July 1, 2013

The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner

“A funny thing about woman and machines: the combination made men curious.”

I do wonder if one day there will be a literary genre distinguished by its treatment of women whose broken dreams are symbolized by their dissatisfaction with their kitchen renovations. I noticed this first in Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, whose middle-class preoccupations were redeemed by Cusk’s Woolfian narrative, and then recently in Krista Bridge’s The Eliot Girls which was more Picoultian than Woolfian and left me frustrated with narrative in general. And so I turned to Rachel Kushner’s The Flame Throwers next, because it promised to be not Picoultian in the slightest and featured a female protagonist who never went into the kitchen at all.

Though to call her a “protagonist” is not entirely accurate, because Kushner’s narrator is more of an observer, and a cypher than one who the story happens to. We get a sense of her internal monologue, but not of her self–we don’t even know her name. (I am careful not to refer to her as “Reno” [um, for the city, not the abbreviation for “renovation”] though she is referred to as such in the book’s copy. But in an interview, Kushner remarks, “Twice, she’s referred to as Reno, and so reviewers have latched onto this.” And I don’t want Kushner to think that I am a latcher. Never.) This is a novel about motorcycles, motor racing, rubber manufacturing, Fascism and terrorism, which is the kind of novel that generally wouldn’t appeal to me, except that it’s also the book that everybody is talking about and for once I wanted to get in on that action. Plus, it’s a novel about all of these things from the point of view of a female character, and I was curious about that. And so I picked up The Flame Throwers, and perhaps I’ve got a thing for speed and crashes after all because I was hooked by page 21 with the story of a legendary American racer whose parachute failed and had to stop from 522 miles per hour on the salt flats of Utah.

Of course, to call Kushner’s character an “observer” is disingenuous, because while the novel doesn’t happen to her, her voice and perspective are certainly key to its construction. She has more agency than we can really understand. The story begins with Kushner’s character on the salt flats in 1977, riding her Valera motorcycle (which had come from her boyfriend back in New York, Sandro Valera, the estranged heir to the Italian motorcycle/tire manufacturing fortune). Her aim is to race her bike, and also to photograph other races. She is an artist, we learn, who has moved from Reno to New York where she met Sandro. Her racing plans are curtailed by an accident, however, and she, previously the lone wolf, ends up with the Valera racing team by virtue of her motorcycle’s make. She ends up setting a world record for female drivers in the Valera car, the Spirit of Italy, and a scheme is concocted wherein she will travel to Italy on the coattails of her racing fame.

And then the narrative takes us to New York nearly two years before, the girl from Reno arriving in the city to make herself (though we learn a few peculiar details to suggest she’s not entirely formless–she’d been a success as a ski racer years before, and once acted in a McDonalds commercial. She grew up in a household with two motorbike-mad cousins, and an uncle who watched TV in the nude. And even the most mundane detail begins to seem conspicuous because there are so few of them). She tells us, “I thought this was how artists moved to New York, alone, that the city was a mecca of individual points, longings, all merging into one great light-pulsing mesh and you simply found your pulse, your place.” But she fails to, remaining estranged from the city itself, from its art scene. She is young and naive, and through a cast of eccentric characters (“I once went to a house in the Hollywood Hills that was a glass dome on a pole, its elevator shaft. Belonged to a pervert bachelor and he had peepholes everywhere. He was watching me in the toilet. Some guy drugged me without asking first. Angel dust. I was on roller skates which presented a whole extra challenge.”) she meets artist Ronnie Fontaine, and falls in love with his best friend, Sandro Valera. She makes her place on the scene as Sandro’s girl, but overrides him when he resists the idea of her trip to Italy.

In chapters involving Sandro’s father, we learn the sordid details of how he made his fortune and these suggest just why Sandro is so uncomfortable with returning to Italy and why he is determined to remain distanced from his family heritage. When the trip finally happens, it is the disaster he predicted, as Sandro’s mother shows disdain for his American girl, and the whole family is troubled by political uprisings by their factory workers, which were part of a movement sweeping the country in 1977. And finally, our character is faced with the truth about her boyfriend’s intentions toward her, and in an instant she makes a decision that embroils her in Italy’s underground radical social movement.

Kushner’s prose thrums with a Didion-esque rhythm, and her narrative concerns read like a combination of “Good-Bye to All That” and “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. Her sense of time and place is stunningly evoked, and while details waver in a few places, the overall impression is of remarkable realization. There is a reason everyone is talking about this book, and that’s because it’s a great American novel in the grand tradition but as rendered by a female hand, but then this novel with all its masculine concerns is a treatment of the feminine as well. What is the place of Kushner’s female character in this kind of story? Is she the I or just the eye? Does anybody hear her voice beyond us, the reader? We hear her, but what are the impressions of those who can see her? In a way, she is as invisible as the “China Girl” appearing among the first frames of movie film, ever present but anonymous and glimpsed by almost no one. Is this the extent of possibility for the woman artist? (“You’re not supposed to evoke real life. Just the hermetic world of a smiling woman holding a colour chart.”)

So much of this book’s impact comes from its evasive approach, which is summed up in its final sentence: “Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.” And that’s why so many people are talking about this book–because it’s a difficult one from which to draw tidy conclusions.

June 8, 2013

How Iris arrived

It really was a very gentle time, the weeks we spent waiting for Iris to come. I spent last Friday evening bouncing on a ball to induce labour, made absolutely miserable, and then my husband discovered that if you bounced on a birthing ball to terrible hiphop ballads, the whole experience was made more fun. Though looking back, I realize it was probably for the best that my labour was not brought on by bouncing to Usher singing Love in this Club. And I absolutely adore the photo of me in my bathing suit from last week, the gloriousness of it all, though it’s all sort of bittersweet when I compare that image to my poor ravaged body today.

Here it is: I am so so happy. I know I am only four days postpartum, and probably hormones have something to do with the happiness as well, but they’re supposed to. “I never imagined it could be like this,” but this means something very different now. And I know the experience of my birth, although it was far from ideal, really has something to do with this. Oh, how much it matters how the baby arrives. I know this for sure now, but in a more nuanced way than when I was ranting a few weeks back.

