Writer Envy

          As a poet, I sometimes am aware of the envy of other writers.  It happens mostly at book festivals and events that have multiple authors.  Perhaps it’s not something we want to admit or talk about – the dirty laundry of the industry – but it’s understandable.  The fact is that other writers can be jealous because, as a poet, I get the perks of being an author– the cachet and respect and business cards – without having to do a lot of the promotional drudgery.
            I’ve shared book signing tables with Maya Angelou, Orson Scott Card, and, most recently, Gillian Flynn who wrote Gone Girl.  Writers like these have to deal with long lines of people who keep asking them to do things; they have to sign books, answer questions, and agree to photos.  They have to sit there for hours.  I suspect they suffer from calluses on their autographing hands, repetitive stress injuries, and dry throats.  I worry about no such health problems.
            I look at those lines and pity the writers.  Poor Maya Angelou.  Poor Orson Scott Card.  And I think, “Thank god, those people are not here to see me.”  As my wife and children know, I hate to be asked to do things, and, as my colleagues know, I’m terrible at small talk.  Luckily, as a poet, it’s not a problem.  At any event, there will be only a couple of people bothering me about my books.  This leaves me lots of free time to text, do crosswords, stare and make faces at the people in the lines to either side of me.  Sometimes I lay out a small picnic.  Sometimes I even do some writing.  I’m not one of those writers who complain they can’t find time to write; it’s easy for me.  I just set up a signing.
            I sense the irritation of the other authors.  They have to work hard, while I get to be there and call myself a writer as well.  And, often my photo is even as big as theirs!  I want to tell them that it’s not my fault they picked the wrong genre, but I realize it’s not always a choice.  Some people write novels because they can’t write poetry.
            So, although we smile at one another, there’s the frank truth about authors.  They envy me, and I feel sorry for them. While they have to worry about mundane concerns like royalties, agents, and their position on the best seller lists, I am free to live the life of the mind and concentrate on what is important like mastering another level of angry birds.

A Few Recent Questions and Comments at Poetry Readings and Workshops

-       My child’s teacher has assigned a 25 page paper.  How do you feel about that?

-       What do you think of grammar?

-       Do you really think about every word [in a poem]?

-       Have you ever tried to write novels or real books?

-       I’m not buying your book.  I’m buying his book instead.  Yours looks good, but I’m not buying it.

-       Well, your reading was  . . . unexpected.

-       If I do write a poem, how much will I get paid for it?

-       That poem didn’t really take years to write, did it?

-       I’m thinking of buying one of your books for my husband.  He doesn’t really like poetry. Which one do you think I should get?

And finally a question that I felt comfortable answering.

-       I don’t think it’s poetry if it doesn’t rhyme.  What do you think of that?

-       I think you shouldn’t buy my books.

Questions For Betsy Towns, Sculptor

Betsy Towns teaches Art History  at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Her sculptures appear in public and private collections around the US including major installations owned by the city of Charlotte, NC. Her recent work -- ceramic and mixed media installations --  is now being shown under the title Recapturing Childhood at the Red Sky Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina.

How would you describe what you do?  

My most important mentor in sculpture is Xavier Toubes, who now works at the Art Institute in Chicago. He took my work seriously before I felt brave enough to take it seriously, and that made a huge difference in the way I valued what I made. In his lovely Spanish accent, he announced to me one day, “You are a maker of things.” It doesn’t sound so significant in my own tones, but it certainly approaches a description the activity in my studio. I make objects, carefully but playfully, and set a variety of stages for the objects to work with and against each other to create meaning. It takes a mouthful for me to say what Xavier said in six words.

Is this different than what other people think you do?

Yes. People see me teaching much more than they see me in the studio. Sometimes I find it easier to say, “I teach Art History,” than “I’m an Artist,” with all the baggage that word totes. More and more, I think of myself as artist first, but I don’t always claim that.

How do you know if you’re on the right track with a project?

When I can’t make myself leave the studio.

How do you go about making choices? 

Many ways. I do a lot of sketching, take photos of work in progress to get a little distance and see a little more clearly what adjustments I should make, and I play with the things I make: put them on wheels, on spring, on see-saws and on each other. I bring them in the house and live with them a bit. I think about the work before I fall asleep and sometimes wake up with solutions.

How do you know when you’re done?

