This week, for our modified Proust Questionnaire project, we are very lucky to be able to feature the poet Christian Hawkey. Mr. Hawkey’s latest book, Ventrakl (which was excerpted in issue three of Correspondence), was just released from Ugly Duckling Presse. If you are unfamiliar with Christian Hawkey, read his bio (below), read his books, and, more immediately, you might be interested in this awesome conversation (PDF) he had with Bill Martin, where he asks the very important question: “is that Mike Myers/Austin Powers, playing Derrida, with a wig?!”
An Introduction to Christian Hawkey
Christian Hawkey is the author of three previous books of poetry. His first book, The Book of Funnels, appeared in 2004 and won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His second book, a chapbook called HourHour, includes drawings by the artist Ryan Mrowzowski, and was published by Delirium Press in 2005. Citizen Of, his third book, was released by Wave Books in the spring of 2007, and received enthusiastic reviews from numerous magazines and online journals, including Time Out New York, Octopus, Silliman’s Blog, and the New Yorker. His poems have appeared in Conjunctions, Volt, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Crowd, BOMB, Chicago Review, Best American Poetry, and Conduit, and his art criticism has appeared in frieze and Meatpaper. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Fund, and in 2006 he received a Creative Capital Innovative Literature Award. In 2008 he was a DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow. He is currently an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, where he teaches the practice of writing poetry in the Writing Program. (via UDP)
Christian Hawkey Answers the Proust Questionnaire
Your favorite virtue.
Regrouping.
Your favorite qualities in a man.
Hunchiness.
Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Truculence.
Your chief characteristic.
Lack of self-knowledge.
What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Rutilant loyalty.
Your main fault.
Lack of self-knowledge.
Your favorite occupation.
Hand-taming wild birds.
Your idea of happiness.
Ibid.
Your idea of misery.
Industrialized animal slaughter.
If not yourself, who would you be?
Exactly.
Where would you like to live?
To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, an art-house movie theater.
Your favorite prose authors.
Beckett. Stein. Marie Redonnet. Walser. Derrida.
Your favorite poets.
Stein. Clare. Vallejo. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Anti-heroes.
Your favorite heroines in fiction.
Anti-heroines.
Your heroes in “real life.”
Andy Kaufman. Mandelstam. Anna O.
What characters in history do you most dislike?
Karl Lueger; Mayor of Vienna, 1897-1910; he brought anti-Semitic rhetoric into the political discourse of a fading Austrio-Hungarian empire; big influence on Hitler.
Your favorite names.
Gerald. Riven. Blondie.
The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
Ability to carry a tune.
How do you wish to die?
I will die in Paris, on a rainy day, with all of my school loans unpaid.
What is your present state of mind?
Distracted attentiveness.
Your favorite motto.
An embryonic thing is a sort of embryonic thing.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
It Gets Better
A Statement by Lonely Christopher
For those of you unfamiliar with Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project congratulations for being so sheltered from all media, but it’s a YouTube video campaign designed as a reaction to the recent publicity over the bullying-related suicide deaths of gay teenagers across the United States. The idea being that, upon hearing stories of tormented LGBT youth who killed themselves out of despair developed through environments of homophobia, abuse, and anti-gay hostility, writer Dan Savage wished he could speak to the teenaged queer community to try and convince troubled youth that middle and high school is torturous, but life gets a lot better and is therefore worth sticking around for. Then he realized that he needn’t wait around for invitations to address this demographic, as YouTube offered him a platform to forgo traditional venues and speak to them directly. The It Gets Better Project began with a great video by Dan Savage and his husband Terry (watch it here) and then opened up the floor for other video contributions. Since then, hundreds of videos have been posted, including a humorous one by actor Jeffrey Self, a very moving one by a councilman in Fort Worth, and many others by regular folk and celebrities alike. While the furious stream of videos tends to become repetitious (the main message being “Don’t kill yourself, wait it out, because it gets so much better”), I feel the project is complicated and tremendously justified. Early on, I decided to create my own contribution for It Gets Better. After drafting a statement and filming it, though, I declined to submit it for several reasons. The project became a cause célèbre overnight and I felt my slightly academic tone was incongruous with the accessibility of the main and, considering the wealth of videos from everyday individuals as well as the slightly condescending ones from famous media figures, both gay and straight, the anti-suicidal musings of a frequently suicidal experimental poet named Lonely Christopher could be both inconsequential and confusing.
