Little Stories.

52. There was an old lady who lived in a shoe } New Genre 7.

2012-01-17T01:41:00.004-05:00

Two days ago I emailed Matthew Pendleton to accept his story “Work Planet, Welt Space” for New Genre 7. His story “I Am Antenna / Antennae” appeared in issue 6. Both stories depict a barely conscious humanity, surrounded by a massive system, possibly of their own making, but now utterly beyond their understanding. Yet, the worlds portrayed are not wholly dystopian, but are worlds populated with nice people who like each other, and filled with moments of childish delights. As far as I know, the only other story Pendleton has published appeared in Birkensnake #2, and can be read here. His blog is also a fine introduction to his entrancing obfuscation.

Also in New Genre 7, a little ghost story by John Cotter, who mainly operates in realism, but has delved brilliantly into weird fiction before, see “Christobel” in The Lifted Brow no. 4; science fiction from poet Greg Purcell; a post-apocalyptic sequence from Geordie Flantz, whose story “The Ghost Days of Melody Brown” appeared in Shadows & Tall Trees no. 2; and a trip to an underworld by Jennifer Claus, whose story "Bench" will be her first published work. I hope to accept at least one, if not two more stories before I call the issue complete. I am grateful to everyone who is patient.

The image above was one of a brilliant batch of possible covers for New Genre 4, designed by the visual artist, composer, and bass guitarist Jeremy Withers.

51. Fantasia and the } here & now.

2012-01-16T00:21:00.001-05:00

After non-fiction night at Inescapable Rhythms, I stood out in the parking lot with Meghan Dahn and Kristin Kostick, talking. We heard an animal move through the tall grasses that grow alongside the nearby railroad tracks. We stood silent for a moment, then a breeze swung down through the tress, and we decided to call it a night. As I drove down Park Road toward West Hartford, I slowed for a group of police cruisers, lights flashing, that made a circle around some crisis. I swear, lit by the red and blue lights, I saw a big animal, either asleep or felled.

The temperature dropped from forty degrees to twenty. I took my eldest daughter to see Fantasia at the Wadsworth. I loved the film as a boy but I really didn’t remember most of it. I thought, as I watched with my daughter on my lap, This is a mature movie, in the sense that it’s grown-up. Whimsical, even silly at times, it never panders. The formation of life on Earth, all the way to the end of the dinosaurs, set to the Rite of Spring? (Is this the Disney movie creationists forbid their ignorant children to watch?) The pagan, at times mildly erotic bacchanal set to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68?

Watching the selections from The Nutcracker Suite, I wondered if maybe Fantasia is the reason I enjoy those pieces—"The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies," "The Chinese Dance," "The Arabian Dance," etc.—so much.

And there, nostalgia combined with a deep pleasure in the present. My memories and the light weight of my little girl, and her delight, and knowing that after the film my wife would be there with my youngest and the four of us would enjoy the rest of the day together.

50. Two readings } one laid on top of the other.

2011-12-07T14:04:00.004-05:00

49. Of critics } and their nasty reviews.

2011-12-04T00:53:00.002-05:00

Oedipus asks Teiresias to identify the murderer in Thebes. Teiresias does, but Oedipus doesn’t like the answer (“You are the murderer you seek.”), so he must accuse the seer of blindness, declare that, “Whatever you say is worthless,” and that Teiresias is motivated (via Creon) by envy, not truth.

What a typical response to criticism.

King Lear asks to be told “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” Goneril and Regan say what Lear wishes to hear in the way he wishes to hear it; Cordelia, possessed of integrity, cannot, says “Nothing” and then, “I love your majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.” For her integrity, Cordelia is disowned. Kent, loyal to the king but not a sycophant, attempts to intervene. His loyalty is met with banishment.

Lear’s pride is wounded by Cordelia’s “plainness” (honesty). To save face, he must declare her honesty to be something else. He calls it pride. When Kent—presumably Lear’s longtime and trusted adviser—points out that Lear is unreasonable, Lear calls Kent a traitor. Lear must declare reason to be worse than its opposite—to be betrayal.

Again, typical responses to criticism—at least in my experience. In the case of a book review, a fan of the author I criticized said I was jealous because I’m not a famous, Edgar Award-winning author. When I questioned the approach an awards committee took to fund-raising, I was accused of doing so because I hadn’t been nominated for their award.

Cordelia and Kent defend themselves against Lear’s accusations by staying true. Kent, disguised, becomes Lear’s closest adviser once more, and Cordelia returns with France to challenge the gross rule of Goneril and Regan. (I know. For Kent and Cordelia, being proven right is bitter consolation.)

For the second issue of Shadows & Tall Trees I reviewed Al Sarrantonio’s Portents. David B. Silva (I assume he’s the “Dave” at Hellnotes) reviewed the issue. He characterized my review as “nasty.” I find this characterization to be misleading, and I don’t want people to think that Shadows & Tall Trees—a very valuable journal—is in the business of publishing reviews that are merely nasty. (For a sense of my critical approach to Portents, I wrote about my thinking here. And Silva's review, it should be noted, is favorable.)

Toward the end of my review of Portents I wrote, “I don’t mean for this to be a hatchet job but a spur,” and I mean that. My greatest wish for Portents is that its editor will react to my negative criticism by editing a flawless second volume. A hatchet job is a gleeful thing; reviewing Portents made me sad.

48. A little more } year end reading.

2011-12-02T01:53:00.005-05:00

As a contributing editor for Open Letters Monthly I periodically criticize the organization and less frequently submit an essay. This month, see “Our Year in Reading.” My bit’s very highfalutin, Virgil, Vergil, epics, and “Ozymandias. ” Do read it though, and the other editors’ recommendations, too, but before you link away let me add to my list, with a little less finesse, a few titles more.

I mentioned James Belflower’s Commuter here once before. I will write about the Side Real Press anthology Delicate Toxins—I haven’t finished reading it yet—but thus far two stories really impressed me: Angela Caperton’s “Tlaloc” (I owe you a letter, Ms. Caperton) and rj krijnen-kemp’s “Dogs.” I’ve been afraid to write about Christopher Barker’s collection Tenebrous Tales because Barker is rumored to be evil, and I generally try not to invoke the names of demons. I liked his story “Subtle Differences.” And by virtue of being an Ex Occidente title, the book itself is exquisite.

For a buck I picked up The Year’s Best Horror Stories VIII (edited by Karl Edward Wagner in 1980) for the Alan Ryan story. Not the same Alan Ryan who writes for The New York Review of Books (sorry for the mix up, Mr. Ryan!), but the Alan Ryan who wrote a handful of excellent stories in the 1980s, then disappeared—though apparently continued to write. Ryan died this year.

And Voice of Ice / Voix de Glace by Alta Ifland. The book, part of the 2007 Les Figues Press "TrenchArt: The Parapet Series," is tall and slim like a Zagat guide, but black, and filled with little stories en français and in English. "I speak from inside the stem of an ice flower." Very beautiful.

47. “I could play all day } in my green cathedral.”

2011-11-06T23:50:00.001-05:00

The storm came two days before Halloween and left the city dark. My eldest and I read by candlelight and watched lightning strikes.

During the bright morning that followed, I walked from the house to the top of the street. Fall leaves torn from trees—red and still green, bright against the snow. A power line sagged low it touched the road. A tree’s limb had flattened the chain-link fence in front of the house where the Crown of Glory van parks every Sunday morning.

In the backyard, I discovered the storm cleared much of the vegetation that grows in a fenced-in no-man’s land between my property and the neighbor’s. A plant my size—I’m a tall man—was now exposed growing from the center of a vernal pond. An odd plant. Its stem looked like bone, like a spine. Its flower, which undulated even when the air seemed still, was like the fronds of a fern. The leaves were orange.

May still be. I’ve yet to examine it more closely. Then, the fence kept me from it—though I could easily hop the fence, there was much to do. I needed to find a place where my family could stay—20 degrees the predicted temperature at sunset.

We were without power till Thursday. Today begins a regular week.

46. Sweep up } for the author’s note.

2011-10-07T11:28:00.001-04:00

Anna Eyre inadvertently caused A panic in man me. A cog in spin A spoke in wheel me is thrown out all windows me.