My labour began on Sunday night after we’d eaten much of Barbara Pym’s Victoria Sponge, although it was not apparent to me that it was labour until Monday around noon. I spent Monday night awake every ten minutes with contractions, but then by morning they were gone. A visit to the midwives on Tuesday showed that things had been progressing, even without the contractions. They started again Tuesday night with a great deal of trouble on my behalf, and we were up all night again, sure that this was it. The midwives arrived with birthing supplies and found me dilated to 6 cm. But the contractions never got stronger and once again were gone in the morning. The midwives came later that morning with the intention of breaking my water, but then the baby’s heart-rate was troubling–she was not responsive enough. And while she was stable, it was scary, and there was no longer very much natural about my “natural” birth. I just wanted the baby out.

We took a cab to the hospital, both of us crying–partly because we knew our birth plans were out the window, because we were scared for the baby, and also because we knew we were leaving Harriet without having prepared her for this. (She was at school at the time, would be cared for by our wonderful friend Erin until my mom arrived to stay with her here.) It was cold and grey outside, and as we drove past a high school, a group of boys threw rocks at our car. The world seemed quite horrible and we kept crying–I have never seen a taxi driver more concerned about his fares (and so maybe the world was not so horrible after all).

En-route to the hospital, I started having contractions again, which continued as we waited in triage. The OB on-call found it odd that someone dilated 6cm was not progressing, and give me the option of induction, which I had no intention of taking. (“It’s going to need a lot of drugs to work,” she said, again, a far cry from natural.) But still, that she give me a choice made the decision to do a repeat c-section one that I could own, and I am grateful for that. Which is not to say that I wasn’t weeping in the OR, so much so that the staff was confused–never had a sadder woman been about to give birth. Situation compounded by an anaesthesiologist who I think forgot I was a human being as she handled my body pre-surgery. The student midwife came over to comfort me with casual conversation though–I think she said, “So what’s the first thing you’re going to eat when you can eat again?” And obviously, the answer was chocolate croissants, and seriously, that woman changed my world around. By the time Stuart was brought in in his scrubs, I was comforted and ready, and knew we had made the best and only choice.

Iris means rainbow, and Malala is a hero. The midwives knew how troubled I’d been having never seen Harriet until she was wrapped and hatted when she was born, and so when they pulled her out and brought her to the warming bed, I knew just where to look and Stuart snapped a photo. She was amazing, purple, and she was mine, ours. I knew it instantly. Because of Harriet, there is a part of my heart that is mother-love now, and Iris resided there immediately. I cried and cried, like I’ve cried just one time before, at the birth of Iris’s sister. Our girl was finally here. Our family was complete. It meant something that we’d been waiting so hard for her, that I had been supported so much in my intentions for VBAC, and that Iris herself had been trying as hard to come to us–they discovered the cord was wrapped around her neck four times and there was no way she would have made it out on her own, and an induction would have been a disaster.

They didn’t lie, all those people who told me it would be different the second time around. That first night as Iris fed all night long, Stuart having to deliver her from one side to another as I was unable to move, I didn’t sit there wishing we could leave her and run away. I knew already that the objective to such a night wasn’t getting the baby to sleep, that the baby was doing nothing but simply being a baby. The goal of the night, I knew, was to get through it as best we could, which we did, aided by the fact that Iris has breastfed like a champion since being 40 minutes old.

We left the hospital yesterday–turns out they can boot you out after 2 days now, which is kind of unbelievable, but we were good to go, and eager to get home to Harriet. The surgery has left me brutalized–I think my surgeon 4 years ago was a master of the art, because I was out for walks last time and today I can barely move. Midwives have assured me that my previous experience was the exception to the rule. And I hate that, feeling so badly, but it’s also not so bad being confined to my bed. I’m reading Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which I love. Stuart is bringing me snacks and meals. We prepared for all of this by buying a queen-sized bed last winter, which is so comfortable, and I also got a smart phone a few weeks ago, knowing it would make this kind of thing easier, still being connected to the world. The postpartum crazies also have yet to arrive–they were knocking at the door last night, but then were followed by the woman I’ve paid to make capsules of my placenta, which are meant to help balance hormones. She dropped off the pills, I started taking them, and I’ve been feeling cool ever since. No weeping even! Maybe it will all kick in tomorrow, but in the meantime, I’m happy to take good days where I find them.

Iris, as we know her so far, is marvellous. She arrived and looked like an elderly frog, the next day like a dinosaur, but now she just looks like Harriet did, but with fairer colouring. She practices smiling in her sleep, and midwives reported today that she’s doing great. Her mood could be assisted by the fact that her mother is not a lunatic. She’s just three ounces down from birth weight and we no longer need to wake to feed! Because of my previous experience, when Harriet lost so much weight, I’ve been breastfeeding with great persistence (which is not so heroic–Iris is content to let me read while doing this) and it seems to have paid off. It’s so good to be home and Stuart is taking such good care of me. Harriet is the big sister beyond my wildest dreams, her bond with Iris already making us swoon, and she is displaying such annoying and atrocious behaviour in addition to this that we know she is in fact fully processing the change in our family and we won’t have to wait for another shoe to drop.

So there it is. Everything is wonderful. Just four days in, and I know you have to take good times one day at a time just like the trying ones, but it really means something. Four days postpartum with Harriet I was in pieces already. I was so scared to go through all this over again, and I am so relieved and grateful that this is different. That the gentle times continue. Knock wood, of course, and there will be challenges ahead, but I’m pleased that there really is a chance that I’ll be strong enough to meet them.

And thank you to so many friends for support and best wishes. We are a very lucky family.

March 4, 2012

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

I fell in love with Lauren Groff in 2008 with The Monsters of Templeton, a crazy novel with its own sea-creature. When I read her short story collection Delicate Edible Birds in 2009, I discovered that I’d actually been in love with her since 2006 when I first read her work with the short story “L. DeBard and Aliette” in The Atlantic. And it has been a pleasure to love a current author so unabashedly in a time when so many books disappoint, though her latest novel Arcadia would make or break our winning streak. So it with great joy that I find I’m able to repeat word-for-word an excerpt from my Monsters of Templeton review four years ago: “I finished reading this last night near 1am, and couldn’t sleep for a long time, just thinking about it, and smiling.” Groff is not only as good as ever, but she’s better and better.

Lauren Groff is a rule-breaker, a boundary-pusher, a genre-blurrer. There’s nobody else quite like like her writing right now, and she writes on the shoulders of those who came before her, with references in her latest book to Greek myth, Melville, the Brothers Grimm, and Eliot. She also writes with a deep appreciation and awe for history, for the role of story within history, and for the epic. Her first novel had a larger-than-lifeness about it, which is not so unusual for a book a writer has been working her life for, but it’s less usual for a second novel and for it to be pulled off so successfully too.

Arcadia starts at the beginning of the world, Arcadia, a hippie commune in New York State near the end of the 1960s. It’s the only world Bit has ever known, Bit short for “Little Bit”, tiny from the day he was born, his early life spent with his loving parents Abe and Hannah in the Arcadia bakery truck. As the community grows and progresses, we see the Arcadians unable to isolate themselves from the evils of the outside world– even in Arcadia, Hannah suffers from profound depression, there is infighting among the community leaders, problems with drug-addicted runaways who keep turning up, and trouble getting enough food and resources to keep everybody fed and healthy. Bit and his peers suffer from extreme deprivation, and yet are also granted the security that comes from being so firmly knit into a community fabric and feeling a sense of belonging. When the balance tips too far the other way, however, Bit’s parents finally make the decision to leave, and he’s cast out into the world for the first time at the age of 14.

I was having a discussion with my husband yesterday about the difficulty of settling into science fiction or fantasy novels whose whole worlds have to be created in order for the story to finally start, and I had similar difficulty getting into Arcadia, coming to understand the specificity of this singular place, its peculiar vernacular, social and political structures. I like my fiction very much here and now, and Arcadia seemed so far afield from both these things. I wasn’t always altogether sure what the point was, what the payoff of my efforts would be. I’m not a sci-fi/fantasy person, and while Groff is not a sci-fi/fantasy writer, she plays with the tropes and structures of genre in her literature– she’s the one who put the sea-monster in her novel after all (but then she is also the writer who made me love a novel with a sea-monster in it. Miracles will never cease).

So although I enjoyed the book from the very start, I wasn’t swept away by it until half way through when we find Bit grown, twenty years since we saw him last, living in New York City with a young daughter. And suddenly, I had a sense of everything Arcadia had been working toward, and Groff’s method became apparent, this novel’s massive sense of scale and its ambition. Bit has married and had a child with Helle, an Arcadian he’d grown up with who’s been troubled for years, and has recently disappeared leaving him responsible for the care of their 3 year-old daughter. He is left to navigate his grief, the practical matters of single-fatherhood, and the fact of his still-alienation from the world around him, his idealization of his childhood. He’s still close to the other Arcadian children he grew up with, in fact they’re the only people he’s close to in the world, because no one else understands the peculiarity of his situation. He goes out on a date with a perfectly nice woman, but is unable to take things any further when she tells him, “I read Atlas Shrugged in college and thought, Oh my God, everything’s coming into focus, finally. You know what I mean?”

And of course he doesn’t, but he’s not entirely alone. He does feel a profound sense of connection with the city and its inhabitants. He notes that New Yorkers did not recover from the Twins Towers attacks in the the way he had expected, that what they had lost was

“not real estate of lives. It was the story they had told about themselves from the moment the Dutch had decanted from their ships…: that this place was filled with water and wildlife was rare, equitable. That it would embrace everyone who came here, that there would be room, and a chance to thrive, glamour and beauty. That this equality of purpose would keep them safe. “

Bit understands, Groff writes, “that when we lose the stories we have believed about ourselves, we are losing more than stories, we are losing ourselves.”

When we find Bit again, it’s 2018 and the entire world is in peril. Low-lying nations are being swept away, Venice sunk, and an epidemic is sweeping the world, drawing closer to New York City. Ordinary life goes on against this backdrop, however, and when his father dies and his mother is left alone to suffer the last stage of ALS, he must return with his daughter to Arcadia where his parents had returned to build a home for their final years. And it is here where Bit must make peace with where he came from, forgive his parents for their mixed legacy, and find a way to finally begin facing forward in his life, his own story, even as the end of the world seems to drawing nigh.

January 8, 2012

Man and Other Natural Disasters by Nerys Parry

Update: On Feb. 1 2012, Great Plains Publications became a Featured Advertiser at Pickle Me This. This review was published prior to our relationship. Pickle Me This does not publish sponsored posts, and all opinions expressed on the site are my own. 

“I’m reading a really wonderful book,” is something I kept telling people last week as I was reading Nerys Parry’s first novel Man and Other Natural Disasters. Then of course I’d be asked what it was about, and every time I came up short with an answer, never did manage to do the novel justice. Because it’s hard to explain, this book, though it might help if you imagine a diagram. At its centre is Simon Peters, who works in the basement of the Calgary Public Library in Book Repair and Maintenance. He’s a loner, repairing broken books with precision, unable to navigate the ins and outs of society, so suited to the solitude of the job.

Now imagine a series of points around the Simon-centre, each one an idea with an arrow directed at Simon himself. From these various ideas, Parry reveals Simon to us, in all his multifacetedness and impenetrability. The first is Simon’s homelife, lived in an apartment with denim curtains in the kitchen and lined with hundreds of hoarded books. Simon lives with Claude, who we’re told at the outset is in decline and will eventually die of a stroke. It’s not clear what the relationship is between the two men, except that Claude once gave Simon shelter when he was homeless, that he gave Simon work in construction building skyscrapers high over Calgary, and that the two have been companions for over thirty years.

The second point is Simon’s past, which he begins to reveal when he meets a new colleague at work, a young woman called Minerva who bears an uncanny resemblance to Simon’s sister who was lost years ago. The sister had been killed in a fire, the first of three tragedies in which Simon’s family would be devoured by the elements– his father was later killed in a mine collapse, and his mother disappeared by air not long afterwards when a tornado touched down on their prairie ranch. So of course, Simon tells Minerva and us also, he now knows how he himself will die, and we also understand the trauma that caused his unusual shock of white hair.

But here’s the third point: the centre cannot hold. With the resurfacing of his tragic memories coupled with the loss of Claude, cracks begin to show in Simon’s vaneer. Is there a sinister element to his relationship with the older man? What about the violence he hints at in his childhood? What is his attraction to Minerva,. and why does the memory of his sister have such a powerful hold upon him? Could the stories he tells really be true? Is Simon actually dangerous?

Point four: a breakdown occurs when Simon discovers Minerva drenched in blood on his bathroom floor, and an alternate history is revealed through psychiatric records and Simon recounting sessions with his therapists.

And the fifth point is the story of the Doukhobor people in Western Canada, a religious sect whose children were interned and abused in residential schools during the 1950s. This atrocity was thought to be an answer to and (by the Doukhobors themselves) regarded as justification for acts of terrorism by an extremist Doukhobor group against government measures for assimilation. How exactly this story connects to Simon is best revealed by the novel itself, but the connection promises to add a layer of depth to a story that is interesting already.

The first half of the novel is an assemblage of mismatched pieces narrated by a man who seems autistic, which results in strange and stilted pacing. In places, the dialogue is weak, which only stands out because the prose in general is so remarkably good. (Though that a conversation with a man like Simon involves weak dialogue is not altogether surprising, but still, there is too much telling [us] going on here). Nerys Parry’s writing is gorgeous thoughout, passages that beg to be read over and over for the gloriousness of their descriptions, as when Simon puts forth the circumstances of his birth:

After nine months of immersion in the temperate, nutrient-rich fluid of the womb, the first breath an infant takes burns its virgin throat like acid. Then there is the lashing of light, the spanking of cold. To recreate the experience, drink a glass of double strength cidar vinegar through your nose, dive in a bath of ice and stare directly at a hundred-watt light-bulb without blinking. You can see why not too many come into this world smiling.

Following Simon’s breakdown, the pace picks up and the rest of the novel proceeds in a flurry of action. And it’s perhaps this disjointedness that makes the novel so hard to explain, which is not a flaw so much as the result of Parry fitting so many pieces together, of taking on the challenge of documenting psychological trauma, and attempting a novel whose shape is all its own. The effect is curiously imperfect, but impressive. Parry is a richly talented writer, and her first novel is an absorbing, rewarding read.

December 13, 2011

My Favourite New Books of 2011

It’s been a funny old year for me reading-wise. I read fewer new books in general, and I read a lot of new books that were kind of disappointing. I enjoyed much-hyped American books like This Beautiful Life and The Submission, but found them lacking as literature in ways their NYTimes reviews never referred to. A lot of new releases never appealed to me, and all subsequent success never managed to nudge my prejudices. I read very little little poetry, and focused too much on women writers. And more than anything else, I focused on my vast collection of unread novels acquired at various used book-sales over the years, and found such treasures there once I blew the dust off. Also remarkable is that I read so many great books this year that were written by friends of mine, such as Jessica Westhead’s And Also Sharks and Rebecca Rosenblum’s The Big Dream, and though both of these are among my 2011 literary highlights, I’m aware that I’m too close to be fully objective about them.

When I review any book upon my blog, it’s because I feel that the book is worth my time and yours, and a listing of those that have risen to the top can be found here. And what follows now is the top of the top of another rewarding reading year.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion: Like everything Joan Didion writes, this book is not easily summarized and has been misunderstood, even by people who’ve read it. Though apparently it had its origins in a less personal book about parenting, it became an examination of aging and mortality for one to whom it had never occurred that such ideas could be reality. To compare this book with “Good-Bye To All That” and “On Keeping A Notebook” only underlines its depth– amazing how much about loss someone so consumed with nostalgia never knew, but that’s what age does. Like everything Joan Didion writes, the meaning comes from her articulation of universal experience intersecting with her own particular world view. Part of the attraction is pure Joan Didion allure, yes, but most of the attraction is words unloaded with such remarkable precision.

Outside the Box by Maria Meindl: This is the book I can’t stop talking about, and I’m pleased that I’ve managed to win it at least a few readers. As noted in a conversation with a friend today, Meindl could write about anything and it would be interesting, but her subject is so interesting too. She chronicles the history of Canadian magazine and broadcast journalism, the history of Toronto literati (and the bohemian Gerrard Street Village in the ’50s), the status of women throughout the 20th century, the dazzling enticement of celebrity, and the story of her extraordinary grandmother whose eccentricities and foibles make her a fascinating character (though undoubtedly a frustrating family relation). But most of all, it’s a really great read, and Meindl proves herself a deft handler of narrative.

The Antagonist by Lynn Coady: What I’ve only yet confessed to my closest friends is that I’ve never wanted to have sexual relations with a fictional character the way I wanted to get with Rank, Coady’s outsized narrator.  My more public declaration was that this was one of the few books ever that I would have read forever and ever, the story and the voice absolutely gripping. I loved the narrative ambiguity, the metafictional elements, the humour, the spot-on portrayal of small town life and also university life (because in many ways, this is as much a campus novel as was Mean Boy). Lynn Coady is amazing, and this book is her very best yet.

This Will Be Difficult to Explain and other stories by Johanna Skibsrud: Were this the very first book we’d ever read by Skibsrud, I think she’d be the critics’ darling, and we’d all be lamenting her underappreciatedness. But her Giller win last year cast her into the spotlight with The Sentimentalists, which means that all the people who dislike successful people don’t like her and neither do those with little patience for challenging writing (and that almost makes everybody). The Sentimentalists was a divisive book, and though I liked it, I thought it was more interesting than brilliant. Her story collection This Will be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories, however, is excellent and I’m sorry that more people haven’t had the chance to fall in love with it. When I read it a second time to prepare for my interview with Skibsrud, I discovered new depths I hadn’t even detected first time around– these stories are rife with buried treasure. My Mavis Gallant comparison didn’t come from nowhere– in the Year of the Short Story, this book stands out as one of the best.

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens: I am such a snob that I never get to fall in love with the books that everybody else loves because I always think they’re terrible. Which means that I never get to wrapped up in fat paperbacks about serial killers, but with Stevens, I had the chance. I’ve heard from those who read her first book that the violence was a bit gratuitous, but I think she dialled it back a bit for this one. I loved that she managed to create suspense with a character who operated like a real person rather than one who committed stupid though plot-enabling conventions such as keeping secrets, and going down to the basement. In a truly remarkable cliche-defying feat, Steven proves that popular fiction is capable of being awesome.

I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore by Anne Perdue: Oh, the gasps, as I read this book on my summer vacation. My husband had to tell me to shut up because I was bothering him, but I couldn’t stop, because Perdue kept delivering one shock after another. The range of stories in the collection is really remarkable, the spectrum including a rooming house resident to one master of the suburban barbecue (and oh, that ending. Gasp. Holy John Cheever). Perdue is Jessica Westhead meets Alexander MacLeod, and I love this book.

The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright: I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why this book never made the awards lists this year, and maybe it’s like Skibsrud and that you get lost in the shuffle when the follow-up to your divisive acclaimed work is even better than what came before. But there is no better novel for 2011 than this one (which I read in its entirety one day in June when I was sick in bed, and it’s the only book I’ve ever read while sick that I don’t feel sick when I think about). It’s about the economic crisis for goodness sakes, and real estate boom and bust, and so this is serious stuff, you know. But it’s also about a love affair, which is the most real thing in the entire world. Enright’s sentences are to die for, but she’s also created an unforgettable voice in Gina, and perfect document of the way we live now.

Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner: Zsuszi Gartner’s success is what happens when great innovative writing is marketed to the mainstream, rather than relegated to a weird literary ghetto.I read its title story first in an issue of The New Quarterly, and I’d never encountered anything else like it. And there is justice in the world in that Gartner made it to the Giller shortlist, because this collection is everything you never imagined that CanLit could be– sharp-witted, biting,  urban, satirical, scathing and shocking. It asks more of its reader than the average acclaimed book tends to, but the rewards are plenty. You’ll finish this book and look around you and think, “Truly, this is a place where something is going on.” (Runner up in this category is Carolyn Black’s collection The Odious Child.)

And Me Among Them by Kristen den Hartog: Odd, the second book on my list about an outsized narrator, this time Ruth Brennan who is seven feet tall and whose perspective beholds remarkable things. From the intro to my interview with Kristen den Hartog: “When I fell in love with And Me Among Them last spring, it really felt like a spring, because it was the first novel I’d loved in ages after a long cold winter. The magical elements of the story about a girl who grows to be seven feet tall and is blessed with a strange omniscience were so perfectly countered with a realism that kept the story’s feet on the ground, and the entire effect delighted me, which is remarkable when one notes my aversion to books about freakish sorts (confession: I am of the handful of people who hated Geek Love).”

Out of Grief, Singing by Charlene Diehl: On New Years Eve last year, the Globe and Mail published recommendations by Canadian literary types, and this was Alison Pick’s. Part of my attraction to this book is my insistence upon staring worst fears in the face, which is a faulty insurance, I know, but Diehl’s story about the loss of her baby not long after birth is also an affirming tribute to the power of story, and represents a remarkable broadening of the motherhood narrative.

Also: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker: I read these books whilst on vacations, therefore leisurely, and never put coherent thoughts together about them except I LOVE THESE BOOKS. Further, this was a year with Margaret Drabble in it, with her remarkable collected stories A Day in the Life of the Smiling Woman. So naturally, it was a very good year.

Coming tomorrow: My Favourite Not -New Books of 2011

June 29, 2011

Drabbling 2011

I fell in love with Margaret Drabble in 2004, when I was living in Japan and first read The Radiant Way. After that, every trip to Kobe necessitated a trip to Wantage Books so I could pick up a few more battered Penguins with bright orange spines (or, more often, with orange spines now so faded that they’d become yellow). When we left Japan, I insisted on sending all of my battered Drabbles home by surface mail. Before we came to Canada, we spent six weeks in England, and I bought a whole pile of mid-period Margaret Drabble books at various charity shops. I read her latest The Red Queen. And then I’d read all the Drabbles in the entire world, and suddenly new Drabbles were a rare and precious thing.

This doesn’t happen to me so often. Most of the writers I like have huge backlists and are usually dead, and so I have many resources at my disposal when I want to feast upon their oeuvre– new books, used books, libraries, random boxes on curbs. When I want anything, I rarely have to wait for it. I don’t know the anticipation of lining up for things at midnight, whether it be for Harry Potter or an iPad, but sometimes I wish I did.

Because I kind of do know it, actually, and it’s wonderful. I’ve known it since Drabble’s The Sea Lady came out in 2007, then The Pattern in the Carpet in 2009, and now as I’m reading Drabble’s collected stories A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman. New Drabble prose: precious and rare . I savour every bit of it, and even when there’s no new Drabble in my immediate future, I am comforted by knowing that in this very room, Margaret Drabble is busy cooking up more.

May 30, 2011

Today I went to the bookstore

Today I went to the bookstore and purchased these fine volumes: Margaret Drabble’s A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman, Carolyn Black’s The Odious Child, and Granta 115. The occasion? Well, after finishing up his contract on Friday, Stuart was offered a new job this afternoon, and starts on Monday. We are thrilled. Further celebrations were had via ice cream cones and sushi take-out. What a lovely, lovely day.

May 15, 2011

Drabble news

Today’s gloom dissipated somewhat as I was writing the post below, was inspired to do a google search for Margaret Drabble (as I do from time-to-time, being a Drabble devotee), and discovered that she has a new book out, a short story collection called A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman. (I found it via this NPR story/profile). Delightful! The first new Drabble fiction since 2007’s The Sea Lady! Her most recent book is non-fiction The Pattern in the Carpet, which I read almost exactly two years ago (and discovered the same way I just found this book). How wonderful to have a gift just fall out of the sky. In even better news, I am quite happy to read that she has reconsidered her decision to stop writing fiction.

November 23, 2010

Talking In Circles and Coming Full Circle: Talking About Talking About Motherhood

Marita Dachsel’s first book of poetry All Things Said & Done (Caitlin, 2007) was shortlisted for a ReLit Award. Her poetry has been published in many Canadian journals, in a recent chapbook, Eliza Roxcy Snow (red nettle press, 2009), and as part of Vancouver’s Poetry In Transit Program. Currently, she is working on a novel as well as finishing Glossolalia , her second poetry book, in which she explores the lives of the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church. After twelve years in Vancouver, during which she received both her BFA and MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, she now lives in Edmonton with her husband, playwright Kevin Kerr, and their two sons.

Kerry: Marita, I think I’m beginning to change my mind. You see, I’ve been fascinated by narratives about motherhood since before I was a mother, and as I prepared to become one, I devoured the modern “ambivalent motherhood canon”.

But I’ve been reluctant to pursue such narratives myself. When I interview writers, I insist that their work is what’s important, and I avoid questions about writing and motherhood that would probably fascinate me as much. I worry that such questions would undermine the writers’ works, would undermine the individuals as artists, would undermine me as an interviewer and a reader. But I can’t shake a suspicion that these questions are important, that perhaps we just have to carve out a time and space for them. Or not. I’m not sure.

Did you feel any similar qualms as you embarked upon your Motherhood and Writing interviews?

Marita: When I first conceived of the Motherhood and Writing interviews, I had no qualms at all. I think that may have been because I really wasn’t aware of all the books written about motherhood and writing. I’m sure if I had dug a bit, I would have discovered them and not felt the need to start the interview series.

The interviews came from purely selfish place. I wanted content for my blog, but more importantly, I really needed to know how other writing mothers did it. My boys are twenty-two and a half months apart. When my second child was born, I panicked. I remember clearly breast feeding him while reading a biography of Margaret Laurence and having the terrifying flash that I would never write again. I knew I wasn’t as driven as Laurence was and couldn’t make the choices she had. My nascent career was over.

After my husband helped talk me down, I realized that of course my career wasn’t over. There were many, many writing mothers out there who were kind, loving, stable mothers. I wanted to talk to them simply to know how they did it. How does a mother balance all those things mothers do and make time to write. And I wanted to talk to women who were in various stages in their careers–from award winning to not yet published.

The project was supposed to be just for a year, but I’ve managed to draw it out longer, partly out of laziness and partly whenever I think it’s time to shut it down, I’ll get an email or a comment on the blog from some writing mother out there to thank me. It’s important, especially in those early difficult years, for those in the trenches to be reminded that they are not alone, that there are other women out there who are struggling, too. And, of course, that it will get better.

That said, recently I’ve begun to have qualms. Maybe it’s because I’m no longer in the trenches, or maybe because I’ve become sensitive that I might be contributing to the creation of a “motherhood ghetto”.

We would never ask a man how he manages to write while being a father, so why do we feel it’s relevant to ask a mother? Is it because there is an assumption that the woman is at home with the babies and that the man is not? And that if she isn’t, she should be? It’s insulting to both mothers and fathers. But I don’t know what I’d rather see–interviewers asking fathers what they ask mothers, or stop asking mothers what they don’t ask fathers.

So, yes, I am now quite conflicted. I hope that in the context of my interview series, the questions I ask aren’t insulting because that is the point of the interview. But I don’t think if I was interviewing a writer in another context, I would feel comfortable about asking about their relationship between writing and motherhood, unless the writer brought it up or it was clearly related to the writing.

Kerry: But yet, beyond domestic drudgery and “how does she do it?”, fascinating connections abound concerning art and motherhood. These interest me the most, and they’re questions that could serve to illuminate artists’ works and the experience of motherhood in general.

But there’s the matter of the ghetto, which you mentioned, and that, as Rachel Cusk mentioned in the introduction to A Life’s Work, that “motherhood is of no real interest to anyone except other mothers.” Why do you think this is?

Marita: I think there are a few reasons and they’re interconnected. The first that popped in my head is that it isn’t paid work, it’s part of the spectrum of “women’s work” (this label makes me want to scream, but I’m using it anyway). Also, because it seems anyone can get knocked up and therefore become parents (which anyone who has struggled with infertility knows how false this is), there is no understanding that parenting is a difficult job. I mean, how hard can it be, right? Turn on the t.v. and feed them and the job is done, right? Um, no.

It’s also invisible work. In public, unless you are a mother or you’re at a child/parent place (playground, school, etc.) you really only notice mothers when their children are in melt-down mode. Mothers are noticed when they are “failing”. I don’t know about you, but once I became a mother, I noticed how invisible I suddenly became.

But there is the inherent sexism of women’s work, too. In a patriarchal society, women’s work isn’t valued work. For mothers, the outcome is important–we want children to become obedient, hardworking adults–but how it’s done isn’t important. The idea of the loving mother is celebrated, but please keep that mechanics of that behind closed doors. We want to see smiling mothers and quiet children–not the day to day drudgery.

All these economic and feminist reasons I’ve been obsessing about since I became a mother, but this morning I woke up with might be the most basic reason: because it’s shop talk. Who likes going to a party and have to hear workmates talk about their jobs the whole night? Maybe it’s that simple with motherhood. People who aren’t mothers don’t care because they can’t relate, don’t want to relate. The politics and theories don’t interest them because they don’t affect them. (Although, I think the politics of motherhood does affect the wider society, however I’m sure the banking industry has an impact on my life, but I don’t really want to hear about either.) It seemed like such a revelation this morning, but now writing it down to you, it feels a little weak. What do you think?

Kerry: I actually love that idea, that it’s shop talk– it is! And it’s easier to think of motherhood being boring for that reason rather than motherhood itself being inherently boring. And yet, putting motherhood up/down there with dental hygienisthood and geography teacherhood isn’t quite right either, is it? Or perhaps it undermines what I’m most interested in about motherhood– how it changes how we understand the world, how we understand our bodies, other women, our own mothers. Issues of empathy, bonding.

I think that motherhood is mostly boring for a reason you mentioned– that it’s so ordinary. Everybody’s mother was a mother, and a lot of daughters will end up being one too, and quite a few of them even managed to go about it without waxing ad nauseum on the subject. Without having conversations like these.

Do you think it’s a phase, this obsession with motherhood? You’ve mentioned that you’ve moved away from it as your kids grow out of babydom. Was it a necessary phase? A useful phase? And how do we make it about more than navel-gazing (which so much online conversation about motherhood, I regret, never manages to do)?

Marita: On a personal level, I think it is a phase, at least at this level of intensity. I wonder if it is a product of our society, this need to analyse it so much? I can’t imagine mothers of our grandmothers’ generation dissecting it so much. Is it because we generally have children at a later age? We’re having less children? We’re not as physically (and perhaps emotionally?) as close to our families as generations past, so it’s more foreign to us? So many questions I don’t know how to answer.

For myself it was both necessary and useful. I was the first of my close girlfriends to have a baby and other than my small, immediate family, I have no relatives in North America. My husband had some friends with children, but I wasn’t in his life during their early years. Despite always knowing I would have a family, I had no idea what those early years of motherhood would be like. I became obsessed. I think that’s normal.

I learned so much about motherhood, about myself. I especially needed to see my position as both a writer and a mother reflected back at me. It’s almost silly now to think how desperate I felt, how much I needed to see that yes, I could be both a writer and a mother. The day-to-day life of writers and mothers can be terribly solitary. I needed to know that I wasn’t alone.

How do we get past navel-gazing? I don’t know. Partly we need it to be navel-gazing, because we need to see ourselves, our situations reflected back to us by others, and how can we do that if we don’t talk about ourselves?

Motherhood is incredibly transformational, especially for those of us lucky enough to have been able to conceive, carry, and birth our children. The physicality of pregnancy and birth is so intense, so raw and life-changing. Birth changes you. You battle through this profound visceral event, and on the other side of it, you have a new title, a new job: mother. It’s crazy. Of course we’re going to talk about it, analyse it, try to make sense of it.

I’m curious about your desire to take beyond the navel, that’s my impulse too, but I’m not sure what the forum should be. Are you specifically talking about the online world?

