Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror

looks out a million miles

(and perhaps with pride, at herself,

but she never, never smiles)

far and away beyond sleep, or

perhaps she’s a daytime sleeper.

 

By the Universe deserted,

she’d tell it to go to hell,

and she’d find a body of water,

or a mirror, on which to dwell.

So wrap up care in a cobweb

and drop it down the well

 

into that world inverted

where left is always right,

where the shadows are really the body,

where we stay awake all night,

where the heavens are shallow as the sea

is now deep, and you love me.

 

~ Elizabeth Bishop, whose poetry will be included on the upcoming comprehensive MA exam at Chapman University

 

"Moonlight Night" by Ilya Repin, 1896

That Razor Edge of Balance

It evaded her now when she thought of her picture.  Phrases came.  Visions came.  Beautiful pictures.  Beautiful phrases.  But what she wished to get hold of was that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before it has been made anything.  Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh; she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel.  It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on. […] For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel.  And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?

 

~ To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, born on this day in 1882

 

Georges Seurat, 1886

Call for Submissions – Third Coast Magazine

Third Coast Magazine is accepting previously unpublished fiction entries up to 9,000 words and up to three previously unpublished poems for its 2012 Third Coast Fiction and Poetry Contests through the extended deadline of midnight on January 31.  Simultaneous submissions are permitted provided an entry is withdrawn from the contest if accepted elsewhere during the judging period. 

Winners will be announced in April.  A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the winners of the Jaimy Gordon Prize in Fiction and the Third Coast Poetry Prize, and the winning story and poem will be published in the Fall 2012 issue of Third Coast Magazine.  The reading fee is $16 for each entry and includes a one-year subscription to Third Coast.  There is no limit on the number of entries per person. 

Third Coast is an American literary magazine based at Western Michigan University and founded in 1995 by graduate students in the university’s English department.  Work that has appeared in the journal has received The O. Henry Award and The Pushcart Prize and has been reprinted in Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri.  For more information or to submit, visit the website at http://www.thirdcoastmagazine.com.

 

Poe Tradition May Indeed Be Toast

With the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth just two days away, fans of the gothic master of macabre plan one final vigil for the mysterious “Poe Toaster” at the writer’s gravesite in Baltimore.  For more than half a century, an unknown guest left roses and a half-bottle of cognac on Poe’s grave to commemorate the author’s 1809 birthday. 

The shadowy Toaster failed to make his pre-dawn appearance the last two years, much to the disappointment of Poe House and Museum Curator Jeff Jerome and the many Poe enthusiasts who gather annually to witness the event.  The second consecutive Poe no-show in 2011 suggested that the ritualistic tribute that began in 1949 is dead and that the unidentified Toaster may remain, like the poet’s lost Lenore, “nameless here for evermore.” 

Nonetheless, hopeful fans will wait with Jerome once again this week for the Toaster’s January 19 appearance before calling an end to the decades long tradition.

 

This 2008 tribute at Poe's memorial was most likely left by an imposter of the Poe Toaster, who leaves his bottle on Poe's actual grave. (Image courtesy of Midnightdreary, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.)

Apropos of the Wet Snow

Try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms.  The day after tomorrow, at the very latest, you’ll begin to despise yourself for having knowingly hoodwinked yourself.  The result: a soap bubble, and inertia. […] Better to do nothing!  Better conscious inertia!  And so, long live the underground! […] 

For what and to what end, in fact, do I want to write? […] There’s something imposing in it, there will be more of a judgment on oneself, it will gain in style.  Besides: maybe I will indeed get relief from the writing. […] Snow is falling today, almost wet, yellow, dull.  And it was falling yesterday, and it was falling the other day as well.  I think it was apropos of the wet snow that I recalled this anecdote that now refuses to be gotten rid of.  And so, let this be a story apropos of the wet snow.

 

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (one of six texts on which MA candidates will be tested on the upcoming comprehensive MA exam at Chapman University)

 

"Колокольня Морского собора" (St. Nicholas Cathedral, St. Petersburg)

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

 

                            ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

"The Frosty Morning" by Nikolay Dubovskoy, 1894

Boy at the Window

Seeing the snowman standing all alone

In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.

The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare

A night of gnashings and enormous moan.

