Tough Love from Hemingway to Fitzgerald to Us

by Lee Eunyeol

After the publication of Tender Is The Night, Fitzgerald asked Hemingway what he thought of the novel. Hemingway’s entire letter is a must-read, but if anything, get into this excerpt:

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.

About this time I wouldn’t blame you if you gave me a burst. Jesus it’s marvellous to tell other people how to write, live, die etc.

“I’ve Got A Language Problem, Too.” – Philip Levine

I’m still taking it all in. Reading at Housing Works Bookstore with Karolina Manko, US Poet Laureate Philip Levine and Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy K. Smith last night at Tumblr/Knopf’s Celebrate Poetry event was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. By the time I got home, my face hurt from smiling so much.

Karolina is only 21 years old, but brought such a fierce heart to the stage. The poems Tracy read from Life On Mars managed to keep their feet on the ground, but their heads in the stars. When she read the line, “We saw to the edge of all there is,” I literally gasped.

And Mr. Levine! First of all, he’s so incredibly nice. Karolina and I were too shy to go talk to him on our own, but a wonderful friend of Knopf was kind enough to introduce us. Instantly, I felt silly for being so shy. He talks to you like you are a person. That’s obvious and yet increasingly rare among writers as celebrated as he is.

When he got on stage, he said, “I’ve added up the ages of the other three readers and I’m two years younger than them.” Every poem he read was, of course, a knock out. I’m debating getting the last two lines from “Of Love & Other Disasters” tattooed across my face. Toward the end of his reading, Philip said “I’ve got a language problem, too. The poems don’t come out the way I want. I want them immortal, but they come out mortal.”

I hear that, man. I hear that.

Tonight is the night!

The writing life can strange and hard, but when it’s good, you feel like hell never happened.

by Paige Smith

I’ve had a goofy smile on my face all day.

First, I was able to share the insanely good news that on Monday, April 23rd, I will be one of the opening readers along with Karolina Manko for our new Pulitzer winner Tracy K. Smith and Poet Laureate Philip Levine at Housing Works. It’s part of Knopf and Tumblr’s Celebrate Poetry campaign and there’s even going to be an open bar! It doesn’t get much better than that. Here are the details in case you’re in the City and love poetry and open bars.

THEN, I remembered that today is April 18 which means it was time for my poem “Skin Like Brick Dust” to show up on The Rumpus as part of its National Poetry Month Project. What a day!

Here’s a peak of the poem. Go over to The Rumpus to read the rest.

Two blocks beyond gravity,
I pressed into you, into you & away

from all the breaking. I didn’t know
your name, so I kissed one

into your mouth.

The writing life can strange and hard, but when it’s good, you feel like hell never happened. And here is where I repeat Nicherin Daishonin’s advice: “Suffer what there is to suffer. Enjoy what there is to enjoy.”

Getting Out of the Way of Our Stories

by Anna Schuleit

I’ve been reading sections of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and when I got to this part of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” I knew I’d have to share it here on the blog:

Whenever he told the story, Rat had a tendency to stop now and then, interrupting the flow, inserting little clarifications or bits or analysis and personal opinion. It was a bad habit, Mitchell Sanders said, because all that matters is the raw material, the stuff itself, and you can’t clutter it up with your own half-baked commentary. What you have to do, Sanders said, is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself.

As Adrienne Rich has been on my mind a great deal lately, Sanders’s advice brings  to mind the lines “the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth…” 

Of course, getting out of the way of our stories is easier said than done. And truth be told, we never actually get all the way out of the way, do we?

Most Recent Reading Diary Entries

by Guido Mocafico

April 10, 2012 

• “The Problems of Language in a Democratic State” by June Jordan via Some of Us Did Not Die
• Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral

April 11, 2012 

• “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams” by June Jordan via Some of Us Did Not Die
• “Do You?” by Sophie Klahr via The Rumpus

April 12, 2012

• Sula by Toni Morrison
• “Understanding Al Green” by Adrian Matejka

April 13, 2012

• Sula by Toni Morrison

April 14, 2012

• Sula by Toni Morrison

April 15, 2012

• Sula by Toni Morrison
• “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

April 16, 2012

• Sula by Toni Morrison
• “Stockings,” “Church,” “The Man I Killed,” “Ambush,” “Style” and “Speaking of Courage” from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
• “Three Tripitaka Priests Pray for Rain” from the Writings of Nicherin Daishonin (Volume 1)
• My Dear Friends in America by Daisaku Ikeda

April 17, 2012

• The Liars Club by Mary Karr
• “Dear HPV” by Jennifer Sky via The Rumpus
• My Dear Friends in America by Daisaku Ikeda

Queering National Poetry Month & Remembering Adrienne Rich

by Lizi Reale

• Tomorrow, at the LGBT Center, I will be MC’ing a reading that features James Allen Hall, Rigoberto Gonzalez and Eduardo C. Corral. Each of these poets is truly amazing and, if you’re in New York tomorrow evening, I’m so happy you’ll have a chance to see them together. The reading begins at 6:30pm. Go here for more information.
• On Monday, April 16 at 7:00, I’ll be a part of a tribute reading honoring the life and work of Adrienne Rich. The event will feature Rosalind Morris, Julie Crawford, Cathy Park Hong, Yvette Christianse, Cyrus Cassels, Suzane Gardinier and others. The venue for this event is Columbia University’s Deutsches Haus,
  which is located at 430 W.116 Street, between Amsterdam and
  Morningside Avenue.

from “Problems of Language in a Democratic State” by June Jordan

I believe Americans have wanted their sons and daughters to write just well enough to fill out a job application. Americans have wanted their children to think just well enough to hold that job. Not too many people have wanted to start trouble, or get into it.

So I would say that our schools have served most of us extremely well. We have silenced or eliminated minority children. We have pacified white children into barely competent imitations of their fear-ridden parents.

But now there are no jobs and, consequently, somebody needs to write aggressive news editorials. Somebody needs to write aggressive new statements of social design and demand. More and more Americans finally want to hear new sentences, new ideas, to articulate this unprecedented, and painful, majority situation. But is there anybody new around the house? Someone who can think and organize a solution to this loss of privilege, this loss of power?

I’ve started reading essays from June Jordan’s Some of Us Did Not Die in the morning. This essay in particular, written in the 80s, is strikingly resonant with where we find ourselves as a country now.

Reading Diary: Day 7 -16

Sorry for the delay. I’m just getting over a nasty stomach virus that owned me for the last week. Also, I’ve decided that trying to record every news article I come across will in fact will be the death of me. Seeing as how I’d prefer to be eternally youthful, just assume that up to date on current events thanks to publications like Mother Jones, Think Progress, New York Times, The Economist, etc.

Day 7: March 31, 2012

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 8: April 1, 2012

• Post-Nativity by Joe Hall
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 9: April 2, 2012

• The Black Ocean by Brian Barker
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 10: April 3, 2012 

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Day 11: April 4, 2012

• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

Day 12: April 5, 2012

• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

Day 13: April 6, 2012

• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

Day 14: April 7, 2012

• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

Day 15: April 8, 2012

• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
• “Life After Lebanon by June Jordan via Some of Us Did Not Die
• “Nicaragua: Why I Had to Go there” by June Jordan via Some of Us Did Not Die

Day 16: April 9, 2012 

• “Report from the Bahamas” by June Jordan via Some of Us Did Not Die
• Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral
• An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 by Adrienne Rich