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the Literate Condition

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the Literate Condition

Monthly Archives: March 2012

Adrienne Rich

29 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by theliteratecondition in poetry, writing community, writing news

≈ 1 Comment

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poetry, writing news

I need to get back to work, but saw this and did not want to wait to post:

Huffington Post: Adrienne Rich: Writing as Social Practice
The New York Times: A Poet of Unswerving Vision at the Forefront of Feminism

The New York Daily News: Adrienne Rich, feminist poet and essayist, dead at 82
The Poetry Foundation’s bio of Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012
Thank you for your strength, your poetry, your vision. You made the world a better place for us all.
As my mother said: a profound passing.


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… and more

23 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by theliteratecondition in Clarion, Wiscon, work, writing, writing community

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

challenges, Clarion, the creative process, Wiscon, writing

Oh, sigh. No Clarion West for me this year, either. So it is. I’ll work more on my Odyssey application. I’ll just keep working in general.

I have many stories in progress and very few I’d consider finished. And even these finished ones, well… fiction is definitely the newer form for me. But there are days when I look at my poetry and think, who am I kidding? I need to do better. I can do better, I think, but how?

Learning and developing a craft on my own feels almost Sisyphean. Because if I knew, I’d be a better writer than I am, but I’m not, so I don’t know, so learning from myself is quite the task. That’s why there are so many unfinished stories on my computer and in my notebooks: I don’t know what to do with them. I write and revise them, but they aren’t quite right. They sit there half-naked, lame, and mute. I think they are beautiful, I hope they can sing. At least some days I think so. Others, they look like a crowd of limping, dirty, ragged embarrasments that I’ve put some lipstick on and wrapped a few sequined shawls around. But enough hyperbole, err, self-pitying…

…because, thank goodness, I have a wonderful writing partner! I know my stories wouldn’t look as good as they do if she were not in my life. Meeting every week with her is a goal I can write towards. So I write and hand over my work and am honored that she gives me her work to critique, too. It’s an exchange of precious gifts.

And there are places like Wiscon that have writing workshops. And one can learn quite a bit in the few hours of a workshop, thanks to the busy wonderful writers that lead them, and the busy wonderful writers that attend.

Community can really save an artist. I am so very thankful for my patient, creative, supportive community of friends. Thank you.

… and the not good news

22 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by theliteratecondition in creative writing, writing community

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

challenges, Clarion

Somehow I knew it was going to be today. Earlier today I made sure I had added Clarion and Clarion West’s e-mail addresses to my contacts so that the results of my applications would not bounce.

Well, Clarion has written back and I am sadly not among the chosen this year. Goodbye chance to work with Jeffrey Ford. Sigh. Of course there is the very likely possibility this was not my only chance to meet him and have worked on writing with him. I was just so excited when I saw he was teaching one of the weeks at Clarion! He’s an amazing writer who has clearly tapped into that part of the psyche that I am trying to get a little closer to. It’s not unlike a wild animal and the less experienced of us seem to come lumbering up, all loud and crashing through the underbrush. Needless to say, it gets scared and takes off without waiting to see what sort of oaf this is, and the most I can write about it is from seeing its tail-end running away. I’ve got the feeling that if someone can teach the techniques of approaching such a wild beast it is Mr. Jeffery Ford.

Still have Clarion West and Odyssey to go. Well, an Odyssey application to finish, first. It helps getting in if you fill out all the information they want and send it to them in a timely manner. Oh, and I still have Breadloaf to hear from. But they don’t notify people until much later.

We all know what I’ll be doing next year – applying again.

Poem accepted and Nikki Giovanni

22 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by theliteratecondition in inspiration

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creativity, culture, poetry, politics, why art is important, writing news, writing philosophy

A few exciting things happened these last few days:

– poetry editors Erin Keane, Drew Morse, and Sonya Taaffe at Strange Horizons have accepted my poem “Sea-Change” for publication! How thrilled am I?! Thrilled! Not only are they themselves an accomplished group of poets, but they’ve also published works by Rose Lemberg, Anne Sheldon, Mike Allen, Jo Walton, and so many other talented writers.

