Inside Cosmopsis Books

Cosmopsis Quarterly 3 Released

2009-02-04T10:17:00.005-05:00

Hello all! After a lengthy absence, I'm pleased to announce the release of Cosmopsis Quarterly 3. This issue has the same great format (poetry and short fiction) with over a dozen authors new to the Cosmopsis world (and a handful of familiar faces).

Click your way to our web site (www.cosmopsis.com) for more information and to order a copy. Discounts for multiple copies and subscriptions are also available. Plus, as William Michaelian reminds us in his fabulous collection of poetry, Winter Poems, you can always burn your copy if you get cold.

Review of Winter Poems

2008-06-07T19:55:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press for publishing Irene Kornonas's thoughtful review of William Michaelian's Winter Poems. We wish Doug, whom the City of Somerville must certainly consider poet laureate, much luck with the latest issue of the Bagel Bards anthology.

William Michaelian: Recently Banned Literature

2008-04-27T17:13:00.000-04:00

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon — oops. Wrong script. I meant to say, it’s been a busy month in Oregon. Among other things, I’ve launched Recently Banned Literature, a blog that contains poetry, notes, and other literary odds and ends that I’ve chosen to classify as “marginalia,” mostly because I like the word. Almost all of the entries are mercifully short — as I vow this one will be. They contain links to updated pages on my main website (there are currently 1,023 pages), as well as others to sites of genuine literary interest. I’ve even included an archival portrait (a wonderful pencil sketch done by a complete stranger) from 1982.

William Michaelian reads on Armenian Poetry Project

2008-03-29T17:01:00.001-04:00

A recording of William Michaelian reading his poem, “I Can Imagine,” has been added to the Armenian Poetry Project. The archived page can be accessed here. The poem is part of his Songs and Letters, an extensive collection of poetry and prose he began in 2005.

William Michaelian: "No symbols where none intended."

2008-03-15T21:08:00.002-04:00

The following paragraphs about Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot; The Unnamable) are taken from the March 3, 2008, edition of a daily newsletter I receive from www.todayinliterature.com, a worthwhile website that I heartily recommend.

Samuel Becket's Watt was published on this day in 1958. The “Addenda” which Beckett attaches to the end of the novel begins with this instruction: “The following precious and illuminating material should be carefully studied. Only fatigue and disgust prevented its incorporation.” The Addenda concludes with a playful and cryptic counterpoint: “no symbols where none intended.” Taken together, these statements reflect Beckett’s career-long attempt to tease his interpreters — in these program notes for Endgame, for example:

"Endgame does not want to be anything but a mere play. Nothing less. No thought, therefore, as to riddles, solutions. For such serious stuff we have universities, churches, coffee houses, etc."

Beckett scholar Raymond Federman says that one passage from Watt “may be Beckett’s best explanation of his own work.” It describes Watt standing transfixed before a painting of an almost-complete circle and a blue spot, the myriad possible meanings overwhelming Watt “to the point of bringing tears of incomprehension to his eyes.” Watt wonders if the circle and the spot were “the playthings of chance,” or if they might “eventually pause and converse, and perhaps even mingle, or keep steadfast on their ways, like ships in the night”…:

And he wondered what the artist had intended to represent (Watt knew nothing about painting), perhaps a circle and its centre in search of each other, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of its centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of its centre and its circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of its centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively, in boundless space, in endless time (Watt knew nothing about physics), and at the thought that it was perhaps this, a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a center and its circle respectively, in boundless space, in endless time, then Watt’s eyes filled with tears that he could not stem, and they flowed down his fluted cheeks unchecked, in a steady flow, refreshing him greatly.

William Michaelian: The Addison Street Poetry Walk

2008-02-22T20:23:00.000-05:00

A while back, I mentioned The Wall Poems of Leiden, an outdoor poetry project in the Netherlands. A similar project is the Addison Street Poetry Walk, located in downtown Berkeley, California. A 296-page companion volume featuring the commentary of former Poet Laureate Robert Hass was also released by Heyday Books in 2004.

Simplicity, Sincerity, Sonority: A New Voice in American Poetry

2008-02-18T19:12:00.001-05:00

The following excerpt is from an excellent review of William Michaelian's two books of poetry, Winter Poems and Another Song I Know, posted recently online. The review is by Russ Allison Loar, a journalist, writer, and poet who lives in Claremont, California. The complete review is available at Amazon.com and on the Powell's Books website.

We are not living in an age of poetry, sad but true. The greatest lines of our most famous poets no longer enter our everyday vernacular. Shakespeare and Robert Frost, among others, still remain in our vocabulary, but the age of technology and the omnipresence of mass corporate culture has replaced the role of the poet in our society.

When one discovers an original poetic voice, a voice that actually matters, it is reason to take notice, to take out the iPod earbuds and try once again to read a book of poetry and enjoy it. This time, you will not be overwhelmed by obscurity, nauseated by pretentiousness and bored by irrelevance.

William Michaelian is a poet that matters, and most of all, he is a poet who communicates what matters, those small parts of everyday life that are the finest moments of our lives — moments of observation, insight and awakening.

William Michaelian: John Anderson, My Jo

2008-01-25T19:47:00.000-05:00

Music, anyone? I found this poignant little poem in Songs from Robert Burns, a pocket-sized volume I picked up a couple of months ago at a used bookstore here in Salem. The book is old, but it has no copyright or printing information. The publisher's name: Collins' Clear-Type Press, London and Glasgow. It has a marbled leather cover and marbled endpapers. A nice companion for a shivery winter day.

John Anderson My Jo

John Anderson my jo, John,
When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson my jo!

John Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither,
And monie a canty day, John,
We’ve had wi’ ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we’ll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson my jo!

William Michaelian: Reading Tristram Shandy

2008-01-12T18:17:00.000-05:00

Digressions are the sunshine of reading. — Laurence Sterne

Not long ago, I discovered that a poem of mine, "Reading Tristram Shandy," is linked in the introduction to a paper by Thomas Steele on Tristram Shandy as a forerunner to hypertext, and author Laurence Sterne's influence on writers such as Joyce, Stein, Woolf, and Vonngeut. In his paper, Steele discusses Sterne's creative use of language and page layout, his non-linear approach to storytelling, and how they seem to anticipate today's blogs and projects like Wikipedia. Along the way, Steele furnishes a number of links (of course!) to some fascinating examples and references.

Tristram Shandy, meanwhile, is a wonderful book. Sterne's vocabulary is impressive, his wit is keen, his sense of humor is delightfully wicked, and the way he breaks rules is potent medicine for readers and writers feeling trapped or bored by conventional literary "wisdom."

Sarah Friend: Writer's Block

2008-01-01T10:38:00.000-05:00

Writer's block. Imbued with previous forward movement, we've all run, full-force, against that merciless brick wall, rebounding back. It sends us reeling, and leaves us messily sprawled on the ground, rubbing our heads, unsure as to what happened or how to proceed. This was my state of mind one recent morning, as I sat, coffee mug in one hand, pen in the other, when I remembered the timeless advice: Just keep writing, no matter what. My what wandered into, whatever happened to sugar cubes as a form of coffee sweeteners?

(Sugar) Cane Mutiny

In the days of yore, sugar cubes were daily liquidated
In London, Paris and New York from human cares they faded

Yet there lived a gallant sugar cube in a tin-box,
Who one fine morning found his home free of locks

The dangers of the world unbeknownst to him still
He shuffled outside to his dreams of adventure fulfill

But there upon the kitchen table, what did he see?
His dear old aunt drown in a cup of boiling tea.

Outraged, he spoke to bananas and pills and the like,
Describing in gory detail the horror of the Fourth Reich.

Rage against sugar cube cruelty grew in fame,
Which explains why today, we use aspartame.

Ed Meek's book What We Love

2007-12-27T17:08:00.000-05:00

Ed Meek digs underneath the broad lawns and narrow minds of the suburbs to unearth a deeper and at times darker, truth about ourselves and our lives.

—Doug Holder, Editor and Publisher, Ibbetson Street Press

Ed Meek, whose work recently appeared in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2, has a great book out called What We Love. It's available online at Amazon.com.

William Michaelian: In Watermelon Sugar

2007-12-20T21:21:00.000-05:00

This short review of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar is also included in the Richard Brautigan Archives, an extensive wiki-based site founded, organized, and maintained by Birgit Ferran in Barcelona, Spain. The Archives contain a wealth of material on the author known for such classic works as Trout Fishing in America, The Abortion, and So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away. Quotes, images, studies, criticism, obituaries, interviews, links, and more are included.

Reality is a poor excuse not to enjoy the work of Richard Brautigan. It is also the best excuse. Either way, I recommend you set reality aside; let it rest awhile; if you find you need it later, chances are it will still be there. If it isn’t, well, as they say, good riddance.

Brautigan’s gentle vision, melancholy humor, and ear for language are all beautifully evident in his short impressionistic novel, In Watermelon Sugar. The story begins simply and in earnest:

In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.

Wherever you are, we must do the best we can. It is so far to travel, and we have nothing here to travel, except watermelon sugar. I hope this works out.

And work out it does. Effortlessly, Brautigan builds a bridge composed of dry timber and sad, sweet images, and places them beneath a colored sky and sun in a comfortable living room as big as one’s imagination will allow. One end of the bridge is at the reader’s feet. The other is in a small community of peaceful souls once shared by mournful tigers, which ate people with regret, sang, apologized in English, and offered to help the narrator with his arithmetic even as he was being orphaned. The narrator, now an adult, holds nothing against the tigers — and, indeed, nothing against anyone. Life is simply the thing it is. Not everything can be explained, nor does it need to be:

. . . Fred had something strange-looking sticking out of the pocket of his overalls. I was curious about it. It looked like something I had never seen before.

‘What’s that in your pocket, Fred?’

‘I found it today coming through the woods and up from the Watermelon Works. I don’t know what it is myself. I’ve never seen anything like it before. What do you think it is?’

He took it out of his pocket and handed it to me. I didn’t know how to hold it. I tried to hold it like you would a flower and a rock at the same time.

‘How do you hold it?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.’ . . .

To me, that simple confession, “I didn’t know how to hold it,” perfectly describes Brautigan’s feelings toward life itself. How do you hold something that is infinite, delicate, and always changing? The answer: You don’t. You write a book instead, give it to the world, and hope it takes root in watermelon sugar.

Richard Brautigan was born January 30, 1935, in the Pacific Northwest. He lived for many years in San Francisco, and was called by many “the last of the Beats.” He committed suicide in Bolinas, California, at the age of forty-nine.

William Michaelian: The Wall Poems of Leiden

2007-12-10T21:52:00.000-05:00

If I remember correctly, I posted the following entry in the Highly Recommended section of my website about two years ago. The Wall Poems of Leiden site is definitely worth visiting. I see the Project is now complete, and that it contains 101 poems in all.

Recently in my literary Web wanderings, I stumbled onto a link to a wonderful outdoor poetry project in the Netherlands city of Leiden. The Wall Poems of Leiden gives the background of the project, which was begun in 1992, and which, when completed, will encompass 101 poems painted on walls throughout the city. The poets represented hail from all corners of the world and include such luminaries as Marina Tsevetayeva, William Carlos Williams, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Anna Akhmatova, Keats, Yeats, and Rimbaud, as well as many others I’ve never heard of and don’t know how to pronounce. What a truly great and civilized idea! Links are provided to photographs of each wall poem printed in its original language. Below the pictures are English and Dutch translations. Visitors can follow the links from one page to the next in a sort of “walking tour,” or choose links from the complete list on a separate page.

I would love to see something like that here. Maybe there are similar projects scattered around the U.S. If there are, I'd love to know where, and to find out more about them.

Kendra Stanton Lee: The winter of my discontent

2007-12-04T22:27:00.000-05:00

Since the first leaves of autumn began to crisp and fall, so, too, have my pleasure, academic reads fallen from my lap to the floor. I have purchased, borrowed, and resurrected from the archives several books of interest. The farthest I have gotten in each is several chapters deep. I've tried fiction and non, brooding and beautiful, romantic and cruel. Everything piques my curiosity but fails to sustain it. I have failed pop quizzes in my class because somehow I developed an allergy to required reading. I became a book club delinquent as month after month I flaked. And then I became a book club drop-out. Is this the winter of my discontent as a reader?

My non-fiction instructor opened class the other night reminding us that these winter months (up here in bleak New England where the sun sets at 4:30p.m.) can be a great time to delve into our writing, to open up the veins of wintry thinking and bleed them out into our work. Perhaps this is the reason I have had no inclination to be a reader since the days grew long and cold and dark. I was frittering away my time trying to do that which I am not meant to do during this season. My brain was longing to produce the kinds of pieces that my brain loves to read during the rest of the year.

I suspect I am not the only one for whom winter triggers a desire to write, rather than to read, to focus on the output rather than the intake. Further, are there particular seasons in which certain genres of fiction or non-fiction are en vogue for you, and other seasons in which those same reads collect dust on your shelves or accrue overdue fines at the library?

Or has Netflix simply ruined us all?

Kendra Stanton Lee's work can be found in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2 as well as on her web site at http://www.kendraspondence.com.

William Michaelian: Brain Fever

2007-11-25T11:18:00.000-05:00

When I talked to our eldest son on the phone yesterday evening, he told me he had missed work that day because he had a fever. Naturally, I asked him if his fever was accompanied by delirium. He was pleased to report that his thoughts had indeed been running away from him, and that he had found the sensation very agreeable. He said it made him feel like a character in a Dostoevsky novel.

This is exactly what a father needs to hear from his son every now and then. After all, anyone can be ill. But to be ill in the manner of a nervous nineteenth century soul who paces, gesticulates, and wrestles with his conscience is the hallmark of genius.

Brain fever is everywhere in Dostoevsky's writing. Every character of magnitude eventually succumbs to a fortnight of raving, inspired, perhaps, by the author's wild sprees at the roulette table.

. . . I flew to the roulette table as if my whole salvation, my whole way out, was focused in it, and yet, as I’ve already said, before the prince came, I hadn’t even thought of it. And I was going to play, not for myself, but for the prince, on the prince’s money; I can’t conceive what drew me on, but it drew me irresistibly. Oh, never had these people, these faces, these croupiers, these gambling cries, this whole squalid hall at Zershchikov’s, never had it all seemed so loathsome to me, so dismal, so coarse and sad, as this time! I remember only too well the grief and sadness that seized my heart at times during all those hours at the table. But what made me not leave? What made me endure, as if I had taken a fate, a sacrifice, a heroic deed upon myself? I’ll say one thing: I can scarcely say of myself that I was in my right mind then. . . .

— from The Adolescent (also A Raw Youth)
trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Alfred A. Knopf (2003)

Dostoevsky's writing also causes brain fever. Really: it is quite the marvelous drug. For another small dose, I recommend his short story, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." Once, many years ago, I read the entire piece out loud to my wife while she was making supper. It took me about forty-five minutes, and I was so worked up by the end that I broke down in tears and had chills for the next several hours. We're still married, by the way.

Carlos Hernandez: Eight Ways of Looking at Cormac McCarthy's The Road

2007-11-14T13:04:00.000-05:00

(Spoiler Alert — This review may spoil things for some readers who miss the point of sections one and two, which argue that The Road is not a fiction, but an epic poem, and is therefore much less about plot — and hence much less vulnerable to spoilers that can spoil plots — than traditional fiction. Therefore, do not continue reading if you do not want to spoil the almost-nonexistent plot for yourself, or if you are prone to missing points.)

1.

The Road is not a novel. It is a poem. I don’t mean that as a compliment, just as a description of the genre. The Road is a nigh-plotless description of the little successes and the little failures and mostly the little events left to a father and son who claw an existence as best they can out of a post-apocalyptic American landscape. It’s focus is on language, immediacy, cosmic nihilism and love. It is written in prose, but it is a poem. A prose-poem.

2.

The Road is a specific type of poem; it is an epic. More specifically, it is an anti-epic.

The traditional epic is about the foundation of a nation, the creation of an identity, an ethos, a people. It speaks of long journeys and endless dangers and of monstrosities so fantastic they enthrall as much as they terrify. It tells of heroes who recite their genealogies before every battle and carry the history of the world on their shields.

This is an anti-epic, a long journey recounting of the last tubercular wheezings of a moribund nation, through the vantage of two of its last survivors. It is the slow dissolution of everything American. The only things left to eat are canned food — supplies are rapidly dwindling — or scavenged grains and fruit — quickly rotting; and the nuclear winter doesn’t seem to allow for new growth — or other Americans. And their numbers are dwindling and rotting too.

3.

The first time I tried to read The Road, it was just before bed after a long day. I read the first page and went to sleep. The next time I picked up the book I read 30 pages, thought it slightly derivative, and didn’t know if I would pick it up again. The next time I picked up the book I finished it in four hours.

It is, if nothing else, compelling.

4.

We never learn the nature of the apocalypse. We hear bombs (nuclear? must be) go off in the distance and see the father decide to fill his bathtub with water. We do not know if America was wrongly bombed or justly bombed or if the bomb was a kind of nuclear suicide, a harikiri meant to atone for — what? American excess? The War on Terror? Everything?

This is why the book is not science fiction: it offers no explanation, no backstory, no setting. Science fiction is, primarily, a genre of setting. The Road is literary fiction that borrows — sparsely — from a genre to write a poem about a father’s love for his son.

And it is the poorer for it. Without the rationale, there is no rationale. There is only allusion, allegory, inference: literary tropes that depend on plot to play the straight-man to their antics.

5.

There is no news in The Road. No discovery. The father sacrifices everything — even, at the end, himself — for the son. But this is what we believe fathers should do for their sons. This is what many fathers have done for their sons. Fathers who don’t sacrifice for their sons are thought of as lesser fathers.

What there is is comfort. How good it is for the father to protect and procure for and sacrifice everything for the son. How we dream we would do the same. How we fear we might not. But never fear — a father protecting his son is natural, inborn, instinctual. You would do the same for your son. Don’t worry.

6.

The son in The Road is not a character. He is a father’s fantasy son. He is the kind of son a father imagines when the father is a new father and he is holding his infant son in his arms and he is imagining the terribleness of the world and how he must protect this small, shapeless, helpless, cooing mass in his hands from the infinite supply of dangers the world so gleefully proffers. Even as he makes himself soft for his son, the father steels himself against the world and says “I will kill everyone and everything before I let a single hair be shorn from the head of my son.”

Or die trying. The father knows the world. And having a child has aged him. He knows danger now in a way he never knew as a young man, back when he was strong, belligerent, casually vicious. He knows he is mortal, he will die. Of old age, slowly thinning, stooping, losing strength? No. He will die for something. Like his beautiful new son.

7.

There is a Deus ex Machina in The Road that rescues the son, because the son cannot die. He is not allowed to die. There is every reason to believe, in this world, he would die without the father: become, perhaps, the next meal of one of the vicious nomadic armies that ravage the ravaged landscape. Or worse: become such an army’s newest catamite. Or some combination thereof.

These things are not allowed. The boy must live. This is the novel’s greatest indulgence: that the father’s sacrifice be not in vain. However unlikely, the son must live.

8.

It is a good book. It is incomplete, a kind of paean to fatherly love, a valentine McCarthy writes to his own son, to whom the book is dedicated. It is written in a commaless rush of breathless language, quietly precise and desperately afraid. It is written by a man who knows words and guns and flora, who knows the terror of life and the terror of nonlife. It is a good book.

In a world with more books and more readers, it would still be a good book. But it would not win the Pulitzer. The Pulitzer would go to a more complete book, more realized, less sentimental. A book with more than one incarnated character. That did a better job of hiding its wires, of nuancing its one-trick allegory.

But The Road has won in this world. It’s hard to begrudge it, to sully its many virtues. And yet. I pray a better, more deserving book was overlooked this year. Happens all the time: a good book wins, while a great book lies unfeted, unremarked. Until much later.

But if there was a better book, I didn’t read it.

William Michaelian: Bound for Glory

2007-11-07T15:29:00.000-05:00

Down in Texas, my gal fainted in the rain,
Down in Texas, my gal fainted in the rain,
I throwed a bucket o’ dirt in her face just to bring her back again.

— Woody Guthrie

There is some priceless writing in Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory (E.P. Dutton, 1943), a book long on literary merit and full of humor, sadness, and rural wisdom. I grew up among Dust Bowl survivors and their offspring in California's central San Joaquin Valley. A year or so ago, when my youngest son, a restless guitar player in his own right, discovered and lent me the book, it was like hearing their voices all over again.

. . . One day my curiosity licked me. I said that I was going to taste a bottle of that Jake* for myself. Man ought to be interested. I drawed up about a half a mug of root beer. It was cold and nice, and I popped the little stopper out of one of the Jake bottles, and poured the Jake into the root beer. When that Jake hit that beer, it commenced to cook it, and there was seven civil wars and two revolutions broke out inside of that mug. The beer was trying to tame the Jake down and the Jake was trying to eat the beer up. They sizzled and boiled and sounded about like bacon frying. The Jake was chasing the little bubbles and the little bubbles was chasing the Jake, and the beer spun like a whirlpool in a big swift river. It went around and around so fast that it made a little funnel right in the middle. I waited about twenty minutes for it to settle down. Finally it was about the color of a new tan saddle, and about as quiet as it would get. So I bent over it and stuck my ear down over the mug. It was spewing and crackling like a machine gun, but I thought I’d best to drink it before it turned into a waterspout or a dust storm. I took it up and took it down, and it was hot and dry and gingery and spicy, and cloudy, and smooth, and windy and cold, and threatening rain or snow. I took another big swallow and my shirt come unbuttoned and my insides burnt like I was pouring myself full of home-made soapy dishwater. I drank it all down, and when I woke up I was out of a job. . . .

*Jamaica Ginger, a potent Prohibition mixture of ginger and alcohol — W.M.

During the past few months, a lot of attention has been given to Jack Kerouac and the fifty-year anniversary of the publication of On the Road, which, of course, is another kind of book altogether. That attention is deserved. But it's worth remembering, I think, that Guthrie and others zigzagged this country in harder times and rougher conditions, and some great art came of it.

Matthew David Brozik's "Clues"

2007-11-04T20:32:00.000-05:00

CQ2 contributor Matthew David Brozik's piece "Clues" has been nominated by the editors of Illya's Honey (in which the piece will appear) for a Pushcart Prize. "Clues" is not quite a story and not quite a poem; fortunately, the Pushcart Prize... er, people accept nominations as well of "literary whatnot." Matthew has long fancied himself quite the purveyor of literary whatnot.

Matthew David Brozik's story "Stunned Heart" appeared in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2.

William Michaelian: In Passing

2007-11-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

Michael Lee Johnson could have been thinking any number of things when he wrote this little poem back in 1969:

She

Somewhere

she has lost
her shadow.

and now

she stands
still

with nowhere
to go.

And really, in a way, it almost doesn't matter what he was thinking. What matters most, at least to me, is that it's a good poem, and that it popped into my life on a rather strange, quiet day I had recently, after hearing that one of my dear Armenian aunties had passed on at the ripe old age of ninety-five. My blood, Johnson's poem . . . two strangers who met in passing.

William Michaelian has a huge web site. Check it out.

National Novel Writing Month

2007-11-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

It's not too late to start!

November is National Novel Writing Month, the period of time when you can finally tackle that idea you've been rolling around in your head for the last few years. Feel unprepared? Take a look at the NaNoWriMo web site for ideas, encouragement and support. Who knows, you might even write something that Cosmopsis Books publishes down the road...

Thanks to Carlos for reminding us!

Carlos Hernandez: Book Review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

2007-10-29T08:44:00.000-04:00

Junot Diaz's first novel, arriving almost a decade after the release of Drown (his nigh-universally acclaimed collection of short stories) is called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And it is about as purposefully impenetrable a book as I can imagine finding its way into print.

It's almost as if no audience exists for Diaz's mind, as if no one is prepared to understand the complexity of his personality. It's almost as if he has to, through the force of his writing, create the audience that is capable of appreciating him.

"But how hard a read can it be?" you ask. "I read Drown, you say. "Sure, there were a lot of DR references I didn't get, but all in all, I followed the stories. Sad stuff, but powerful. Doesn't Oscar Wao read like Drown?"

Please allow me to answer a question with a question: How many times is Darkseid's Omega Effect referenced in Drown?

Click here to read about Darkseid's Omega Effect. (Scroll down to the Powers and Abilities section).

To get the most out of Oscar Wao, you should have at least a minor in Comic Book Heroes 1970-1990. Oh, and another in The Lord of the Rings; you should know your Tolkien well enough to spot a metaphoric ringwraith when you see one. Oh, and at least one course on anime that spent at least two weeks studying the cultural importance of Akira. And God help you if you didn't major in Role Playing Games. You cannot understand this work if you don't know what a Saving Throw is! You can't! Seriously, just go back to college, play lots and lots of role-playing games — start with D&D, but to get some of the references you're going to have dive into at least a half-dozen other ones, all which are out of print. Try E-bay.

"But wait!" you protest. "I thought he was a Latino writer! A Caribbean diaspora writer!"

Oh, don't you worry: he is. He's as DR as they come — plenty of his DR dialect sent my Cuban Spanish scrabbling to Google for a gloss. He brings the mean streets of Jersey to life (and don't laugh; the parts of Jersey he describes are tough enough to rip that I Heart New York shirt off your back and that smug smile off you face), especially the Dominican community. Uses the N-word more times than my Latino-but-white-passing complexion could tolerate.

And let's not forget all the literary allusions. Sure, you have your Shakespeare Easter Eggs, and your fashionable Proust madeleine-reference, and a plot-vital mention of Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde -> Oscar Wao), but then there are all those science fiction writers who get thrown into the mix as well, the ones most literary types equate, when they're feeling generous, with a wasted youth.

See where I'm headed here? To "get" this book, you would need a book that doesn't exist yet: The Unabridged Dominican/Literary/1970s-Present Nerd Concordance. Without it, you may just feel adrift.

You may. But you may not. See, let's say you are a Latino — not necessarily Dominican (so you might have to look up some of the Trujillo references), but Cuban, so you know something about the Caribbean, and something about a people's oppression under the rule of a larger-than-life dictator. Let's say you are a child of the 70s, and you were a bookish kid who loved reading: the classics, sure, but comic books and science fiction and fantasy just as much. And let's say you were addicted to Dungeons and Dragons ever since you laid eyes on it, played it and other role playing games with your friends through your teens and much of your 20s. And let's say that you decided to devote your life to literature, and that you've earned a Ph.D. in English and know what the Proust Phenomenon is from first-hand reading.

In other words, if you are me, you can read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at a reasonable rate. And you can love it. But I have to ask: how many Latino literary meganerds are out there? For whom, I found myself asking over and over as I read, is this book intended?

I wonder if Diaz's voice will be enough to help convince readers to keep reading. He has a great voice: savage, honest, self-deprecating, and full of the deadly-hip cant of modern street-speak. Maybe people will just be willing to blow over reference after reference that they just don't get?

Here's what should happen: his publishers contact me. We go to lunch at some swank New York midtown restaurant. After some very good Latin Fusion, they offer me a four-figure advance (I'm not greedy) to write a concordance to accompany Oscar Wao. Because, they realize that this book is trebly impenetrable to the general public, that this book needs an easy-reference
guide to help readers march along with the plot. If not, I'm afraid Oscar Wao will be revered by academics and cultural critics who are willing to do the work to understand it, but categorically ignored by the public at large.

When not working on the aforementioned Concordance, Carlos Hernandez is writing fiction, which recently appeared in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2.

