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A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Seeking Myself in a Pile of Books by Women

August 3, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 4 Comments

Lately I’ve been searching. Digging into books by women about women—trying to find out what it means to be me. Although I have some very dear friends, I’m feeling the absence of a community as we’re too busy to get together or too far apart. Most likely I’m sheltering myself too deeply inside me.

So I’ve taken this quest where I take all of my quests—into the pages of books. The place where it’s safe to learn and stretch and grow. To shine and blossom away from any influence that might divert or derail me. But I’m ready to come out now—my thoughts jelled enough I’m no longer terrified I’ll twist and shape them to please others. At least for now.

Men Explain Things to Me

men explain things to me - rebecca solnitI picked up Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit on a night when I was headed to a gathering of female writers (a group that will not be named). During dinner before the event, Ann Hedreen and I discussed what we really thought of this group. I was wrestling with the fact that the event had to be secret. That the organizers felt they had to exclude men. And that they had named their group after a remark by someone they would consider part of the patriarchy. It all felt so reactive.

Ann and I had a really good discussion that night about feminism and what it means to be a woman. It was just the kind of conversation I’d been craving. We wandered into Elliott Bay Books and ran across this book and I thought it would be just the right time to get a new perspective on feminism. The event went well. It actually felt amazing to be surrounded by so many successful women who were so open and generous with each other. I was still sad that it needed to be exclusive, but if that’s what made them be as open as they were, I can understand the place for that.

What I didn’t love was this book. I actually had a fight with my husband about it before I even opened it. I think I was reacting to some sense of being stifled and he was reacting to the combative title. But I put myself in the position of defending something I hadn’t even read. Which I now deeply regret.

What I wanted from Men Explain Things to Me was some insight into the reasons I sometimes feel small or less than. To slights and microaggressions that might be undermining me as I try to build myself up. What I got was a story of how men victimize women. Solnit was saying that not all men intend to put women down, but behind her hand her tone sounded as though they should know better. They should be responsible for our feelings even when we are not responsible for ourselves. I think the book is meant to be playful, but I didn’t feel playful in reading it. I felt less than rather than equal. And not in a way that made me want to improve my lot.

Strike one on finding empowerment in the pages of a book.

When She Named Fire

when she named fireThe next book I picked up, When She Named Fire is a collection of poems by women. I have to admit I haven’t gotten very far into the book yet because I was so floored by Kim Addonizio‘s contributions (the book is alphabetical by last name if you want to know how soon I got hung up) that I stopped reading.

In just four poems, Addonizio struck deep into the heart of how the two sexes wound each other and ourselves. She opened up sensuality. And she made me reconsider (deeply) my relationship with my mother. I don’t know how good the rest of the book is, but I’ll be reading this one slowly and for a long time. If even one or two more poems are as good at helping me take ownership of myself and my experience, that sense of empowerment will bleed into my next book, which is a good and necessary thing.

Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls

Courage daring poems for gutsy girlsCourage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls was co-edited by Karen Finneyfrock, someone I’ll dare to call a friend although we don’t yet know each other that well. Karen and I spent a few days up at the Whiteley Center together with Nicole Hardy and I was so impressed by her centered sense of self and her presence.

Karen works a lot with teens and this collection was created to empower teen girls by showing a wide diversity of experiences. The poems get to the heart of owning yourself and of the myriad ways we can be beautiful and strong and sometimes hurt ourselves. I fell in love all over again with Sarah Kay and Patricia Smith. I read this book fast and will probably read it over again. I’m definitely buying copies for the young women in my life.

What stuck with my most about Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, though, is the sense that we write for ourselves. Full of many right answers and a few wrong ones, I’m sure that girls will take comfort in (and power from) this book. They will learn that they are not alone. But they will also not really listen and will instead go off and make their own lessons. And that is how it should be.

What surprised me about this book is how maternal it made me feel. And maybe that’s because my best friend is having her first baby this weekend (so it’s on my mind), but maybe I’m growing up a little, too. But reading and communing with these women over their tenderest moments, I came to realize how small and individual our lives are. I have so many things I want to teach to young women, but maybe the lessons we need to learn cannot be taught. Maybe I could not be taught. Maybe it’s okay that I, like many young girls, longed not to be told how to live but to be loved no matter what choices I made—what successes and failures I created.

Talking to My Body

talking to my body - anna swirThe irony of Talking to My Body is that I found author Anna Swir through a collection anthologized by Czesław Miłosz who at every turn celebrated her feminism but in the most misogynistic tone. I can’t really explain and I think it was well intentioned and also cultural. Regardless, after reading one or two of her poems, I had to have more.

And the real reason I picked this book up is because Swir’s poetry is incredibly sexy. And not in a 50 Shades of Grey sort of way. I actually thought there would be more erotic poems in the book, but twenty-five or so poems gathered as “To Be a Woman” were enough. What Swir does in this section is explore the experience of being a sexual being through the voices of three very different women. It’s gorgeous and full and the three diverse perspectives open up an entire plane of acceptable possibilities.

“A night of love with you,
a big baroque battle
and two victories.”
– Anna Swir

Why this Now

One of the things I’ve been struggling with in this post-publication summer (if not my whole life) is that I ache to be known. Deeper than that, I ache to be accepted in all of my faults and failings. I’ve built a wall to shield those tendernesses and I understand that as long as I hold strong this wall, none of that will happen. I’ve learned a lot from Rebecca Bridge about the power of exposing your experience while sitting with yourself (see her essay about her boyfriend’s suicide on Gawker), but I also see how vulnerable being at that edge can make her (and watched others jump over) and I’m not sure I’m brave enough to sit that close to the fire.

Some days I think that the pain of not being known is just slightly less than being rejected for who I am. On those days I do not write. And some days I am strong enough that I want to dig and become no matter what anyone says or thinks or feels. That is when I unlock the door—let the words tumble out into the shape of the real me. Whoever that may be.

What I’m looking for in these books—in all the books I ever read—are the edges I butt up against—the rubs that show me the negative space that is me. With each book I shift and change shape—sometimes a little and sometimes a lot—find my center of gravity and learn to occupy this space.

I don’t know if I’m a feminist. I do know that I am most happy when I’m surrounded by a sea of voices speaking their own truths and when I speak up so that my voice is counted among them.

I have a date, soon, with Roxana Arama where we’re going to talk about writing—where I’ll get real with her about the things I’m struggling with most and I’ll listen as she does the same. And tonight I’ll talk about books and reading and life with a very accomplished group of women. I feel lucky to be counted among all of the women I’ve named in this post and those whom I have not named. As much as I long for a large communal kitchen filled with all the generations of women and all the voices I love, I know, too, that this is my way of engaging, and that maybe, if I’m lucky, my voice will endure to someday help someone else.

Filed Under: Books, USA & Canada Tagged With: anna swir, courage: daring poems for gutsy girls, karen finneyfrock, kim addonizio, longreads, rebecca solnit, talking about my body, when she named fire

Breaking the Rules of Writing with Anthony Doerr, Karen Finneyfrock, & Natalie Diaz

February 22, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 6 Comments

Rules are made to be broken, right? And yet when we’re training as writing, we’re constantly taking classes and reading books and looking for new rules to follow so we can “be good writers” or “get it right.” That’s why Must the Gun Always Fire at Hugo House last night was such a relief. Natalie Diaz, Anthony Doerr, and Karen Finneyfrock were all asked to present work that examines Chekhov’s rule that a gun placed in the first act must go off by the third and the results made me want to run home and reexamine the writing rules I’ve set for myself.

Natalie Diaz

Natalie Diaz breaks so many rules already with her poetry that it was exciting to see how she responded to the prompt. I love the way she blends really gorgeous language and metaphors with hard-hitting stories that push at familial comfort zones. In the first poem she read last night, which was about playing basketball on the reservation, she talked about the splintering of a fibula and I think she used the word “motherfucker.” Diaz says that she likes to write in form and then break it, which is harder for me to hear in a reading. She’s definitely playing with expectations throughout her writing and I love it.

The rules I most enjoyed watching her break last night were self-imposed. She read one poem that was a really fresh draft which is something many writers avoid, but I loved the vulnerability of that moment and the poem was gorgeous. She also read a series of poems about her brother in a row. Someone had remarked to her that they thought she might move onto new subject matter after writing a book about her brother, but she pushed back last night by writing what she needed to write about. And then she changed it all up again by breaking that series with a poem about something else entirely.

Diaz has a very particular reading style which I find distracting. I kept thinking about how her very careful enunciation and sometimes halting cadence might be accentuating the rhythm of the poem and helping to show what the piece looked like on the page. But as a prose writer with a tin ear, I really prefer to focus on the flow of the language.

Karen Finneyfrock

The first piece Finneyfrock read broke every rule of reader anticipation and I adored it. The piece takes place in a room with a gun on a table (a fact which is repeated frequently enough to break another rule to wonderful effect). But the room is also filled with other loaded objects including a pregnancy test and unlit matches. A hooded figure passes the window. What the piece did for me was show the charge that we as writers build with certain objects. As she piled one on top of another, there was no way that the resulting story could utilize them all, but I was fascinated by the way my brain wanted to complete the action implied by each object. That’s a potency I’d like to play with later.

Another piece she read played with the stereotypes different types of writers have about each other. Beyond the genre fiction versus literary fiction “divide,” I’d honestly not thought much about it before, but her observations were spot on and hilarious.

Finneyfrock also played with our expectations when she read a poem about her own rules of writing. Interwoven with some more expected maxims, she shared advice about when and how to ride a bicycle. The rules became about writing but also living. I liked the way that poem expanded for me to show how writing is living for some of us.

Anthony Doerr

anthony doerr
Anthony Doerr at the Lit Series. He’s not usually up this late either. Image courtesy of Hugo House.
The featured reader, Anthony Doerr, took a completely novel approach to the stage. Novel, at least, for a literary reading. He placed a large pad of paper on the wall as you would at a business conference. On each sheet was a rule of writing like, “Never start a book with your character waking up” and “Only amateurs write dream scenes.” Then he read beautiful examples from classic literature of writers who stomped all over those rules and threw the books to members of the audience who could identify the works. The Literary Series runs a little late for this early bird and this performance added a fantastic rush of energy.

And then Doerr read. The rules he was wrestling with was about being overly sentimental in writing and not being able to fit an entire life into a short story. The story he shared, I think it was called “Two Oranges,” was seven pages long. I’m going to spoil the plot for you here, but I’ll talk about why I don’t think that matters in a moment. The story started with a boy and a girl (Annie) who meet on an airplane and share two oranges. Boy falls for girl and then fails to ask for her number. A year passes as he acclimates to a new town before he sees her again. They fall in love, get married, have a child who grows to be a teen, and then Annie is diagnosed with inoperable and fatal cancer. After her death, the daughter has a child with the mother’s eyes.

Fitting an Entire Life into Seven Pages

This story started a really great discussion with my husband last night. He thought parts of the story, like inoperable cancer, were too easy and had become expected. I agree, but only to a certain extent. Inoperable cancer is a pretty pat state of affairs and it’s a TV-easy way of getting rid of a character. But so is getting hit by a car. What making Annie’s death expected does for the story is it shifted the weight. We are all going to die. Some of us horribly, some peacefully, some soon, some a very very long time into the future. Two oranges became about the life we live in between those expectations. By making her death easy (and in fact not mentioning the actual death, more on that in a moment), Doerr is fighting for team life and for getting the most out of it we can.

The trick of it all is that Doerr’s gun does fire. He has two single characters sitting next to each other on a plane. They do fall in love. Their lives do end. He uses the device of the orange throughout the piece as a metaphor for the sweetness of living. And the piece was sentimental, maybe not in the writing but in the effect. It touched me so deeply that for one minute I looked at the ring on Doerr’s finger and wondered if his wife was dying. That is the art of great writing–being able to provoke and convey that kind of feeling. I don’t know whether it was real or not but I was weeping so hard by the end of the story I was worried I would sob audibly.

The Art of Elision

Part of the reason Doerr was able to fit so much into those few pages is he lets his readers fill in the gaps in the story. I don’t think he ever mentioned that the characters were on an airplane. He instead had them travelling a long distance in seats 13A and 13B. When they re-encounter one another, he tells us that one movie date becomes twelve. The entire courtship is that one sentence. Then there is the diagnosis but he never mentions her death and instead goes straight to after her memorial service.

There are very few scenes in the story and the whole of it seems to be on fast-forward, but it works because Doerr uses the recurring significant detail of those oranges to touch very human parts of us. Listening to the story was like watching the characters’ lives flash before my eyes, but I had enough information that I could fill in the other bits in any way I wanted. I normally don’t love short stories, but I loved this one and I loved seeing the art in it.

The Musicians

jake uitti
Jake Uitti and friends perform at the Lit Series. Image courtesy of Hugo House.
The Literary Series always includes a musical element. Last night Jake Uitti was invited to write three pieces on the same theme. He broke the rules by inviting three friends to do the writing instead. The result was three wildly different pieces that converged around a phrase about an oasis. And each was performed similarly with the songwriter using a guitar on one mic and the other three musicians singing backup (and clapping and other accompaniments) around another. I’d never heard of Jared Cortese, Joel Mars, or Caleb Thompson before (I’m not the person you trust to find the latest bands–really), but their performances were each amazing in individual ways.

The point of it all is that maybe what’s most important about the rules of anything is to be aware of them and then to remake them to suit you. I received advance copies of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide for Transforming Artifacts into Art, a book of writing rules I co-authored, this week. If you choose to read that book, I hope what you’ll take away from it is your own set of guidelines to build upon and break down as you see fit.

Happy writing!

Filed Under: USA & Canada Tagged With: anthony doerr, hugo house, karen finneyfrock, natalie diaz, writing rules

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Polska, 1994

Polska 1994

Clear Out the Static in Your Attic

Clear Out the Static in Your Attic_cover

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What I’m Reading

Isla's bookshelf: currently-reading

Birds of America
Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
by Jonathan Lethem
The Souls of Black Folk
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois
Bomb: The Author Interviews
Bomb: The Author Interviews
by BOMB Magazine
On Writing
On Writing
by Jorge Luis Borges

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