In Which I Am Very Lucky

I've been very lucky this year, not only to have work published by editors I admire, but also to be nominated for a few literary-type awards.

So I say thank you to Nate Pritts for nominating my poem WE DID NOT YIELD AND QUIET for a Pushcart Prize. If you're not reading h_ngm_n, you're missing out on this and this and this and this. And that is sad! Start clicking! Don't be sad!

And all my love to Wendy Xu and Kyle McCord for nominating WE TOW OUR SAD FACULTIES BEHIND US for Dzanc Books' annual "Best of the Web" anthology. If you don't know iO: A Journal of New American Poetry, trust me, you are not feeling alive and well. You need this and this and this and then you will feel better.

My My Ideal Bookshelf

My Ideal Bookshelf is an internet thing that turned into a book thing. I am starting a personal-type project based on this thing. Sort of. My "My Ideal Bookshelf" does not consist of the books I cannot do without; for me, it is a way:

1. to read books I have been meaning to read
2. to allow myself the freedom to read with abandon and without pressure to produce writing
3. to mentally seek solutions to some "problems" (the good kind of problem! like, a thought problem!) I have been thinking about in regards to writing
4. to become a better writer in terms of understanding approaches to large-scale structures
5. to begin the weeding-out process before I move this summer

I have a long-standing, weird, compulsive, love-with-abandon relationship to reading and purchasing books. Grad school has made my compulsion much, much worse. Not only do I check a million books out of the library at once (give or take), but I also buy books with abandon. "I got this," I say, doling out my meager wages. "I'll be able to read this book tomorrow. Plus I need it a) because I love the writer, b) for a thing I'm writing, c) for a "class" (this can include self-prescribed "supplemental" reading or research for a paper, in addition to books I actually buy for class), and/or d) because I have made a mental chain of associations that means me finding this book is a co-incidence and therefore I must have it."

I told you. Compulsion. (The Compulsion is something I'm also attempting to address re: this project; we shall see whether or not I'm successful on that front.)

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This Winter Break, my attention belongs only to this bookshelf (plus a few stray titles not pictured [look at that Compulsion go!]).

Pile One: my fairy tale pile, an ongoing love & obsession & thought project.

Pile Two: books by authors I love or who've been highly recommended to me, but which I haven't had time to read because a) graduate school and b) teaching and c) I have a Reading Problem, obviously.

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Amidst the craziness of writing my Final Seminar Paper Ever, I vowed that I would devote my Very Last Long Student Holiday to reading. Only to reading. I'd also just turned in a draft of my thesis, and I thought I needed a break.

After one weekend of slothful recovery, I'm Absolutely Bored and ready to work again. So I plan to write my way through this reading adventure, too.

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FIRST UP: 

Hollywood glamour meets Mediterranean Italy. Let's do this.

Some thoughts on Cloud Atlas

I should say impressions.

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I wish the filmmakers had trusted the audience more, trusted their story would do the work. The resonances they tried so hard to establish through narration would be there: in the repeated lines of dialogue, in the recycling of actors. The matching and crosshatching of storylines is rendered clearly enough (maybe? It's hard to tell, having read the book) without these devices.

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The risks of difficulty, of trying to build a bridge for your reader, when perhaps they have figured their way across without you.

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I am trying to understand if the film would mean as much to me without having read the novel, without having read the novel first and seen the film second. I can't unread the book; it is there, lodged deep in my imagination. It's worked on me for years, something my brain turns over and over again, always keeping an eye on it. At a reading in Boston a few years ago, David Mitchell discussed his own desires as a reader and how they informed the structure of Cloud Atlas. I'm pretty sure he said it was Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler that cinched things. That he was so taken with Calvino's playful form, but the book also left him feeling bereft as a reader, to have to leave the characters mid-scene and never come back to them. So he came back to them.

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Still struck by Mitchell's absolute commitment to deal with the effects of colonialism and global capitalism. At the risk of sounding like a vulgar liberal humanist, he makes my heart feel bigger and more determined about what art can do.

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Of course Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent win this contest. But then it never was one, for me.


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Also, where can I get Jim Broadbent's coat? Seriously, it's amazing.

All Hallow's in a Fairy Tale

Here is an exciting thing you should know about!

The delightful Kate Bernheimer, editor of The Fairy Tale Review, has been writing fairy tales and collaborating with various architects to imagine spaces and places for her characters.

Here's the latest edition: a spooky collage and schematics for your post-Halloween needs:

Collage by Bernheimer Architecture

Have Gun, Will Travel

Downton is back! And while it's early days, I'm hopeful that this season will be *slightly* less ridiculous than the last, which was so syrupy and saturated with hysterics, I could barely handle it (like many, I did my best to embrace the trashy qualities and implausibilities (Matthew's miracle recovery! The heir who had no face!) and roll with it. Excellent tumblr comic material just waiting to happen there.).

As the Crawleys convene for the much-anticipated Matthew-Mary nuptials, the usual snobbery and amazing outfittery commence as expected. And, discounting an unfortunate scene where poor Branson gets roofied by a snarky former suitor of Sybil's, we're off to a roaring good start:

1. MATTHEW CRAWLEY LEARNED HOW TO FLIRT

I can't decide if this is exciting or disturbing.

2. WHY IS THE DOWAGER COUNTESS' SCRIPTWRITER GIVING ALL HER LINES TO CARSON

Before you know it, we're going to have a Carson paper doll with his many priceless faces of disbelief and distaste to rotate at will, including why-can't-the-damn-chauffeur-dress-himself?, and the irreplaceable here-is-your-napkin-you-bumpkin! complete with disdainful wrist action.

3. BEST PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY/NATIONAL STEREOTYPE

"Don't worry about me; I'm an American. Have gun, will travel."

I love how pragmatic Cora is when she learns her husband's crap investment just ruined the family estate. Why didn't Robert ask for investment advice from his wife, who clearly has a grasp of, oh, I dunno, not putting all your eggs in one basket? Oh, right. Dumb women!

4. COCKTAILZZZ

5. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP EDITH

Maybe I should give Edith a break. She was unforgivably bitchy in Season One, but now she acts so downright desperate, I feel bad for her. It's easy to start believing you are who others want you to be. Come on, writers! Let's flesh out her character a little, shall we?

6. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP SYBIL

Just because you're poor and pregnant doesn't mean you have to dress like a bag lady. Well, maybe it does.

7. INTRODUCING...

Shirley McClaine as Cora's fast-talking, judgmental mother. LOVE IT. Mrs. Levinson's going to give Violet a run for her money.

8. STOP SOLVING ALL OF THE PROBLEMS BEFORE THEY BECOME PROBLEMS

We are out of money! Wait! Matthew might inherit a mountain of money! HOW CONVENIENT. Introduce insufferable Matthew-type moral quandary here.

9. BRANSON IN TAILS

Why are the clothes of the oppressor so hot?

10. HOW WILL THEY KNOW IF THEY GET THE RIGHT HAT BACK?

Is what I was thinking when Matthew and Branson tossed their top hats to an underling upon entering the church. 

And I guess the wedding was beautiful, etc. Now for what happens *after*!

Why do I have a tumblr?

I don't actually know.

Can you tell me?

Dear Internet,

I am become a hermit!

Here are my favorite and most recent reasons for not falling into your black hole until today:



Maybe I should start hanging out more...

Dear Internet,

Clearly, I am the biggest. liar. ever. Be shocked if you ever hear from me again.

                 Liar.

Dear Internet,

I suppose we have been on break.

That is the kind way of saying: I broke your heart and now I'm back.

But I have been busy!

When last we spoke, it was April and I was excited about a trip to my alma mater, the land of eternal spring-time. Then I was completely and totally laid out by a bout of food poisoning at the 10th Annual Emerging Writers Festival (which is completely blameless and was actually a lot of fun. Up until that point, anyway.) You can guess which five of the six symptoms listed here I actually had!

Since then, there was the Juniper Festival where I met and fell in love with this man:

And by that, I mean his poems. I think you're romantic tricky, baby.

And then there was the Juniper Summer Writing Institute where I finally met and was hugged twice by this lovely lady:

Dottie Lasky (via Dodie Bellamy)

& reading "I Hate Irony" at Penn Sound

At long last, my review of Kevin Goodan's lovely second collection of poems, Winter Tenor, was published at Kenyon Review Online. While you're there, you should check out Hilary Plum's thoughtful blog posts on creating a sustainable, supportive independent fiction community--lots to think about there.

Also in the inter-sphere: the always good-natured, informative, and amusing No Slander podcasts hosted by Ish Klein and Greg Purcell. If you're in need of a summertime poetry pick-me-up.

