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Patience

 

To what lengths would you travel to save a lost love? This question is what lies underneath the surface of Chicago-born comic book artist Daniel Clowes’ latest graphic novel, Patience (Fantagraphics Books, 2016). A book self-described as, “a cosmic time warp deathtrip to the primordial infinite of everlasting love,” Clowes expounds upon themes of love, loss, despair, obsession, and hyperrealism presented in previous works, while adding sci-fi elements of time travel, ray-guns and parallel timelines into the mix for a book that, although is severely tied to earlier works, stands out as one of his most unique and heartfelt to date.

The graphic novel begins in 2012, where relatively happily-married Patience and her husband, Jack, discover that Patience is pregnant. This leads to the usual woes of an expecting couple: what clothes should we buy for the baby? Do we make enough money to support this family? Will we be bringing this child into a less-than-acceptable future? One day, after returning home from his less-than-financially-satisfactory job, Jack finds Patience dead on their living room floor, supposedly murdered by an intruder. This leads to a whirlwind year of Jack being prosecuted, tried, and eventually imprisoned for ten months until his name is cleared, due to insufficient evidence. After being released, he conducts his own investigation, leading nowhere. Jump to 2029. There’s clubs with drinks served in scientific beakers, blue women in LeeLoo Dallas-esque attire and “Super-Creeps” in yellow Hulk Hands; this future is not quite Jetsons, no flying cars and floating buildings, but far from A Clockwork Orange. Jack is still severely depressed from Patience’s death and has been living in a self-loathing, obsessive freefall until he finds a man named Barry that has created the ability to time travel, and all hell breaks loose as Jack jumps from 2006 to 1985, and back to 2012, disastrously interacting with past incarnations of pivotal characters, including Patience.  

Clowes’ exploration in Patience of lost love and the depths we as humans are willing to dive to retrieve retribution is a modification of themes explored in his earlier works, specifically David Boring (Pantheon Books, 2000) and Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (Fantagraphics Books, 1993). But where Clowes utilizes the main characters of Boring (David Boring) and Velvet (Clay Loudermilk) as mediums for the idea of closure (i.e. Boring searching for a woman he considers his feminine ideal who previously abandoned him, and Loudermilk searching cross-country for his estranged wife after seeing her in a BDSM snuff film), Clowes has progressed to using Jack Barlow as a tool of retribution, a man so obsessed with the loss of his late wife he is willing to travel through space and time itself to avenge her.

In this journey to find and stop Patience’s killer, he becomes obsessed with attempting to better the lives of past incarnations of Patience, bringing forth several moments of moral ambiguity and complexity throughout Patience that rings true to Clowes’ style. For example, when back in 2006, a middle-aged, time-traveling Jack beats a teenage boy half to death that sexually humiliates Patience. At one point, thinking Patience’s con ex-boyfriend, Adam, was her future killer, Jack goes back to 1985 to when Adam was a child and almost murders him, to which he rationalizes and pontificates:

I can’t tell you exactly what happened. It sure as hell wasn’t because I couldn’t shoot a baby; nothing like that. One thing about a guy with my perspective—once you know how the story ends, you don’t much give a shit about human potential . . .  And it wasn’t because I might fuck up the future . . . No, it was like some invisible force of nature took over for a second. I wanted to broil that little fucker so bad, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

Though these appear to be terrible deeds on Jack’s behalf, they are carried out with the full intent to continue the life he and Patience had, as well as attempting to make the life she had prior to their meeting and eventual marriage—to which she earlier expresses much disdain for, to the point of never talking about it with Jack—easier, effectively asking the reader the question of, “would you take a life to save the life of a loved one?”

The hyperrealism at play with the elements of sci-fi of the plot is further pushed through the artwork of Patience. Relatively drab, muted colors and stark line-work are on display in the years of past, while when in the future that level of realism is literally layered over with vibrant colors and rotund figures. It is almost a bit jarring to see Jack with his colorful future technology in Clowes’ visual idea of yesteryear. 

Daniel Clowes wrestles with ideas of love and loss in Patience, often times forcing the reader to ask themselves questions throughout about the things they would do, the depths they would sink to, and the sacrifices they would make to save a loved one. All the while letting the reader know ultimately no matter what you try, no matter what you do, that some outcomes are inevitable, but that for the ones that are capable of change, that change might not be immediate and often times one must exercise a certain degree of patience.

Davis R. Blackwell is a Chicago-based author. You can catch him ignoring you on the Red Line eating a six-piece chicken dinner from Harold’s.

June 19, 2017

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We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

 

By Claire Martin, Interviews Editor

In the grand scheme of sibling-driven stories in the literary world, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves stands out with an imaginative framework that very few others can boast. Released in 2013 by writer Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club, Wit’s End) the novel went on to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2014. It continues to gain attention for its stark originality, which earned it a place on the New York Times bestseller list.  

The Cooke family is brought to life through Rosemary, narrator and daughter of the group. She’s found herself in college at the University of California in Davis where she recounts the quirks of growing up with a family of five in the late 1970s. Her parents, both mild-mannered people, raised their three children in the midst of the academic environment her father worked in. Aside from Rosemary there was Lowell, the oldest son with a radical edge. But most notably there was Fern, the youngest sister and beacon of the bunch. Rosemary recalls Fern being unruly, boisterous, and wildly close to her. Rosemary notes, “Once upon a time there was a family with two daughters, and a mother and father who’d promised to love them both exactly the same,” but as tales of families often conclude, it’s rare that this sentiment is true.

