In The Studio
An ongoing series of photographs documenting the work of Daniel Hoffman ~ Luthier
Maker Of Fine Concert Violins, Violas, and Violoncellos.
http://www.danielhoffmanluthier.com
Chisels
Carving
Working Notes
West Wall
Violin Player
Tagged: “My Writing Process”
“My Writing Process” is an ongoing series in which authors “tag” each other to answer some questions about their work. Robert Vaughan invited me to participate. Initially I declined, but reading Robert Vaughan’s and Bud Smith’s responses to these questions kind of got the wheels turning. I have always been fascinated by the creative process and it seems to be different for each individual.
Robert Vaughan’s most recent book is Addicts & Basements (Civil Coping Mechanisms)http://www.amazon.com/Addicts-Basements-Robert-Vaughan/dp/1937865231 Bud Smith (http://budsmithwrites.com) is the author of Tollbooth and Or Something Like That. He just released full length poetry collection, Everything Neon by Marginalia Books. He also is the host of The Unknown Show.
Authors Mia Avramut and Gary Powell have accepted my invitation to participate. Gary Powell is the author of Speedos, Tattoos, and Felons: A Novella in Stories http://www.amazon.com/Speedos-Tattoos-Felons-Novella-Stories/dp/1492820504
Here are links to some of Mia’s work:
http://www.escapeintolife.com/poetry/mia-avramut/
http://www.menacinghedge.com/spring2013/entry-avramut.php
http://thebookendsreview.com/2013/07/29/mia-avramut-postcard-from-kettwig/
http://lucidplaypublishing.weebly.com/glass-eye-chandelier.html
Here are my responses to the questions.
1) What am I working on?
I have two chapbooks looking for a home. Although, it seems the longer they are homeless, the more they keep changing. “Long Gone and Never Coming Back” is a poetry chapbook and the other is a flash fiction chapbook called “Between Dusk and Dawn.” If they go much longer before finding a publisher, they will be full length collections and may not contain any of the work that currently comprises them.
I’m also working on a portfolio of altered photographs called “In The Studio” which documents my friend Daniel Hoffman’s work as a luthier making cellos. I’ll be posting that on my website. To view Hoffman’s exquisite work go to http://www.danielhoffmanluthier.com.
I have an ongoing series on my website called The Lunch Lady Cookbook where I post recipes and photographs, music and beverage pairings all carried along by tongue-in-cheek goofy narrative. I also write essays when the spirit moves me and irate letters to my legislators when I’m hot and bothered by environmental issues, which seems to happen more and more frequently.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot to mention. I write songs too. Singer/songwriter/Americana story stuff, blues, ballads and rock and roll. Guitar, harmonica, vocals ~simple chords and simple structures.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I think, like everybody else, I try to be authentically “myself” and put my “personal stamp” on it without getting so esoteric that I lose the reader. My best work conveys irony, humor and redemption, no matter how far it may veer into the dark side. From time to time, I’m lucky enough to write a piece that only I could write. However, that’s a slippery and intangible bit of magic that I am at a loss to explain, because I don’t even understand it myself.
3) Why do I write what I do?
It usually comes from a deep emotional response or a reaction to a situation, social condition, event, or nature. Sometimes it’s triggered by a song or a visual image. I also seem to write a lot of stuff that comes from driving my car. I have a lot of fun writing parody and satirical pieces laced with ironic, often self deprecating humor. This shows up a lot in my series The Lunch Lady Cookbook and in my serial detective noir send-up “The Last of the Hard Boiled Dicks.”
4) How does my writing process work?
I compose most every thing on my computer or iPad. I think all my years of academic writing rewired my brain. Or maybe “short-circuited” would be a better description! Songwriting is done differently. I usually write songs in long hand and use a guitar or mandolin to play the chords. Although, some of my best songs came to me, unbidden, while doing things like mowing the lawn or walking my dogs. In a couple of cases they came like a “download” ~ fully formed with lyrics, melody, chords all intact ~ and I had to rush into the house to write it all down before it vanished back into the ethers. It was like I “channeled” them. A lot of my poetry starts with a line that has come to me in a near dream state, either just before falling asleep or as I’m awakening. Most of the heavy lifting in my writing is done with a burst of energy using blunt instruments and big, broad strokes. After that, it seems like an endless process of revising, cutting, and rearranging words and phrases. It’s like feng shui. I’m also a recovering adverb and cliche abuser, so ferreting out those buggers is an important part of the process. Quite often, I’ll get ideas for poems while driving my car and I start scribbling madly in a notebook on the passenger seat. Of course, this is even more dangerous than texting, so I’ll pull over if at all possible. I also beg, borrow and steal ideas shamelessly, then hammer it into something that is my own. Don’t we all? Perhaps the secret to transmuting it into something new and original lies in responding in a truly honest, personal and authentic manner. That’s all easier said then done, but it’s worthy of striving toward.