So, you see, I've been out and about. Getting freckles. Chasing two-year-olds. And I've also been in, reading and writing and working.

I promise to pay more attention to you in the future!

xoxo Kristen

I am in love with Tiny Hermione

and with Kate Beaton, more generally.

(oh, god, the hair is still hilarious)

Head south! Head south!

Thank the lord, it is springtime.

Two big things are happening next week!

I'll be at the 10th Anniversary of the Emerging Writers Festival in Lancaster, PA checking out the jubilee and checking in with my alma mater. Springtime in Lancaster is basically heaven, so expect lots of pictures of blossoming dogwood and cherry trees, fried donuts from the Amish, large organic martinis, and affordable vintage shops...and I'll throw in some words of wisdom from the "up-and-comers," a rad group of poets, novelists, journalists, and song writers. The year I helped coordinate the festival, I met Lauren Groff, Jay Kirk, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Cynthia Cruz, and Kevin Moffett, who have all gone on to lead super interesting careers and whom I am still compelled to check up on every once in awhile.

Then I'm rocketing back to Amherst (north!) for the Juniper Festival, where I'm very excited to see Sommer Browning and Timothy Donnelly read, especially. But more on that later.

(See that building? That is where I used to work. EVERY DAY. Sigh.)

(Just to compare, this is where I now work, photographed on a good day--i.e. no snow is falling.)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Hey, ladies!

Sad. Sad and so true.

Whiz! Bang! Pow!

If I had an extra hundred dollars, I would buy each of my friends a copy of Swamplandia! & send it to them in the mail with a letter:

DEAR FRIEND, 

I LOVE YOU, HERE IS A BOOK YOU WILL LOVE TOO. IF YOU LOVE ME, OPEN THIS BOOK AND START FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF SWAMPLANDIA!. KAREN RUSSELL CAN TAKE IT FROM THERE.

This is only a sneak attack post (bam!) because I have been mondo-sick for the entirety of February (stupid February), and I am working up some energy to write an essay on the Vida statistics, Betty Draper, and the article/extended-punchline-with-a-buried-moral Tina Fey wrote for The New Yorker, and, side note, why I kind of hate The New Yorker (spoiler alert!).

Meantime, here's some material for you to peruse:

If you would like to listen to Karen Russell on NPR's All Things Considered, click here.

If you haven't already read the thoughtful correspondence on the Vida statistics Jessa Crispin & Michael Schaub posted at Bookslut, click here (and here and here and here and here).

If you would like to read an interview with Emma Straub, whose Other People We Married just came out from Five Chapters Books and is almost at my house, click here.

If you would like to see Aimee Bender in person, you should show up at 8PM, this Thursday, at Memorial Hall, UMass-Amherst. Where I think there will be lemon-flavored cupcakes, but this is only a rumor.

If you would like to listen to Christy Crutchfield and CS Ward read some awesome fiction/poetry, you should come to Live Lit, this Friday, at Amherst Books.

Transmission ended (pow!).

The ice storm cometh

I had one of those nice, leisurely writing days planned.You know: get up, caffeinate, write and read to your heart's content for as long as you can go, but for at least the whole morning before your brain implodes.

BLAMMO! Totally woke up with a cold. Now I am half-heartedly poking around in poetry land and falling asleep on my notebook. Forget that I wandered around all hours of the night on the New York subway system. Forget that I spent yesterday clearing my car off in freezing rain. How on earth did I get sick before the semester even started?

Amidst my grumbling I googled "Julianna Swaney," this month's cover artist for Tin House. I'm completely beguiled by her ethereal drawings and watercolors--straight out of a fairy tale with all the right, weird, humorous notes. Swaney seems to keep track of everything that inspires her online--her drawing blog, Oh My Cavalier!, is chock full with her latest work, while she keeps track of a burgeoning vintage paper scrap collection over at Ephemeratopia, which is definitely worth a visit.

I've been working on some fairy tale poems that are taking their sweet old time to figure themselves out--Swaney's art makes me feel like trying to suck it up, eat some soup, and get cracking.

Besiege the spirit

I keep running across the idea of writerly obsession--as an impulse for finishing a longer work, as an impetus for writing anything at all.

--

ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense [haunt, possess,] referring to an evil spirit): from Latin obsess- 'besieged,' from the verb obsidere, from ob- 'opposite' + sedere 'sit.'  The current sense dates from the late 19th cent.