Following the journey of the two sisters through Rosemary’s hazy memories remains madly captivating, as if each remembrance is the divulgence of a tightly held secret. Fern’s often unpredictable behavior guides Rosemary through her toddler years both in moments of youthful joy, such as winning the attention of the students working for their father, and deep confusion, which comes with Fern relentlessly outperforming Rosemary. However, this is all told under the looming pretense that Fern disappears when Rosemary is only five years old, a pivot that seems to shake the four remaining family members to a place from which no one can recover. But after growing to love Fern deeply and then losing her, Rosemary reveals a plot-splitting piece of information.  

Fern is a chimpanzee. Her father’s lab adopted a young Fern around the time Rosemary was born, kicking off five years of close watching and experimentation. By the time Fern’s origins are revealed, there is already a vibrant picture of the Cooke family, siblings, parents, scientists and all. There has been an introduction to all of the absurdities and pitfalls of this family, like any other group, so with the presentation of an inter-species sisterhood, it is comically easy to go along with.

“Though I was only five when she disappeared from my life, I do remember her. I remember her sharply—her smell and touch, scattered images of her face, her ears, her chin, her eyes.” Through repeated moments of immense intimacy, Rosemary’s remembrance brings Fern to life with equal parts delight, fascination, and remorse. They read like a series of foggy instances, each one more gripping than the last.  

Using a primate, Fowler animates siblinghood with astonishing accuracy and poise. Rosemary aptly comments, “In the phrase ’human being,’ the word ‘being’ is much more important than the word ‘human.’” This novel is an endlessly entertaining look into our own sense of being, our capacity for personal relationships and natural ability to grow close. Reliably funny and unassumingly sweet, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is worth savoring every sentence.

Claire Martin is studying Fiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago.  You can find her working on creative essays, wandering through Printer’s Row after hours, and becoming fully nocturnal.

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I’ll Give You the Sun

 

by Marygrace Shumann, Contributing Editor

Told from alternating perspectives, I’ll Give You The Sun is a poignant character study on twins Jude and Noah as they deal with the intricacies of self-worth, death, and love.

Noah’s sections are told before their mother passes away in a car crash. Throughout his sections, Noah begins to having feelings for a boy named Bryan while, at the same time, growing apart from his twin sister, Jude. This sort of cosmic connection that Noah himself describes with, “Unlike most everyone else on earth, from the very first cells of us, we were together, we came here together. This is why no one hardly notices that Jude does most of the talking for both of us, why we can only play piano with all four of our hands on the keyboard and not at all alone, why we can never do Rochambeau because not once in thirteen years have we chosen differently,” is broken as Noah’s love and understanding for art brings him closer to their mother, while Jude (who doesn’t feel her art is as worthy as Noah’s) becomes jealous of their connection. Throughout his sections, Noah is trying to get into a prestigious art school. As he learns more about himself as an artist, Noah begins to draw in his head, allowing the reader to merge the gap between art and artist. He describes his own process saying, “When I draw it, I’m going to make my skin see-through and what you’ll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages.” The novel itself breathes like a painting, a sculpture, a sketch. The descriptions are not only vivid, but both lifelike and mystical. Noah’s sections in particular are bursting with imagery that feels unworldly and yet, like a beautiful painting, so anchored to reality. The style Nelson takes allows us to better understand that line between what we feel and what is, which rings particularly true as both Noah and Jude begin to face the harsher realities of life.

While in Noah’s sections, Jude is belligerent and rebellious, in her own section, years after their mother’s passing, we find Jude to be more reserved. Attending the art school her brother felt was destined for him after she destroyed his application, Jude is filled with an unspeakable guilt. Everything she tries to make is destroyed, Jude believes, by the ghost of her mother. While Noah’s sections are filled with vibrant imagery—emotions described with color, sounds described with scene—Jude’s sections deal closely with her ability to put into words both her own feelings, and the feelings of those around her. Noah paints, but Jude is more concerned with making a sculpture. Throughout her sections, Jude wants to make something solid, something she believes won’t break. This is shown through a more matter-of-fact style of writing. As Jude falls for a boy her brother painted years before, and accidentally becomes the student of the man her mother was having an affair with, Jude begins to understand the lines between forgiving yourself and forgiving others. As she grapples for answers, Jude’s ultimate character growth comes in her ability to let things be, let things break, and let things come back together on their own. “Because who knows?” she says, “Who knows anything? Who knows who’s pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life?” As Jude finally forgives herself for what she did to her brother, she gives her brother the freedom to confess to her the guilt he feels surrounding their mother’s death. It is this freedom of confession that finally allows Jude to understand the middleground and see things less as a plan to follow through with, and moreso as something messy, the breathing nature of relationships and self.

Told with a vibrancy and emotional maturation seldomly found in Young Adult fiction, Nelson weaves a haunting and meaningful story about family and self-discovery.

Marygrace Schumann, lesbian mother of the team, is a senior at Columbia College Chicago studying Fiction Writing. When she’s not writing, it’s all about Cheesie’s and serenading her friends with ’80s music.

April 17, 2017

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Hey Liberal!

 

By Claire Martin, Interviews Editor

Hey, Liberal! may just be coming out when we need it most. Although writer Shawn Shiflett (Hidden Place) takes us back to the north side of Chicago in 1969, his brand new novel remains strikingly relevant to today’s issues.    