First of all, the idea of some weirdo calling himself Lonely Christopher trying to convince queer youth that one day they will not feel so alone is problematic. I felt like I had to address this situation before reaching the fundamental point of my statement, which resulted in an overlong, self-involved preamble. I explained, don’t worry! it’s only an arty pseudonym, I’m really a friendly, semi-adjusted, and sociable person. Wondering if that was really enough, I then went on to try to posit the concept of “loneliness” as a profound and positive characteristic. I attempted this by citing my favorite poem by Emily Dickinson (you can tell how the video is already derailing here). Here is the poem:
There is another Loneliness
That many die without –
Not want of friend occasions it or circumstance of Lot
But nature, sometimes, sometimes thought
And whoso it befall
Is richer than could be revealed
By mortal numeral -
I then attempted to pose this heightened concept of loneliness as a metaphor for queerness, in such a way that a traditionally negatively perceived disposition could be viewed as a liberatory, ultimately subversive, benefit. Like loneliness, queerness is also often viewed in an unfavorable, unhelpful way. But, as Dickinson proves in her poem on loneliness, there is also no singular definition for queerness, what it means to be gay, or whatever word one uses to identify as LGBT. That suggests that one can push past the stereotypes and cultural restrictions around being gay and understand queerness as a special opportunity --- a gift, even, that not everybody has, through which one can really actualize one’s self in a tremendous way. I ended this overwrought point with the only line in the statement I really like: “I guess this is an overly complicated way of saying that I think being queer is basically a super power.”
After that regrettable introduction, which was unnecessary and haughty enough to discourage me from posting the video, I got around to my main purpose (and drew my point out in such a way that my video would have been significantly longer than most offerings available through the project). So that my misguided efforts do not go completely to waste, I here offer the entirety of the rest of my statement (addressed directly to the hypothetical youth watching the video):
You have to celebrate yourself as a queer individual. I know that it’s hard --- and it doesn’t automatically entail coming out to your friends or school or parents, but what I really mean is that you not only have to accept yourself in your own mind, but you have to allow yourself to understand all the ways that you are valuable, unique, and gifted --- and how being queer plays into your perception of self and the world around you. Again, that’s an incredibly hard task. I know I didn’t understand how to view my sexuality in a wholly positive light for many years after I discovered I was queer. That was when I was maybe thirteen, if you can believe it. Many other LGBT people say that they knew at a much earlier age, but I don’t think I was situated in a cultural climate where I was able to understand that about myself preternaturally. It really took until puberty, when I began developing sexual attractions to boys instead of girls, when the possibility dawned on me. And when it did, it was very bad news --- a real private struggle that I was completely alone in and lacked the critical faculties to negotiate. Basically, when these attractions came to my attention, I thought, “Oh no! Please, no! Not another problem I have to deal with!” And this particular problem really did feel like the biggest one in the world --- and one I was experiencing in complete isolation at first.
When I was growing up, “the gays” were only discussed in what was perceived to be a negative context such as AIDS. Being gay was construed as such an unspeakable fault, it seemed almost like anybody so much as talking about it was under suspicion for being a sexual deviant. Sometimes it seems so easy to understand how silly and thoughtless this cultural taboo placed around homosexuality really is, and how insubstantial and indefensible. But that didn’t help me much in school. I was so afraid of being abnormal I really didn’t come out to anybody throughout middle school and high school. It was just inconceivable that something like that, an out gay kid, could actually exist and be in any way accepted or live a normal life. There was a definite environment of homophobia, perpetrated by the students and enforced by the adults, which kept all the queer kids at school very, very quiet about it. At the time, I had male friends who were very worried that I wasn’t taking the same interest in girls as they were. So they set me up with a string off blundering homecoming and prom dates, girlfriends who lasted about a week and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t interested in making out, all of that. And, of course, I had to suffer, day in and day out, hearing almost everybody my age using the word “gay” in a derogatory way, “That’s so gay,” accusing each other of being sissies or fags when they were acting stupid, and all the rest. And whenever I was suspected of being one of those unspeakables, a fag, there was verbal abuse and casual bullying involved.
