10 Questions for Robert Thomas (poetry, ’02)

An excerpt from “10 Questions with Robert Thomas” (poetry, ’02) published at the Massachusetts Review:

10 Questions with Robert Thomas

Who is that angel in Bernini’s white
marble of St. Teresa? He’s so strange:
her ecstatic communion is with God,
not him, the winged sous chef who’ll tenderize
her flesh for the Master to come . . .
—from “Sonnet with Ghost Writer and Syringe,” Winter 2017 (Vol. 58, Issue 4)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first pieces I wrote in high school was a rather embarrassing haiku inspired by a scene in the wonderful 1960s British spy series Secret Agent starring Patrick McGoohan. “Dark glasses, shading eyes from a shady world, seeing me, are removed.” It was only the first in a long obsessive line of failed love poems.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I think of myself as the love child of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce. I’m still not sure why as an adolescent I found Ulyssescompelling while The Great Gatsby seemed utterly impenetrable, but I’m sure it had something to do with seeing the 1960s film ofUlysses by Joseph Strick. I don’t know why more people haven’t seen that film!

What other professions have you worked in?
Years ago I worked as a barista in North Beach in San Francisco, but for many years I’ve worked as a legal secretary. One skill—and maybe the only skill—a poet has in common with a legal secretary is obsessive attention to detail.  I do sometimes think of the different perspectives of trial attorneys depending on whom they represent. Sometimes they need to present a case that will persuade all twelve jurors. Sometimes they need to persuade only one juror. If you need to convince all twelve, you need to present what might be called an “accessible” case. If you need to reach only one person, your argument can be more “esoteric.” I suppose as a writer I only want to persuade one person, but that one person is very skeptical—myself.

[….continue reading here]

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The 2018 Post-MFA Alumni Conference

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN!  http://friendsofwriters.org/the-2018-alumni-conference/

A FEW REASONS TO ATTEND FROM FELLOW WALLIES

The prospect of the afterlife is a unsettling one. Though we are told numerous times that we will be given all we will need, that what we learn within the current-student-Wally cocoon will be enough, that what comes after is merely a less bureaucratic version of what is coming now, I for one believed precisely none of it. Not a damn word. Why should I? How can you know if a thing is good until that thing is upon you? Which suddenly the afterlife is, and there you are, a writer reborn, raw and on your own again. But here is the tremendous, singular gift of the Warren Wilson education: you really are given all, or at least most, of what you need. This is lonely, unforgiving work and thankfully, we need not do it alone for 365 days a year. There is a span of seven golden haloed days we may spend with our tribe and remember why we do what we do. Last year was my first at an alumni conference and the prospect of missing another is difficult to conceive as the handful of days I spent with people who took my writer-ness as a given and never for granted, who delivered me back to the self I treasure most, the private self from which I write—this is a communion I imagine doing without. —Jen Funk

I went to my first conference three years after graduation, knowing nobody and feeling like a general writing failure. What I found that summer was the most supportive, smart, generous community of writers I’ve ever known. At each Wally Camp I get good work done—new pieces, deep dives into work-in-progress with friends—but the real reason I return is all the friendships I’ve made over the years. —Annie Kim

For me the best part of the conference is connecting across generations, those both before and after my time at Wally, and also those in different genres. In particular, one year in California, we did a cold reading of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” and a bit of improv. I’ve yet to experience anything in a reunion or conference format that matched that! —George Higgins

The alumni conferences have been great experiences for me. I’ve gone to half a dozen since I graduated in 2002, and the most valuable thing about them is the deep and lasting friendships I’ve made, as well as the friendships I’ve deepened with people I was in the program with. I recommend doing a workshop or manuscript critique because you really get to know the people in your workshop—in a good way! And the food! Okay, the food has never been a highlight. But I am very excited about this year’s conference at Dominican University in San Rafael because I think the quality of the venue will be a quantum leap improvement over the previous Bay Area conferences at St. Mary’s in Moraga—which were good too! And the readings are fantastic and inspiring. If you’ve ever read at a reading where the barista just wishes you’d shut up and the people waiting to read at the open mike just want you to stop so they can do their thing (which they may well be writing during your reading), you know how valuable it is to have a group of extraordinary listeners as well as writers to hang with.

—Robert Thomas

 

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It’s time for another NorCal Wally Get-Together and Reading!

When: Sunday, May 6, 3:00-5:00 pm.

