I've loved your writing for decades, gave your books to friends for presents, used your stories and books in my twenty two year teaching career- mostl public high school and some lowresidence college courses. My favorite story of yours is Spokane Woman Scalp Dancer which my students flipped for and I assigned them to do a one page story, or like Grace Paley's two page story about education "He Tells Me The Story of His Life", or the great Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer's story in The Hedgehog and OtherStories " A Summary of Whata Happened to Mohamed el Matagubi" about a chage in thelifeofacafeneerdo welll. If you google my name,you can see some of thewor Ive done in the last few years in fiction and poetry. I have a bunch of what I call Black Lives MattersHybridd Haikus in the flowereingssongpressanthology GoodCopBadCop editedby Eduard Villaruea and Vincent Cooper at flowersongpress out of Mclellan Texas in the nd eof the Rio Grande Valley. Be well in the deepest, but dont eat any moss .
also - you said a while ago that the book worldd/business was changing and not forthe better. Could you say more about that? And are you still publishing with Grove? Do you ever publish anything with your earlier press, Hanging Loose,that published those two astonishing slim works- The Business of Fancy Dancing, and First Indian On The Moon.
Love can do strange things, but I find the juxtaposition of how you describe the couple, and the fact that you met your wife while living there maybe the most beautiful thing in the poem. The pain of others does not necessarily become our pain. What is a place of violent memories became a place of loving memories. At least, that's how I read it. I hope it did in reality as well.
In the 70's two friends rented a house like that up on Capital Hill. Six bedrooms upstairs. I remember wondering what stories I would hear if I knew how to listen to the walls. Probably no row of bullet holes, who knows. Please share what novel you wrote while you lived in the bullet hole room.
My Dad spent the last two years of his life helping care for my brother as he succumbed to ALS. They played dominoes and cards and Dad sat with him for hours during his periodic hospitalizations. Dad passed in his sleep just a few months before my brother. I believe he cleaned his slate.
In the winter of 1979, my father shot my brother(drug addict). Both survived. My brother with a bullet lodged near his spine, my dad with a masking tape covered bullet hole in a cabinet in the hallway where the shooting occurred. I have always wondered how my Dad could have done such a thing and why he left the hole so thinly hidden (until a realtor suggested the value of the house could be impacted). This poem has offered me an opportunity to look back at that event with a more understanding and forgiving heart.
This reminds me of similar period of destitution I went through at around the same time, living in an apartment in Aberdeen while teaching English comp for starvation wages at Grays Harbor College. Let us compare mythologies, to quote Leonard Cohen.
A gunfire discount! Great movement in this poem, encompassing so much that it reads like a mini memoir, with a wonderful shift when you address the reader, offering a kind of call to arms. But what really distinguishes this poem is the matter-of-fact voice that narrates most of it until the end, making the plea more powerful. Nice!
This is breathtaking. The sparse form bearing so much drama and feeling. My thought is that your life prepared you for this kind of writing. Most of us would have seen the surface violence and run away from it But you found love and produced art, as if indifferent to the surroundings, and asked for the meaning that the wreckage could offer. So grateful to you for giving this to us.
Dang, Brother. What you can do with a story like that. And to live with that invisible constellation and feed your spirit with its fire. Sadness and rage come into our lives, all of us. Use them to feed the fire!
I have returned to this poem over and over again since I first read it. I think it’s one of your best.
Trauma, not poverty. Lack of hope, a path out, abuse, trauma. Rarely poverty although it can make the rest harder.
Thanks, Mary Kay.
Great story!
Pulling the reader in directly was a curious twist.
I've loved your writing for decades, gave your books to friends for presents, used your stories and books in my twenty two year teaching career- mostl public high school and some lowresidence college courses. My favorite story of yours is Spokane Woman Scalp Dancer which my students flipped for and I assigned them to do a one page story, or like Grace Paley's two page story about education "He Tells Me The Story of His Life", or the great Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer's story in The Hedgehog and OtherStories " A Summary of Whata Happened to Mohamed el Matagubi" about a chage in thelifeofacafeneerdo welll. If you google my name,you can see some of thewor Ive done in the last few years in fiction and poetry. I have a bunch of what I call Black Lives MattersHybridd Haikus in the flowereingssongpressanthology GoodCopBadCop editedby Eduard Villaruea and Vincent Cooper at flowersongpress out of Mclellan Texas in the nd eof the Rio Grande Valley. Be well in the deepest, but dont eat any moss .
also - you said a while ago that the book worldd/business was changing and not forthe better. Could you say more about that? And are you still publishing with Grove? Do you ever publish anything with your earlier press, Hanging Loose,that published those two astonishing slim works- The Business of Fancy Dancing, and First Indian On The Moon.
Wow, what a story.
Such an engaging write, too.
Love can do strange things, but I find the juxtaposition of how you describe the couple, and the fact that you met your wife while living there maybe the most beautiful thing in the poem. The pain of others does not necessarily become our pain. What is a place of violent memories became a place of loving memories. At least, that's how I read it. I hope it did in reality as well.
I loved that place!
In the 70's two friends rented a house like that up on Capital Hill. Six bedrooms upstairs. I remember wondering what stories I would hear if I knew how to listen to the walls. Probably no row of bullet holes, who knows. Please share what novel you wrote while you lived in the bullet hole room.
I wrote Reservation Blues there.
Your words make me feel like writing my own words. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew.
My Dad spent the last two years of his life helping care for my brother as he succumbed to ALS. They played dominoes and cards and Dad sat with him for hours during his periodic hospitalizations. Dad passed in his sleep just a few months before my brother. I believe he cleaned his slate.
Oh, wow, that is sad and beautiful.
In the winter of 1979, my father shot my brother(drug addict). Both survived. My brother with a bullet lodged near his spine, my dad with a masking tape covered bullet hole in a cabinet in the hallway where the shooting occurred. I have always wondered how my Dad could have done such a thing and why he left the hole so thinly hidden (until a realtor suggested the value of the house could be impacted). This poem has offered me an opportunity to look back at that event with a more understanding and forgiving heart.
Thank you Sherman.
Oh, damn, Michael, that's a traumatic memory. Our loved ones can be such mysteries.
Poverty turns people into economic compatriots.
And poverty can turn people into anger machines. Beautiful, dark story.
This reminds me of similar period of destitution I went through at around the same time, living in an apartment in Aberdeen while teaching English comp for starvation wages at Grays Harbor College. Let us compare mythologies, to quote Leonard Cohen.
A gunfire discount! Great movement in this poem, encompassing so much that it reads like a mini memoir, with a wonderful shift when you address the reader, offering a kind of call to arms. But what really distinguishes this poem is the matter-of-fact voice that narrates most of it until the end, making the plea more powerful. Nice!
Thank you, Peter, for the kind words on the architecture.
This is breathtaking. The sparse form bearing so much drama and feeling. My thought is that your life prepared you for this kind of writing. Most of us would have seen the surface violence and run away from it But you found love and produced art, as if indifferent to the surroundings, and asked for the meaning that the wreckage could offer. So grateful to you for giving this to us.
Thank you, Kate.
Dang, Brother. What you can do with a story like that. And to live with that invisible constellation and feed your spirit with its fire. Sadness and rage come into our lives, all of us. Use them to feed the fire!
Thank you, Bruce.
wooooow!
Thank you, Amy.