girls in art (christina rothenbeck)

released just a couple of weeks ago, Girls in Art is christina rothenbeck's first chapbook, and it's available from dancing girl press (http://dulcetshop.ecrater.com/p/16193127/girls-in-art-christina-rothenbeck# ).

there are numerous reasons why you might enjoy this little book, one of course being its charming cover art. The poems in this collection touch on a wide range of subjects: egyptian miniatures, grey hair, fever dreams, laundry, frieda kahlo, nicknames, a robbery -- it's hard for me to pick a favorite.

rothenbeck's conversational tone makes her poems very accessible, and her evident interest in the world around her is contagious. the two recurring themes among these poems are the body and the mirror. observing her own body, at times as if it was someone else's, at times in pictures, at times in mirrors, she  manages to capture what it is to be alive in this world, and the desire to avoid, to redistribute some of these experiences.

"I could knit my own twin out of wire, / a little yarn for hair. Ghost double, mirror's mirror" she explains, "the unnameable growing inside me, / bundle of hair and bone and teeth. I've been hiding this / so carefully." (from I want to make someone feel this for me so I don't have to)

All Is Vanity by Charles Allan Gilbert (1892)

what i like most about her poetry is how it manages to subvert, to introduce the strange into the every-day: there is a certain domesticity to some of the poems here, but in the creases of that linen there is strangeness, the house is haunted, the girl is a ghost, tired of writing for the dead.

Suddenly there's all this noticing going on;
the light is almost painfully bright.
You're feeling everything at once --
like the world caught you watching
in the dark beneath its window. 

(from This is a troubling idea)

i thoroughly enjoyed this playful chapbook, and if any of the above sounds good to you, you might want to get a copy of your own. :)

Y (leslie adrienne miller)

thanks to the good folks as goodreads and the generous associates at graywolf press, i have this copy of the uncorrected proofs of leslie adrienne miller's Y right here beside me. with the madness of a busy semester behind me, i can finally give it the attention it deserves. here goes.

the book caught my eye immediately for two reasons: the one letter title and the gorgeous cover. the cover is actually photograph of another artist's work. australian artist ron mueck did a series of oversized, hyperrealistic sculptures of people (including that of the boy on the cover), and they are gorgeously detailed and uncanny. in a nice way.

but the book has much more to offer. after the code-switching, language-playing title poem about the y chromosome that makes half of the world's population what they are by its presence, and the other half by its absence, there's the lucifer effect -- and even while i was reading it the first time, i could tell i was torn: the poem works beautifully, it's very effective emotionally, it's like a giant fist closing around my chest. not a good feeling. but fascinating. here's a taste:

Learning her limits is a game he suspects
he shouldn't play, but sometimes he's quiet
on purpose: some funny place in him likes
to see her struggle to locate whatever he is
beyond squirm and din.

the boy like a predator teasing his prey, an elderly neighbour who is nearly blind. she knows he's there but she can't see him. and this is where, tacky as it sounds, this poem breaks my heart:

Crouched in a shrub, he waits
for the moment to unfurl its enormous flock
of risks, only to wheel back and settle again/
He waits until her smile begins to slide, until
the inevitable stumble, and there it is --
tingle of dark cause, sensation ajar,
rippling across his scalp. 

that slipping smile. it gets me. i've seen it. i have a soft spot for old people -- i grew up around old people. i got to know three of my great-grandmothers and several of their sisters. from very early on i learned the 'right' way to act around old people, how to respond to their occasional loss of context, how to learn their limits, not to play with them, but to respect them. what also gets me is how well 'the lucifer effect' is captured in this simple, short poem.

the collection is interspersed with 'adversaria' -- mental notes miller made while researching for her poems, tidbits of information, like petit fours of science. a particularly beautiful one is on page 15. it talks about roget's DNA, and says that it contains genetic palindromes. i suspect miller loves the research part of her work as much as i do for my own writing. it's these little sparkles in science texts that make the digging worthwhile.