Simon Fleming carries us through his ever-moving world during the late ’60s. At just thirteen years old, he’s sent by his family of civil rights activists to attend Dexter High School, a chiefly African American institution, where he is one of few white students. His father, a prominent minister, answers the swelling call for change by insisting that his son be part of the fight for equality. With all the excitability of being a freshman, he takes on young romance, steers around watchful parents, makes a new set of friends, and even finds a spot on the baseball team. But in the midst of rising pressures throughout the city, Simon is involuntarily swept into the sparks of the riots. So when Officer Clark, a bigoted burnout of a cop working at Dexter, tries to buddy up with him, he realizes that passivity to his advantages will still make him enemies. Upon recognizing the separation from his friends, teammates, and peers, he must push forward to understand his intrinsic place in the community.

Shiflett uses Simon’s character to expertly convey the great complexity and incredible tension of the ’60s. In one poignant passage toward the end, Simon finds himself in the midst of a riot with a young African American woman silently walking next to him in hopes that he would block shattering glass. All the while, Simon is musing to himself.

“A chunk of something whizzed past, nearly clipped his chin, and punched a jagged hole through the front door window of a flower shop. He flinched, recovered, and glanced inside the store just in time to see the gray-haired crown of someone’s head disappear beneath a counter display of bouquet arrangements. Too fucking close for—

He noticed that the girl, after jolting from the near miss, must have fallen behind. Not my problem. Would she have cared about . . . But he hesitated, questioned if doing so made him a sap, just long enough for her to catch up to him again, and they moved on, their forward progress calibrated by necessity, convenience, pride, and even a baffling unity. In an instant, the sum total of his experience clicked. He was older.”

It’s exactly this kind of reflection that propels the importance of Simon’s story. By throwing a curious and compassionate boy into the world of Dexter, two impossible to ignore racial realities of 1969 collide, and Simon becomes the unique platform to take us there. His imperfections highlight his growth, confirming that progress is not always linear, but often the result of taking responsibility. The title of Hey, Liberal! is a lesson that stands on its own. It suggests with certainty that Simon’s political battle cry is nothing more than a statement until he earnestly learns what it means to stand tall in a complicated time. We finally see him do this when he starts acting from an angle of genuine understanding, and Simon shows us a place of resonance that we are still grappling with as a nation today. Hey, Liberal! brings us into a world where we have space to explore our inherent roles in society and all of their essential and valuable nuances. Not only that, but it can be done through humor, poise, and unwavering honesty.  

Claire Martin is studying Fiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago. You can find her working on creative essays, wandering through Printer’s Row after hours, and becoming fully nocturnal.

March 06, 2017

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The Game We Play

 

By Bethany Bendtsen, Managing Editor (Hair Trigger 2.0)

Six blocks later, they turn right onto Kinzie and crane their heads like tourists up at the Trump Tower construction. Sophie holds her right hand up to the sky and covers the building with the butt of her cigarette. She closes one eye, and the building plays peek-a-boo.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yeah, if you like concrete and steel,” Sophie says, dropping her cigarette and stepping on it.

“You don’t think it’s beautiful?”

Sophie thinks the tower looks like a giant metallic lighter, or a lipstick case, or a shard of glass. She thinks people want to think it is beautiful. That people want it to be art, but really it is just a building surrounded by other buildings in a city that doesn’t need any more fucking buildings. It is the spinal tap of Chicago. She doesn’t say any of this to Jamey.

Sophie Salmon says, “It’s just a building.”

“That’s sad,” Jamey says, and lights another cigarette with a chapped red hand.

They turn left onto State and cross the river. The tower guts the horizon behind them now, waiting to be crowned with a lighting rod.

The excerpt above comes from “Sophie Salmon,” one of ten stories in Susan Hope Lanier’s debut short story collection The Game We Play. If I had to pick one story from Lanier’s collection that stands out just a little more than the rest, that cuts to the core of what all the pieces seem to be about, it’s this one, sandwiched in the middle of the collection’s one hundred and twenty breezy pages. In it, the main character, an employee at the Michigan Avenue Border’s, makes one final attempt to spark a relationship with her coworker Jamey on his last day of work. Sophie is plagued by an unknown, serious illness for which she refuses to seek medical treatment and her obvious fragility permeates throughout her after-work interaction with Jamey; after a few hours at the bar, back at his apartment, for example, he simply holds her in his arms, gently, as if she was made of tissue paper.

 As in the except, much of the power of “Sophie Salmon” comes from the implications of all that goes unsaid, all that remains unresolved. The dialogue and character interactions in the piece are driven forward by whisper-subtle nonverbal cues, a quality it shares with the collection as a whole. Lanier’s prose is conversational, straight-forward, and refreshingly lacking in pretense. In a few of the other stories, namely “Over Shell Drive” and “Nighthawk,” the same subtlety and simplicity of language prove to be their downfall, as the stories build but never quite . . . crescendo. Here, though, Lanier’s writing prowess is on full display as is the collection’s underlying conflict, the struggle to connect with another human being, to bridge the shortcomings of communication and the reality of innate human separateness.

 This central theme unifies a collection that has little else in common; the stories have neither a shared set of characters, setting, or point of view, and they span a myriad of relationships and contexts: a baseball player at-bat to win the championship, a wife in a grocery store roleplaying to save her marriage, friends on a bender, to name only three. Some, like “At Bat” and “Felicia Sassafras is Fiction” are playfully, delightfully experimental, while others like “Cat and Bird”—my personal favorite, in which a college freshman attempts to make sense of a newfound friendship that is as intense and fraught as the 2000 presidential election against which it is set—adhere to a more linear and traditional mode of storytelling.