It was just not a pleasant environment for me to grow up in. I hated school so much. And, you know, when I was a junior, at sixteen, I did try to kill myself. In many ways, first of all, not feeling able to be honest with my parents about who I knew I was, but also, the climate of abuse and mental torture which I experienced, and which I know is prevalent for many others even now, in many ways these were the major contributing factors to my decision to try and prematurely end my life. Fortunately, my attempt was nonfatal --- I was discovered and hospitalized. Being in the hospital, personally, didn’t help me, because even in that drastic situation I was not able to be honest with the doctors and with my family about my sexuality. So that wasn’t really addressed, but I survived, and went back to school --- and somehow I just got through it. And now, of course, it is very obvious that the idea of ending my life was the absolute wrong way to handle that situation. I know that now because, as they say, it gets better.
One of the ways I got through it, I think, was with the Internet. This was a new instrument that just a few years before wasn’t really around. But since it was there, and I had access to it, I was able to discover whole worlds that existed outside of my drab small-town nowhere life --- worlds that were so much more vibrant, cultured, exciting, sexy, and filled with opportunity. I realize that the Internet is and always was a platform for hate and cyber-bullying, which is a problem it seems many teenagers deal with today, but it’s just as much, and I’m sure more, of a positive resource for intelligence, for learning, for communication. Online, I was able to connect with other queer kids my age, far away but in the same situation as I was in, and we were able to form a sort of way of supporting each other from a distance. Also I was afforded access, through the Internet, to forms of culture and troves of information that I would have not otherwise received. If you are watching this video right now, that means that you are utilizing the Internet as a tool to learn about what exists outside of your personal experience. And that’s fabulous.
With the Internet, and reading a lot, and watching lots of movies, and coming into contact with gay culture whenever I could, whether that meant watching Queer as Folk late at night with the volume turned down low so my parents wouldn’t hear or renting John Waters movies from Blockbuster, I gained a lot of perspective and realized that my world, the one I felt stuck in, was not the end of the world. So while my experience with boys was rather limited as a teenager --- and when I did have brief encounters with boys, usually boys from a few towns over, we had to sneak away to the isolated train tracks to even hold hands or briefly kiss --- while I didn’t have much in the way of boyfriends at that age, I did eventually grow comfortable with being more of myself more openly, and expressing myself publically. And although that still did not mean coming out to more than a few very close and understanding female friends --- it meant that I learned how to care less about how the bullies and dullards around me thought of what I did and how I looked or acted. So, with varying degrees of success, I tried to keep afloat during an extended period of depression, self-hatred, confusion, guilt --- all of which contributed to frequent absenteeism in school, plus alcohol and drug abuse --- and then, one day, it was all over.
I left town, went to college in Brooklyn, and never really looked back. And of course I’ve continued to have bad periods, and I make mistakes all the time, but… really, really… the struggle was worth it and the struggle was an education… and, very quickly after I left high school I was prepared to live out of the closest, even though it took me four more years to tell my family, I never again had to lie to my friends about who I was. Because I went to college, I went to art school, I went to the city, and found it very liberating, and found it a place where my queerness was a benefit rather than a deficit, and all sorts of wonderful things happened. I met so many fantastic friends, both queer and straight, who are very supportive, I read a lot of queer theory and became very interested in gay rights activism, I even met my beautiful boyfriend Ryan when we were both featured in a queer poetry reading --- and never again did I have to worry about those things that tormented me when I was younger on the overwhelming level which they were occurring at the time. The first time I held hands with another boy, in the city, and walked down the street without anybody batting an eye, let alone yelling “fag” at us --- it was a revelation. It gets better, seriously, and you’re going to see that so soon.
In conclusion, I want to return to the Dickinson poem, a little bit. Because there is another queerness that many die without. But not you. You have it. If you take anything from this statement, I hope it’s that being queer is whatever you can possibly define it as --- you. Nobody else has the right to define what your sexuality means to you, and the role it plays in your life. And nobody has the right to make you feel terrible about being LGBT. The reality is that we live in a heteronormative society, and that kind of violence and discouragement is still widely tolerated, and you are going to experience discrimination --- but we all face those challenges, we all have our stories, and when we’re determined to stick it out, to refuse to be beaten down by anti-gay abuse, we win. We allow ourselves to live, and to love, and to grow, and that makes us unfathomably lucky. And, you know, I think kids that are fifteen, sixteen, going to school right now --- you are the kids that are going to change the world. So much has happened for gay rights since I was that age --- just that it has become a topic of consistent national debate seems like a miracle to me (despite the vitriol over the issue that comes from certain, ignorant groups of people). So, please, think big, continue, and don’t let your present circumstances cloud your vision of the future.