His tearful sight can hardly reach to where

The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes

Returns him such a god-forsaken stare

As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.

 

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,

Having no wish to go inside and die.

Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.

Though frozen water is his element,

He melts enough to drop from one soft eye

A trickle of the purest rain, a tear

For the child at the bright pane surrounded by

Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

 

                         ~ Richard Wilbur

 

Image of "The Old Railway Line" by Jo Sayers, courtesy of geograph.org.uk, 2007

Time to Submit – Hippocampus Magazine

Hippocampus Magazine, an exclusively online publication dedicated to entertaining, educating, and engaging writers and readers of creative nonfiction, is seeking essay and memoir excerpt submissions of up to 3,500 words.  Each monthly issue features memoir excerpts, personal essays, reviews, interviews, and articles on the craft of writing.  Submissions from both emerging and established writers are welcome. 

To ensure the integrity of the magazine’s content, all unsolicited creative submissions are read blindly by a few dozen members of its reading panel, which consists of freelance writers, published authors, teachers, scholars, avid readers, editors, poets, and others involved and interested in the creative nonfiction genre. 

For more information about Hippocampus and its submission guidelines, visit the website at http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com. 

Good luck! 

Books to Read and Tales to Tell…

I love the month of January.  While it’s bittersweet to take down the lights, pack the stockings and holiday garland, and toss what’s left of the panettone and eggnog, there’s something about the clean slate of this month.  With the onset of a new year and my birthday just two days apart, those first few weeks are like a gleaming blank whiteboard.  As usual, I have some fairly lofty literary ambitions for the New Year, most of which I’ll have the opportunity to accomplish as part of my coursework at Chapman.  Still, with only seven classes of my program requirements left to complete and an actual graduation date in sight, writing the book-length thesis is at the top of my 2012 priorities and resolutions. 

My 2011 New Year’s post conveyed my general aversion to resolution making.  “Over the years,” I explained, “I think resolutions have become associated with the incremental elimination of pleasure, such as vowing to stop eating cake or sleeping in on Saturdays rather than going to spin class.”  For me, the New Year has always been a time to reflect on values and priorities and assess how my time is being spent.  Rather than resolving to eradicate or quit doing something that’s ostensibly “bad” for me, I examine and juggle the time slots to try to squeeze more good stuff into each day – like reading and writing. 

This year, January will be spent studying for the MA exam and writing new chapters for my pre-thesis class.  The exam alone covers five works of literature, including The Mill on the Floss and Notes from Underground, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.  (Refer to the sidebar on the right for the full list of exam texts.)  While this first month of the year will pass in the blink of an eye between the pages of Eliot, Dostoevsky, et al., the rest of the year must culminate with the production of at least eighty new pages of my thesis novel. 

In This Year You Write Your Novel (2007), Walter Mosley encourages writers with a propensity to become distracted from their writing (yeah, he’s talking to me) to “let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls” and to “save the world at 8:30 rather than 7:00” (14).  He even advises against journaling, another activity I believe has tremendous creative value (unlike, say, dusting the window treatments) and to which I had resolved to return this year, unless the entry is going in the book.  Mosley’s tough, but let’s face it…so is my thesis defense committee. 

So once again I greet the New Year without much in the way of resolutions other than to write my novel.  To be honest, this assignment is more than just a hurdle to clear in order to graduate.  I have a story to tell, and I want to tell it.  I need to tell it.  And I will.  As soon as I pass this troublesome MA exam… 

Welcome, 2012!

A Song for New Year’s Eve

The year, whose hopes were high and strong,

   Has now no hopes to wake;

Yet one hour more of jest and song

   For his familiar sake.

      Oh stay, oh stay,

One mirthful hour, and then away.

 

The kindly year, his liberal hands

   Have lavished all his store.

And shall we turn from where he stands,

   Because he gives no more?

      Oh stay, oh stay,

One grateful hour, and then away.

 

……………………………………………………………………………………. 

 

Even while we sing, he smiles his last,

   And leaves our sphere behind.

The good old year is with the past;

   Oh be the new as kind!

      Oh stay, oh stay,

One parting strain, and then away.

 

         ~ from “A Song for New Year’s Eve” by William Cullen Bryant

 

Frances Brundage, 1910