Poet Anna Eyre is this month’s featured poet for the Inescapable Rhythms series at Real Art Ways. Now hosted by Kristin Kostick, Inescapable Rhythms brings a writer to the microphone to read, then invites its audience to read. Rarely all at once. On our best nights, the power fails and we read by candlelight, or our guest says “train” and a distant whistle blows. Anna may or may not read from her chapbook are me, or she might read from her upcoming collection. Let’s all go to the lobby for wine, beer, soda, and snacks. Inescapable Rhythms happens every second Wednesday of every month. All are welcome to come listen, and to come read their poetry or prose. Anna and I may or may not work on our collaborative poem live during the open.

“A make sense this pulse they / all about not not given up an answer they / not sure the correct answer of they / not sure of these questions they / struggle round immeasurable rulers they / want A balance to make up they” [from Anna Eyre's “they”]

45. Worse than } marginalia.

2011-08-09T22:08:00.001-04:00

I reviewed Portents, an anthology edited by Al Sarrantonio, for the second issue of Shadows & Tall Trees; anyone who orders the new issue is entered to win the copy of Portents I used to write my review. This is a hardbound book, numbered and with Sarrantonio’s autograph, but what makes it a singular object is my extensive marginalia. I used Pigma Micron pens, with either .25 or .45 millimeter line width, and various shades of blue or brown. Some of my notes amount to rough drafts for the review, but most are immediate reactions to the contents—from Steven Jones’ forward through the last story and contributor’s notes. A sample page can be found at the Shadows & Tall Trees blog.

Whoever wins the Portents + Golaski marginalia will want to work vigorously to make me a famous author, in order to boost its value. One way to do this is to write favorable reviews of my books. Here’s a line you could write: “…the style, the execution, the refusal to offer up a warmed-over and simple explanation or denouement …are marks of quality in my book.” Or you could write, “It is with… subtleties that Golaski most impresses; while he’s gorgeous on ‘the allure of the accident…’ he’s even stronger on those unpicturable things: the “heavy nostalgia” of watching discarded videocassettes with a loved one, or, even more, those post-coital feelings, as in a tremendous scene where a man’s wife lies on her back and ‘pictures a glass jar, a large jar... emerging from her ribs, just below her breasts.’” Of course I don't mean to impose.

Purchase Shadows & Tall Trees #2, edited by Michael Kelly, with all new fiction including a story by New Genre author Eric Schaller (“The Sparrow Mumbler,” issue #6), my review, a set of really fine film reviews by Tom Goldstein and YOU might win a book I thoughtlessly destroyed.

44. Aaaaaaaaaaaalice } read.

2011-08-07T22:36:00.002-04:00

Aaaaaaaaaaalice, the second single-author collection published by Flim Forum Press, my and Matthew Klane’s poetry press, was favorably reviewed by poet Erika Jo Brown for the Iowa Review.

Jennifer Karmin’s book-length poem was emphatically a yes for Flim. When we first saw cantos from the poem, a submission to Flim’s A Sing Economy, there was no discussion; we took ‘em. That’s not customary. Matthew and I still bear scars from our debates over a good number of the poems that did and didn’t make the Sing cut. Karmin’s cantos were salve. We were similarly of one mind when the full Aaaaaaaaaaalice ms. was sent us.

Brown's review begins by describing the book’s overall aesthetic, and while I can take some credit for the look of our titles, the lion’s share must go to Matthew, who labors over every page in his little basement office. Back then, he was still constructing mock-ups with print-outs and a paper cutter. He not only made mock-ups of the book, but also constructed paper bookshops and paper readers. This of course made for a very strange scene, a bit like a Robert Wilson installation. Matthew’s wife still refuses to go to the basement at night.

Brown also described an Aaaaaaaaaaalice reading:

Karmin distributed slips of printed paper—later revealed to be ribbons from her book—to a crowd of about a hundred people. She invited the group to interject with their given words at any volume, at any interval. Then, she began to recite evenly and energetically. Thoroughly unruffled, her voice seemed to absorb the intrusions that eventually evolved into enrichments.

This is only one form Aaaaaaaaaaalice readings take, but they are always collaborations with the audience. Never, I hasten to add, free-for-alls. Karmin conducts, so even accidents fit. If the opportunity arises, hear her read.

43. Bookstock and } the Dire Literary Series.

2011-07-25T11:41:00.000-04:00

Alone in a miniscule Vermont town, alone for days, wandering around in a French-cuff, white dress shirt, gray trousers, and black, leather boots, lost off a trail, I ended up at a post-and-rail fence, looped with barbed wire. There ahead was a field. Horses, all of them white, grazed. One turned to the noise I made when I stepped on the bottom rail of the fence to test its strength. Green plants dangled from the horse’s mouth. Looked more like seaweed than grass. We stared at each other.

With minimal damage to my clothes I managed to hop the fence. The horses mostly ignored me and I did my best not to look at them, as if they’d recognize me later when they were questioned by the rancher. I’d been out all night, and the sight of a road—a real, paved road, with route numbers on signs posted alongside—was a huge relief.

Just a few feet from the fence that closed the field to the road, I felt a sharp pain between my shoulder blades. Very briefly, the road ahead of me turned red, and flowed, and all over the banks of this blood river were pale white flowers, blooming, and the trees withered white, and the sky, white. Beside me stood a horse, but not a horse: from between its nostrils was erupted a horn, its tip bright red. It snuffled—I felt its wet breath on my cheek. I made for the fence and got over it, started up the road, and finally found my car.

This weekend I’ll be in Vermont again, but with family and clear goals to keep me from late night bacchanalia. I was invited to present at Bookstock, “a Green Mountain Festival of Words.” I’ll read from Color Plates, and talk a little about writing short fictions; I have it in mind to talk about Angela Denstad’s as-of-yet unfinished collection of shorts, maybe read one or two. I’m also on-call to workshop high school student writing.

If you’re in the neighborhood of “the beautiful village of Woodstock, Vermont” Friday and/or Saturday, July 29-30, come see, “Over thirty authors of national and local renown will speak, read from their work, offer interactive programs and mingle with the participating public.” There’ll be book vendors and music, too.

The following weekend I’ll go Cambridgeward, to read for Timothy Gager’s Dire Literary Series, August 5, 8pm. The evening begins with an open mic, which means I get to meet you, and then features, Anne Ipsen, Ray Charbonneau, me. Timothy asked me to participate after I read at Ron Goba’s. I hope it’ll snow.

42. "la Porte de l'Orient," } where I note things.

2011-07-23T23:38:00.001-04:00

Dan T. Ghetu, the man enslaved by the beautiful and malevolent creature called Ex Occidente, has published The Master in Café Morphine: A Homage to Mikhail Bulgakov, the second in what appears to be a series of anthology tributes to European authors of the weird (the first is Cinnabar’s Gnosis: A Homage to Gustav Meyrink; the third will be This Hermetic Legislature: A Homage to Bruno Schulz). The Master in Café Morphine is under “real-time review” by D.F. Lewis at The Hawler, and my contribution has already been reviewed.

Tho I type “review” certain that it’s not the right word. Here’s a sample:

“…a Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, Anton Chekhov incident that haunts the stiff pages of this book, one of which pages might be used to funnel or chase dreams of forgetfulness in powder form… the sharpest funnel of all being the one that can deliver dreams of forgetfulness melted or distilled from the Winter of our souls by directly penetrating the skin with such a page’s words made fluid.”

I do know what Lewis means, by the way, and from his review it’s obvious he’s insightful. Chekhov was very much in mind while I wrote. My story is called “The Country Doctor” a title taken from Kafka, but also Bulgakov’s A Country Doctor’s Notebook.

Lewis also reviewed Cinnabar’s Gnosis. My contribution, “Her Magnetic Field,” is a story I am very fond of, which introduces Theophile, his amoral sister Monica, and his friend Philip (who once did battle in outer space with “the stone that thinks”). Lewis wrote:

“Proustian selves by cassette tape. Proustian selves as flies. This brings back for me the days of cassettes, when I recorded not only music from the wireless but echoes of sonorous existence from blank tape to blank tape and back again as sounds mounted sounds like randy insectoids…”

Proust! Thank you Mr. Lewis.

…and Lewis reviewed Old Albert: An Epilogue, another Ex Occidente title (in the Passport Levant series), this written by my friend Brian J. Showers. I’ve yet to read all of this revised and expanded version of the story, but I accepted the original “Old Albert” for New Genre #7, so I know at its core is a stellar story (I sold the rights to “Old Albert” for an astronomical figure, which explains why I’m writing this post from a club in Ibiza, for those of you who wondered). The book itself, as is the case with all the Ex Occidente titles I’ve seen, is gorgeous.

Earlier this year I heard Lance Olsen talk about books and their future (or non-future, says the hideous structure that once was a Borders). He said something along these lines: in the face of the e-book, many publishers of print books are showing us what the book can do.

What can a book do? The physical book lends atmosphere to the text it carries. Even the crummiest paperback, pages loose and yellowed, can enhance a text (what better way to read hardboiled detective fiction or Burroughs?).

The stately elegance of a volume from Ex Occidente is exactly the right setting for the collections and novels they publish. If I were in Romania, Dan and I would right now be standing over a table, smoking horrible cigarettes and examining the pages of the novel I am making in my head at this moment, and considering which silk ribbon bookmark and which silver foil stamp will best suit the horror.

41. The murky depths } of the frog pond.

2011-07-20T22:50:00.003-04:00

At last back from Boston, where my ship wrecked in the middle of the frog pond shortly after I left Emerson College. There was nothing to do but sit below the fountain and watch dryads mock me from the trees. A little girl led me and my crew to the shore, only to transform us into carousel horses. As I went round and round there was time to contemplate Emerson's Pre-College Creative Writing Program, for which I was a guest speaker. Thirty high school juniors and seniors listened to me during the day's Coffehouse Hour. I was asked to "prepare a brief introduction that touches upon what you wish someone would've told your teenage self about writing… and read about ten minutes worth of an excerpt from a recent publication or something you are working on." I spent all morning thinking about what I wished people had told my teenage writer self, but my thots all rabbitholed back to the fact that people did tell me, gave me fine advice, a very little of which I followed. If I could tell my teenage writer self something it would be to take some of that advice more seriously. So I told them to watch less television, eat reasonable after-school snacks, read more and more widely, and to fold and put away their school clothes.

I also showed the students OUTLAND, read a new story called "Open Houses," and encouraged questions. I'm not sure what I would have asked if I were in their position, but at least one student was determined to go home to his mom and dad with proof positive that a writer can make a living so mom and dad please send me to college for creative writing and not dentistry. I was little help, since I am a dentist.

While I went round and round the carousel, Speculative Fiction Junkie posted a positive review of Shadows & Tall Trees #1, and editor Michael Kelly can now wear a “British Fantasy Awards Nominee” badge, if he so chooses (Murky Depths won last year for best magazine? Murky Depths is what’s wrong with horror magazines. And its victory illustrates how broken fantasy literary awards are). Whatever. I’m pleased to see S&TT get some attention.

Night fell on Boston. The children went home and the gates to the carousel were locked. All we could move were our eyes.

40. Efflorescent } Barzakh.

2011-05-21T16:45:00.000-04:00

John Cotter and I read to a handful of people at the Center for Social Justice in February. In Albany. John brought strange wine. I tried a shortcut across a snow-covered vacant lot but was stymied by a precipitous drop. I read February newspaper notes (above, a page from; the first two lines transcribed from text messages sent to myself just prior to a reading by Abraham Smith).

Our hosts were Anna Eyre and James Belflower. I read James’ book and wrote him, “Yr Commuter arrived today. Sat down to read a few pages and read the whole book. Good to read it in one sitting. The bomb-narrative carries the reader thru and tends to generate the most poignant moments, but of course some of that is juxtaposition, honeymoon and lost limbs, for instance.” And, “this poetry comes at just the right time. I think it and Anna E., and some other poetries may save me and push me deeper into what I began with what I read in Albany.”

And indeed. Anna asked me and John to send poems for Barzakh, a new journal out of the English department at the University at Albany, SUNY. We did. The new issue was posted a few days ago. Anna telegraphed from Alaska to tell me. From co-editor Sarah Giragosian, “Barzakh wishes to consider in what ways traditional and experimental forms may provide an efflorescent zone for marginalized communities.”

John’s “Rus in urbe” is one of (I believe) a chapbook length ms. of Norwich (CT) poems. The river that is “blue one day and gold the next” features in other of his Norwich poems, such as “They Want to Convert the American Finishing Company”: “While your poison colors / streaked the river / Norwich ate hearty, / woke up early.” Anne Gorrick’s “When Noon Wears Ermine” is dedicated to Lori Anderson Moseman; Flim Forum Press will publish her next. The Evie Shockley poem “ode to the taxicab” moves vivid, “which candles night’s feast of onyx / and jet…”; an interview follows. My selection is from a long poem called OUTLAND. OUTLAND is dedicated to the poet Jessica Smith.

39. New Pages, New Genre & } the Color Plates.

2011-05-06T23:50:00.001-04:00

Regarding New Genre issue #4, Jennifer Gomell wrote, “I think this magazine has the potential to really stick its thumb in the eye of literary snobbery” (New Pages, Oct. 14, 2006). That’s the quote I pulled for our meager press material. The quote begins, “Bump up the quality of the horror, and…” She “found the horror tales a bit conventional (one downright plodding).” I’m not here to bicker. My guess is she found Christopher Harman’s story “plodding.” Harman, in my experience, tends to write stories that make tension with a near-infuriating attention to apparently inconsequential details that culminate in the kind of horror that for me, at least, is devastating. Harman’s story (“The Last to be Found”) was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, though I’d be the first to admit that this is a dubious measure of a story’s excellence. His story was the first story I selected to be reprinted in that series. From that same issue, Don Tumasonis’ “Thrown” was reprinted in the Stephen Jones series Best New Horror. Gomell did love the science fiction, and it was brilliant—Jeff Paris was then science fiction editor.

(“Thrown” suffered a big cut and paste error I should have caught. Tumasonis was gracious about that. He was upset about a section break that was (accidentally) removed. As an author, I totally sympathize, but I read the story many times without the section break, and I still prefer the story without it.)

Kenneth Nichols reviewed #5 (New Pages, Nov. 3, 2007) and Trelaine Ito #6; Nichols was delighted by the whole of #5, and I unabashedly am as well; Ito had some mild reservations about the “over-the-top prose” in #6 choosing as his favorite story Stephen Graham Jones’ “Lonegan’s Luck” which is absolutely an excellent story, but also the issue’s most conservative. (It, too, was reprinted in a year’s best, and nominated for an award, as was the most conservative tale in #5, Paul Walther’s “Splitfoot.”)

A few days ago my publisher informed me that New Pages posted an extremely positive review of Color Plates. The author, Alex Myers, writes, “When I first sat down to read this collection, I approached it as I would any other short story collection” but that he found a different approach was necessary. “I set up my laptop and found an online image for each painting that Golaski writes about.” This slowed Myers down, but “enriched” his reading experience.

The paintings are not required to understand the stories, but I love the idea of a reader who takes the time to look at all those paintings, and isn’t it fortunate that—from his desk—he can do so. Over a sandwich, he holds my “Luncheon in the Studio” in one hand and with the other visits Wiki for Manet’s.

38. A review and a review } New Genre.

2011-04-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

New Genre (the literary journal I edit) is an argument. If horror and science fiction is carefully selected and presented with seriousness (rather than as an ongoing homage to the template established by the pulps), then horror and science fiction will be approached by readers as literature, not as something less than. That’s all New Genre is.

Incredibly, there still isn’t another journal like it.

I am currently reading a review copy of a new horror anthology, preparing notes for what will be a negative review. The book itself is physically attractive. The cover is a throwback, but it’s meant to be. The authors include one major literary figure, and about half a dozen writers considered to be among best fantasy writers alive (considered by fantasy readers/writers, at least). Some of the more minor names still stand out, too—many have published fantasy work for more than a decade.

Which makes all the more distressing how bad this anthology is. I cannot believe that the editor edited. A few of the stories are good, two are very good, but most range from mediocre to bad. Bad how? Filled with cliché language and other symptoms of lazy writing. Good ideas squandered by lack of development—flat characters or narrative too rushed to develop properly. Most of the stories needed an editor’s involvement and I can’t believe the editor of this anthology was involved. A few of the stories are not publishable—one of these by an author who has written what are considered to be horror fiction classics in his decades-long career.

This anthology is an embarrassment. Another embarrassment. Too much that is mediocre in horror fiction is praised as the best by its readers, and too much that is bad is published. This is why it is perfectly reasonable for a reasonably informed, intelligent reader to conclude that horror fiction rarely (if ever) produces worthwhile literature. We can’t keep pointing back to Poe, to Hawthorn, to James, etc. and expect to be taken seriously.

