“Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s ‘You’re Ugly, Too'” by Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18)

An excerpt the craft essay “Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s ‘You’re Ugly, Too” by Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18), published by CRAFT.

Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too”

People tell jokes to attract attention or deflect it, to express a point of view, to connect, to offend, or in the hope of shared laughter. Some people (disclosure: me) tell jokes to themselves, rehearsing for an audience or attempting to keep problems at bay. Other people are so scared of blowing a punchline that they never tell jokes. There are even people who don’t like hearing jokes. They’re afraid that they won’t get it; or that the joke teller will screw up, embarrassing both of them; or that the joke will be offensive, leading to an unwelcome understanding of who the teller really is.

In other words, joke-telling is a short, risky interaction between people and sometimes part of an emotionally laden internal process. Sounds like the raw material of fiction. A joke can do many things in a story or novel: build character, advance the plot, engage a reader’s emotions, echo themes, mask exposition so it doesn’t feel like exposition. Here we’ll look at two of these uses—character and plot—in Lorrie Moore’s “You’re Ugly, Too.”

[…continue reading “Joke-Telling in Lorrie Moore’s ‘You’re Ugly, Too'” at CRAFT]

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2019 Goddard/Warren Wilson Post-MFA Writing Conference, Macalester College, July 21 – July 28, 2019

“Nowhere is the spirit of what the program means to working writers more evident than at the annual alumni conference.  I remember being stunned to learn that, upon graduation, alums gather and hold a residency, complete with classes, lectures, panels, readings, and yes, even the dance.  Whereas most MFA programs send graduates into the world without so much as a walking stick, we get a yearly opportunity to revisit what made our MFA program amazing.” – Ross White


We’ve announced the dates, and here are the prices:FULL STAY, first meal Sunday July 21, last meal breakfast July 28:                                            $792.00

Three squares in the general college dining room, private room in a suite sharing bathroom with three others, linens. Glass of wine, time and locale to be determined (we can’t have them in the general-population dining room). Facilities. Free parking on campus, although I’m told there’s free street parking closer to the dorm.  Classes, panels, caucuses, readings like you can’t imagine. And oh yeah, a dance.


SHORT STAY, first meal dinner July 24, last meal breakfast July 28                                              $515.00
               Ditto.


COMMUTER, lunch and dinner beginning dinner July 21 and ending dinner July 27:                   $372.00

Lunch, dinner, facilities, attendance at all classes, readings, dance, etc. 
“The Conference will surprise you. But the only way to know that is to come. Each year is different, and that’s the beauty of the thing. A conference is not a residency without faculty and it’s not a reunion. It’s a small summer oasis filled with peers who will amaze and encourage you, with laughter, with as much or as little work as you’d like. But the very best part of the conferences is meeting Wallys who were in the program at different times over many years – creating a lovely confusion of dates and faces…So come. You’ll be happy. You’ll be surprised.”  –Nancy Koerbel


We will have scholarships, but we won’t know how many or how much for each until we have until the fund’s next financial report in April. At that time we will open applications, and ask that you only apply if you’ll be unable to attend the conference otherwise, and that you not apply if you’ve received a scholarship for any of the last three conferences. We trust you at your word if you apply and literally draw names out of a hat. I even vary the hats, from year to year, when I’m involved. The scholarship application window may be relatively short  this year (a short window?), so please watch the blog, the FB page, and the listserv on a frequent basis in the next month or so. Scholarships are awarded only for Full-stay, on-campus attendees. Once the scholarship recipients have been drawn, registration will be opened. Continue watching for that, too, as rooms could fill up.

“I die a little bit inside every year that I can’t go.  I think I’ve been to [five or six] of them.  Each time it is a revelation, a tremendous gift of time to work and a community in which to celebrate that gift.  It maintains the very best of the residencies at Warren Wilson and jettisons all the rest.  It revitalizes and inspires every time.  I can’t remember a single moment at an alumni conference when I did not feel like the luckiest person on the planet.”  –Michael Jarmer


REGISTRATION IS NOT YET OPEN. DO NOT SEND ANY CHECKS! (You can see this is serious, as I have used up one of my 2019 exclamation points.) In fact, this year we may be taking only electronic payments after the infamous 2017 loss of checks in the Great Hole of the Nashua NH USPS Mail Processing Facility.


More soon, and always feel free to ask me any questions,
Peter KlankFiction ’85

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“Balancing Act” by Peter Schireson (poetry ’17)

An excerpt from “Balancing Act” by Peter Schireson (poetry ’17), published by Hoot Review.

Balancing Act

Smokey the Bear is well paid
for appearing in TV commercials,
but he’s required to wear pants—
a punishing embarrassment for a bear.

[…continue reading “Balancing Act” at Hoot Review.]

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“Saint Nobody” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19)

An excerpt from “Saint Nobody” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19) published by Pigeon Pages.

Saint Nobody

To prepare the eighth graders to choose their new names for confirmation, Sister Antoninus lectured them about the saints. The miracle workers, the mystics, the martyrs with their severed limbs and cut out tongues. The girl found herself drawn to stories about acts of penance, self-mortifications. She liked to hear about hair shirts, especially. Whenever the topic came around to St. John the Baptist, his image appearing on the slide projector in his wiry loincloth, a shroud on his shoulders of coarse animal hairs irritating, purposely scratching his skin, the girl was reminded with a pleasurable stab of him, the boy she loved. She held her breath and squeezed her knees together in the dimness of her religion class and wondered, with a shudder, how the source of such feelings could be anything less than a miracle, an actual gift from God.