(slightly adapted from gray's anatomy)

notes on a suprasternal notch talks about the body and being in one's own body, responding with the body through instinct and primal urge. playing with the vocabulary of anatomy, miller describes how even a view can turn the skeleton keys inside us:

[...] a view
of a man squatting to read
for a towel on a summer beach
his shoulders forward so the stunning V
of him ignites in you own nether notch

the suprasternal notch, by the way, is the jugular notch, the small hollow where your clavicles meet at the base of your neck. for random association, i remember it was of particular interest to the central character in the english patient when talking to his lover. in any case, now you know what that little hollow place is called.

the following adversaria section goes back to the image of primal responses in the body:

I believe that when I visit a zoo my muscular response changes as I move 

from the hippopotamus house to the cage of the weasels. 

and then, in cambiata. miller considers another peculiar experience where the body has its way: the breaking of a boy's voice. here, the boy is jean-baptiste maunier, a french singer and actor. his last great performance and his last release was in 2005, when he recorded one last duet before his voice broke, to "deliver ever after / only ordinary music, the round nub / of his Adam's apple rocking in grief."

there are lots more poems to explore in Y. this is a collections of poems that are concerned with the body, with our agency, our animal instincts, our peculiar emotional worlds. if any of the above sounds good to you, go get a copy of this book.

child made of sand (thomas lux)

(poet thomas lux)

the second book i read / pondered during my trip back to mississippi was the advance reading copy of thomas lux's child made of sand. first off, it's a handsome book:

a lovely yellow / red / white colour scheme with a chunky sans serif. nice. now, let's talk about the 65 pages of poetry between those yellow covers.

what i noticed, reading the collection through from cover to cover for the first time, was a recurring image: a handless god. a god who is either literally or symbolically handless - possibly indifferent, possibly impotent, possibly resentful.

From Whom all Blessings Flow 

[...]
Nobody ever sees Whom around.
Whom gets credit
for what Whom never lifted a pinky
to do, or not to do.
Whom doesn't have, I think, a pinky.
[...]

the speaker of "every time someone masturbates god kills a kitten" gives god a proper talking-to: after a list of alternatives (why not kill rats, snakes, clams instead?) he demands, "how 'bout a little less hard-ass?"

kittens are not the only ones faced with death in this collection. there is a horse that drops dead, there is the thought of death in general, death by hanging, suicide, one's own mortality. there's "a frozen ball of rattlesnakes" we cannot be sure are dead or alive.

many of the poems in child made of sand are at the same time funny and disturbing, such as "ermine noose" and "graves rented by the hour". other poems are simply beautiful, like "not the same mud as in 'two tramps in mud time'"or "the drunken forest" or "the moths who come in the night to drink our tears". their strengths lie in the well-crafted images that suggest lux is an observer with attention to detail:

[...] the fog of mud, what first
grips your ankle so whisperly, a little warmer
than the water above it, a satiny sock [...]

(from: "not the same kind of mud")

images of illness go hand in hand with the theme of death, and there is illness in this book: leprosy, nervous breakdowns, birth defects: "boy born with small knife in his head". in "rue de la vieille laterne", lux eulogizes the french writer gerard de nerval (1808-1855) who had the endearing habit of taking his pet lobster for walks on a silk leash. de nerval, after three mental breakdowns, took his own life in 1855 (wiki).

then again, there are a few poems i find it hard to warm up to - the "elegy" for cesar vallejo, "the queen of truth", "madsong", and most of all, "the riverine farmers" - the ending in particular feels, to me, rather heavy-handed, possibly because of the dominant end-rhymes and a tone that - again, to me - sounds too educational, too intent. however, that's a matter of taste.

overall this is a lovely collection. when it comes out in november, you might want to check it out!

the curious life of the dead (stiff)

so i've been parallel reading howards end and stiff. since the semester starts again today, i wanted to tell you about stiff before the madness of school catches up with me. stiff was a spontaneous gift from a friend of a friend who noticed i was looking at it while they were practicing for an upcoming performance. i have to say that some passages made me feel a little unwell - i have a very vivid imagination, a very tangible, physical imagination, and if that is true for you too, be aware of it. at the same time, the book is not gross. it is in no way revolting or shocking. mary roach treats the subject of corpses with just enough humour, some detachment, and respect at the same time.