Kerry: Oh, I’m talking about the whole wide world, but online in particular. I think that’s what I liked about your motherhood and writing interviews– that they were looking at motherhood in the context of something bigger, and that was so interesting to me. Perhaps I also needed a reflection of mother/writers, to know it was possible.

Whereas the whole mommy blog circuit was just depressing, uninspiring. Once I’d grown accustomed to being overwhelmed by my crazy blown-apart new life, I didn’t so much want that experience affirmed, as some bloggers delight in doing. Maybe I am unusual in this, but I wanted to believe in the possibility of something better, something more. That I wasn’t limited to this entrenched idea of motherhood– of being forever harried, depressed and stretched to the point of exhaustion. I mean, of course it was nice to know I wasn’t alone in the hardships, but when life is really awful, how much do you really want it reflected back at you? And how far can that kind of reflection really take you?

If we’re talking beyond navels, I’ve been really inspired by the work being done through the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI, formerly the Association for Reseach on Mothering). Their book Talking Back to the Experts was a real tool of liberation for me as a new mother, and I also appreciated Mothering and Blogging: The Art of the Mommy Blog, which gave me such an appreciation for what blogs about motherhood have done in particular for marginalized or isolated mothers. These books had me understanding my own experience in a wider context, and also addressing issues of feminism and motherhood and how these ideas support and contradict one another. That motherhood was a job that required a great deal of thinking, learning and understanding. Worthy of an area of academic study, even– I liked that.

I wonder if the level of analysis and need for understanding you so astutely addressed is particular to artists– writers tell these stories over and over again, but would an architect fixate on the narrative quite so much? Does our artistry give us the means to engage with motherhood as we do, or do you think it happens to everyone?

Marita: Thank you, I’m glad you liked the interviews! I think you nailed how we can take the discussion of motherhood beyond the minutia–by talking about it in relationship to something else. Perhaps that is why we talk about it so much now. Our mothers’ generation was fighting for our rights to be anything we wanted to be, and now, our generation is figuring out how to negotiate our place within so much choice and what that all means.

As a huge, sweeping generalization, there seems to be two types of mommyblogs. The negative, complaining ones you mentioned and then the ones on the other end of the spectrum, where everything is perfect and idealized. No chaos, all domestic bliss. It’s hard to be in that place, too. Neither options feel honest or a reflection of my reality. But I must to admit that I still read a couple regularly, and one of them is the “perfect life” kind. (However, if she didn’t post every day, I probably would stop that one, too.) I can’t read the negative ones at all.

Your last question is a hard one. My hunch is that most mothers want to reflect on motherhood, at least early on and I think that’s why mommyblogs are so popular. That said, artists have the creative vocabulary to fixate, which many people do not, but more importantly, it’s our job to fixate. A new mother who returns to work at her architecture/accounting/law firm has other work she’s paid to do, but as artists, one of our jobs is to obsess. So many artist-mothers that I know try to work from home at the same time as trying to be a SAHM. Both are full time jobs, so it makes sense to me that this obsessing ends up being reflected in our work to some degree. Writers specifically create narrative, so of course we’re going to examine and dissect how this new character is changing our personal narrative arc.

I believe that every experience we have somehow influences our work. I haven’t read Emma Donoghue’s Room yet, but my hunch is that it would have been a very different book if she wasn’t a mother. You’ve read it. What do you think? And do you think you can tell if an artist is a mother? Would you want to?

Kerry: I think an artist can imagine her way into motherhood, and I say this with assurance because I’ve read Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. I remember reading the novel The Almost Archer Sisters by Lisa Gabriele too, and being stunned to discover that Gabriele wasn’t a mother– it’s a funny, popular novel, but her depiction of mothering a disabled child is stunning. I asked Alison Pick if she’d made changes to how she wrote about parenthood in her novel Far To Go after her daughter was born, and she said she’d pretty much got it right the first time (and she did).

What was remarkable about Room to me was not how “right” Donoghue got my experience, but that she’d actually managed to articulate aspects of my experience I hadn’t before been conscious of– which is really incredible. I’m at home all day alone with Harriet, and I remember as I was reading that everything I said and did was taking on a new resonance. I had never realized (perhaps because Harriet is still so young) how much a mother constructs her child’s universe in the various real-world Rooms in which they find themselves– the womb, the empty house alone all day.

I think if Donoghue hadn’t been a mother though, Room would have had a different kind of emphasis. I recently read James Woods’ review of the novel in the LRB, and he wrote about its lightness, its readability, the cutesy focus on Jack– and how the actual story that inspired the novel would not have such a rosy tinge. Because of her focus on the mother-child bond, Donoghue was able side-step a horror story, the fact that an actual mother probably would not construct such a fair and happy world for her child, would have neither the tools nor the capacity to do so. Room is a fairy-tale, really. Perhaps as a mother Donoghue was unable to look the real situation in the face (and I can’t blame her). Her story is a hypothetical one rather than a particular one, and there is safety in that.

And I must say that you’ve just answered my question, Marita! Well done. You ask, “Can you tell if an artist is a mother?” and I think, perhaps, one can’t. (Though sometimes, with bad artists, you can tell when they’re not a mother cough cough Christos Tsiolkas). Which means that my longing to ask or not to ask questions to artists about motherhood is kind of beside the point of the art. Has more to do with my own life and my own interests at the moment than art itself. (Ah, sweet navel, nice to gaze at you some more…) Which doesn’t mean these questions don’t matter, and can’t be incredibly useful/interesting in some respects. But perhaps my aversion to dwelling upon them comes from a rational place?

I think, Marita, that we’ve come full circle, and in a satisfying way. Do you think so? Can you tell if an artist is a mother?

Marita: Yay! I’m glad I helped you find your answer. I agree, I don’t think you can tell if an artist is a mother, and one wouldn’t want to. There are things that only some mothers can know, like what let-down feels like, or when your water breaks, but those details are so small that they are insignificant when it comes to the creation of art.

Someone once told me to not write what you know, but write what you want to know. This seems rather relevant to this conversation. I’m more drawn to writing about certain subjects and themes at the moment (my polygamy project) because of motherhood, but I know I won’t only write about those for the rest of my life. As artists, it’s what interests us in the moment, and for some it is motherhood.

I do think, however, that we still need to have conversations amongst writing/artist mothers, even if it is simply to compare navels and say, yes, that’s normal too.