 However, all revolve around a character’s attempt to connect with someone else on a deeper level, to understand exactly what another person wants and thinks, and the stories echo with the sharp pain of coming up short, of realizing that the connection between people is so often tenuous, insufficient, imperfect. While the collection itself is imperfect in some ways—as Newcity suggested, and I agree, the stories themselves could have been ordered differently to better showcase the strongest pieces—the overall result is a piece of work which demonstrates Lanier’s ability to do so much, which, in terms of pages, is so little. After reading this collection, I will definitely be watching to see what Lanier, a Columbia College Chicago graduate, has to offer next.

Similar Works:

 Literature: Dear Life by Alice Munro

 Film: Scenes from the Suburbs directed by Spike Jonze

 Music: “Youthemism” by Coral Bones

When Bethany’s not writing “fiction” about falling in love with everyone she meets, she spends her time eating cheese fries, obsessing about her outfit, and being generally shady. Her favorite color is glitter. 

January 30, 2017

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Sam talks about his writing journey, how to balance your life and writing, and tips for a future writer

 

I first discovered Sam Weller last semester in my Introduction to Literary Interpretation class here at Columbia College Chicago. I had heard great things about him from a previous professor at my community college, and the class was no disappointment. I was enthralled by his knowledge and experience in literature and his profession, including his past as Ray Bradbury’s personal biographer.

Through his spoken stories to his classes, you can tell just how much he has to teach the upcoming generations, and how much it means to him. His love for literature and teaching is one that is genuine. His work showcases his ability and talent as he delves into real-life topics, all the while adding his hint of science-fiction.

A journalist, fiction writer, and two-time Bram Stoker award-winner, Sam Weller is well known for his biographies of Ray Bradbury. His book The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury was a bestseller and winner of 2005 Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Biography. It was followed by Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews in 2010 and in 2012, Weller co-edited Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury alongside Mort Castle. Sam was a Correspondent for Publishers Weeklymagazine and his own essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Slate magazine, and more. He is a current blogger for the Huffington Post. More recently, Sam’s fiction has been featured in various outlets such as Printer’s Row Journal, Rosebud, and the Chicago Reader among others. Upcoming, we have a lot to look forward to. Sam Weller is currently working on his debut novel and in 2020 he will be releasing a collection of short stories titled Dark Black.

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I’d like to start by noting your previous work. You’re well known for your work as Ray Bradbury’s authorized biographer. What are a few of the key things you learned while working with him?

Ray taught me so much. First of all, he was creatively fearless. He was a tremendous creative risk taker. He wrote short stories, novels, essays, poems, screenplays, teleplays, radio dramas… He did whatever he wanted. This is what I try to emulate in my own writing career. I have done a travel book; a biography; a book of interviews; comic books; a graphic novel and, next up, I have a collection of short stories coming out in April. I don’t want to be confined by boundaries as a creator, and Ray taught me this.

Another important lesson is that he taught me to trust my creative intuition. As readers and writers, we are constantly training our subconscious in the art of storytelling. Ray often said, “Your intuition is smarter than you are, so get out of its way.” So, with this in mind, if a story keeps tapping me on the shoulder and saying “write me,” I listen! I don’t question where the story wants to lead me, I try to follow. When a story is really working, it almost starts to write itself, the writer is just the medium to channel the ghost.

 

Besides Bradbury, what stories and/or authors had a strong influence on you and your writing?

So, so many. I love writers who have an electric energy to their narrative movement. Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff is absolutely voltaic. That book was a towering influence on me. Same with Lester Bangs, the greatest rock-music critic ever. James Wolcott, the essayist, critic, and fiction writer has a similar lightning to his wordsmithery. I like to take this energy over to my fiction. Other important influences include Truman Capote, James Baldwin, John Steinbeck for sure, Louise Erdrich, Joan Didion and contemporary writers such as Joe Hill and Charles Yu.

 

You’ve had short stories published and have written for various magazines in the past – as a journalist and author, where did that journey begin for you? 

As long as I’ve been writing nonfiction, I have been writing fiction. The commonalities between the two genres are far more pronounced than the differences, really. A story is a story. It needs to be told well, using all the senses, with memorable scenes, a sense of play, experimentation, use of narrative forms, dialogue, narrative movement and more. These things cross easily between nonfiction and fiction. And a story must be told in your voice. Like a great guitar player, you really should be able to recognize a writer’s signature very quickly. So, I have been writing fiction for years. My MFA is in fiction. My stories have been published in a number of anthologies, as well as in literary journals. After writing THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES: THE LIFE OF RAY BRADBURY (William Morrow, 2005) I was ready to get away from heavy research and interviews and footnotes and indexes and facts for a while, to just take a break, so I started publishing more and more short stories. This journey has been one of pure joy.

 

How did your journey lead you to where you are currently?

Well, I’ve been writing and publishing short stories for the last decade or so and it’s led to my first short story collection coming out in 2020. I’m very excited about it, but I’m now ready to get back to a huge nonfiction project that will take me deep into the research mines again! I was at the New York Public Library a few weeks ago in the rare manuscript room and my heartbeat sped up. It felt like Indiana Jones and Hogwarts rolled into one.

In Spring 2020, you have a collection of short stories being published. It’s a little different than what you’ve published previously. What was the inspiration for these stories? Without giving too much away, is there any more you can tell us about them? 