***
That is the end of my statement. Reading it over again, I feel slightly sorry I wasn’t able to figure out how to reformat it to fit the general structure of the project, but I don’t think its absence on YouTube is a terrible detriment, especially considering all the great videos available on the It Gets Better channel. I recently visited my family, in Western New York, and regrettably dragged some of my old notebooks out of storage in the backyard shed. Reading my journals and letters from high school for the first time since I wrote them, I was struck by how absolutely miserable I felt. One friend with whom I corresponded at the time described my lengthy and tortured letters as a model in suicidal ideation. And, at the time, I absolutely lacked any foresight whatever, beyond the intense desire to leave my hometown surroundings as soon as humanly possible, so whatever happened in school, with being ostracized and mocked, and with my non-comprehending family, it all felt completely inescapable. But, of course, it wasn’t; that is the primary message the It Gets Better Project is delivering to our nation’s LGBT youth. And that is entirely admirable.
For those of you unfamiliar with Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project congratulations for being so sheltered from all media, but it’s a YouTube video campaign designed as a reaction to the recent publicity over the bullying-related suicide deaths of gay teenagers across the United States. The idea being that, upon hearing stories of tormented LGBT youth who killed themselves out of despair developed through environments of homophobia, abuse, and anti-gay hostility, writer Dan Savage wished he could speak to the teenaged queer community to try and convince troubled youth that middle and high school is torturous, but life gets a lot better and is therefore worth sticking around for. Then he realized that he needn’t wait around for invitations to address this demographic, as YouTube offered him a platform to forgo traditional venues and speak to them directly. The It Gets Better Project began with a great video by Dan Savage and his husband Terry (watch it here) and then opened up the floor for other video contributions. Since then, hundreds of videos have been posted, including a humorous one by actor Jeffrey Self, a very moving one by a councilman in Fort Worth, and many others by regular folk and celebrities alike. While the furious stream of videos tends to become repetitious (the main message being “Don’t kill yourself, wait it out, because it gets so much better”), I feel the project is complicated and tremendously justified. Early on, I decided to create my own contribution for It Gets Better. After drafting a statement and filming it, though, I declined to submit it for several reasons. The project became a cause célèbre overnight and I felt my slightly academic tone was incongruous with the accessibility of the main and, considering the wealth of videos from everyday individuals as well as the slightly condescending ones from famous media figures, both gay and straight, the anti-suicidal musings of a frequently suicidal experimental poet named Lonely Christopher could be both inconsequential and confusing.
First of all, the idea of some weirdo calling himself Lonely Christopher trying to convince queer youth that one day they will not feel so alone is problematic. I felt like I had to address this situation before reaching the fundamental point of my statement, which resulted in an overlong, self-involved preamble. I explained, don’t worry! it’s only an arty pseudonym, I’m really a friendly, semi-adjusted, and sociable person. Wondering if that was really enough, I then went on to try to posit the concept of “loneliness” as a profound and positive characteristic. I attempted this by citing my favorite poem by Emily Dickinson (you can tell how the video is already derailing here). Here is the poem:
There is another Loneliness
That many die without –
Not want of friend occasions it or circumstance of Lot
But nature, sometimes, sometimes thought
And whoso it befall
Is richer than could be revealed
By mortal numeral -
I then attempted to pose this heightened concept of loneliness as a metaphor for queerness, in such a way that a traditionally negatively perceived disposition could be viewed as a liberatory, ultimately subversive, benefit. Like loneliness, queerness is also often viewed in an unfavorable, unhelpful way. But, as Dickinson proves in her poem on loneliness, there is also no singular definition for queerness, what it means to be gay, or whatever word one uses to identify as LGBT. That suggests that one can push past the stereotypes and cultural restrictions around being gay and understand queerness as a special opportunity --- a gift, even, that not everybody has, through which one can really actualize one’s self in a tremendous way. I ended this overwrought point with the only line in the statement I really like: “I guess this is an overly complicated way of saying that I think being queer is basically a super power.”
