant to be over-the-top, I consciously ration myself not to risk losing the thrust of my piece. I have several dictionaries (some of them esoteric) and thesauruses, which I prefer to online versions.

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Therapy; a weapon; serious fun; a dais. Writing, to me, is all these, and more.

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog.

Tanja Cilia, Guest Blogger

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Tanja Cilia lives with her husband and three children on the  Mediterranean Island Republic of Malta. She is an Allied Newspapers (Malta) columnist, blogger, and features writer, and freelances for several print and online publications in Maltese and English. Contact her at tanjacilia@hotmail.com - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

The English seminar I designed for the boarding school in which I teach, Strange Literature, has been attracting a steady flow of seniors. A “strange” title? Well, the syllabus offers no Sci-Fi, let alone Fantasy with its frequent adjunct Horror. What I intended was to teach selected books with a unique slant toward life and which had a unique writing style.

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I open the course with a pair of short story opposites. Raymond Carver offers a Minimalist style and a somber survivalist look at life. “In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. Except for that, things looked much the way they had in the bedroom.” (Why Don’t You Dance?) On the other hand, John Updike is one of our most ornate fiction writers in the 21st century. “The woods at their distance across the frosted lawn were a Chinese screen in which an immense alphabet of twigs lay hushed; a black robe crusted with white braid standing of its own stiffness.” (Crow in the Woods) Both men are able to look deeply into character and motivation. If their plots seem truncated, their intent is to show life is like that, often unfinished and unexplained.

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One of my non-fiction choices is an autobiography by Stephen Kuusisto. The premise of this book, as Kuusisto states late in the plot development, is that he was a blind man for the first thirty-six years of his life who pretended to see so he could be accepted into “normal” society. His encounters are hair-raising. “One of the fellows lifts me to my feet, spins me around. He’s talking spitfire cartoon gibberish. ‘What the. . .how the. . .didn’t you. . .waddya BLIND?’ I have concrete in my hair and beard. It hangs from my shirt like pelts strung around a fur trapper. ‘Yessir.’ “ (Planet of the Blind).

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Again using short fiction, I conclude the course with a duet of foreign writers. Poland’s Isaac Singer mystifies while making the students guffaw. “I don’t think myself a fool. On the contrary. But that’s what folks call me. They gave me the name while I was still in school. I had seven names in all: imbecile, donkey, flax-head, dope, glump, ninny, and fool. The last name stuck.” (Gimpel the Fool) His shtetl characters are full of life, and the plot is often rambunctiously outlandish. Luis Borges brings the world of South America alive. Since he is the forerunner of Magic Realism, I try to choose stories that feature a more concrete rather than abstract premise. “With a gesture, he asked them to wait and turned his face to the wall, as if to resume his sleep. Did he do it to arouse the pity of those who killed him, or because it is less difficult to endure a frightful happening than to imagine it and endlessly await it.” (The Waiting)

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Some of my students have been greatly moved by these books. One student wrote a very emotional essay inspired by Planet of the Blind, because he could see parallels to his brother with muscular dystrophy. Another boy could relate to the brutality in the neighborhood that Carver writes about. Someone finally spoke for him. Still another student was made more environmentally aware by reading Lopez’s Desert Notes, then on his own River Notes. If I could put my finger on the specific area in which I was influenced by this unique literature, I would note that I write more freely and more associatively now, as in this poem:

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WAITING FOR THE WORD

Through the filth, degradation,

pain, an inmate of Auschwitz

waits for the right word;

surrounded by light and wine

and camaraderie

the poets speak of

jazz, existentialism,

humor late into the night.

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The victim waits and nods

waits and nods until

almost offhandedly

he hears the word Hope

and his ancient soul sleeps;

the poets not knowing

what they have contributed

to the world beyond.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Ray Greenblatt, Guest Blogger

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Ray Greenblatt’s poetry has appeared in America, International Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly. His reviews have been published in Drexel Online Journal, English Journal, Joseph Conrad Today. His latest book Leavings of the Evening was published by Foothills Press.

On my computer monitor I have stuck a photo from the 1970s of my sister holding me in her arms when I was a baby and she was thirteen. It was once colour but the chemicals that were used in photographic production at the time do not age well. It is now faded and looks almost monochrome, the image present being seen through a fine warm mist. I was tiny and a month premature my fists tightly balled, my eyes firmly shut. She is looking down at me with affection.

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My sister is no longer living. She died at the end of 2007 because of complications caused by the treatment she received for leukaemia. Now in my mind she will always be a woman in her mid-40s. I will not see her grow old as I once expected. When our parents die she will not be here to take matters in hand and keep us all together. She was very good at keeping things together.

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I remember this when I no longer feel like continuing. The shock of her death has done strange things to me. I liken it to an earthquake that still sends out unsettling ripples. It was the first tragedy I have had to deal with in my adult life and it changed everything. The pieces of my personal jigsaw were thrown into the air ending up fragmented and scattered. I am still trying to locate them all. Sometimes I am unsure if I ever will.

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I think her passing marked the end of my young adulthood and brought about the first real realisation I had that my time was limited. Of course you know you are one day going to die but you do not really accept or appreciate the finality of this until something brings it sharply into view. Then I became fearful. My body is a fragile vessel. What if I wake up tomorrow and discover a lump where a lump should not be? What if my partner did the same? What malevolent bodily squatter am I incubating?

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It is now nearly three years since my sister died and still I am trying to piece myself together. Sometimes I feel as if I am doing fine, that the loss is real but the sun is shining and she would want me to be happy. At other times I am struck by a deep and profound sense of emptiness, both personal and universal. When that happens a slide into mundane depression usually follows. You are told by the doctors that this is biological but it always feels more philosophical.

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I have become fascinated by grief and mourning and how it affects people. In the Western world there is a culture and expectation that you will after a short period step up to the plate, slap a smile across your face and re-engage with the world in a upbeat way. I have tried to do that. I have presented a public face that is amenable and not marked by mortality, the one thing our consumer society cannot rid us of. The bereaved threaten our cosy self-deceit which is why we work so hard to ignore them or chivvy them back in line, shaking the scattered ashes out of their hair, dressing them in bright colours.

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In learning to let my sister go I have given her a new role. She is now the voice behind my shoulder that whispers encouragement to my better self. She is freed from inconsistency and human failings to become an ideal. I remember her in her hospital bed. I remember her as my big sister taking me on fair ground rides for the first time. I see us both on the faded photograph and know that our experiences had and always will intertwine, even though hers is to be felt as an absence in the lives of those who knew her.

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I lost all faith. I look at the sky and it seems empty, but it no longer feels quite as threatening. Certainties might be gone, but love seems real enough.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Martyn Clayton, Guest Blogger

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Martyn Clayton is a journalist and writer. He is the author of a non-fiction book about the Roma people and his debut novel Take Me Out was published by Subculture Books in 2008. He lives in York, England. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor