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Until the beginning of this month, I hadn't really written anything in some time; either the brief heartbreak of last November had taken it out of me (you'd think it would be the other way round) or I'd just run out of steam. At February's start, I promised myself to write every day, to at least a couple of thousand words a week. Two recent events have rather renewed my purpose.
The British Horror Films forum, of which I'm a happy and proud member, recently saw the announcement of an "experiment" by our friend Kath, whereby a very haunting picture was posted (I don't have the link, but it showed two desiccated corpses clutching each other tightly against a sickly-sweet yellow backdrop) and members were asked to write stories based on that picture. I hemmed and hawed and said it would probably take a couple of weeks for me to do something, and then I write this that very night in under an hour. The enthusiastic reaction really jazzed me, and it was great, too, to see some other excellent contributions as well. There's a lot of genuine talent on the board, and considering the crap market for short stories (especially horror or "speculative fiction," a term I prefer to "scifi-fantasy"), it's likely the only place we'll ever have to see other people's honest reactions to our work. Bless you guys.
Monday, I went to hear local poet Karyna McGlynn read from her chapbooks Scorpionica and Alabama Steve at Shaman Drum. I've known Karyna for several months now (my friend Adam's her significant other), and had grown increasingly curious about the work she did--she's an M.F.A. at Michigan and teaches at Washtenaw Community College, and apparently won the prestigious Hopwood Award (named for Charles Hopwood, local literary luminary of the early twentieth century and writer of Gold Diggers of 1933, which I inexplicably haven't seen). So when I heard she was going to read at Shaman Drum, I figured I should go hear her. I've made my feelings on most contemporary poetry known already, and was a little alarmed that I'd have to indulge in the well-meaningly mendacious "um, yeah, I thought it was pretty good" shuffle that's a persistent danger whenever you have to read work by people you know (I've certainly been the recipient of such "praise" more times than I care to remember). Fortunately, after the hilariously rococo introduction given by that guy at Shaman Drum who does it so well (I've heard him introduce Peter Balakian, Daniel Clowes, and Kim Deitch, and it's a crackup every time), I found rerlief that such muffling wouldn't be necessary. I heard nothing that started with "I am a gull," nothin'. The poems from Scorpionica were powerfully haunting cinematic pictures from her childhood in Texas that could easily be done into short films, and then we got Alabama Steve, poetry after my own heart. It's hard to describe Alabama Steve--the pieces are a lot like "Rollo's Lament," only better and more coherent, all boisterousuly funny "poetry-prose-flash-fiction-whatever" involving the adventures of a semi-mythical character named Alabama Steve. Apart from the appearance of Journey's Steve Perry and a praying mantis scientist named Alejandro, I can't really say much else, but was charmed beyond words, and reminded that there's really a place for whatever literary lunacy you care to name--including hers, including mine, including everybody's. Thanks, Karyna.
So if I stop again, I only have myself to blame.
Updated: 19 February 2008 12:54 PM EST
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