April 19, 2010

"Dead Boyfriend Disco": A poem by Rebecca Rosenblum

My friend, the writer Rebecca Rosenblum, once wrote a poem just to see what would happen. When I read it first, I didn’t know her so well, and was sure it was based on true experience. “Imaginations run rampant,/ the romance of tragic”– I was afraid to become her friend because she was so wounded. I admired her bravery, her stoicism, and (as always) her way with character and story. When we were better friends, she told me she’d made the whole thing up. Apparently, it’s called fiction, and Rebecca is very, very good at it. This poem was previously published in echolocation and I appreciate her giving me permission to post it here.

***

Dead Boyfriend Disco

There are things that the dead don’t do—
desire, demand or debate—
but they dance if they feel it and
if you want you can watch,
if vicarious seems like your thing.
In teakettle steam and exhaust from the dryer and
fog on the windows they dance.
All these visuals that just barely are
bring the past for the partnerless waltz.
A little cigarette smoke and the
zydecco’s sliding for aunts who drank sherry out back.
Grandpas who disapproved,
constantly, always,
in rivermist foxtrot like they did in the old days.
And then there’s that best of the specters,
The one that I wait for in dreams:
The dead boyfriend who does disco while I shower, in steam.

The thing about dancing is that you do it in twos,
and the thing about dying is that you go it alone.
So these dead that are dancing, they dance all alone, but
they’re moving to music for me.
A snuffed candle smoking invites smooth
smooth jazz, and Uncle Edwin who used to teach math.
And the dust from a pillow-fluff is the swing of Sarah,
a neighbour from when I was small.
I can’t dance with the dead, no more than could die,
but they need me to see them and
I never ask why.

I’ve been staying home Saturdays to breath on the mirror,
wanting to see him appear.
Late for work Monday morning
because the steam from my coffee made possible
just one more encore.
Coerced to a party, I stay for three drinks, but
smoking weed in the garden brings disco and tears.
The left-girlfriend can leave, and
no one will stay me, it’s the right of all us bereaved.
I can run from a friend, knock over the cheese-dip, and
no one will ever say boo.
I can leave without speaking,
all runny-eyed, rude, but
I know in my absence
they’ll talk of my sadness, because
everyone knows about his absence too.
In my wake at the wake, or parties, or dinner,
this fleeing girl with a dead boyfriend casts spells.
Imaginations run rampant,
the romance of tragic,
and they wonder what I’m doing now.
Boys will imagine, bosses believe, that
tragedy breeds something deep.
They picture us powerful, all us widows-of-maybe,
knowing things that they can’t know unearned.
Who would think that his dying would earn me some secrets?
All that I had was all that I wanted,
and most that I wanted was him.
To ski fast and dangerous or crack up the car, or
get something stuck in the blood—such was the destiny
of that boy of my heart and mine
is to leave when the dance music starts.

Yet there are a few victories for those with our histories,
you can’t always be the one who does not.
There are ways to go wrong with it and ways to get over it and
I’ve given those ways some thought.
The rum and the smoke and the sex of it,
all those boys who breathe easily,
seem like they might have what I want.
Once you’ve stopped writing home about dead boyfriends and agony,
you can go out and see what they’ve got.
I can think about strangers and drink up the drinks and
if there’s no candles it feels like romance.
Yet sometimes when flirting, a moment of
hurting for boys who are now corpses or worse.
The skin sinking slowly and the soil surrounding and
those bugs that can bite into bone. In the restaurant
smiling, I’m giving the pitches and ordering chicken but
in the background I’m thinking
of maggots and lichen and
the ways that a grave isn’t home.

So I escape once again, to go haunting curbside,
away from the puddles that spray out the blues.
Leave parties, leave restaurants, leave school, work and friends,
there’s no end for the need to escape.
I run home for a tear, for a tear in the stockings, for
a moment that felt less than fine. Everyone indulges,
the bosses with bravado, saying take care of yourself,
take your time.
All this time given freely, for me to enjoy,
this time in the bathtub while dressed.
An afternoon off and I hide on the tile, wondering
if this makes me obsessed.
I could run the water but then there’s the steam
and Sinatra and all of it makes me feel caught.
The Lindy Hop’s cute but I’ve got things to do, and
sometimes I’m too tired to watch.

So I stay dry and stay dirty, I make it a motto
of all ladies who got left behind. We are a club of girlfriends
who laugh at disaster and get called brave or strong or
snow cool. All of that flattering, somewhat but laughable—
it’s only ourselves that we set out to fool.
We are a club of ladies
with no love for each other,
because it takes one to know one who lies.
Lying and hiding his tapes from the seventies,
I go out alone, but when two
girlfriends meet then we know
that dead boyfriends are haunting us all.
And still we get on with it, buy shoes on their birthdays,
spike heels we know they’d have liked.
Wearing those heels, in the bathtub bone dry, we can talk
on the phone and from the safety of home, admit
that top-forty songs make us cry.

In the funeral bouquet I got a burlesque,
a masque play of dating done by grieving instead.
Roses in lieu of the boy that I loved, white roses instead of his red,
In lieu of that boy who had something bad in his heart or his car or his head.
White roses like silk, in vases on tables, waiting to wilt but
they don’t.
I’m stuck with roses with stamina forever,
it’s always the wrong things that last.
Although, if a vase should fall after a table is kicked,
the pollen that rises might tingle of tangos and other things missed.

This rageful vagueness that takes me makes me
do things only now forgivable. In embraces of boys
still living with girls I feel soft and sweet for
the hard candy meanness in me.
The wrath of waking up wet for a boy
so long underground knows no bounds I can see.
In the club with my hand on a thigh, in
the fizz of the gin that he bought, in
the thump and slide of bass, I flinch
at a shadow of specter and the dream of the disco,
but the other boy’s real and there’s no synth and no mist
so I can dance and flirt and get kissed.
So he’s not all that cute—I’m not all that sober and
want not the best but a rest.

A piranha pariah, they say it’s made me so bitter,
they say it and they’ll say again.
Dead boyfriend’s no license, but what about my sense
that I’ll never get to feel it again.
Dead boyfriend’s a period to sentence not spoken, and
I can’t say if it would’ve got better or worse.
I was still really too young to know what I wanted,
to be a wife or not quite or alone. My head on his chest or
his tongue in my ear or jam eaten straight from the jar.
And here I am missing his toenails, his watch,
and the soundtracks sung loud in the car.
It wasn’t an epic, that’s what makes it so tragic,
just over six months since we’d met.
Whatever I wanted, whatever I’d get,
No one told me I’d never get to forget.