Where: The home of Lewis Buzbee (’82) and Julie Bruck (’86)

1255 Seventh Avenue, San Francisco (between Irving and Lincoln)

Let’s get together and re-Wallify, over snacks and drinks; talk about the real life and the writing life, and everything that goes with it.  We’ll also have readings by 4 of you, two prosers and two poets.  Pretty much guaranteed a good time.

We will ask for a contribution of $20 per person, and all money collected will be donated directly to support scholarships and projects funded by Friends of Writers. $20 is a suggested amount, but every Wally is welcome, regardless of ability to pay.

If you are interested in giving an 8-minute reading to the best audience on the planet, please email Lewis ([email protected]) by April 11.  We’ll announce the readers in a later email.

Also, we may be missing some email addresses, so if you know Wallies who may be interested, please pass this invitation along.

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Lewis Buzbee ([email protected])

Julie Bruck ([email protected])

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The Hounds of Spring by Lucy Andrews Cummin (fiction, ’87)

An excerpt (Chapter 1, Page 1) from The Hounds of Spring, the new book by Lucy Andrews Cummin (fiction, ’87) from Tupelo Press:

 

 

Morning

The first order of business was to let Spock out into the very small backyard. This
morning while he nosed about, Poppy watched from the very small wooden deck
Clive had built last summer, admiring the pansies and primroses he had planted in
terra cotta pots over the weekend. She was thinking about how different they were.
Clive liked to be busy. He liked to go from one thing to the next. He was the same
at home as at work. He was happy.

She was happy with Clive, but she was not happy with herself.

Her first choice of career had failed and she had fallen into wandering the city
and woods, dogs as her companions, with time to note how a tree wrote its
history in its bark or a family revealed their state in the condition and
decoration of their front door. What was unnerving was that this life suited her
quite well and she was even being paid, but it was a stopgap. A er almost two
years it was getting to be a very long stopgap.

Spock returned, tail wagging, tongue lolling, li ing his upper lip slightly so only
the gums showed; his imitation of a human smile. They went in.

Her breakfast today was yogurt with nuts and blueberries. Early morning was
her best time and breakfast her favorite meal. No one asked, “Shall we have
green beans or peas? Pasta or potatoes? Beef or chicken?” No one remarked,
“Haven’t we had brown rice and chicken the past five nights?” Best of all, she
was alone, so there was no scattering of dreams or diminishment of the day’s
potential.

Poppy liked breakfast so much that she was apt to slip like a leaf diverted into a
quiet shallows, spinning lazily, until the prickling sense of time passing made
her consult a clock.

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Three Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10)

An excerpt from “Secrets,” one of three poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10) appearing at Scoundrel Time:

 

Secrets

At two a.m., without enough spirits
Spilling into my liver to know enough
To call my tongue to silence, Miles learned
Of the years I spent inside a box: a spell,
A kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
But History: I robbed a man. This, months
Before he would drop bucket after bucket
On opposing players, the entire bedraggled
Bunch five and six and he leaping as if
Every lay-up erases something. That’s how
I’d saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating
Presence recompense for the pen; my father
Has never seen me play ball is part of this.
My son has seen me drink whisky in the morning
Is the other part. Tell me we aren’t running
Towards failure is what I want to ask my kid,
But it is two in the a.m. and despite him seeming
More lucid than me, I know it’s the cartoons reflecting
Back from his eyes, not a sense of the world. So
When he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know what’s
Happening is some straggling angel, lost from
His pack finding a way to fulfill his dream,
Breathing breath into this kid who crawls into
My arms, wanting, more than stories of my past, […continue reading here]

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Four Poems by Caroline M. Mar (poetry, ’13)

An excerpt from “Ghost Language,” one of four poems by Caroline M. Mar (poetry, ’13)  appearing with an interview, at Connotation Press:

Ghost Language
My grandmother, the white one, my mother’s mother, she has Alzheimer’s.
     It isn’t an easy thing for Grammie, or my mother, or me. My grandfather,
the Chinese one, my father’s father, it was the same: he lost his English, then his mind;
     the ghosts all came to pace his hallways.
Things I know about ghosts: the haunting, of course.
     We bring Grammie mini-candy bars, the tiny shiny squares of sweet she loves,
and honestly it might not be so terrible, a quick and painful heart attack since she’s forgotten
     she wanted to end it before things got this bad.
That sometimes, ghosts have voices. I was . . . I was a smart woman—
     a writer, as deliberate in her choice of words as in her choice of pearls.
Her language never failed her. My students speak a language I don’t always understand. It rings
     of false bravado, a high-striker hammer dropping to prove some mewling manhood.
That ghosts spoke to you more clearly than I could, at the end.
     I teach the code’s switch, the value of speaking both vernacular
and academic, the only way they’ll make it past entry-level at Foot Locker. But also,
     the way those ghosts were welcome, and weren’t you happy to see them,
so happy to have back all the people you’d loved, together, like a reunion.
     I am supposed to value their home language, the way my father,
ghetto-C-Town born, still says It’s mines. She does. Does. Not “do.”
     Godammit, just speak right. […continue reading here]
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God, Maybe, a new book from Trish Reeves (poetry, ’83)