After that regrettable introduction, which was unnecessary and haughty enough to discourage me from posting the video, I got around to my main purpose (and drew my point out in such a way that my video would have been significantly longer than most offerings available through the project). So that my misguided efforts do not go completely to waste, I here offer the entirety of the rest of my statement (addressed directly to the hypothetical youth watching the video):
You have to celebrate yourself as a queer individual. I know that it’s hard --- and it doesn’t automatically entail coming out to your friends or school or parents, but what I really mean is that you not only have to accept yourself in your own mind, but you have to allow yourself to understand all the ways that you are valuable, unique, and gifted --- and how being queer plays into your perception of self and the world around you. Again, that’s an incredibly hard task. I know I didn’t understand how to view my sexuality in a wholly positive light for many years after I discovered I was queer. That was when I was maybe thirteen, if you can believe it. Many other LGBT people say that they knew at a much earlier age, but I don’t think I was situated in a cultural climate where I was able to understand that about myself preternaturally. It really took until puberty, when I began developing sexual attractions to boys instead of girls, when the possibility dawned on me. And when it did, it was very bad news --- a real private struggle that I was completely alone in and lacked the critical faculties to negotiate. Basically, when these attractions came to my attention, I thought, “Oh no! Please, no! Not another problem I have to deal with!” And this particular problem really did feel like the biggest one in the world --- and one I was experiencing in complete isolation at first.
When I was growing up, “the gays” were only discussed in what was perceived to be a negative context such as AIDS. Being gay was construed as such an unspeakable fault, it seemed almost like anybody so much as talking about it was under suspicion for being a sexual deviant. Sometimes it seems so easy to understand how silly and thoughtless this cultural taboo placed around homosexuality really is, and how insubstantial and indefensible. But that didn’t help me much in school. I was so afraid of being abnormal I really didn’t come out to anybody throughout middle school and high school. It was just inconceivable that something like that, an out gay kid, could actually exist and be in any way accepted or live a normal life. There was a definite environment of homophobia, perpetrated by the students and enforced by the adults, which kept all the queer kids at school very, very quiet about it. At the time, I had male friends who were very worried that I wasn’t taking the same interest in girls as they were. So they set me up with a string off blundering homecoming and prom dates, girlfriends who lasted about a week and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t interested in making out, all of that. And, of course, I had to suffer, day in and day out, hearing almost everybody my age using the word “gay” in a derogatory way, “That’s so gay,” accusing each other of being sissies or fags when they were acting stupid, and all the rest. And whenever I was suspected of being one of those unspeakables, a fag, there was verbal abuse and casual bullying involved.
It was just not a pleasant environment for me to grow up in. I hated school so much. And, you know, when I was a junior, at sixteen, I did try to kill myself. In many ways, first of all, not feeling able to be honest with my parents about who I knew I was, but also, the climate of abuse and mental torture which I experienced, and which I know is prevalent for many others even now, in many ways these were the major contributing factors to my decision to try and prematurely end my life. Fortunately, my attempt was nonfatal --- I was discovered and hospitalized. Being in the hospital, personally, didn’t help me, because even in that drastic situation I was not able to be honest with the doctors and with my family about my sexuality. So that wasn’t really addressed, but I survived, and went back to school --- and somehow I just got through it. And now, of course, it is very obvious that the idea of ending my life was the absolute wrong way to handle that situation. I know that now because, as they say, it gets better.
One of the ways I got through it, I think, was with the Internet. This was a new instrument that just a few years before wasn’t really around. But since it was there, and I had access to it, I was able to discover whole worlds that existed outside of my drab small-town nowhere life --- worlds that were so much more vibrant, cultured, exciting, sexy, and filled with opportunity. I realize that the Internet is and always was a platform for hate and cyber-bullying, which is a problem it seems many teenagers deal with today, but it’s just as much, and I’m sure more, of a positive resource for intelligence, for learning, for communication. Online, I was able to connect with other queer kids my age, far away but in the same situation as I was in, and we were able to form a sort of way of supporting each other from a distance. Also I was afforded access, through the Internet, to forms of culture and troves of information that I would have not otherwise received. If you are watching this video right now, that means that you are utilizing the Internet as a tool to learn about what exists outside of your personal experience. And that’s fabulous.
