Is it peculiar
that, in the same week, I received invitations to participate in Brandon Public Library's Authors Festival on September 14 and 15 and to read at the Foot of the Lake Poetry Collective's reading series at the Windhover Arts Center in Fond du Lac on March 6? I mean, one goes for months and months without such invitations, and then receives two of them only a few days apart.
Confirms my theory about the universe's tendency to glob like things together.
In the case of the Authors Festival in Brandon, I had to tell them I would not be able to participate on Friday, September 14, as I had already committed to reading at the Village Booksmith in Baraboo on that date.
Confirms my theory, again, that the universe tends to glob like things together. When the fellow called with the invitation for the Authors Festival, my reading on September 14 at the Village Booksmith was the only engagement on my 2007 literary calendar beyond those in January. (I read at the Pump House in La Crosse on January 18, you remember, and at the Poetry Marathon at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee this past Saturday.)
My firm policy is "First Come, First Served." That is, I would stand by my commitment to read at the Village Booksmith, even if that meant I could not participate in Brandon's Authors Festival. That's how I want to be treated, so that's how I treat those who are kind enough to invite me to read. It is a slippery slope, I think, if you cancel an appearance at one place in order to read somewhere else that might be more lucrative or better for your career. I grew up in a world where a hand-shake agreement meant something.
Fortunately, it seems that the Brandon Library's Authors Festival can accommodate my prior commitment and will schedule me for September 15th only.
*
I did read at the Poetry Marathon at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee this past Saturday, January 27. Because I was later than usual getting signed up for a reading slot, my accustomed hour (3:00-4:00 p.m.) was filled. I read during the 4:00-5:00 p.m. slot.
Fortunately, things were running about twenty minutes behind schedule when we arrived, so I got to see and hear some of my accustomed co-conspirators; and then during the next hour I was introduced to many writers who were new to me. The work of some of them was terrific. Indeed, I have to say that the two young women who came up from Chicago for the Marathon brought some stunning work with them. The first, reading what she called "a five-minute fiction," left you gasping for air; the other read a poem in five parts which she said was about pornagraphy and society and such, and "if that bothers you, you can leave now," yet it turned out to be a lovely ode to that place where a woman curves back inside herself. Terrific and exciting writers, both of them.
It was not poetry that I read for my part of this year's Marathon, but prose passages which maybe could pass for poetry, taken from my memoir, Curlew: Home, passages about: the smell of St. Mary's Grade School in Mallard, Iowa; the poetry of scooping corn; night plowing; and this, from a "Meditation at the Old Home Place:"
You see mile after mile after mile of empty field, the ground worked for another season. There is a time to sow and a time to reap. A time to laugh and a time to cry. A time for the wind to blow, a time for incredible silence. A time for building up small farms, a time for tearing them down. For everything there is a season and a purpose under these shifting Iowa skies.
I must say, my prose of that farm world I grew up in sounded awfully grounded compared to the work of some few of the other writers who read during the same hour, self-important poets who haven't yet realized, perhaps, that poetry, true poetry, is about something bigger than they are. Perhaps they will come to that recognition, but they haven't as yet. Neither wall-to-wall surrealistic imagery nor L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E G=A=M=E=S will get you into heaven, I'm afraid.
And, I ask you, if poetry doesn't take you to heaven, what does it do?
*
I have been continuing to hammer mightily upon Peter's Story, the memoir of a Milwaukee childhood during the 1920s and 1930s that I am co-authoring with Peter Pizzino. That which I pulled apart again - the first eight chapters - is now pretty much put back together. And I have sketched out the contents for each of the chapters still needing to be written, Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12. Chapter 13, the final chapter, is pretty much drafted, as is the short epilogue.
Sometimes I think the writing of Peter's Story might be a little bit like the Wreck of the Old 97: "He was goin' down the grade doin' 90 miles an hour...." I hope I don't get "scalded to death by the steam."
I'll take Chapters 2 and 3 to Peter and will review them with him one week from today.
That's progress.
Yeah, the universe does do that globbing thing but only does it to me in what appears to be a mean way. Those times when you have to ask, what the hell else can go wrong today? But then I usually get all spiritual and say well, everything happens for a reason and go and put some ointment on the rash.
I very much respect your commitment to scheduling. Girls get a bad rep when they break a date with a girlfriend because a cute guy called and, well, who wants to go out with the girls when there's this guy? It's important to honor that agreement and handshake. I like that.
Posted by: Sharon | February 02, 2007 at 03:39 AM
Well, Sharon, I'm not sure everything happens for a reason, but it happens; yet one is always happier letting go of it than holding onto it. We get beyond it sooner if we stop rubbing salt in it and leave it alone, which is what your "getting all spiritual" does, doesn't it?
Posted by: Tom Montag | February 02, 2007 at 06:09 AM