One of my favorite artists is Joseph Cornell. Both his life and his work (meticulously crafted habitats for found objects) fascinate me. He gave many of his pieces away as gifts (to Susan Sontag, Lauren Bacall, a few ballerinas, and others he loved from afar). Sometimes, though, he would go to their houses and take the work back, either because he realized the piece was not finished, or because he no longer felt they should have the piece. I don’t go that far. My work is finished when it sells. Until then, it moves around, tries on clothes, gets a new set of wheels.

What’s your workspace like?

I have a little wooden shed in the back yard—six feet by ten—with a porch about the same size, a lean-to shed to house the kiln, and a large work table in the yard. I like best to work outside, and just have the tiny indoor space to protect my materials and work on the coldest days. 

What are your essential tools? 

My hands, my eyes and my kiln. I also like to use spoons and forks and a few pencil-shaped pieces of wood.

What’s the most surprising tool you use? 

When I go to the dentist, I ask for their cast-aside tooth-cleaning tools. Stainless steel picks with various curved points, all terrifying.

What was your biggest mistake or the one you learned the most from? 

Taking a real job. I keep learning so much from teaching, though, that I keep teaching.

A Gallery of Betsy Towns' Work

Betsy Towns' Website

My First Publication

This entry first appeared as a guest blog at David Abrams’ “The Quivering Pen.”

            The writer Fred Chappell  has said, “If you’re lucky, you’ll be rejected the first 1000 times.  That will teach you to persevere.  Get the first poems that you submit published, and you’re dead meat.”  In my case, he was wrong.  The first place that I ever sent work to accepted it, and it was the best thing that could have happened.

            As a junior in college in 1986, I had just begun to write poetry as part of a creative writing course.  However, I had been told since elementary school that I would be an author someday, so, after I had written a half dozen poems, it was logical to send them out for publication.  They had received scathing critiques in workshops, but only by classmates.  The professor hadn’t said a word, I suspected, because he didn’t want to embarrass the other students in public by correcting their faulty judgments.

            I’m not sure where I saw the announcement, probably in The Writer or Writer’s Digest, which I had begun to read regularly (spending more time, in fact, reading about writing than actually doing any).  An “Important International Poetry Anthology” wanted submissions.  I sent my best poem.  It was four lines long, and it dealt with the aftermath of a party.  Cigarette butts.  Empty bottles.  Hangovers.  Ash, trash, and regret.  Real life, man.

            The acceptance came quickly along with the stipulation that contributors must buy a copy.  This seemed reasonable, even unnecessary since, of course, I wanted one.  My dorm-mate began introducing me as a “published poet” at the business school recruiting parties we were crashing.  I would shake my head and look away as he did this, trying to look modest, which was difficult since I was only twenty and already on my way.

            Finally the fat envelope came.  I opened the book and had an immediate, overwhelming, feeling.  Surprisingly, since this was my first publication, it was also a familiar one.  It’s that feeling you get at the arrival of the X-Ray specs or the life-size remote control Frankenstein ordered from a comic book, that alloy of disappointment, anger, and shame forged by the awareness you’ve been scammed. 

            Each of the anthology’s hundreds of pages had at least a dozen poems.  It was difficult to find mine crammed among the thousands.  I read some, and they were uniformly terrible.  Then I realized that if each “contributor” bought a copy, that’s all the publisher had to sell.

            Long after midnight, when the hall was deserted, I took the book to the garbage chute, tossed it in, and listened as it hammered its way down to the dumpster to be incinerated.

            This first publication was critical.  I stopped going to B school parties, afraid someone might remember “the poet.”  Consequently, a business career became even more unlikely.  I didn’t submit work again for several years, and then I chose the places that I knew.  Most importantly, I understood from the beginning of my career what it meant to be a “published author.”

Ray Bradbury, A Thunderous Philosophy

           Ray Bradbury’s death this year coincided with the 50^th anniversary of his masterful story “A Sound of Thunder.”  In it, a hunter goes back in time to kill a dinosaur, accidently leaves the path, crushes a butterfly, and changes history.

            Reading this when I was young, the story had the same impact as seeing the ending of the original Planet of the Apes (which had me jumping up and pointing at the TV.  "Oh my God, Oh my God, they've been . . .").  It opened my mind to previously inconceivable “what if” possibilities.  This world doesn’t have to be the way it is.  History might not be inevitable.  I knew instinctively these science works were philosophical works.  In fiction, the writers were presenting challenging, revelatory, concepts. 