With the Internet, and reading a lot, and watching lots of movies, and coming into contact with gay culture whenever I could, whether that meant watching Queer as Folk late at night with the volume turned down low so my parents wouldn’t hear or renting John Waters movies from Blockbuster, I gained a lot of perspective and realized that my world, the one I felt stuck in, was not the end of the world. So while my experience with boys was rather limited as a teenager --- and when I did have brief encounters with boys, usually boys from a few towns over, we had to sneak away to the isolated train tracks to even hold hands or briefly kiss --- while I didn’t have much in the way of boyfriends at that age, I did eventually grow comfortable with being more of myself more openly, and expressing myself publically. And although that still did not mean coming out to more than a few very close and understanding female friends --- it meant that I learned how to care less about how the bullies and dullards around me thought of what I did and how I looked or acted. So, with varying degrees of success, I tried to keep afloat during an extended period of depression, self-hatred, confusion, guilt --- all of which contributed to frequent absenteeism in school, plus alcohol and drug abuse --- and then, one day, it was all over.
I left town, went to college in Brooklyn, and never really looked back. And of course I’ve continued to have bad periods, and I make mistakes all the time, but… really, really… the struggle was worth it and the struggle was an education… and, very quickly after I left high school I was prepared to live out of the closest, even though it took me four more years to tell my family, I never again had to lie to my friends about who I was. Because I went to college, I went to art school, I went to the city, and found it very liberating, and found it a place where my queerness was a benefit rather than a deficit, and all sorts of wonderful things happened. I met so many fantastic friends, both queer and straight, who are very supportive, I read a lot of queer theory and became very interested in gay rights activism, I even met my beautiful boyfriend Ryan when we were both featured in a queer poetry reading --- and never again did I have to worry about those things that tormented me when I was younger on the overwhelming level which they were occurring at the time. The first time I held hands with another boy, in the city, and walked down the street without anybody batting an eye, let alone yelling “fag” at us --- it was a revelation. It gets better, seriously, and you’re going to see that so soon.
In conclusion, I want to return to the Dickinson poem, a little bit. Because there is another queerness that many die without. But not you. You have it. If you take anything from this statement, I hope it’s that being queer is whatever you can possibly define it as --- you. Nobody else has the right to define what your sexuality means to you, and the role it plays in your life. And nobody has the right to make you feel terrible about being LGBT. The reality is that we live in a heteronormative society, and that kind of violence and discouragement is still widely tolerated, and you are going to experience discrimination --- but we all face those challenges, we all have our stories, and when we’re determined to stick it out, to refuse to be beaten down by anti-gay abuse, we win. We allow ourselves to live, and to love, and to grow, and that makes us unfathomably lucky. And, you know, I think kids that are fifteen, sixteen, going to school right now --- you are the kids that are going to change the world. So much has happened for gay rights since I was that age --- just that it has become a topic of consistent national debate seems like a miracle to me (despite the vitriol over the issue that comes from certain, ignorant groups of people). So, please, think big, continue, and don’t let your present circumstances cloud your vision of the future.
***
That is the end of my statement. Reading it over again, I feel slightly sorry I wasn’t able to figure out how to reformat it to fit the general structure of the project, but I don’t think its absence on YouTube is a terrible detriment, especially considering all the great videos available on the It Gets Better channel. I recently visited my family, in Western New York, and regrettably dragged some of my old notebooks out of storage in the backyard shed. Reading my journals and letters from high school for the first time since I wrote them, I was struck by how absolutely miserable I felt. One friend with whom I corresponded at the time described my lengthy and tortured letters as a model in suicidal ideation. And, at the time, I absolutely lacked any foresight whatever, beyond the intense desire to leave my hometown surroundings as soon as humanly possible, so whatever happened in school, with being ostracized and mocked, and with my non-comprehending family, it all felt completely inescapable. But, of course, it wasn’t; that is the primary message the It Gets Better Project is delivering to our nation’s LGBT youth. And that is entirely admirable.
Monday, October 11, 2010
River
The Corresponding Society is very excited that Splitleaves Press, a chapbook publisher based in Philadelphia, has just released a new poem cycle by Robert Snyderman with illustrations by Esther Ward: River Tried to Not Be River.
Click here to learn more about it!