from: waterhouse: sleep and his half-brother death (1874)

the idea of death something like the waterhouse painting above is still quite common - it's a common trope in movies, faerietales, and the likes. death as the brother of sleep. death as something peaceful, something unchanging and permanent, but not utterly alienating. the body is not much changed, in fact death (on the right) looks only a little stiffer, a little less relaxed than sleep (on the left). roach suggests that in the past, often people who chose to not donate their body to science or not to allow autopsies on their loved ones did so because they felt the peace of the dead would be disturbed or the memory of the decedent desecrated. she argues that the increase in people's willingness to will their own bodies to research after death is a direct result of the increase in the general public's understanding of the chemistry and biology of the body, especially the dead body. considering the processes of decay a dead human body goes through naturally, or when buried, letting others use the body for a common good seems more of an option. eventually, each body will cease to exist, whether it is buried, cremated, embalmed or autopsied.

while i still don't know that i would offer my body up for research, roach's book has given me a much better understanding of what is in store for the body after physical death. the american practice of embalming both fascinates and frightens me: it involves replacing the blood of the deceased with a formaldehyde solution. the reason this is so popular is that it gives the dead person that "alive" look - refilling some of the tissue that has inevitably collapsed or shrunk with the dehydration and other effects of physical death. with the help of some special make-up (yes it has to be special, since most of what you and i may use normally is designed to work on warm, living skin, rather than cold) and some aces up the embalmer's sleeve [such as moisturizing creams, plastic eye caps to keep the eyes from looking sunk and collapsed, which due to dehydration they will, and then some tricks to keep the mouth from falling open], your loved one can be made to look like they were, indeed, just sleeping. as i already mentioned in my ramblings about janet frame's daughter buffalo, the whole idea of chemically treating the dead to postpone or (as in lenin's case) even halt for decades the process of natural decay seems a bit iffy. formaldehyde is not exactly spring water, and considering it is a proven carcinogen, allowing it to seep through into the ground and into our drinking water seems like a less than brilliant idea. i am relieved to know, now, after some reading up, that embalming is rarely done in germany. i know you're going to say, hey, you'll be dead, you won't even know what happens to you, but to be honest i still don't like the idea of strange chemicals messing with my body.

an ecologically sensible coffin, by http://www.englishwillowcoffins.co.uk/index.htm

 here are some eco-friendly ways to go, if after reading this book you still decide you don't want to serve in one of the many capacities corpses have served in over the centuries.

another eco-friendly coffin, made from recycled paper.

roach makes a good case for the important role of donated / willed corpses for research. these have allowed scientists to learn a great many things in many areas of our daily lives. yes, virtually all crash testing is done with dummies these days, but there was and is only one way to know the limits, the thresholds of the human body, how strong an impact can be before it does organic damage or breaks a bone. once these limits are established, we can work with dummies and probes and such, but we only know these limits because there were people who willed their bodies to research. much medical training, until recently, included work on corpses when available. how else could a surgeon know where and how to find or fix a certain piece of your anatomy, if s/he has never seen it in the big picture? in the past, say, the 17 to 1800s, the bodies of executed criminals were made available to scientists for these purposes, autopsy being considered an added penalty on top of death. there were not enough corpses to go around, and so a trade in bodies began - which roach describes in chapter 2, crimes of anatomy. consider this:

[Body snatching] was a new crime, distinct from grave-robbing, which involved the pilfering of jewels and heirlooms buried in tombs and crypts of the well-to-do. Being caught in possession of a corpse's cufflinks was a crime, but being caught with the corpse itself carried no penalty. [...]
Some anatomy instructors mined the timeless affinity of university students for late-night pranks by encouraging their enrollees to raid graveyards and provide bodies for the class. At certain Scottish schools, in the 1700s, the arrangement was more formal: Tuition, writes Ruth Richardson, could be paid in corpses rather than cash. (43)

the body snatchers were also called (ironically enough) resurrectionists.the situation is different now, - according to roach there is almost a surplus of donated bodies. while there is still research that needs doing, in forensics as well as in medicine and safety testing for vehicles etc, and plastic surgeons need close-to-life materials to learn and practice their procedures on, a lot has already been achieved. roach cites alert king's calculations, in 1995, that

vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-ons. (92)

one touchy area is, according to roach, however in need to more willed corpses: pediatric impact studies, or any studies really, i would imagine, where the bodies of children would be needed. children do not usually will their bodies to anyone or anything. it's not the sort of thing children worry about, and it's not the sort of thing they should worry about. and who would want to bring up the option of body donation with grieving parents? (95)

not all the bodies researchers work with are willed or donated. sometimes, the body is all they have to solve a crime or find out the cause of an accident, a plane crash or such. there are professionals out there who have studied the types of injuries different types of accidents or assaults will create, the type of decay that occurs naturally and under various conditions, and can tell much from "just" the body at the scene of an accident or crime. (yes i know, there are lots of tv shows / series about that, right? csi this and csi that. keep in mind, as you read this blog, that i don't even own a tv.) 

medical schools are beginning to work with digitized corpses, a collection of  images of a great number of "slices" of an actual corpse, giving a (re-usable) three-dimensional image for medical students to work with and study.

overall, this book is fascinatingly interesting. it is well-written and quite readable, even for someone as squeamish as myself. i still have about half of the book ahead of me, but i would recommend it to anyone who is curious about the human - dead - body.

more to read:

• preservation procedures for different countries: http://www.afif.asso.fr/english/preservation.htm#Europe
• formaldehyde myths & risks: http://www.themodernembalmer.com/pdfs/20090620myths.pdf 
• thanatos, the greek personification of death: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatos
• zeit: wie man in deutschland begraben wird (2004)
• hygienische totenversorgung: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienische_Totenversorgung
• thanatopraxie: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatopraxie

pale horse, pale rider (porter)

i have to admit i had never heard of porter before a friend recommended "pale horse, pale rider" to me. the book contains three short stories (or, novels as the author preferred to call them, detesting the word "novella"): 

1. old mortality
2. noon wine
3. pale horse, pale rider

the copy i have is a browned, formerly eggshell coloured 1962 signet paperback that, undeniably, must have spent years on a smoker's shelf - not read, but exposed to lots of smoke. the lower quarter of the spine is brittle with a tear like it's been bent, but otherwise it is a good reading copy. this group of stories was first published in the 1930s. 

detail from "apocalypse"
by vasnetsov

i started with the title story, pale horse, pale rider, which in this edition (but not in all) comes last. the title is a reference to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: the fourth horseman is death, on a pale horse. porter's tells the tale of two lovers who cannot be together because of world war 1, as well as a portrait of the circumstances of miranda, a young journalist who is the focal point of the story.

the whole, for me, falls into four parts: a very short part at the beginning, where she "meets" the pale rider, then her work and economic concerns, meeting adam, and the influenza. the first and last part, rather dream-like and disorienting, not only drew me in but drained me of energy while reading, while the other parts are much more clear and, i guess, illustrate her lucid state of mind.

old mortality i found easier to read. at times, i fell in love with little passages here and there. this story is split intentionally into three parts:

part 1: 1885 - 1902
part 2: 1904
part 3: 1912

in part 1 we meet the sisters miranda (8 at the time) and maria (12), who see their family and their own destinies through the stories about other family members. (this miranda may well be the same person as in pale horse, pale rider, only younger, and, in the last part, older.) the grandmother is instrumental in making those stories "real" in the sense that she is the keeper of tangible evidence to go with the stories: letters, photographs, a wedding dress.