            “A Sound of Thunder” plays with the idea of “the butterfly theory,” which is epitomized by the question “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”  Complex, large, systems can be altered by small changes. Examples of this seem to be everywhere.  In college my roommate, a Physics major, liked to quote an adage about gravity, “when you throw a stone, you move the stars.”  Historians recite the proverb about Richard III:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider, the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horsehoe nail.

            Numerous works of art explore the tremendous world-changing effects small actions can have.  For some, this inspires.  As we head into the next presidential election, I’m sure this will be one of the repeated arguments for going to the polls.  However, it also suggests you cannot know what the effects will be.  There is no easily discernible cause and effect.

            Ultimately, Bradbury's story seems philosophically aligned with the tale that Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character tells in Charlie Wilson’s War:  There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. The boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "How terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful.” . . .

            Actions have consequences, but the consequences can’t be determined by the actions.  This was a fascinating idea to the boy I was; this is a terrifying idea to the man I’ve become.

Questions for Bob King, Composer

Bob King thinks of himself as a composer.  He likes this term "because it gets me out of all the boxes of thinking I'm a teacher, a scholar, an artist, a parent, etc."  For Bob, "composing cuts across all of these categories and unifies them meaningfully. Having an identity that is a verb rather than a noun also makes sense to me."  He works as an instructor in the Division of Liberal Arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.  His source fields include philosophy (B.A), painting and drawing (M.F.A.), and cultural studies/education (Ph. D.), and for Bob all of these converge in the field of media studies. 

How would you describe what you do?

I do a lot of things, so I'll try to describe that. In order to simplify, it might be helpful to know that I regard the aesthetic as one of four basic ways-of-knowing or WOKs or probes that humans have devised to phrase questions and get responses from reality. In my scheme of things the other three WOKs are the scientific, the spiritual, and the intellectual. I see each one as uniquely capable of highlighting or revealing particular aspects of reality, including states of consciousness and those sorts of aspects of reality, that the other three cannot get to.

My surmise is that if humans could make do with less than four WOKs and still know reality thoroughly, we would probably have reduced the number by now. Despite attempts by one group or another to rid the world of one WOK or another, these efforts always seem to fail over the long haul of history. All four seem to persist. So what do I do? I honor, explore, question, combine, recombine, and remix them.  In this, I see myself as as composer, and I see acts of composition as closely intertwined with acts of representation (in a psychological sense, as Lacan describes it) and with the constant activity of perception (in a purely physical/critter sense).

Sometimes my WOK remix process involves composing artworks (drawings, furniture, photoshop pieces, lamps, audio collages, paintings, video montages, meringue sculptures, etc.). Sometimes my WOK remix process involves composing courses, assignments, writings, agendas, etc. Sometimes it involves composing neural/somatic states (I like the idea of neural composing). Sometimes it involves composing studies and polls and analyzing the data gathered. So I guess that makes me a remix composer. What do I do?  I compose.

Is this different than what other people think you do?

I would imagine so. My surmise is that a lot of people don't know what to make of me or what I do, and are therefore either mystified (I've repeatedly been described as abstract) or irritated (in which case they might describe me as a computer teacher for example, in order to ascribe to me a concrete identity, or possibly to irritate me in return) or blandly neutral (some describe me as philosophical). Of course I also have friends who seem to understand and like me, and appreciate the things I do and the way I do them.

How do you know if you’re on the right track with a project?

The initial indicator for me is a feeling of being inspired, and after that a feeling of being in a state that Jackson Pollock described as "in contact," or fully alive, or in a relational state of consciousness (a la Betty Edwards), or in a "flow" state (as Csikszentmihalyi describes it), or as a participant in the coming-into-being of en emergent phenomenon (like a midwife, as Socrates --according to Plato-- described it).

How do you go about making choices?

I think I make compositional choices mostly based on the relationships of one thing to another in whatever it is I'm working on. If I am composing a course, I make choices about assignments in relation to an idea or direction that is inspiring to me, or in relation to the learning goals I have in mind. Or it might go the other way 'round. I might make choices about learning goals in relation to an assignment idea that I find inspiring at the time, and so forth.