One of my favorite books by Ray Bradbury is 1955’s, The October Country. It is very dark, very melancholy, deeply poetic and — psychologically — quite creepy. It is one of his finest short story collections. I wish he had written more stories in this tradition. The October Country got me interested in “weird” fiction, and then I went deep into the light-deprived rabbit hole of Gothic literature and haven’t returned. I noticed that most of the short stories I was writing were cut from this sort of dark, velveteen cloth. My subconscious was writing a collection of dark stories long before I saw the thematic connections. My book, Dark Black comes out in June of 2020. It includes twenty short stories. I played with narrative forms in some, one is written as a found transcript of a conversation; another is written as a sort of fictionalized, rock-music magazine feature story. I love playing with contemporary forms in the constructs of fiction. The title story of the book is one of my favorites. It is about an oceanographer who is at the end of his career and sets out to prove the existence of the mythic Kraken, something he is convinced he saw early on in his career. This story is sort of Moby-Dick meets Jaws meets my love of Kaiju monsters. The story is sad. It is very cold and autumnal and, strangely, reflects that I was listening to a lot of John Denver when I wrote it. It caused me to reflect on John Denver’s death in a plane crash, and how he died flying, which was something he loved very much.

Death is the pervasive connection between all of the stories in Dark Black. Death, grief, loss, loneliness, isolation and madness—the hallmarks of Gothic literature. I lost my Mom when I was in my early twenties. I lost Ray Bradbury, who was really like a second father to me, in 2012. I lost my childhood best friend in a car accident and one of the stories in the book (“Conjuring Danny Squires”) is a fictionalization of this tragic experience. I think the only way I could begin to grapple with all of this loss was to allow life to come from it—life in the form of story and art. Creativity is the flower, the miracle, that grows from the drought striken landscape. It’s very gratifying that Charles Yu called the book “haunted and haunting,” as this was my intent with this new book.

The final thing I will say about Dark Black is that it was very important to me to have every story include an illustration. I wanted the illustrations to be as haunting and desolate as the stories themselves. My publisher got this aesthetic immediately. They said, “Go for it!” They didn’t worry about cost. They just said, “Do it.” The art is all done by artist and printmaker Dan Grzeca, who is best known for his work rock bands like the Black Keys, Sharon van Etten and U2. In many ways, his art is the visual twin to my stories.

 

I’d love to know what your creative process looks like. When you sit down to write, do you have any rituals? What does your environment look like? 

Music has always been absolutely imperative to my writing process. I have always listened to music when writing. Every project I have ever worked on always had an unexpected soundtrack that I listened to as I created—sort of a musical mood that painted a color and vibe. I listened to a lot of punk while writing Dark Black, as well as lot of Johnny Cash and old Irish folk songs. Most of the music was about broken hearts, broken people and redemption.

I would love to be precious about my process, but I really can’t afford to be. I would love to be able to rent a cabin somewhere in the woods to go away and just write. I could get so much done! This is a dream of mine, one day. Or to buy a small farmhouse somewhere. But I have three kids and really can’t do that. At least, not until they are a bit older. My years as a staff writer for alternative, weekly newspapers fostered in me an ability to write anywhere. Journalism is great training this way. Newsrooms are loud and people are constantly talking to you and you just have to stay focused. Edward R. Murrow wrote on battlefields, so I figure I can write in a loud house. I write sometimes on my phone using the memo app. I can write pretty much anywhere. It’s not ideal, but it’s how I get things done.

One thing I do like is to have several hours to get in a groove. I don’t like to only have 15 minutes here or there. I hate writing like a lurching car with a sputtering engine. I want to get on the highway and go for a long road trip. I am also very much a morning writer. I love the energy of the morning, with the promise of the day out before me.

  

You’re a father, a teacher, and a writer. How do you find the time to write?

Balance is the hardest part of my creative life. I have no answers. I fight for my creative time. That’s all I can say. If I don’t write, I get depressed and feel caged. So that’s good motivation to constantly look for an opportunity to be creative. I’m also a much better teacher when I am engaged with my creative practice. I’m also a better father because I am a happier person. Somehow, someway, I make the time.

 

Going off my last question, do you have any tips for those struggling to find a balance between their writing and life?

You have to want this career. You have to fight for it. You have no choice. If you are a writer, you must write. And cut it with the procrastination. Don’t do it tomorrow. Do it today. No one is going to facilitate your dream but you.

 

To end the interview, what would you say to those writers who are struggling to not only find their voice but also their footing in the literary world?

Don’t despair. We all feel these things. We all question our voice, or tire of the sound of our own voice because we are with it 24/7, on every page, in every sentence.

Write about the things that fascinate you. Be curious. Be an active listener. Be an active reader. Write with passion. Write the story you would want to read. Writing like this will never let you down. Ray Bradbury taught me, “Do what you love and love what you do.” So write what you love! If you do this, the story will take care of the rest.

   

Interview by Alison Brackett

Dark BlackHat & Beard Press
254 pages
https://hatandbeard.com/products/dark-black

The Ray Bradbury Chronicles
Published by HarperCollins Publisher on April 5, 2005
ISBN: 006054581X
383 Pages

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On writing, his process, and more importantly, how nothing matters because the planet is going to incinerate itself one day

 

Mike Gifford is a comedic essay writer, performer, and director in Chicago, IL. Mike was the co-writer and director of the 2017 revival of “Steamworks: The Musical,” and is an original ensemble member of “The Shithole” variety show, where you can still see him perform original essays. Mike is proud to say he has made virtually no money off of his artistic pursuits and has no interest in fame or posterity. He still works very hard to make people laugh, grossed out, or disgusted while reading his essays on stage.