– tonight I heard poet, activist, teacher Nikki Giovanni give a talk thanks to the UW’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Wow, what an amazing woman. Her clarity, passion, joy, intensity, knowledge… just, wow. I laughed, cried, scribbled notes… and afterward, I biked into the night with a renewed sense of hope and purpose. And duty.

Here’s a few quotes I’d like to share:
– This is the year two-thousand and twelve. I think being alive is a good idea. I want to recommend it, I really do.
– Nobody beats the machine. John Henry couldn’t beat the machine.
– I was so upset, I wrote a poem.
– I urge you not to think of success, but to think of truth.

Nikki spoke on so many topics. And like any intelligent, creative, engaged human being she wove these stories and anecdotes of seemingly disparate topics into a cohesive, moving, meaningful, urgent lecture. And there was poetry. Of course.
She spoke of the importance of a quality education and the difference it can make in an individual’s life, the importance of art education, women’s rights and reproductive freedom, Pullman porters and A. Philip Randolf, John Glenn and black women humming when faced with death and fear, eating dinner alone and watching tv, and she spoke of grandmothers as the hidden person of the 60’s – the hidden voice behind the civil rights movement telling their grandchildren “nobody is better than you” even though the kids were being spat on, beaten, worse… and who is going to say to their grandmother, “no, we couldn’t do it” after these women had survived so much, had thrived, built families and communities, and loved and worried and lived their lives… exactly. That’s how you move forward despite great odds. And the civil rights movement did just that.

And I think that’s what artists are charged with, too, to be true to themselves and humanity and create the best art they can create. Which is to say, not to give up, to keep fighting the good fight. Change the world for the better, do not let it conform you. Nikki said: “What you can do is what you believe in and not wind up saying ‘I wish I had.'” That’s one of the times I cried. I might question myself and my abilities as a writer, but it is what I believe in, it is where my passion lies. I can’t give up. I can’t go back and say “I couldn’t do it.”

Nikki said: “I believe the Universe is just.” Well, I don’t know if she said “Universe” or “universe”; regardless, the Universe is awesome and it is what we have and are a part of. As Carl Sagan said, we are a way for the universe to experience itself. That’s a duty, too.

Women with clean houses: redux

04 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by theliteratecondition in linguistics, writing

≈ 1 Comment

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analysis, communication, culture, linguistics, politics, statistical issues, writing philosophy

Dear Readers,

Here are a few important philosophical/linguistic/statistical issues raised by my last post – ones I did not directly address but which are present nonetheless, and since I did not address them directly, and since you do not know me personally, assumptions or questions are likely to be made. As a writer, I like to communicate in a way that is as specific and understandable as possible. Which could take some time, perhaps more than either of us has, but let’s make a dent in it 🙂

viewpoints/beliefs/issues I implied but did not directly addressed include: language as a paradigm and word as generalization; understanding generalizations as such and as fundamentally untrue but accepting them in this light so that we can get on with the point; using hyperbole for effect; statistics do not actually exist as such, but in aggregate terms they do exist, i.e. every household does not have two and four-tenths of a child living there, for one, because there is no such thing as four-tenths of a person; my partner supports me and supports my writing in many ways; I mentioned the desire “to print it [the article by Lynda Williams] out and tack it to the front door” because of society’s judgment – it’s this external world that I wish to educate.

Firstly, I identify as a humanist. I believe in possibility. Also, when I use language, written or spoken, I understand that I am using a paradigm and that I am using generalizations left and right and center. Especially when I’m using terms like “women” and “writers.” To use the language of NVC (non-violent communication): I can only speak for myself. I certainly cannot speak for a whole group, much less one formed by people of diverse cultures, epochs, socioeconomic backgrounds, personalities and so forth.

Language as paradigm and words as generalizations: There is no such thing as “men” or “women” or “writers.” Not as complete and definitive entity anyway, not in a way that we can point to the entirety of said group and be able to predict any behavior. There are individual people that identify and are identified by others as belonging to one or more of these groups, which is a very different thing. There is no “men” roaming the fields, there is no “women” strolling by a river.