Photographs, portraits by inept painters who meant earnestly to flatter, and the festival garments folded away in dry herbs and camphor were disappointing when the girls tried to the living beings created in their minds by the breathing words of their elders. Grandmother, compelled in her blood twice a year by the change of seasons, would sit nearly all of one day beside old trunks and boxes in the lumber room, unfolding layers of garments and small keepsakes; she spread them out on sheets on the floor around her, crying over certain things, nearly always the same things, looking again at pictures in velvet cases, unwrapping locks of hair and dried flowers, crying gently and easily as if tears were the only pleasure she had left. 

If Maria and Miranda were very quiet, and touched nothing until it was offered, they might sit by her at these times, or come and go. There was a tacit understanding that her grief was strictly her own, and must not be noticed or mentioned. (p.11)

apart from the girls, their aunt amy, whom they have never met, is an important, if absent character here.
after refusing his advances for years, and after a scandal at a dance and a shooting, amy suddenly decides to give in to gabriel and marry him. some weeks after the wedding, she dies. mysterious aunt amy is important to the girls, even if the painting of her does not strike either girl as beautiful. in the family's stories, and hence in their minds, amy is (was) wonderful.

the defining impact of stories told on their perception of reality goes further than idealized family members: when their father takes them to see some shakespeare plays (they are not allowed trivial entertainment),

Miranda thought the magnificent lady in black velvet was truly the Queen of Scots, and was pained to know that the real Queen had died long ago, and not at all on the night she, Miranda, had been present. (p. 15)

part two tells of the two sisters' time away from home, in a convent school in new orleans. miranda has, in the meantime, decided she will never grow into a tall beautiful woman, and toys with the idea of becoming a race jockey. both girls have strong ideas about stories. when they come across a fiction paperback, they read it but do not take it seriously, taking from the book just one word: "immured" - as a more romantic adjective for their time at the school. (p. 31)

It was no good at all trying to fit the stories to life, and they did not even try. They had long since learned to draw the lines between life, which was real and earnest, and the grave was not its goal; poetry, which was true but not real; and stories, or forbidden reading matter, in which things happened as nowhere else,  with the most sublime irrelevance and unlikelihood, and one need not turn a hair, because there was not a word of truth in them. (p. 32)

during the time at the convent, the girls briefly meet uncle gabriel, who is nothing like the romantic poet they had constructed in their minds from the stories they were told, and his hostile second wife.

the last part takes place on a train, as miranda, then 18 and recently married, travels to uncle gabriel's funeral. by chance, she meets old cousin eva, whom she has never met before and also only heard stories about. the stories mainly focused on eva's lack of a decent chin and her (supposedly) consequential life as a spinster. during the train ride, cousin eva tells a different version of the stories about amy and gabriel and the shooting. miranda comes away disillusioned and with the conviction that, at least, she will know the truth of her own life, her own story.

noon wine - a gripping story. i am trying to think what i can say about it without giving too much away, because this story relies much on plot events, and not so much on the characters' internal goings-ons as the other two. i hope you'll read the story anyhow, and if you don't want spoilers do not read past the following paragraph! :)

the setting: the title refers to a (real or fictitious) scandinavian drinking song about waking up feeling so great that one drinks all the wine ("likker") normally saved for the lunch break in the morning already, and feels even better. now, the story is set in south texas, and the notion of feeling great while drunk and working on the farm strikes farm owner mr thompson as bizarre, since he can barely stand the heat sober. the man who plays this song every day on his harmonica, mr helton, never touches a drop of alcohol for as long as thompson knows him. mr helton appears out of nowhere (well, out of north dakota) and asks for work, which mr thompson is happy to provide him with, for low wages. helton is a quiet character, very private and not always polite, but a hard worker and very good at what he does (tending the animals, making butter, straightening out the farm, later even making cheese for them to sell) and becomes almost a part of the family over the years.