I don’t have a lot of hope that things will change. Too many of horror fiction’s influential tastemakers are unreliable and unsophisticated. I am always grateful when good work is done, and there is good work. (Much of it written oblivious to what I think of as the horror fiction community, some of it coming from within.)

When I write my review some names will be named but I’m not interested in that now. What’s important is that horror fiction can be serious literature, but the genre as a whole will never be taken seriously unless it gets serious about itself. I’m close to not caring if it ever does, but I’m not free yet.

Issue #7 of New Genre isn’t ready. That’s why I haven’t published it.

37. The Old Poet } Moves to a New Apt.

2011-04-08T23:19:00.001-04:00

(but sometimes a meter's a voice.

5.

After all—
nothing
interests me
when it is full of being.

8.)

Tiny sarah golden

(so taken in

by the beauties
of the suites
wondrously)

36. I suspect } the tides may be what’s waiting.

2011-03-12T20:36:00.001-05:00

Freshman year of college, just before spring break, a guy who’d recently befriended me, Geoff, invited me to his apartment and there, over the course of a couple six packs he proposed a trip to Maine. The Bay of Fundi, specifically. A friend of his had a cabin. I agreed. We left immediately after class—I vividly remember sitting in sociology with a duffel at my feet. We took buses.

When we arrived, late that night, we found his friend’s propane tanks empty. We lit a fire, got into our sleeping bags fully dressed, and Geoff told me about the time the cook on the oil rig where Geoff worked summers cut off all his fingers, how Geoff was ordered to pick them up, pack them in ice, and bring them to the infirmary. He told me about an accident with a pipe he witnessed—a man’s head crushed. “Popped like a blood-fat mosquito.”

When we woke the next morning—shivering uncontrollably—we saw it snowed during the night. I set up another fire. Once we warmed up a bit, we went out to unbury some more logs. The wood pile was fused together by ice; I spent a great deal of time whacking logs free with the back of an axe.

At the Bay, we watched the tide rise twenty-five feet in an hour. Geoff dislodged a rowboat, frozen to the beach, and stupidly we rowed out. Ice may have been all that held that boat together. We learned that if we pointed at the seals that popped up around us, they dove, so we stopped pointing and several seals kept us company. We watched a log get sucked into a maelstrom caused by the rising tide and realized we’d best get to shore. In the woods on the way back to the cabin, elk paused not four feet from us to gnaw at bark.

With the roads buried by snow, we weren’t sure we could make our way back to town, a twenty-mile hike from the cabin. We stayed a few days hoping the snow would melt. It didn’t. Hungry, cold, I spent hours staring out of the cabin, into the woods. Boston was a dream. I saw a man dressed head to foot in fur appear from behind a tree. Help! I thought, someone to guide us to town. I ran out of the cabin—Geoff, dozing, sat up when the door slammed. He ran out after me. He shouted, “Adam! It’s a bear!”

I’ll never forget the sound of its roar, or the long hours spent listening to it scratch at the cabin, praying the door would hold each time the bear slammed against it.

The next morning, with Geoff’s compass and dumb luck, we found our way back to town.

35. Built on a walk } thru (a bar of green soap).

2011-03-08T23:04:00.000-05:00

First “a field of colors” by Charles Lennox, sent to me 4 June 2009, in a cream envelope, by someone who lets their commas hang low. Dialogue in this story is written in ALL CAP, yet remarkably doesn’t read shouting. “a field of colors” is a place where a divorced father goes with his daughters and sometimes alone. The field is of colors, dismembered body parts (human and otherwise, less revolting than an opportunity to make new bodies), chairs, paper, etc. His daughters do what they do, they are bored, they are with their mother, they make origami. It’s a lonely little piece, and I was immediately attracted to the writing and to the presentation Mud Luscious Press (MLP) gave: a little chapbook, with a pale blue paper cover, stamped MLP. MLP was new to me but by goodness gracious not new to anyone else, I guess. J.A. Tyler published the first of these chapbooks in 2008, “a field of colors” no. 33 or thereabouts if y’r counting.

Another envelope, manila, arrived shortly after the first, no commas, no date (the $1 stamp hand-canceled with a sharpie), with three more chapbooks enclosed. Of the three, Elizabeth Ellen’s “a thousand & one others, yes” shocks the most, about a boy, the son of a garbage collector, and a girl, his nearby neighbor, and violence. Unexpected and brutal.

So I don’t know a whole lot about MLP or J.A. Tyler, but for the four chapbooks I’ve read. My editors emailed to tell me he reviewed Color Plates today. My first thought was to read those chapbooks again and maybe say a word or two about them. All are out of print. Maybe a lot of the stories can be found elsewhere? On the MLP site C. is announced, an anthology of MLP “Stamp Stories.” They’re not the chapbooks, see for yourself. However, as part of the announcement for C. are two stories from C. and one is “from Charles Lennox.” I won’t quote it here but here it is and it has origami: “My girls come to me & say THIS IS BORING. CAN WE GO BACK HOME NOW? When we reach the truck they say NO. OUR OTHER HOME.”

I know very much less about Spencer Drew except he also reviewed Color Plates. Thank you Mr. Drew and Mr. Tyler.

34. Live past } the wrong house.

2011-03-04T22:58:00.001-05:00

Ron Goba now hosts, with Tom Daley, a poetry salon in his home just south of Boston. Tom invited me to read as feature, so last week I read. I asked Sarah G., the screenwriter/traveler, to join me. She and I used to attend the open at the Cantab Lounge, where Ron was the doorman/last reader for decades. Rain turned to snow at 6:30, when I picked Sarah up at the train station. Look up into the snow it’s dizzying. Sarah wore a white coat. I drove a black sedan.

First we walked to the wrong house—knocked on the wrong door, peered into the brightly lit and comfortable home of Ron’s neighbor. When we were invited in, we hadn’t yet realized our mistake. Not much of an audience, I thought, just an elderly couple. I looked at the old man, thought, Ron has changed he’s unrecognizable. Sarah asked to use the bathroom. She came back, like, in a minute and said, “This is the wrong house.” No one spoke: we left. Sarah said to me, when I asked how she’d figured out we were in the wrong place, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ron’s house is well-stocked with single malts and decorated with clowns. After a warm welcome from Ron and Tom—the only people at the salon who knew me—I was offered a seat. Twenty-five people came. Before the feature, everyone there is offered a chance to read in what’s called a “round robin”; two more round robins follow a break after the feature. During the round robins, it was suggested I read poems by other poets. I read “The Yellow Bicycle” by Czeslaw Milosz, “Psalm” by George Oppen, and “Why Trees Weep” by John Taggart. The introductions Ron and Tom gave me were most generous. Interesting for me to hear about the impression I made as a young poet, reading with the likes of John Cotter, Jeff Paris, and Matthew Klane. Sarah and I shared an excellent red donated by my father. I read from my unpublished ms. The Rescue: I read the poems about “our daughter,” the Metamorphosis (Ovid’s) poems, “St. Emma,” the entire Dante series, and ended with “[The Forest by the River is Never Empty]” (“Beowulf is ashes. / So bury ashes.”). What a pleasure to read for so long and to be heard. After, for about fifteen minutes, I was asked questions and kindly enthused over. I enjoyed hearing, too. Good to hear Ron and Tom again. Sarah and I were both especially interested in Carol’s poetry—I didn’t catch her last name. We guessed her to be in her sixties. She carried a fossil with her. An ammonite. At the end of the evening, I was offered two features (dates to be announced), one at an art gallery named for the place where I once weekly met with The Blue Poets, the other at The Boston Conservatory. (I wonder if Nina J. would choreograph something and join me on stage?) My thanks to Ron and Sue for hosting me, to Tom for the invite; I am grateful.

Sarah and I found the car covered in snow. We drove north to Boston.

33. AWP } Paul Dry on a park bench.

2011-02-18T10:11:00.000-05:00

Suffering from a bout of angst, I found myself a bench a little ways away from the conference hotels and took out Mandelbaum's Iliad. A gentleman, waiting for his lunch companion on the next bench, asked what I was reading and when I told him he and I had a brief conversation about the translations of Greek and Roman classics that we preferred. In about a minute all I knew on the subject was exhausted. The gentlemen, Paul Dry, told me that he is the namesake of a small press that mainly does reprints, and that if I stopped by his table at the book fair he’d give me a copy of the Arthur Golding translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Thus he unwittingly but ably cheered me.