[…continue reading “Saint Nobody” at Pigeon Pages.]

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“Slippage” by Kim Hamilton (poetry ’16)

An excerpt from “Slippage” by Kim Hamilton (poetry ’16), published by Iron Horse Review.

Slippage

We need to hear everything twice these days.
Click click of rabbit teeth in wildgrass.

These days tick, a metronome
counting down the dawn’s double

whammy: golden purse, timed bomb.
The skeleton of yesterday rises, holds watch

dial with its faint echo against cold bone.

[…continue reading “Slippage” at Iron Horse Review.]

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“Unwritten” by Emily Sinclair (fiction ’14)

An excerpt from “Unwritten” by Emily Sinclair (fiction ’14), published by JuxtaProse.

Unwritten

Eighteen years old: I’m standing at the entrance to the newsroom at The Dallas Morning News. I’m wearing a white linen Ann Taylor suit and white stockings, bought special for this internship. For me, it’s a time during which I intend to come into the person I want to be: a hard-bitten reporter, albeit one with hot-rollered hair, because I’m a Texas gal. In my purse is a pack of cigarettes. It’s 1985. I love Madonna and Prince. This job is the bridge between the life I’ve been expected to lead and the life I have secretly always wanted for myself. This is my beginning.

[…continue reading “Unwritten” at JuxtaProse.]

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“Model Tribute” by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry ’02, fiction ’16)

An excerpt from “Model Tribute” by Ian Randall Wilson (poetry ’02, fiction ’16), published by The Olive Press.

Model Tribute

In the land of 100 million cars,
what kind of man chooses a bike?
What kind walks? Have they
a better sky sense
of what’s up?
Fluff does not call cloud its father.
The hallway paintings are not often seen.
I wanted to cover the walls
in black, the floors in white.
My suggestions were roundly rejected.

[…continue reading “Model Tribute” at The Olive Press.]

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“An Astonishing Plentitude” by Sarah Audsley (poetry ’19)

An excerpt from “An Astonishing Plentitude” by Sarah Audsley (poetry ’19), published by Alpinist.

An Astonishing Plentitude

Before the bitter cold of ice-shatter
from wind battering the treetops, snow
drifted from gusts, before the shadows
of dusk consume the length of day, before
it is too much to slot fingertips into
rimy seams of granite, before there is frost
coating the un-harvested squash
in the garden, sit still & remember
the question you didn’t know you asked
yourself against the flicker of campfire.

[…continue reading “An Astonishing Plentitude” at Alpinist.]

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“From Mars” by Megan Pinto (poetry ’18)

An excerpt from “From Mars” by Megan Pinto (poetry ’18), published by Passages North.

From Mars

Each person has their own reason: the man sitting next to me drove his wife into a tree, and the lady scaling that volcano just miscarried. The stars cannot understand our grief, so I take off my space suit and show them my skin, places I’ve ripped into again and again. You’ve told me you cannot love me, and I’m trying to understand but it hurts. Out here, Earth looks tiny—like a pretty, marbled thing, and you are so far away.

[…continue reading “From Mars” at Passages North.]

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Shall We Play a Game? Daniel Jenkins (poetry ’18) reviews Kill Class by Nomi Stone (poetry ’17)

An excerpt from Daniel Jenkins‘ (poetry ’18) review of Nomi Stone‘s (poetry ’17) new collection Kill Class, published by Tupelo Press. Read the full review at Poetry Northwest.

Shall We Play a Game?

I must’ve been eight or nine the first time I watched War Games, the 1983 action film starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, about a tech-savvy teenager who hacks into a computer war game called ‘Global Thermonuclear War.’ Much of the film involves Broderick and Sheedy running into and from the government, but what has stayed for me is the five-word question that flashes across an old black DOS screen, cursor blinking green on black: SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? At the story’s conclusion, when playing ‘Global Thermonuclear War’ is suggested for a last time, the computer says, A STRANGE GAME. THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY. This blur between playacting and real warfare in the film scared the hell out of me. Those five words became an entrance to my childhood reality: growing up in a culture saturated with an enemy—The Soviet Union—somewhere over “there,” but not “here.” Kids in the 80s could unravel the acronym ICBM. I knew their purpose. But never once was I asked, Shall we play a game?

Kill Class, the second full-length collection of poems from poet and anthropologist Nomi Stone, embodies the fear and reality of this question. In the same way Stone used her fieldwork studying the Jewish community of Djerba in Tunisia through her first poetry collection, Stranger’s Notebook (2008), she opens her field journals once again in an unveiling of the American military machine. Stone explains in the book’s contextual notes that these poems come from

. . . two years (2011-2013) of ethnographic fieldwork, observing predeployment exercises in mock Middle Eastern villages at four military bases across the United States. The setting of these poems is the Middle East-inflected, US military-created fictional country of Pineland, in the woods of the American South, where people of Middle Eastern background are hired to theatricalize war for the training soldiers, repetitively pretending to bargain and mourn and die.

Kill Class gives us Gypsy, the collection’s heroic centerpiece. She is, according to Stone, a hybridized anthropologist-speaker and sometime “role player.” Through her studies of Pineland, she observes, interviews, and even participates in war games along with those people of Middle Eastern background who have been hired to play guerillas, the dead, the grieving, and the avenging. Throughout, Gypsy and the role players receive instructions from American soldiers conducting the trainings. Kill Class ultimately asks readers—through digressions, refractions, and the dismantling of consciousness—to directly confront the indirect and faceless experience of 21st-century warfare.

[… continue reading “Shall We Play a Game” at Poetry Northwest.]

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