--- spoilers ---

after many years, a stranger appears in search of helton. he makes some unsettling claims about the man who has been helping the thompson family immensely for years. he tells thompson that helton is an escaped lunatic, and a murderer at that, and the farm owner realizes this is a bounty hunter of sorts. he has to take sides. when thompson refuses to help him capture and handcuff helton, the stranger pulls out a knife. helton, hearing the argument, comes to thompsons' aid and there is a brief fight - believing the stranger is stabbing, even killing helton, thompson tries to knock him out with an axe, killing him accidentally. helton runs but then dies when caught. there are no knife wounds on him, but still, thompson goes free, claiming self-defense. despite the verdict (that he is not guilty) nobody believes him.  a week after the trial, having told his side of the story to every single neighbour, finding his wife stricken with panic attacks at night, and hearing his sons warn him not to ever do her any harm again, he gives up, writes one last testimony and shoots himself in the fields.

--- end of spoilers ---

if you wanted to, you could look at the images of manliness in this story. mr thompson has clear ideas about what is "man's work" and what is "woman's work" and what is "paid help's work". helton does not, apparently. (p. 74) there is also the passage where thompson and the stranger compare their stumps of chewing tobacco. (p. 91). you'll find some more stuff in here if you want.

anyway, thanks for recommendation, i am glad i read this. all three stories (novels) are very different from each other and well-written and interesting in their own way.

"it's not a sin to have feelings" (Gay Mormons?)

i told you in an earlier post that i was reading this, and that i would tell you more about it soon. today is "soon." the book, Gay Mormons?, is now available and so, now seems like a good time to talk about it.

brent kerby's book is a collection of over 30 different personal stories of latter-day-saints (nicknamed "mormon") and their experiences with same-sex-attraction (ssa). the contributors speak of how they came to realize they were not heterosexual, they speak of their fears and feelings of guilt, but they also speak of their hopes and wishes. they are sons, daughters, parents, girl/boyfriends, spouses with partners of the other or the same gender.

each story is different, yet there are some recurring themes, the strongest of which has to be the common desire for a meaningful, trusting relationship with another person - something pretty much every human being experiences, no matter what their orientation. this collection makes it very clear that those who feel attracted only or mainly to their own gender do not do so simply out of lust,  and that a homosexual relationship can be (and often is) based on love just as much as any heterosexual relationship.

another commonality is having to deal with the conflict between the teachings they grew up with and the feelings and experiences they are having. what do you do when the religion, the community you trust in and live with every day of your life tells you that what you are feeling is not right? some contributors tell of their failed attempts at reconciling their faith and their orientation, others tell of success, while others again are still trying to figure things out for themselves.

since the family unit of husband, wife and children is an important focal point in the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints (as in many other churches), and many lessons in sunday school and other meetings center around this configuration, it is not easy for church members who know that they will / can never form such a family to feel included. much like single working moms, they may feel judged by others for the way they lead their lives, - others who do not understand their situation. the idea that ssa is a "choice", a more or less conscious decision that can be reversed if one simply wants it enough is still wide-spread.

some homosexual church members may enter into a heterosexual marriage in an attempt to "do what's right", some choose to never marry, live in a celibate relationship, or stay alone. others may turn away from the church community. some people may find the conflict irreconcilable and go into a deep depression or even try to take their own lives.

the book aims at giving people who experience ssa a voice, sharing the ideas, worries, and hopes others might otherwise not be aware of. as the editor of this work, brent kerby has done his homework: he has researched the church's official position on this topic and provides quotes and also a list of resources for those who want to read further. he has also paid much attention to keeping the tone in these stories helpful, - honest and straightforward, and free of anger or personal accusation.

these are real stories, from the lives of real people, most of whom were happy to see them printed under their real name. only a few contributors opted for a pseudonym. i think this book will be interesting to anyone who wants to know about mormons and ssa, to understand their experience. it will be particularly interesting to those latter-day-saints who experience ssa or have a friend, family member, spouse, or other acquaintance who does.

in the introduction one general authority of the church is quoted as saying that we (here: the members of the church, but i think it goes for all of us really) need to be more loving and more tolerant of those around us. we need to re-examine our own ideas and preconceptions. we need to see beyond theoretical rules, the letter of the law, and make sure we look at the person, their heart, their desires, their hopes.

the book is now available at amazon: 
http://www.amazon.com/Gay-Mormons-Latter-day-Experiences-Same-Gender/dp/1461034221/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303441945&sr=8-4