The joy for me in this type of composing is the sense of interconnectedness that it brings, and the adding of connections that I hadn't seen before.

The same sort of relational decision process applies to visual and multi- media compositions.  I tend to make decisions based on the interplay of the various elements (ideational as well as formal) of the pieces as the elements come on board. This is sort of like adding a member to one's family, and noting that this changes all of the relationships.

For example I may feel that a visual composition at some point needs a bold horizontal element in the bottom third of the frame, running coast to coast, side to side, and this is based on perceiving something lacking in the relationships already on board. Maybe this is like a band that senses it needs a horn player, or an accordion player, or something like that, for other elements to play off of. I find that seemingly formal decisions (things like deciding to add a horizontal element) sometimes end up registering across and meeting a need in the ideational aspect as well. That part is interesting to me.

How do you know when you’re done?

In my case this depends on the type of composition. When I am composing paintings or other sorts of visual work, and my inner composition is tilted towards the aesthetic/creative WOK, I sometimes know a project is done when it feels to me like I participated in making it, but didn't make it in an egoistic, self-determined sense. It's like I kind of stand back from it and feel a nice sense of having been party to something I know not what, and yet there it is, and it's done.

When I was involved in conversational email writing (which was the creative endeavor that got me interested in new-media composition) with a writing partner, there were moments like this as well, times when a conversation would just seem to, surprisingly and out of nowhere, finish, without any attempt to make that happen.  My guess is that people used to talk about muses in this type of context, but I don't know much about that. In Jenlink and Carr's typology of conversation (a useful tool when applied in other contexts as well, including composition), any of these types of markers or occurrences would qualify the activity as 'transcendent,' as compared 'transforming' or 'transactional.'

In composing courses, assignments, and those sorts of projects, my inner composition is tilted towards the intellectual WOK, and I tend to know projects are done when the relationships between the various parts seem to be clicking with connections and so on, in tandem with the addition of new connections. In Jenlink and Carr's typology, this likely belongs in the 'transforming' category. The specific feeling of done-ness in this regard is similar yet also qualitatively different from that of completing an aesthetically-oriented composition (and I still think Betty Edwards description of R-brain and L-brain functionality in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain describes the qualitative difference best). 

What’s your workspace like?

My workspace is more like a network of places, including online as well as face-to-face places. It's sort of a distributed workspace I guess. All of the spaces (I have a home workspace, two work workspaces, and several online workspaces) are flexible. The f2f spaces all feature components that I have composed and constructed myself --custom work surfaces, desks, shelves, benches, etc. All of the items I make convey a sense of construction. For example my work surface/tables have modified sawhorses as supports. All of the workspaces have tools laying around, within easy reach.

I approach the making of many things in a modular, re-use kind of way. For example in making furniture I often limit my materials to two-by-fours, pine boards, and deck screws. That way anything I make I can easily be disassembled and made into something else. To some extent I approach my workspace (picturing its network-form as one thing) in much the same way. It is capable of shifting in emphasis, which I guess connects to the shifts in emphasis that occur in my inner WOKs / neural workspace as well. Did I say I use metaphors from complexity theory quite a bit? In this case one of my favorite concepts is emerging in this narrative, namely the notion of self-similarity or sameness across differences in scale. Did I say that I think of metaphors as tools? So ideas can be among the things that might be laying around in one or another of my workspaces.

What are your essential tools

Woodworking tools are essential to me, as are painting and drawing tools and software tools for multimedia work, and, as noted, ideas and metaphors. I anticipate the addition of programming tools --Processing and MAX-- to this menu. I am at a place now where some of the composing projects I want to get involved with on the new-media side of things are going to require that I develop some programming chops.

What’s the most surprising tool you use?

I sometimes use sharpened sticks as drawing tools to make ink drawings. One of my sons made me a beautiful set of these for me one time, when we were on a weekend camping trip.

What was your biggest mistake or the one you learned the most from? 

Well, the biggest mistakes I make seem to be ones that get big from repetition and accretion. These include not thinking big enough (this is my main mistake in aesthetically tilted WOKdom) and not infusing things enough with conversation (this is my main mistake in intellectually tilted WOKdom).