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DFW had tennis. And drugs, the altered experience. David Mitchell, to some degree, has Japan, and gallivanting about with a matryoshka storytelling structure. Arielle Greenberg has being Jewish, being a mother. Ben Lerner had war. Then physics and love and a different kind of war.  Mavis Gallant wrote a whole book of stories about Paris. Susan Howe wrote a whole book about Emily Dickinson.

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If you're a typographer, perhaps you're besieged by the persistent use of double-spacing after a period.

(Guilty).

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Photographer Neil Krug took a series of 60s-inspired pulp portraits, featuring the long legs of his wife, who is holding a bad-ass gun.

--

Being a curious neurotic, I always wondered about how diffuse my thinking is. I am never obsessed with any one thing in particular. Images, though: a tree, a certain kind of light, walking in the snow along the river. A long, empty prairie.

--

Being in an MFA program gives you the freedom to be obsessed with one thing. Or, maybe less often, with a bunch of things all at once. As soon as you wear one out, you're done with your draft, you move on. Most likely it'll sneak up on you again in a different form.  But you're already trying out the next fascination.

--

Over at The Millions Cathy Day wonders if we should be teaching the short story as definitively as we are, if we might be killing the urge to create in longer forms. Whether the workshop indefinitely kills a productive discussion about a longer work.

Maybe this is also a roundabout way to think about cultivating longevity of thought. Of continued fascination with one evolving idea. To stick around for awhile.

Now with more winter (and a little Aimee Bender)

I haven't forgotten you, internet.  I've been enjoying the cold.

And storing up for the New England winter.

I missed all of the end-of-year booklist blog-mania, so I'll try to make up for it with a flurry of new posts over the next few weeks before I head off to AWP. 

School caught me by surprise and so did the Aimee Bender reading, coming up this Thursday, January 20th as part of the Visiting Writers Series at UMass. {Edit: the Visiting Writers Series did a massive bait and switch! Aimee Bender will not read until February 24. Sorry for the misinformation. I'll post another excited entry when she actually does come to read.} I enjoyed An Invisible Sign of My Own as I enjoy all new versions of fairy tales--unfortunately The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is beneath a teetering to-read pile.  The only way to get it out is to play what will certainly be a losing game of Jenga with a tower of three-pound hardcovers.

Time to shake off my post-holiday-travel-and-epic-television-slash-nonstop-reading-hobbit-hole-brainfreeze.   Even if it does mean more teaching and cold-ass weather and squeaky boots on the bus.

Readings galore!

Oh boy, it's the end of the semester, and I'm flying by the seat of my pants trying to get everything done.  Which explains why this post is too late to do anyone any good, but here you go:

Went to a fabulous jubilat/Jones reading this past Sunday in Amherst, featuring the phenomenal Ben Lerner, as well as Kimiko Hahn, both of whom were gracious readers.  I got up the nerve to shake Ben Lerner's hand & later apologized for asking for a signed copy of his book (::head desk::).

He's only 31.  The world is unfair.  (I promise I have intelligent commentary about his latest book, Mean Free Path, forthcoming in the next issue of Rain Taxi).

Natalie Lyalin is also reading TOMORROW at 7 PM with poet Michael Earl Craig in the Augusta Savage Gallery, New Africa House, UMass.  I'm excited to meet the woman behind GlitterPony & the author of Pink & Hot Pink Habitat.  Her chapbook from Ugly Duckling Presse, Try A Little Time Travel, also hits the spot.  If you you're in the Valley (& shouldn't you be?), I hope you can come!

Spirit of the Occasion

October's over & Tavi's what I have to show for it.
Oh, & one highly successful Rachel Zoe costume & a bunch of beautiful hand-made objects about which, more later.

Happy Halloween, folks.

New GlitterPony! More Internet! More Fall!

It's October & I've needed an umbrella all day so far.  My gutters are giving up.  But the internet is not!

Exhibit A:

GlitterPony's latest issue, with poems from yours truly, natural wonders Anne Ceceila Holmes and Lily Ladewig, & lots of other fabulous people.  Please take a look!

Exhibit B:

My good friend Adam Cogbill is/was Mr. Story of the Week at Short Story America.  Mr. October?  Maybe.

Exhibit C:

Mr. October of the Century.

The Internet might be giving up 'cause Gabe Durham said so.

This Is Where I Do My Best Thinking