And his Metamorphosis is a fine edition, based on the edition edited by John Frederick Nims. The cover, designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden is striking—an elegant grid transforming patterns. Also included is an essay by Jonathan Bate that discusses the influence of the Golding Metamorphosis on Shakespeare.

Much later that night found me in a café called Luna (for the second time) with poets Kristin Kostick and Andrea Henchey. Matthew Klane, by this time, had called it a night. Andrea was in her own world, possessed by a series of lyric poems she conceived over a gin fizz and had to write down immediately. As text messages. I’m eager to read them/hear them read at the next Inescapable Rhythms.

This left me and Kristin to entertain each other. We talked civilization. What is it, and just how civilized are we? We talked Mumbai: the extreme proximity of its wealth and poverty. Civilization is peace, or freedom from fear, I figure. When we called it a night, I put Kristin and Andrea in a cab and returned to my hotel, where I talked with C.S. Carrier for a while about typewriters. Better than laptops for dictating epistles from the dead. For writing “shapes transformed to bodies straunge.”

32. Weird AWP } the glass mannequin.

2011-02-11T21:12:00.000-05:00

Kristin Kostick sent me a text, told me I had to go to the Book 12 reading down near Eastern Market. I read the text, then deleted the text, and flipped the numbers in my head: instead of 1337 St. George I walked to 1373. Since the street entrance to 1373 was dark, I ventured down the cobblestone alley that ran alongside. There was a velvet rope and a sign (an illuminated human heart), so I figured I’d found the place. There was no line. I was late. I asked the bouncer, “Is the reading in here?” He nodded, shone a little light on my ID and waved me in.

Nothing was going on inside. It was an empty bar. No bartender. No bottles of anything on the shelves behind the bar. But: I heard voices and applause. Coming from above. I found the stairs and climbed them. There I found a big open room, a stage with drawn curtains at one end, and dozens of round tables on the floor and lo! a bar with a bartender and booze. The only lights on in the space were strands of green lights, webbed across the ceiling. Many of the tables were occupied and a poet was on the stage. I couldn’t understand what she said. I went to the bar, leaned against it and ordered a drink, scanning the room for Kristin. A number of women in skirts and with thick black hair were seated among the crowd, but I wasn’t sure if any of the women were her. I turned to the bartender to ask about her gin selection—the low light made it impossible for me to read the bottles.

The bartender didn’t reply, didn’t even move. I figured she was listening and I was loathe to interrupt but she was the bartender so I said, a little louder, “Excuse me. What gins do you have?” Again, no response. I moved down the bar a little, as close to the bartender as I could (odd, I thought, that no one else is at the bar) and that was when I realized the bartender was a mannequin.

I admit I recoiled from it, and backed clumsily away from the bar. I looked around, to see if someone was watching me, maybe laughing at me? I looked around and the stillness of everyone in the room—even the poet—became horribly apparent to me. There was no actual person in the room but me.

That there was the sound of speaking and then—it happened while I was in the room—applause—tipped the balance from interesting-weird to freaky-weird and I got downstairs right quick, worrying a little that the bouncer was not only in on the gag but that he was in on the gag and the gag wasn’t funny. Indeed, by the door, stood a man.

As I approached him, I asked dumb questions, trying to keep my cool, “Is that an installation? Where’d you get all the mannequins? Was the whole event the poem?” until I saw that, like the bartender, he was a mannequin. I cursed and brushed past. Doing so, I knocked it over, and it fell and shattered. I didn’t look for someone to apologize to, I just took off. Once I was a good distance from 1373 I texted Kristin who was like, “Where have you been?” and gave me the correct address.

I don’t remember much about the Book 12 reading.

[I should mention that John Cotter and I are reading in the Yes! Reading Series this Sunday. The reading starts at 4pm in the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue. More information about the reading can be found here.]

31. Autographing books, readings, } & where to when.

2011-01-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

Immediately following: a few happenings tied to the upcoming Association of Writers & Publishers (AWP) conference in Washington DC next week.

Wednesday, Feb. 2nd. I will read poetry at Busboys & Poets with James Capozzi, Geoffrey Gatza, Matthew Klane, Adam Liszkiewicz, Marjorie Maddox, Brittany Perham, Sarah Sarai, Jon Thompson, Daniel Tiffany, Sam Truitt, and Bryan Walpert; we’re hosted by the journals Free Verse, Reconfigurations, and Word For/Word.

Thursday, Feb. 3rd. I’ll be hosting with Flim Forum Press (and quite a few others) a reading with Jennifer Karmin, Charles Alexander, Amy Allara, Andrea Bates, Joe Elliot, Laura Moriarty, Hoa Nguyen, Sarah Suzor, and James Belflower,. [James Belflower, by the way, will host (with Anna Eyre) me and John Cotter in Albany on the 13th as part of the Yes! Reading Series.]

Friday, Feb. 4th. At the Rose Metal Press table in the AWP book fair, I will be available to autograph copies of Color Plates (or whatever) from 10:30am until it ceases to be reasonable for me to sit at the RMP table with an uncapped pen.

Saturday, Feb. 5th. The AWP book fair is open to the public from 8:30am until 5:30 pm, and there are three tables I would like for you to visit: the aforementioned Rose Metal Press table, the Flim Forum Press table, and the Open Letters Monthly table. The Flim table, by the way, will be a nexus of the new, sure to be graced by poets your children and grandchildren will one day ask about. “Dad, did you ever meet Jessica Smith?” they might ask. And won’t you feel lame if the answer is, “Uh, nope.” Open Letters Monthly will be selling copies of their anthology, which includes an essay of mine about the poet Paul Hannigan.

[photo: Jennifer Karmin reading from Aaaaaaaaaaalice (with Jessica Leigh) at last year's AWP book fair.]

30. Books that aren’t } and books that do.

2011-01-25T23:18:00.002-05:00

After Christmas John Cotter asked me if I’d heard of Lance Olsen and I thought THAT name rings a bell but why say so? I said, “I’m not sure,” so John told me all about Olsen’s Calendar of Regrets (SEE John’s review at OLM). What I wish I’d said when John asked if I’d heard of Lance Olsen was, Uh, yeah. I’m in a book with Lance Olsen.

That is, ahem, The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature, edited by Ben Segal and Erinrose Mager.

Ben and Erinrose pitched it so: “The Catalog is to consist of a series of blurbs/short descriptions of books that do not exist. In order to compile that Catalog, we have asked many of the writers, theorists, and text-makers we most admire to imagine that they’ve just read the most amazing book they’ve ever encountered and then write a brief blurb about the imagined text.”

An advanced e-copy was sent to me so I might splendor on its grass before the actual encounter (the Catalog will be at the AWP conference). I’ve been doing. Let me mention a few I especially liked. Matt Bell’s “The Big Book of Infinitely Possible Timetables,” which sounds like the Catalog’s cousin and is similarly interested in the impossible, specifically, the wish to be in all of our possible lives. There are a number of impossible books described—my contribution is such a one; the Catalog lends itself to the improbable. Such as “The Slow Book,” by Shelly Jackson, which imagines a book that is written over the course of centuries (her blurb reminded me of John Cage’s “ORGAN2/ASLSP,” currently being performed as slowly as possible—for 639 years—in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt), or Ben Mirov’s “Inadequate Pillow,” about a book that’s literally all things and nothing. Then there are books more possible. Mallory Rice’s “Hugging in the Kitchen” describes a novel made of the moments after the protagonist cries. I noticed frequent furniture moving in these blurbs. There are a few the-book-as-me blurbs, including Diane Williams’. There’s a lot of language that can’t be read. Lots of incredible cities, too, like the beautiful “Haven” by Evelyn Hampton I’m sure other patterns will becomes apparent to careful readers.

The blurb most unlike all the others: “The Gardens of Krakov” by Brian Reed. I like it most of all the blurbs.

By now you’re suitably interested.

29. A long story written } with teeth.

2011-01-23T00:06:00.003-05:00

While swimming Thursday afternoon I met three booksellers, members of the ABA and attendees at the Winter Institute. I tread water while these women from Illinois, all owners of independent bookstores, asked me about Color Plates. Thus began (for me) two days in the mighty Crystal City of being introduced to booksellers. A few hours later I joined Meg Taylor (from SPD) and Abby Beckel in a ballroom occupied by authors signing their new books for booksellers. We did our best to politely ingratiate ourselves with the crowd. The crowd was kind to us. We took a few books. I did meet Tim Wynne-Jones and he was eager—eager!—to speak with me about Nightfall and the Bay of Fundy. Afterward, a quiet Chinese dinner with Meg and Abby.