Examples of the first type of mistake, and lessons learned, look like this. I was painting one time, stuck at some point or other in the process, and happened to notice the window-reflected image of the painting I was working on, and saw how helpful it was to see it differently in a major way (as in backwards). This led to turning canvases 90 or 180 degrees every once in a while as part of my working method. Rather than agonizing over small changes, it worked better to find ways to think big, so to speak.

Another example. I was creating an art installation to simulate an industrial rooftop (the installation was called Uncommon Ground and the rooftop idea was designed to create a resonant context in which to situate the group of paintings I had made for the show). I was working on the rooftop part of the installation with the curator of the gallery space, who happened to be a sculptor. We were talking about how to create the rooftop effect and all of my ideas were really small -- I mean I was thinking of adding a little pipe here or there coming up out of a roofing-paper covered floor. He suggested thinking bigger, and to show me what he meant we got into his truck and drove to a downtown area where there was an unoccupied building. It had some substantial HVAC ducting on its roof, on the scale of 4' by 5' pieces. We ended up 'borrowing' one, let's put it that way, and I ended up building another one out of masonite, painting it to look like sheet metal. These pieces really anchored the context part of the show. Same mistake, same lesson learned. Think bigger.

An example of the other category of big mistake I make --again made big by accretion and repetition-- is that in composing courses and other intellectual-oriented WOK projects I often fail to include conversation among participants as a main element in the composition. Given that I think I know the importance of conversation to learning --I mean I see the main human WOKs as forms of conversation after all-- this is probably a mix of stupidity and cowardice on my part. One or the other by itself could not account for the number of times I've missed the ball on this one. The lesson is to think social and/or think affective, and to make this part of intellect-oriented compositions.

Can we share an example of your work?

Here's a link to a recent video composition that kind of bridges the two areas of composing that I for the most part separated in the above responses. It's a video I made as a self-portrait for teaching (intellectual WOK) purposes, and is also a more or less purely creative exploration of genre-creation (aesthetic WOK) featuring a genre I refer to as a channel-surf.

Self-Portrait

The Eyes of My Children

As the plane took off, my six year old son said, “Look, we’re touching the clouds.”  We banked, which made my daughter nervous:  “We’re tipping.”  I explained, “No, we’re turning.”  “Well, she said, “It feels like tipping.”

I spent a lot of time traveling with my kids this summer, and one of the pleasures was listening to them describe new experiences, but this is how it’s been since they began to talk.  As toddlers, they would want to eat “monsterella” and “strawbellies.”  Last year my daughter announced she was learning “multiplication and dividenation.”  This year on the metro, my son wanted to see “pickerpocketers.”

This is stereotypical “cute” kid talk, but it’s also more than that.  As my children engage a world fresh to them, they make the world fresh to me.

When they ask if they can swim in “the shadow end” of the pool, I see the space differently.

When I ask my daughter whether she dreamed the night before and she says,

“Yes, I was imaginating,” I think, “That’s exactly right.”

Sometimes, we talk about language, like when my daughter points out, “When two words mean the same thing, they’re cinnamon.”

Sometimes, we talk about theology, like when my son asked, “Daddy, do people have butts in heaven?”

Sometimes, like this summer when I stopped to look at a house that was for sale, we talk about art. 

Daughter - Daddy, look at that statue!  That guy is naked.

Me - It's art.

Daughter - Why is he naked?

Son- I can see his weiner!

Me - It's David, the one who fought Goliath.

Daughter -Why did he fight naked?

Me -Good question.  I'm not sure he did.

Daughter - Why is there a design above his penis?

Me - That is supposed to be pubic hair.

Son - I have pubic hair.

Me - No you don't.

Daughter - I'm going to.  The doctor said.

Son - I'm going to first.

Me - You both will someday, but your sister will be first.

Son - No fair!

Daughter - Is it going to look like a design?

Me - No.  I don't think so.

Daughter – Who would buy a house with a naked guy?

Son - I can see his weiner!

I have a friend who likes to quote Picasso about an artist needing the ability to retain a child-like capacity for imagination and play.  For a poet, this means being able to access a child-like use of language and perspective.  Although a writer should respect and understand the precision and complexity of words, there also needs to be a willingness to use them in unexpected ways.  It’s estimated that Shakespeare coined seven words a play.  He made up the ones he needed.  Since I’m not Shakespeare or Picasso, I’m lucky to have children who help keep my relationship with language and the world fresh.