William Michaelian: I Hear America Singing

2007-10-25T14:20:00.000-04:00

I still remember what I said when my friend and literary co-conspirator, John Berbrich, told me several years ago that there's a shopping mall on Long Island named after Walt Whitman: "There should have been a huge public outcry over that. What kind of people are we, that we would name a place of generic commercialism after a national treasure?"

We'd been talking about Whitman's colossal stature and my idea of declaring a national Whitman holiday. John, the Long Island-born publisher of the small press quarterly Barbaric Yawp, said — and I'm quoting directly from our conversation as it appears on my website — "Whitman is the monstrous whispering ocean moving eternally beneath the full moon, waves lapping the sand."

"Beautiful," I replied. "And so true. For me, Whitman’s confidence is like Beethoven’s. They were geniuses, creatively bursting at the seams. Their defiant laughter shakes the universe. These days especially, with the news dominated by petty minds cultivating lies, I think we should declare an international Whitman holiday and observe it for at least a year. During that time, we can take stock of ourselves, and perhaps emerge with a higher aim and purpose."

Of course, we go on like this all the time. But I still think about that holiday idea, as well as another John came up with: "I propose that all technological inventions be declared illegal for at least ten years, thereby giving us perhaps a chance to catch up a little bit. This time period may be extended if necessary."

William Michaelian has already prepared for the long nights, the rain and the snow: buy his book Winter Poems here.

Kendra Stanton Lee: John Elder Robison in Person

2007-10-19T18:12:00.000-04:00

I have all sorts of expectations prior to hearing authors read in person. Of course I do. These people published something that someone other than their mothers bought. Somewhere, somehow, they charmed their publishers enough to promote their books. And now their names are listed in newspapers, searched for in library catalogues, and dropped by literati and booksellers alike. It’s enough to be a little bit self-impressed, no?

This was not the case for John Elder Robison, who recently read from his memoir Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA. The latter part of the title refers to Robison’s experience in growing up with a high-functioning form of autism. The former part of the title refers to “Aspergian’s” aversion to making eye contact.

Although the room was packed — I presume with your basic mix of book snobs, teachers and parents of Aspergians (or sisters, in my case), and retirees killing time — Robison seemed surprised, almost tickled that he had gathered such a group around the proverbial campfire.

Robison talked about his life as noted memoirist August Burrough’s older brother, about their dysfunctional upbringing, and about the social struggles he experienced as an Aspergian. He also dwelled on the fact that he had “done all this cool stuff” and even written a book, which he thought was “pretty cool, too!”

This reading was a very refreshing contrast to others I have attended. There was no author looking out at a sea of admirers, appearing smug, as though he expected as much. In this way, Robison defied my expectations.

What have been your experiences regarding meeting writers and artists in public settings? Who surprised you most?

Kendra Stanton Lee's poem "Saturday Chores" appears in Cosmopsis Quarterly 2.

William Michaelian: "Rain nails kiss the dance of the shiny road,"

2007-10-18T10:11:00.000-04:00

a restless man named Kerouac once scribbled in his notebook. And now, more than fifty years later, I see a thousand tiny hammers hovering above the pavement and striking in rapid, silvery succession. Hammers without hands, lit from an unknown source — the sun tried and failed long ago, put out its last cigarette, they should have seen me in former years — the entire scene etched on the inside of an addict’s eyelid by Gustave Doré.

Recommended reading: Book of Sketches, by Jack Kerouac; Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, illustrated by Gustave Doré.

William Michaelian's work appears in Cosmopsis Quarterly 1; his two books of poetry are available from Cosmopsis Books.

Michael Lee Johnson: The Lost American

2007-10-17T13:31:00.000-04:00

We are extremely proud to mention that Cosmopsis Quarterly 1 author Michael Lee Johnson has released a new book, The Lost American: From Exile To Freedom. You can obtain copies from iUniverse.

About the book
The Lost American is about one man’s journey into exile over the Vietnam War many years ago, his struggle, his survival, his road to recovery and strength manifesting itself through his prose and poems.