Kala Wahl: What attracted you to writing solo material/monologues for the stage?

Mike Gifford: Monologues were a complete accident.

I was asked by a guy to write this essay for a variety show. I’d never performed solo before in my life. I’d done this podcast with another guy, and he wasn’t a bad guy, but we just didn’t see eye-to-eye creatively. This guy running the variety show asked me to do a monologue about my experience in politics. So, that’s when I wrote this very first essay—first one I’d ever written—and performed in front of people at a show. It was about President James Buchanan and his homosexual relationship with William Rufus King, the senator from Alabama. They’d lived together for twenty years in a fairly open homosexual relationship. So, I wrote an essay about that. It went over really well; people laughed. It was wonderful.

I was asked to come back and do it again—that meant I had to write a new one. And then I wrote a new one after that. It was an avalanche. I kept writing; I would write a new five-minute monologue for virtually almost every show I did, which was crazy. I didn’t know any better. But there’s not a lot that’s changed in my process from the beginning. I may be totally wrong with that. I’m not doing anything right, but it’s fun.

 

KW: What’s the crossover between monologues and essays?

MG: You could get into semantics. I believe an essay, specifically, is determining a length of something. I think that’s if you’re being very technical, but I might be wrong there. The difference really could be—for example, a character monologue would be taking on a different persona. Let’s say for this piece I’m going to be playing Orson Wells eating taffy. [Does voice of Orson Wells eating taffy]. So, I have a very specific voice. That’s a character piece. As just a monologue as me, or reading an essay, that’s simply that. But there always is a sense, for me, that’s it’s never quite me. It’s not really me; it’s me performing. So, performing me is a little bit different than just me bitching.

 

KW: I noticed a big theme in your writing is queer identity and your experience as a gay male in day-to-day life. What do you want your audience to take away from this kind of material?

MG: These days, everyone has an agenda. I don’t care. I don’t want them to learn anything. I want them to laugh, and then through that, I think it makes everything a little more acceptable.

I’m disgusting. I find all these gross topics interesting, and I talk about it very bluntly. And the funny thing about me is—even though I’m a big prude—while most people don’t want to talk about anything, I’d much rather push the boundary and gross people out. And I’ve really grossed people out before. I once performed a five-minute piece about anal sex. I had one thing in there, it was: “Butt oven of burning delight.” It really grossed people out. And it was really funny, people laughed. But it was gross.

There are rare occasions where I’ve written something specifically to connect with people. I don’t think performing does anything to change anyone’s mind about anything. I don’t necessarily think I’ll change anyone’s mind. I’d rather be as funny and vulgar as possible—that’s my entire objective. I couldn’t care less.

There was a moment where I did care and I wanted to get a little bit of success, and I was getting some, but it made me very unhappy—at least in my case. I’m just sort of rolling with the punches and enjoying doing the little things I get to do. Which is very fortunate. Most people have very miserable lives. So, I’m doing all right.

 

KW: Your writing is incredibly blunt; it’s super honest and to the point. What are your thoughts surrounding the stylistic choice of writing in your own voice? 

MG: I just never censored myself. Because that’s the way I talk. I’m very matter-of-fact.

People get very offended by certain types of things. I am sort of like George Carlin on the topic of shell shock. Now they call it PTSD or something else. It’s like, no: it’s shell shock. It’s a blast and it’s hurting the brain. They even have studies talking about the brain damage that comes from all these bombs and gunshots and stuff that really fucks up a soldier’s brain. It’s shell shock; it always was shell shock. That’s exactly what it is. Two syllables, done. But we’ve evolved over time and we’ve dehumanized it as much as possible. So, now it’s a very politically correct word that sounds very easy, but it doesn’t describe what it is at all. Which is shell shock. It’s fucking up your brain.

So, I guess for me, I’m just too blunt. I’ve never been a good liar. It’s gotten me into all sorts of trouble, but it’s also made me very funny. People like liars; it’s much more comfortable. But I’m not very good at it.

 

KW: You sit down to write solo material—what does your process look like? How do you transfer your ideas to the stage?

MG: So, like right now I’m writing a piece. I’m performing a piece before the election. I never write about my experience in politics or anything like that, because it seems to be preachy. And I don’t want to be preachy. So, what I do is try to find an angle that isn’t preachy. I’ve been thinking about pulling something from the Federalist Papers. Or I could say, “This is a lost piece from the Federalist Papers that was written by Alexander Hamilton or James Monroe.” What if I wrote one of the lost Federalist Papers and I performed that? That might be an angle. I thought of that just now. I might do that; that’s a very good idea.

So, anyways, I get with that. Then I do a little research. I may go home and start to read about the Federalist Papers and find some interesting in’s to write about. They could be satirical as to the election that’s going to be happening. And that’s it. And then I’m just funny. The only way you know if something is funny or not is by performing it in front of people. A big part of it is selling it; I’m good at that. But there are all sorts of factors. There can be death by exposition. So, in the course of being funny, the set-up can destroy something organically funny. I’ll write something, often times, with long description in the sentences, and it’ll come across rather preachy. I cut those. And I go right to the funny thing and skip the bullshit. Now that’s antithetical to being descriptive if you’re writing an essay or prose or an article, but for performing, you want to get right to it. You don’t want to get boring. Whereas if someone’s reading and has to interpret it, you want more detail to explain what you’re trying to say. I don’t need all that detail because they know exactly what I’m saying because I’m saying it right in front of them. That’s the balance as far as process goes.