River Tried to Not be River is a study in contradictions. Graceful and elegant, yet one cannot help but feel an undercurrent of violence and aggression subsumed beneath the surface. Robert Snyderman’s poems can alternately feel like sketches or stories. Either way, one can’t help but relish his turns-of-phrase. Esther Ward’s enigmatic, black and white illustrations could easily stand on their own. Here, as a work of ekphrasis, they only perpetuate River‘s dichotomy.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Proust/Lasky
Okay guys, the Proust Questionaire is back in business (again). This time we are very pleased to feature super-awesome-uber-poet Dorothea Lasky. If you haven’t heard of Lasky, you need to go read her books (Awe and Black Life) right now. But, most likely, you know very well of her and you love her. The Corresponding Society loves her too. For the curious, blog editor Lonely Christopher reviews Lasky’s latest book, Black Life, here. Now, let’s get to it!
A Brief Introduction to Dorothea Lasky
Dorothea Lasky is an American poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 27, 1978. Lasky earned her BA in Classics and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, and her Ed.M. in Arts & Education from Harvard University. (From Wikipedia.)
Dorothea Lasky Answers the Proust Questionnaire
Your favorite virtue.
Kindness
Your favorite qualities in a man.
Humor
Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Humor
Your chief characteristic.
A changing center
What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Loyalty
Your main fault.
I always want to make everyone happy.
Your favorite occupation.
Teacher
Your idea of happiness.
Freedom
Your idea of misery.
Being constrained
If not yourself, who would you be?
A wolf
Where would you like to live?
Ideally, I would like a house in every town.
Your favorite prose authors.
Lydia Davis, Cicero, Flaubert, Yasunari Kawabata, Eileen Myles, Ivan Turgenev, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein
Your favorite poets.
Sylvia Plath and Catullus
Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Ivan Denisovich
Your favorite heroines in fiction.
Madame Bovary
Your favorite painters and composers.
Painters: Arshile Gorky, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Oskar Kokoschka, William Blake
Composers: Timbaland, Virgil Thomson, Handel, Bach, Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, Tom Petty
Your heroes in “real life.”
My father and Martin Luther King, Jr.
What characters in history do you most dislike?
Hitler
Your favorite names.
Violet, Roz, and Buzz
What do you hate the most?
Injustice
What military event do you admire the most?
The founding of Rome
What reform do you admire the most?
Dorothea Dix’s reform work in improving treatment for the mentally ill.
The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
Mathematical genius
How do you wish to die?
In my sleep
What is your present state of mind?
Clear
For what fault do you have the most toleration?
Tardiness
Your favorite motto.
Stay loose.
Interestingly enough, Lasky seems to be the only of our participants so far who has previously answered the Proust Questionnaire. Here is a beautiful video she brought to our attention of her answering the questions the first time around:
A Brief Introduction to Dorothea Lasky
Dorothea Lasky is an American poet. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 27, 1978. Lasky earned her BA in Classics and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers, and her Ed.M. in Arts & Education from Harvard University. (From Wikipedia.)
Dorothea Lasky Answers the Proust Questionnaire
Your favorite virtue.
Kindness
Your favorite qualities in a man.
Humor
Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Humor
Your chief characteristic.
A changing center
What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Loyalty
Your main fault.
I always want to make everyone happy.
Your favorite occupation.
Teacher
Your idea of happiness.
Freedom
Your idea of misery.
Being constrained
If not yourself, who would you be?
A wolf
Where would you like to live?
Ideally, I would like a house in every town.
Your favorite prose authors.
Lydia Davis, Cicero, Flaubert, Yasunari Kawabata, Eileen Myles, Ivan Turgenev, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein
Your favorite poets.
Sylvia Plath and Catullus
Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Ivan Denisovich
Your favorite heroines in fiction.
Madame Bovary
Your favorite painters and composers.
Painters: Arshile Gorky, Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet, Oskar Kokoschka, William Blake
Composers: Timbaland, Virgil Thomson, Handel, Bach, Stevie Nicks, Brian Wilson, Tom Petty
Your heroes in “real life.”
My father and Martin Luther King, Jr.
What characters in history do you most dislike?
Hitler
Your favorite names.
Violet, Roz, and Buzz
What do you hate the most?
Injustice
What military event do you admire the most?
The founding of Rome
What reform do you admire the most?
Dorothea Dix’s reform work in improving treatment for the mentally ill.
The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
Mathematical genius
How do you wish to die?
In my sleep
What is your present state of mind?
Clear
For what fault do you have the most toleration?
Tardiness
Your favorite motto.
Stay loose.
Interestingly enough, Lasky seems to be the only of our participants so far who has previously answered the Proust Questionnaire. Here is a beautiful video she brought to our attention of her answering the questions the first time around:
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