Book Review Before Whose Glory by Lawrence Kessenich 2013 FutureCycle Press
Lawrence Kessenich’s Before Whose Glory is his first full length collection of poems, published in 2013 by FutureCycle Press. Kessenich writes about time and space, people and places, unfathomable mysteries and the beauty of nature, the human condition and the experience of being alive. Before Whose Glory is a collection of beautifully crafted poems, each one a story, each one its own self contained universe.
To say that Kessenich’s poems are accessible is not to say that they are without depth. The poems in this collection are deceptively complex, intricately layered and subtly nuanced. Each poem offers a clear path through the piece without obfuscation, needlessly difficult arcane references or unintelligible abstractions that might otherwise leave me bewildered and wondering if I’ve missed the point. These pieces are compelling and evocative. They insinuate their way into my subconscious and run through my head like my favorite songs. They are poems I find myself going back to and noticing something new with each reading.
Kessenich’s poetry is narrative and reflective and the artist’s sensibilities are pervasive throughout the collection. His understated, gently ironic humor and sense of the absurd comes through in the pieces based on true stories ripped from the news that are stranger than fiction. Other poems are poignant and compassionate reflections on relationships and family life written from the perspective of being the Devil himself, a kid with a paper route, a son, a lover, a husband, a father, or a citizen of planet Earth.
With this collection of symmetrically crafted poems, Kessenich demonstrates a dazzling ability for juxtaposing the mundane with the sublime. Some pieces begin in a very ordinary setting and end in reverent contemplation of the spiritual and metaphysical and sometimes it’s the other way around. Either way, the poems in Before Whose Glory give me cause to pause; stop what I’m doing, question, reflect, appreciate and remind me to be grateful for life and all its blessings.
Book Review
Dead Letters JP Reese (2013-ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS)
JP Reese’s Dead Letters (2013-ČERVENÁ BARVA PRESS) is a captivating and compelling chapbook of poems that will keep you coming back for more. Each of the twenty poems in this collection is an exploration of lyrical language, vivid imagery and human emotion. Reese’s dedication to the craft is evident in the way she deliberately uses form to serve function in order to create a sense of time and place and to convey the message in each individual poem. Each of the poems in Dead Letters flows effortlessly when read off the page and is spellbinding when read aloud. While the poems in Dead Letters are readily accessible, they are also subtly nuanced and have the kind of depth that reveals something new with each reading. This is a really fine short collection written by a fine poet. This chapbook is one well worth reading and adding to your library. You’ll find yourself going back to it again and again.
Book Review: “Bound by Blue: Stories” by Meg Tuite 2014 Sententia Books
I know it’s been said before, but it took courage to write this book and it takes courage to read it. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s rough, tough and in your face, unflinching yet poignant and compassionate, but certainly not without humor and redemption. Meg Tuite’s stories are inhabited by wanderers, wonderers and seekers, lost and broken souls, parents and children estranged and searching for connection, people looking for meaning and characters dancing on the fringes of society and the edges of reality.
Each story, from the opening “The F Word” through the keystone in the arch, “Bound By Blue”, that leaves you stunned and reeling, to the final (and my favorite) piece “The Healer” bristles with fulminating energy that simmers just beneath the surface before exploding in your face. These stories are written in prose that is rendered with the sensibilities of a visual artist and the soul of a poet.
The 13 stories in this brilliant collection are dark, tough, beautifully written and skillfully wrought by an author who can look right through you and immediately tell if you are bullshitting or not.
Meg Tuite’s writing is raw boned and edgy and her voice is all her own and totally original and unique. Bound By Blue is unlike anything you’ve ever read. It’s a beautifully designed book, published by Sententia Books, and the cover art alone, a reproduction of a painting by Goro Endow, would be reason enough for me to buy it. You should buy Bound By Blue, read it, talk about it and try, just try, to write something as unique and powerful as this. Go ahead. I dare ya!
Diptychs +Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits
Stories/ Robert Vaughan 2013
Published by Deadly Chaps ~ Joseph A. W. Quintella, Publisher
Robert Vaughan is a busy man with a lot on his mind, and an incredibly prolific writer. I don’t know how or when he even finds time to sleep. Author of hundreds of published stories and poems, Diptychs +Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits is his second release in 2013, with more on the way. Don’t take your eye off the ball or you’re likely to miss the next pitch altogether. This chap book contains many of his best known pieces and is a little like a greatest hits album, in all the best possible ways. Notable pieces include “10,000 Dollar Pyramid” which was a finalist in the Micro Fiction awards 2012, “Ten Notes To The Guy Studying Jujitsu,”finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award 2013 and “Gauze, a Medical Dressing, a Scrim” 2nd Place in the Flash Fiction Chronicles String-Of-10 Contest 2013. It also contains some of my personal favorites which include “Seven Shades of James”, “Going to Reseda On The 405” and “Mother/Father/Clown.”
Diptychs +Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits is a marvelously crafted collection with moving parts that work beautifully together. At times deep and dark, then light, playful and mischievous; the pieces are written in beautiful prose that moves the reader through surprising and unexpected journeys. Robert Vaughan’s work is characterized by his playful use of alliteration and eye winking references to icons, titles and phrases in the lexicon of popular culture. His capricious imagery and surprising, cleverly placed internal rhymes create pieces that are at once rambunctious, mischievous and somehow, gently subversive.