And honestly, whenever it comes to performing the essays I write, it’s messy. A lot of it is counterintuitive to when you’re preparing for an article or a journal or something to be read. It’s a very different mindset. And you have to keep that in mind. Otherwise whenever you’re performing it, it can be very boring.

 

KW: Why keep writing and performing?

MG: This is wonderful. I finally have a very good answer for this, because I wouldn’t have had in the past. I would have had a bullshit answer that I would have felt very sincere about, but I would have been wrong.

I only do things I find fun. I couldn’t care less about what anyone thinks. Or making money in that way. I just don’t care, because I’ll be dead. It’ll be over. I’ll be dead and done and in the dirt. So, everything that I did doesn’t matter. And one day, whenever the planet burns up, no one will remember what anyone did. To me, that is very reassuring. Because I don’t have to worry about it. It just takes the weight off.

I used to have all this pressure, and knowing that it doesn’t matter gives great meaning to me, actually. Most people look at it entirely wrong. Knowing that it’s all over means that all I have to worry about is making sure that I’m doing the best I can today. As long as I do the best I can today and have fun, I don’t have to worry about anything else. I could drop dead of a heart attack right now and then that’s it. So, I better enjoy every moment now. Who cares? That’s why I keep writing and performing. Because it’s fun. There’s a lot more value to me when I write and perform that way, because I’m not worried like I used to be.

 

Interview by Kala Wahl

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On poetry and the many themes that inform her writing

 

I first met CM in the spring semester of 2018 when I took her class, “Fetish, Sustainability, and The Self.” She began our first day together by reading the opening poem from her book, The Vital System. I knew then it would be a good semester, and that I had to read this collection of poems. Throughout my semester with CM Burroughs, I learned what poetry is. I created some of the work I am most proud of because of her skills and guidance as a professor. I found myself often wondering what more of her work was like. What would it look like if I took a close look at it? 

After that semester, I bought The Vital System and devoured the collection within a matter of days. Each poem had a unique flavored, something I had never tasted before. CM Burroughs creates small worlds within her poems that I could not help but ask questions about. I was delighted when she agreed to speak with me about The Vital System, her process, and her inspirations. 

CM Burroughs’s debut collection of poetry is The Vital System (Tupelo Press, 2012). She is an assistant professor of poetry at Columbia College Chicago, and she serves as senior editor for TupeloQuarterly and coeditor for Court Green. Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Writers Workshop, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the 2009 Gift of Freedom Award, her poetry has appeared in journals including Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Bat City Review, and Volta. 

When does a poem begin for you? Do you find yourself taking up a routine when it comes to beginning a poem, or is the process different for every poem?

A poem begins with provocation and desire. I tend to fantasize about and mull over poems before I write them as a means of figuring out what they are about. And some poems come out of free-writing and pure chance upon an intersection of language and idea. I generally walk around with subjects in mind, and I work to find the right language to craft the subject into poems. 

In The Vital System,the titles of each poem are found at the top of the page with a border line separating the title from the poem. This made me wonder, what does the title for a poem mean to you? Do your poems always have a title or is this a structure you like to play around with?

The title is the first moment I am able to take my reader by the hand. I look at every part of the poem as a cooperative space between the word and the imagination of the reader. And I have to admit that I prefer to work for the right title—the first thing a reader sees cannot be lazily-made. 

In The Vital System, the structure of each poem is unique. How do you find the structure for your poems? Do you write each piece with an intended physical structure or do you piece it together once you have gotten all the words on the page? 

A poem’s structure should be aesthetically provocative in some way. That is, if the piece is held away from the eye and the language rendered abstract then I prefer there be some desire toward the poem. The content of the poem also informs the structure—if the poem is tense then the structure might be short-lined and narrow. That said, I shift structure throughout my writing and revision process in order to satisfy how the content is changing until the poem is complete. 

As I read this collection, there is continuously a strong sense of the human body in the work. How did the body find its way into these poems? What is it about the human that draws you in and keeps you coming back to write about it?

I was born 3 months premature, which is addressed by the first poem in The Vital System, “Dear Incubator.” The body that I was born into—the initial 1lb 12oz vulnerable thin-shelled gather of organs—that body, and now this healthy athletic body that I use today, informs everything I write. I think from the body; it belongs in my poems because I exist. 

There is also a subtle sensuality within some of your poems, these were some of pieces that resonated with me personally. How did the female body influence this collection? Was it something you found in the poems as you wrote? Or was it a subject you intended to showcase even before beginning the idea of the collection? 

Because I exist, I attempt to explore all expressions of the body, and this includes sensuality, romance, play, etc. Sexuality is one of the uses of the body that I’ve alway been interested in writing—curious about all the ways one may explore herself and another.  

When you began writing the poems of The Vital System, did you know each poem would be a part of something bigger? What was the process of putting a book together like for you? Were there any poems that did not make it into the book? 

The book is a revised version of my Master’s thesis. The intention was to create a full-length collection all along. I have an old photograph, I’ll dig it up for you, in which I am standing before a wall of poems. I used to live in Pittsburgh, PA in a Heinz carriage house with vast apartments throughout. I used one of the walls in my apartment to post all the poems of my book. That’s where I edited and rearranged them. That wall held my first book. 

What are you currently working on in terms of writing? Do the themes of The Vital System continue to influence you? 