Written on a plaque in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: “…using its front teeth and claws, this palcocaster dug its burrow in soft sediment. After its death, sediment filled the hole and preserved the beaver’s skeleton.” Behind the glass a corkscrew of stone—a petrified tunnel—that culminated in a burrow full of its maker’s fossilized bones. I found this affecting. I spent half of Friday in the museum, and most of that time among the bones of prehistoric mammals. I was similarly affected by a phrase that finished the Museum’s narrative on the evolution of horses: “…merely the current stage in a long and complex evolutionary history.”

All this and reading Andrew George’s translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh—now my favorite of the translations I’ve read—put me in a peculiar frame of mind for my second night of the ABA’s Winter Institute, where I was scheduled to autograph copies of Color Plates for booksellers. I had no idea what to expect and was surprised when people eagerly came up to me, already excited about CP, and in some instances urging me to come read at their store. We ran out of copies before we ran out of interest. Much of this excitement was due to a presentation Meg gave Friday morning—while I was sitting in the shadow of an Irish Elk, wondering (as I often do) about its antlers.

Ralph Nader sat next to us and signed copies of his book. He and I did briefly touch on the subject of our (essentially) two-party system, but he was preoccupied by a sour stomach. Bad cream, he thought. Ginger ale and cheese, he thought, would settle things nicely. I’m wasn’t so sure. Ginger ale, yeah, but cheese? He also praised a set of legal books, designed to help non-lawyers navigate the law. You know, write your own will. The three of us were invited by the publisher to join Mr. Nader for dinner, but he and his publisher left a couple hours before we could, so—a missed opportunity. Mr. Nader seemed exactly as he seems on television, etc.

Saturday, today, I went back to the Natural History Museum. I considered my many other options, but realized I wanted to be there, and in those thoughts. I was particularly interested in the “mammal-like” reptiles. Dimetrodon! My brother! I dwelled a long while beneath the prehistoric whales—the subject of one of my better elementary school papers. (I fondly recall an afternoon spent in the Boston Aquarium library, photocopying papers on the subject.) I confirmed that I like crinoids. I will write a slim volume about crinoids.

Perhaps in a few years I’ll be autographing copies of my crinoids monograph for booksellers attending the Winter Institute. Perhaps in a few million years someone will put my bones in a museum.

28. SPD will feature } me.

2011-01-17T22:42:00.002-05:00

Thursday will find me on the train to DC again, but not for a reading—Small Press Distribution (SPD) has asked me to represent them as their “featured author” at the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute. I’m still trying to get my head around what that is, but I gather copies of Color Plates will be put into the hands of hundreds of Independent bookstore owners, and I’ll get the chance to meet them all.

Friday appears to be small press day at the Winter Institute. I’ll be autographing Color Plates in a room with just three other authors: Sharyn Wolf, Alexander Maksik, and Ralph Nader.

Also in attendance at the Winter Institute will be Tim Wynne-Jones, who—if it’s the same Tim Wynne-Jones—wrote several radio scripts in the ‘70s and ‘80s for Nightfall and Vanishing Point, including one of the most mysterious and beautiful episodes of Nightfall, “The Road Ends at the Sea,” set in a lighthouse on the black rocks of the Bay of Fundy.

27. In the pages of } Paul Hannigan.

2011-01-11T11:32:00.004-05:00

Spent the last three days in Brunswick, GA. with the papers of the poet Paul Hannigan. The second such trip. I had the feeling that I was seeing the future.

On the way home, at a restaurant in the Newark airport, I wrote a letter to a friend and felt as I was writing that the tone wasn’t mine at all but Hannigan’s.

26. Color Plates loves } Worse Than Myself

2011-01-06T10:59:00.001-05:00

I don’t know what it means to be on the Small Press Distribution (SPD) bestseller list, but Color Plates is on that list. In September, the month the book was published, CP was no. 7, just below the Starcherone Books title Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls by Alissa Nutting; CP moved up to no. 2 for the October / November list. The result of that activity: CP is no. 26 on SPD’s 50 bestselling titles in 2010. Right now, SPD is promoting their top 50 with the “Kiss-Off 2010 Sale”—use the code “kissoff” and your copy of CP will be shipped to you for 30% of the cover price, which is, uh, $11.16 + tax and shipping.

Brian J. Showers informed me that he and I were among the Speculative Fiction Junkie’s “top 5 reads of 2010”—I for Worse Than Myself and Brian for The Bleeding Horse & Other Ghost Stories. I recently came across a review of Datlow's first best of for Night Shade, that dwells enthusiastically on “The Man From the Peak,” a story from that collection. Thoughtful reviews take time to write. I do appreciate the effort.

At about this time in 2008, I was in a branch library in Harrisburg, PA, revising and writing the stories for Worse Than Myself. At that library, in a box marked $1 CDs, I made some finds: Mono’s Walking cloud and deep red sky, Flag fluttered and the sun shined, a beautifully designed Gregor Samsa EP, a Naxos recording of Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, paired with “Three Olden Style Pieces” (which are excellent), Albedo 3.9 by Vangelis, and set fire to flames’ signs reign rebuilder. That library also had a heap of 331/3 book/CD sets. I read Chris Ott’s book about and listened to Unknown Pleasures. Joy Division doesn’t mean much to me, but at that moment, it was absolutely the right record.

24. The script (a fragment). } A Black Masque

2010-12-17T23:14:00.001-05:00

A few posts back I wrote about a script handed to me by an actress who’d been bloodied at an audition (?). After I finally read it (as I obliquely implied I had in post 21), I found myself troubled by it. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so had it not been for my encounter with it. That is to say, if I’d come across it in a book, it might have seemed weird and no more, but the deliberate (?) way it was given me, and where and when… it has haunted me. Regrettably, I haven’t the time to transcribe it all for you, and I’m pretty sure such a transcription is an infringement on the author’s copyright—who is the author? Can anyone tell me from reading the following? Anyway, what follows is a bit of the beginning. See what you make of it and if anyone knows who wrote it, please post a comment or email me and let me know.

Of MASQUES for ARISTOCRATS & the like. The first is
BLACK.
To be Personated during the Twelfth Night.

The persons of the play.

Uncle HOFFMANN, both himself and otherwise
POLO, Hoffmann’s nephew
BIRD, Hoffmann’s niece
OLIROOMIM, a demon
PARTYGOERS / DEMONS

“First, for the scene, was drawn a Landscape”: a blank landscape, a blue screen. In front of the screen stands HOFFMANN who holds a box.

HOFF: …sends a package paid for with peculiar
postage. Needless to say it’s from away.
“My dear loves Polo and Bird forgive me
too much time has passed. Enclosed, the Black Mask.
Hang the angled mask, nail and copper wire,
hanged on your feature, face screwed in to it.

POLO is alone when he opens the package. He stares into it. Awkward and silent minutes pass, POLO crouched on the stage, staring into an open cardboard box. Gradually—so gradually as to be barely perceivable—a light within the box grows. Correspondent to the light in the box is an image projected onto the pale blue screen, at first blurry, then more clear, and more clear: it is a mask carved from obsidian.

At last, POLO moves. As he leans forward to reach into the box, BIRD enters stage right. (POLO and BIRD are dressed in the same black tights and black, form-fitting shirts, but there is nothing androgynous about either.) POLO mimes the removal of a mask, mimes putting it on his face. BIRD, lit up gaudy, is delighted and aroused.

There is no mask. The “mask” is an outline made by lights carefully projected onto POLO’s face. He leaps to his feet, the image of the mask projected on the blue screen disappears and a curtain, painted to look like the inside of a well-appointed city apartment drops behind POLO and BIRD.

BIRD: Oh Polo what a weird wonder our uncle
sent! Ha! So often is Hoffmann off, man!
It fits just right for tonight’s revelry!
POLO turns, faces BIRD.
BIRD: Oh!
POLO: (to audience) When do guests arrive for our holiday
masque? Are decorations hung? Light strands strung?

Lights woven into the curtain illuminate. A doorbell rings. PARTYGOERS enter stage right and left, all elaborately dressed and with masks—cheap plastic “Lone Ranger” masks, but in many colors and gold and silver. A soundtrack of glasses and wine corks and laughter, mixed with the susurus of the PARTYGOERS clothes. All dance waltzes around POLO and BIRD, though there is no music, only drums that keep the 3/4 time.