So for me to say I am clean, or I was raised with the cultural expectations of a certain level of cleanliness is all very relative. To say that a male raised in the U.S. in the early 21st century is less clean household-wise than myself is an overstatement, a generalization, and used as I did, it is hyperbole. There are many men tidier than myself and many women less tidy than myself. I do not live with any of them, so what I wrote about would not be true in all situations, only the one I am currently in.

This brings me to statistics and how they’re not real: In my understanding, reality is what happens to individuals, whereas a statistic is a paradigm of what happens to a subset of an aggregate, the limit of that subset chosen either deliberately or arbitrarily or by the limits of our human tools and resources. Like blueprints: the blueprint of a house doesn’t reflect a reality that any individual can experience. Why? Because blueprints lack “perspective” – that term we learned in art class when we learned to draw railroad tracks that seemed to converge at the vanishing point. Each part of the house on a blueprint is drawn on an equal level of existence as if we, the viewer, could be at all places at once. But we can’t because we don’t exist that way. (Okay, maybe blueprints aren’t the best analogy, but they are something most anybody will understand as existing and they represent something else we agree exists, but they themselves do not show us what we see/experience.)

So here, too, when I use a term like “reality,” that is an anthropocentric generalization. Maybe there are entities that exist on multiple levels of reality at once.  But we don’t, so we use the term “reality” to mean our reality as is generally accepted and go on with the story.

Statistics state that the average single-family home consists of two adults and two and four-tenths children. But that is not real in that every single-family household does not have two whole children and one four-tenths of a child running around in the yard. In my reality only whole people exist. I have never had the experience of meeting four-tenths of a person. Similarly, there are statistics about what “women” experience in the work place, for example, but that doesn’t mean that all women experience these things. Some women may experience none of them, may be treated as equals and supported and respected and paid like non-women – that is to say, men. Some experience much worse than the average scenario expressed by statistics.

But generalities have substance, they are in some way true. As far as cleaning and other divisions of labor along gender lines is concerned, there is a whole historical and cultural foundation for this practice; otherwise, the task of cleaning wouldn’t fall to women more than half the time, or women wouldn’t be on average doing more than half the cleaning. What I was trying to point out in my writing of the post “Women with clean houses…” is that though we live in an age of technological advancement, an age of relative well-being (again for whom and in relation to when and who and so forth…) and education, little has changed in the realm of who is expected to and who does the cleaning. Will culture and society ever view people as individuals and not as male or female and thereby make assumptions based on a history of division to facilitate power mongering? Will social life ever be “fair” and not divided along gender lines? I don’t know. Maybe not. So, could we maybe have greater awareness and recognition? A little gratitude goes a long way.

As for my partner: chores such as cleaning are only one aspect of my daily life. My partner may not clean as much as I do, but he also does not expect me to clean as much as I do, either. He does not hold me to a different standard than he holds himself. And he supports me and my writing in so many other ways; in very tangible ways, such as his recording my poem “Woman of Wood” with me. Not only did he read the third-person male voice of the poem, but he also cleaned up the recordings, and cut and pasted them so that they sound really cool, if you ask me. When a co-worker approached him to ask me to run for the Board of Directors at our place of employment, he said he would support me if I wanted to do so, but he thought I would be better served if I focused my energies on my writing this year. You see, he remembered my hopes and dreams for myself as a writer and he put them first. He helped me feel less pressured to take up another responsibility at work by reminding me and letting someone else know that I have a responsibility as a writer – that I need to write. His holding and sharing that belief, that I am a writer, that my responsibility is to write, is worth more than I can express.

I hope you have someone close to you that supports you in your writing, your creativity. If you need to hear it from an external source, but haven’t yet today, here it is: your writing is important, it is valuable. Take the time to write the stories only you can write. The world will not be able to read them if you don’t.

Kathrin Köhler--writer of literary and speculative fiction and poetry. University of Wisconsin - Madison. Odyssey Writing Workshop.

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