Diptychs +Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits is crafted from lush poetic prose. On one hand some pieces are abstract, cryptic and disturbing; while on the other hand, others are humorous and totally straight forward, without any artifice, tricks or distractions that might dull the edge or detract from their power. Vaughan’s stories are often poignant, tender and compassionate without being too sweetly sentimental. In almost every case, any one of the segments of a diptych or triptych could easily serve as the foundation for its own expanded story.
Hats off to publisher Joseph A. W. Quintella for a beautifully designed and produced book. It’s a wonderful chap book and a piece of visual art in and of itself. Diptychs +Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits is an enduring body of work. Woven from gorgeous, rich, lyrical language and imagery, it’s right up there with the very best. Available from the publisher, http://www.deadlychaps.com and from Amazon. It’s also listed on Goodreads. If you are not yet familiar with the writing of Robert Vaughan, then this is the perfect place to start.
Book Review
Tollbooth
Bud Smith
Piscataway House Publications 2013
Bud Smith’s 2013 release Tollbooth is one of the most entertaining, refreshing and compelling novels I’ve read in a long time. The protagonist, Jimmy Saare is a toll collector on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. It opens with Jimmy saving the lives of a mother and daughter by pulling them to safety from the flaming wreckage of their vehicle after a horrific accident. It’s Jimmy’s second day on the job. Although this is a real event in the life of Jimmy Saare, toll collector, it’s also an important piece of metaphorical foreshadowing.
The story takes off from there like a bull exploding out of the chute at a rodeo, twisting, turning, bucking wildly and it doesn’t stop until it’s over. Tollbooth takes the reader on a wild ride through the interior psychological landscape of Jimmy, his hallucinatory break with reality, a marriage in the midst of crashing and burning, an impossible obsession with a nineteen year old sales clerk and his involvement with a bizarre cult and the exterior physical landscape of the Garden State Parkway, coastal New Jersey, strip malls, Iceland, and a commercial fishing trawler all the way to the gates of Hell and back again on an unexpected path to redemption.
I think Tollbooth is a wonderful book. The voice and writing set the stage for an effortless and compelling read. It’s also totally original and just plain brilliant. There’s humor, mystery, eroticism, the good, bad and ugly of human nature, mysticism, magic realism, characters I care about and “diamonds in the rough” passages of absolutely gorgeous, lyrical, poetic prose.
Although the book is an acrobatic mash-up of different genres including realism, magic realism, absurdist black humor and surrealism, none of those labels really do justice in accurately describing Tollbooth. For all of the twists and turns and forays into other worldly realities, it’s also a classic love story and solid, old school storytelling. But don’t just take my word for it. You really should see for yourself.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,100 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS from our family to yours!
I know I’ve bitched and moaned about good old fashioned Christmas cards being replaced by tedious newsletters with sappy photo bombs of everybody and the family dog wearing goofy reindeer antlers and ugly Christmas sweaters while the kids all flash big toothless smiles. I used to tape the old school cards to the wall, but who the Hell wants to look at those friggin’ mugshots for the entire Holiday season? And then the newsletters! Oy Vey!
BUT who says a man can’t change? If ya can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em, right? (Although I can think of one or two people I wouldn’t mind licking, but I’m drifting off point.) Anyway, I decided to try doing it their way and see how it goes.
First of all, I apologize for this stick figure rendering instead of including an actual family photo. We haven’t actually been on speaking terms for most of the past year and really can’t stand to be in the same room together. In fact, I’m writing this in a Motel 6 while watching a show about making Viking swords, so this little pen and ink drawing will just have to do. It’s a strange and wondrous life!
It’s been a busy year for us. Of course, my release from prison and sex change operation were pretty much the high points of the year for me. There was that alien abduction thing last spring, but I don’t really consider that a high point, since I was missing two months when I woke up. So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s only been a 10 month year for me, but you work with what you’ve got.
Henrietta found Jesus and started a monitor lizard rescue shelter in our living room. Somehow we ended up with a Komodo Dragon named Ralph. It’s one thing to harbor an internationally protected endangered species in our living room, but that fucker is almost 10 feet long and over 150 pounds. I can’t even describe the unbearable stench. And how do you even keep a thing like that fed? Just read an article that places humans somewhere between pigs and anchovies on the global food chain, so that makes me a little nervous. All I can say is that I think we had too many cats anyway.
Almost forgot to mention waking up to find our yard mysteriously filled with garden gnomes. There must be 10,000 of them. I’m sure it’s some kind of close encounter, but I really haven’t quite figured out what to make of it.
After me and Henrietta get back on an even keel, we’re gonna buy an RV, leave all this behind and take our act out on the road. Of course we’re bringing Ralph. We may just show up on your doorstep! Life moves pretty fast and creeps up on ya like a pair of cheap undies!
Anyway, Happy Holidays!
Love,
Me & Henrietta & Ralph
Your Own Back Yard - Michael Gillan Maxwell 