25. Readings } Two more.

2010-12-09T15:27:00.003-05:00

During the open mic last night—there was a big turnout at Real Art Ways that included lots of new faces—a member of the audience caught my eye. She looked exactly like a student of mine who was killed shortly after her graduation last year. I know I’ve mentioned this student several times before, and I realize I also wrote about a woman who looked like my former student before—I wondered, in fact, if she might not be the same look-a-like I saw on the train. No reason why she couldn’t be. I hoped she’d read so I’d then have a reason to speak with her. She didn’t read. And when the open was over, she was gone.

Not only was she gone, but her seat was occupied by someone completely different, a young man who read a poem about “Her castle,” punctuating each line by clearing his throat.

Aside from this mildly off-putting visit, last night was terrific. I was honored by good people. The food was extravagant—baked brie! caviar! dried sausage! cheese! wine!—and I was pleased to celebrate both Color Plates and the two year anniversary of Inescapable Rhythms. A few of us gathered by the fire at Andrea’s, talked about publishing, listened to records (real records, including Paul McCartney’s excellent Ram “…but I leave my pajamas to Billy Budapest / and I don’t get the gist of your letter”).

When I was younger, I thought it would be so wonderful to join the gatherings of the great writers and artists; turns out it is pretty wonderful.

Saturday morning I’ll head to Norwich, where I’ll read with the venerable John Cotter as part of the Otis Library Holiday Book Fair, which may mean any gains I make selling Color Plates will be spent buying books. I feel I haven’t enough Penguin Classics (Dear Steve Reads, I disagree with you on Oh! so many things but greatly enjoy your “Penguins on Parade” series. I’m currently reading Bernal Diaz’ The Conquest of New Spain—a wonderful book. What’s your take?).

Sunday, John and I will share a podium at Bank Square Books. The reading begins at noon. I hear tell that this is the book store where Julia Roberts once made the staff extremely nervous by enjoying a rapidly melting snow cone over their recently received and autographed hardback copies of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

24. Readings } Real Art Ways

2010-12-03T14:21:00.000-05:00

Above, a photo from an Inescapable Rhythms reading held during the summer before it was moved to Real Art Ways. In the photo, I’m having a conversation with poet (and sometimes poet-collaborator) Kristin Kostick. After a brief humanitarian stint in Baltimore, she’s supposedly returned to Hartford, coincidentally in time for my featured reading on Wednesday.

Hosted by Andrea Henchey, Inescapable Rhythms (the series’ name in honor of hometown hero Wallace Stevens) is a once-monthly poetry reading, usually including both a guest reader and an open mic. Guests have included Jennifer Karmin, Deborah Poe, Matthew Klane, and Ken Cormier, to name but a very few, and not to exclude C.S. Carrier, a reluctant local poet whose book and blog y’all should check out. The readings happen on the second Wednesday of every month, and seem to happen no matter what: we’ve read by candlelight when the power was out (a most silent and beautiful experience), we’ve read when only three or four of us have shown up, and we’ve even read when Andrea has had to telekinetically lead us from the west coast.

As is customary, the reading will begin close to 7pm. We tend to gather a little bit beforehand, to buy each other drinks and to catch each other up and sometimes, just occasionally, to finish a poem to be read that night. Kostick, Henchey, and Carrier will all read, for sure, and they’re excellent readers. I’ll read poetry and some little stories from Color Plates. There’s a narrative to my reading, too—a thread to trail through the maze.

Come. Not just for me, indeed, not for me, but because it’s better than online, it’s better than TV, it’s never dull, the poets are mostly kind, and we listen.

23. Shadows & Tall Trees } + Wormwood no. 15

2010-11-27T12:16:00.009-05:00

Issue first of Michael Kelly’s new journal “devoted to weird and strange fiction” is published. Of the six fine fictions, and not including my own contribution, my favorites are Geordie Flantz’s “The Ghost Days of Melody Brown” and Nicholas Royle’s “The Blue Notebooks.” I'd already read the Flantz story: it was originally sent to me as a New Genre submission. My intern Ashley Spears singled it out as worth my reading and she was so right. Immediately, the language catches the attention; here’s the first line: “That night the weather broke, and the land was born anew beneath a black baptismal rain.” It’s a long story, and I knew it wouldn’t fit the mood of the upcoming issue of New Genre, so I hailed Michael in the hopes he could pick it up for S&TT #1 and I’m very glad he did. Really, it elevates the whole issue. (By the way, Flantz sent me something else that is exactly right for New Genre, and will appear in the next issue—more on that later.)

My first exposure to Royle was his “Very Low-Flying Aircraft” in Exotic Gothic II (edited by Danel Olson). I didn’t think much of it. (Note that Ellen Datlow liked it very much, praising it frequently and including it in her Best Horror of the Year Vol. 1, and obviously Olson liked it; purchase EG II or Datlow’s best of and decide for yourself.) Royle’s “The Blue Notebooks,” however, I liked. It appeals to me for the way it brings so much together and so vividly: eyesight and degenerative illness, abandoned structures, libraries, birds, and suicide. Royle obviously loves abandoned and locked-off spaces (as I do) and is fascinated by the difference between what we see and what is. I’d love to see this story made into a novella, or as part of a triptych.

The other contributions are good too: Simon Strantzas’ story compliments my own (or vice-versa, if you’re from Canada), Sandra Kasturi’s is a very physical ghost story, and Joel Lane’s tale of a man back in his rotten hometown during a winter holiday is utterly Lane-esque, i.e. nasty and despairing. Promising, too, is Kelly’s inclusion of reviews. I look forward to the maturation of this non-fiction section. Within the genre(s), there is very little worthwhile criticism; S&TT, paired with the efforts of Supernatural Tales might fill the void left by All Hallows.

And Wormwood, edited by Mark Valentine. It is the only journal entirely devoted to the criticism of supernatural/ weird/ horror fiction I consider worth reading. I wish its scope were broader—not that I find its focus a flaw; I’d simply like to see the Wormwood standard applied to contemporary and mainstream genre fiction.

I have yet to finish this latest Wormwood, but am currently enjoying Jonathan Woods’ essay on the poet Wilfred Rowland Mary Childe. Adam Daly’s essay on Gerard de Nerval is excellent (it’s hard to tell who is a poser and who is honestly weird and who is just plain crazy—Nerval was all, poor bastard) and so is Robert Eldridge’s short piece on the weird fiction of Arthur Johnson. I’m very pleased—for reasons I’ve stated above—to see Reggie Oliver’s new column “Under Review.” He discussed recent books by Quentin S. Crisp, Adam Nevill, and Mark Samuels.

My own contribution is unusual for Wormwood, as it’s a hybrid piece of criticism and fiction. “Threshold in the First Half of the Tenth chapter of Lucius Shepard’s Viator” uses that small portion of Shepard’s book as a jumping-off point for numerous considerations of threshold, while also criticizing both versions of Shepard’s book. Thanks to Nick Gevers at PS Publishing for the Viator Plus ARC—he probably wondered if I would every get around to writing my review.

By the way, I’m sending postcards to anyone who orders a copy of S&TT #1. On each card is a line from a fiction in progress, or from one of my notebooks. If you come across that line when reading one of my stories, and let me know that you have, I’ll send you some additional treat. The decaying leg of a camel, or a book, or jewelry made from the bones of my enemies.

22. Upcoming Reading } Black Squirrel, Washington DC.

2010-11-06T01:05:00.001-04:00

Last time I was in DC it snowed. DC is no stranger to snow—last winter friends living in the city sent pictures of picnic tables set with five feet of snow while plows made mazes on the boulevards along the Mall. But the last time I was in DC was in May, so to see snow fall was… beautiful—but ominous. Someone in that city made a deal with the devil.

Maybe on Thursday I’ll find out who.

This Thursday—November 11th—I’ll take the train and join stalwart pal John Cotter, fellow Rose Metal Press author Sherrie Flick, and the poet Maureen Thorson at the Black Squirrel where we’ll read as guests of the Barrelhouse Presents Reading Series. We start at 7pm. More info here, at Sandra Beasley’s Chicks Love Poetry blog (thank you, Sandra), and here, at Maureen's Applies to Oranges blog.