The themes do continue to influence me. My new book Master Suffering (Tupelo Press, 2020) explores the female body through the long illness and death of my younger sister, the impotence of spirituality to appease grief, and the role of pleasure in providing haven from despair. I believe writers chase certain subjects throughout the life of their art, and my obsessions continue to demand poems of me. 

Interview by: Jessica Powers 

 

Tupelo Press
ISBN: 978-1-936797-15-8
63 pages

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On process, survival, and mysterious poet dreams

 

I was lucky enough to walk into my beginner level poetry workshop and see David Trinidad sitting, like a captain at the helm, at the front of the class.

I was a sophomore fiction major. I’d written poetry, but nothing serious, and was skeptical about being taught poetry, a subject I didn’t think lent itself to teaching. Fifteen weeks later, I emerged from that class as a poet, and I believe every bit of that is thanks to David.

A year after completing the course, I asked him about his poetry process, inspirations, and the extraordinary life he’s lived. This is what he told me.

 

David Trinidad is an award-winning poet from California. He has published numerous books, including his latest collection of poems, Swinging on a Star (Turtle Point Press, 2017). Known for his masterful exploration of pop culture in his poetry, Trinidad’s poems speak to very specific American experiences.  His other books include Notes on a Past Life (BlazeVOX [books], 2016), Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera (Turtle Point, 2013), Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (Turtle Point, 2011), The Late Show (Turtle Point, 2007), and Plasticville (Turtle Point, 2000). He is also the editor of A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (Nightboat Books, 2011) and Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith (Turtle Point, 2019). Trinidad lives in Chicago, where he is a Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry at Columbia College Chicago.

 

When you set about writing a new book of poetry, what is your process like? Do you compile poems you’ve already written which contain a common thread? Or do you write according to a preset theme in mind?

My first few books were compilations of poems that did not necessarily have a common thread. I just tried to make a bunch of poems, that I’d written over a period of years, fit together and make sense, produce a book that was a good read. I’m sure those poems “spoke to each other,” either formally and/or thematically. But they were written as individual poems, not as a book. At some point my books began to be generated around a central idea: elegiac poems about my mother (The Late Show), a book of haikus based on the soap opera Peyton Place, a book of memoir poems about the years I lived in New York (Notes on a Past Life). I’m currently working on a book of prose poems. At first that was the only guiding principle, that they be in prose. Now I see that there is a unifying theme: retrieval of remnant-like memories.

 

How often do you pen a new poem? How long does it take you to revise them until they’re as close to perfect as they can be?

I tend to write one or two a month. Every month I meet with my friend Tony Trigilio. We eat Thai food and show each other new poems. That always gets me to write something new, as I’d hate to show up empty-handed. A failure! The revision process varies from poem to poem. Sometimes it’s fairly close to “perfect” on first draft, sometimes I tinker (or obsess) with certain lines or images, sometimes a poem will need to be written over a period of days, months, even years. Different poems have different requirements (or demands).

 

How has your long career as a Creative Writing professor influenced your writing, if at all?

I came late to academia. I’d already had a career as a poet out in the “real world.” It’s wonderful to have a job that values what you do as an artist. Where what you do—write and publish poems, give readings, etc.—counts for something. I have time to write, time (and resources) to pursue scholarly interests. I’ve researched and written essays about Sylvia Plath, edited the collected poems of Tim Dlugos and Ed Smith. Edited magazines. In general, being a teacher has enabled me to lead a more literary life than I might otherwise have had. I feel I’ve managed to thrive as an artist in academia. And I’m grateful.

Your latest collection, Swinging on a Star, contains a string of poems about other poets, such as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Lee Ann Brown. Why write about these poets specifically?

Those are all dreams I had about those poets. I often dream about poets. The dreams are usually mysterious. I suppose I wanted to try to capture that mystery in the poems.

 

A few of the poems in Swinging on a Star memorialize poets who have tragically died young. Is this a concept you find yourself returning to? 

Yes, very much so. I became acquainted with death at an early age. My friend Rachel Sherwood died in a car accident at twenty-five; I nearly died in that accident as well. Then so many were lost to AIDS. Some of them dear friends. When I wrote my poem “AIDS Series” in 2010, it felt like finally I’d paid my debt to those men. A debt I owed them because I survived. I’ve felt that way about Rachel my whole life. There’s this way in which life itself, after such loss, feels “posthumous.” (I’m quoting Ted Hughes there.) I’m leading up to writing an entire book about Rachel. It’s taken me a long, long time to be able to face her, to pay that debt in full.

 

I’d like to know a little more about the inspiration behind the poems “The Old Poet” and “The Young Poet.” Were they written together? 

They weren’t, actually. “The Young Poet” was written a few years before “The Old Poet.” Both were written in response to attitudes I’ve noticed in the poetry world. I wish I could say they’re Blakean songs of innocence and experience. But the young poet doesn’t seem particularly innocent, and the old poet hasn’t learned from their experience!

 

I was recently browsing the collections on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and came across one of your poems (“A Regret”) listed under a “Love Poems” collection. Among the other poets in this collection were Frank O’Hara and Audre Lorde. How does it feel to be included in a collection with these big names? Do you ever feel like comparisons such as these get to your head?

I’m still astonished when I’m grouped with those kinds of poets. It’s more humbling than head-swelling. A true honor to sit next to some of my heroes.

 

Interview by Jerakah Greene

 

Turtle Point Press
ISBN: 1933527978
96 pages