An excerpt from God, Maybe, a new book by Trish Reeves (poetry, ’83) published by Scattering Skies Press:

After Lewis Hine

“PLANS FOR WORK”—AN APPLICATION
TURNED DOWN BY THE FOUNDATION

He would have to count the coal
piece by piece: this boy stone,
this boy slate, this boy a cloud
of soot standing in the shovel
chute close to the ceiling. Darkness,
he’d also have to allow for
darkness walking in form, in
hundreds and hundreds of boys,
billed caps, black smears of noses
and mouths the face
of fuel in Pennsylvania.

“Looking at labor,” he wouldn’t have to
spend every lump of his light
as the breaker boys on the black benches,
feet in slag
and coal clattering down
like 75 cents a day, a lamp on the cap
of the lucky lad.

He would, however,
spot the child’s bend in the backs
of all the boys, coats on, cold
work against the cold. […continue reading here]

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Two Poems by Martha Zweig (poetry, ’98)

An excerpt from “Beauty Sleep,” one of two poems by Martha Zweig (poetry, ’98) at Scoundrel Time:

 

 

Beauty Sleep 

Kwitcher bitchin, dad snorted. Shut

yer yap up. I hated the salt
stinging my cheeks, it curdled my sass.

Little blue gas flames itched in the kitchen.
A pudding seethed, the better to set.
Pulpy crushed gripes folded in.

Bard: the excellent thing
in a woman’s her stifled voice.
Her boa: sleek silken throat gag. […continue reading here]

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“Icarus Does The Dishes” by Tommye Blount (poetry,’ 13)

An excerpt from “Icarus Does The Dishes” by Tommye Blount (poetry, ’13) at The Kenyon Review:

ICARUS DOES THE DISHES

It leaves a mark when I fall
on the floor of my father’s kitchen.
Only a few days it’s been
of lifting him up from one place,
then putting him down somewhere else,
then driving to work for the late shift
while a nurse looks after him
for five hours, three times a week—
all we can afford. There is no choice;
sometimes, I have to leave him
alone. I ignore the soreness
of the bruise taking shape on my ass,
because these dishes won’t clean themselves
and Father hasn’t had his bath. It embarrasses us,
especially the rolling back of his foreskin,
the veins like tiny stitches on the inside
of a minotaur’s mask, so I let him wash that part
while I look away. He does not see me […continue reading here]

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“Young Reflects on Stephen Hawking’s Influence, UNC’s Connections” by Katie Bowler Young (poetry, ’07)

An excerpt from the article “Young Reflects on Stephen Hawking’s Influence, UNC’s Connections” by Katie Bowler Young (poetry, ’07) posted at UNC Global:

 

 

Young Reflects on Stephen Hawking’s Influence, UNC’s Connections

In August 2015, I had a stage manager’s dream role, pulling back a curtain and cuing Stephen Hawking to take the stage. We were at the Waterfront Congress Center in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was to deliver a public lecture, “Quantum Black Holes,” to an audience of more than 3,000 people after being introduced by UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt.

Like Professor Hawking, I was in Stockholm for an academic gathering co-sponsored by Carolina, along with the Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics (Nordita), an institute co-hosted by KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University; the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge; and The Julian Swinger Foundation. The conference was organized through the efforts of Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton, cosmologist and theoretical physicist in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, and her some of her close scientist colleagues.

We were together in Stockholm for a week for the Hawking Radiation Conference, where scientists were grappling with what most of us consider to be inexplicable rules of the universe, a science well outside the boundaries of my experience and knowledge. I had come to be a part of it all through my role as Director of Global Relations for UNC Global, an external relations role with roots in my work as a writer. How a career in writing extended to external relations is a separate matter, but what is important to me about it is the influence that Professor Hawking had on who I am as a writer. Truly, at the core of my love for language, I think of myself as a poet, and in Professor Hawking’s words and being I saw endless metaphors, symbolism and a light I typically associate with literary greatness. […continue reading here]

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