21. Doctor Faustus } from the script.

2010-10-31T22:22:00.004-04:00

RAFE: Why, Robin, what book is that?
ROBIN: What book? Why the most intolerable book for conjuring that e’er was invented by any brimstone devil.
RAFE: Canst thou conjure with it?
ROBIN: I can do all these things easily with it: first, I can make thee drunk with hippocras at any tavern in Europe for nothing. That’s one of my conjuring works.
RAFE: Our Master Parson says that’s nothing.
ROBIN: True, Rafe, and more, Rafe, if thou hast any mind to Nan Spit, our kitchen maid, then turn her and wind her to thy own use as often as thou wilt, and at midnight.
RAFE: O brave Robin! Shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own use? On that condition I’ll feed thy devil with horse-bread as long as he lives, free of cost.
ROBIN: No more, sweet Rafe. Let’s go and make clean our boots, which lie foul upon our hands, and then to our conjuring, in the devil’s name.

—from The Tragicall Historie of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

20. Readings } the KGB Script

2010-10-30T22:30:00.002-04:00

Last week, Wednesday, I drove to Manhattan for my reading in the Fantastic Fiction series. All along the Saw Mill Parkway were deer, their coats shaggy and dark. Once in the city, I lingered outside the KGB Bar (pictured above) as long as I could, stayed outside to watch the sky, as much sky as could be seen from the alleyways that make up the grid of that city.

KGB Bar is on the second floor of a three-story walkup; the bottom floor is a theater, upstairs I don’t know what. A rehearsal space? I’m pretty sure people were auditioning for a show. There was a woman on the second floor landing, a glistening gash above her eye, she was weeping, a script rolled tightly in her hand. She was called—I stepped aside and she rushed past me, up the narrow stairs. At the top of the stairs stood a man waiting for her, a sack in his left hand. Everything’s always weird in Manhattan.

The bar was red. High-ceilinged. Decorated with Agitprop and bears. Since I was reading, I was treated by Matthew Kressel and Ellen Datlow to a Baltika porter I very much enjoyed. Jenna Lawrence was there, a comfort—I wanted to ask, Are they auditioning for Grand Guignol?—but the opportunity never presented itself. I was introduced to the main act, Paul Witcover and friend Cynthia Babak. The audience gathered and soon enough it was time for me to read.

After Paul read, I stepped out of the bar to make a call. Before I could dial, the woman with the head wound stumbled down the stairs. I asked, What’s going on up there? She stopped in front of me, stared at me, then forced that rolled-up script into my hand. I gestured, like, I don’t want this, but she just shook her head and took off down the stairs. Jenna appeared at my side and told me we were going, Matthew and Ellen were taking me and Paul out for dinner. Very nice, I shoved the script into my bag and forgot about it, Rick Bowes distracted me and Jenna with stories about NYC architectural peculiarities.

Once home, exhausted from a dark drive, I dumped the bag in a closet and forgot about it.

Until tonight. Of course I have other things to do. I’ve got to read a few essays concerning Kit Marlowe, “poor deceased Kit Marlowe,” and knock out a few pages of a story I’m writing for editor Danel Olson. I don’t have the time to read the script tonight. Tomorrow.

19. Readings } John Cotter & Adam Golaski

2010-10-27T18:41:00.002-04:00

Taken at Freebird Books, Brooklyn, October 24, 2010, by Jenna Lawrence. John and Adam alternating between readings from Color Plates and Under the Small Lights.

18. Readings } A leg. & bones.

2010-10-20T12:44:00.001-04:00

At a party in Iowa City hosted by Erika Jo Brown, I tripped over a pair of glittery red and gold trimmed cowgirl boots. I crouched down to right them but ended up staring at ‘em for more than a few minutes—till Joshua Unikel took me aside to talk poetics.

I didn’t think about the boots again till I lay down for a three hour nap before John and I needed to leave for Northfield. Those boots shone above me in the dark hotel room, a pair of Mars lights.

Many to thank for Iowa City. Especially poets Rob Schlegel, Keisha Lewellyn Schlegel, Joshua Unikel, and Matthew Klane. A good crowd attended the reading at Prairie Lights. I was thrilled to meet Cole Swenson, whose books I’ve been reading since I came upon Park at Talking Leaves in Buffalo, about a decade ago.

The next morning John and I read and spoke at St. Olaf College, a visit arranged by Kaethe Schwehn, who then brought several of her colleagues to our Magers & Quinn reading in Minneapolis. There, we read with Alan DeNiro, who whispered to me a very odd anecdote just before I got up to read, something he’d read in the paper, about a girl whose bones were crystallizing. I said, “Don’t you mean her organs?” He looked at me funny and I wondered if he’d said anything to me at all.

We enjoyed Milwaukee for its local kindness: “Stef” the roller derby announcer, Avital from Brazil, and Jo at Buckley’s on Cass. We read there too. At Boswell’s. Not only a bookstore, but a museum of tin Band-Aid boxes and abandoned card catalogs. I flipped through and found the card for The Nets of Space by Emil Petaja. I didn’t dream that book!

Last Wednesday I returned to UConn to give a reading at the Co-op. Thanks to Kim for her reportage and to Ms. Staubach for hosting me. Eliza Smith, beloved New Genre intern and Shakespearean scholar attended, as did Katelyn W., to whom I gave a copy of Werewolves and Shapeshifters, and Emily W.—she and I talked Spenser and though Ben Johnson wrote that “Spenser has no writ,” we’re inclined to agree with Coleridge who admired the “indescribable sweetness and fluent projection of his verse….”

Sunday found me in Providence, R.I., where I happily spent a couple hours on Wickenden Street, in a waterfront park, and on a block of cement in a parking lot. The sun set, just behind a factory (three smoke stacks); behind me, when the clouds—gray, pink (purple, white)—broke, the moon. Not full. I’d’ve stared longer at the sky, watched the whole of its transition from day to night, but I was due at Abe’s Bar for the Cousins Reading Series, hosted by William Walsh and Darcie Dennigan.

Darcie, who just happened to be Kim’s teacher (at UConn) introduced me lovely with a few kind words. I read with John, who entertained us all with the lighting and an excellent reading, and with Matt Bell and Carol Novak. Better than the incredible sky was the company of two old friends, Jeremy Withers, who gave me a copy of his solo album (more on that later) and Elizabeth Dooher, now a sculptor in New Bedford. Both have saved my life many times; their presence, revitalizing.

As I drove home on very dark and narrow roads, I caught the glimmer of a deer’s eye in my headlights and slowed to a stop. The deer crossed the road—paused to gaze at the car—and then into the forest.

Tonight, I’ll sink Manhattan.

17. Virgil dreams & } smoke.

2010-10-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

Kelly Spitzer selected story from Color Plates and interviewed me for Issue 29 of SmokeLong. The interview took time: I answered the first question on the west coast and the last on the east. Fair enough. I like the questions. For instance, she asked what my weirdest childhood memory was and after some hemming and hawing, I replied:

“In early November, which is by far the eeriest time of the year—at least in New England—I was in the woods near my house—a strictly forbidden locale. I was, uh, seven? I was pretty deep in the woods and I took a path I hadn't taken before. It was probably about three in the afternoon—the sun already a little low in the sky. From somewhere off the path I heard a grunt. This scared the living daylights out of me, I was sure it was a wild boar—not likely, but, you know, I was seven. I didn't want to run away. I knew from experience that dogs tended to chase me when I ran, so I kind of backed up for a while, took every step painfully slow. Somehow, I managed to walk a loop, and ended up off the path at the mouth of a huge pit. I kid you not. I peered over the edge. The low light lit just a crescent of the bottom of the pit. It was, I thought (remember I was seven, so who knows), about fifteen feet deep. And I heard another grunt. Oh God it was so loud, Kelly! I saw a big animal, uh, kind of bumble through that crescent of light and I ran. I crashed through brush and branches, until I found my way to the path and finally to my little neighborhood. By the time I got home I was wheezing pretty hard and it took my worried mother a little while to get the story from me. She was mad, of course, that I'd been in the woods, but not madder than she was a) glad I was home and b) troubled that there was a large animal in a pit in the woods behind her house.

I hope this isn't a let down but there really isn't much else to the story. I guess Mom called the police or animal control or something. I eventually found the path again—foolish curiosity. It was full-on winter by then and the ground was covered with snow. A little distance off the path I found a frozen pool. I poked a branch through the ice. It wasn't deep, a few inches, all that remained of a vernal pond, probably. I don't know if that was the spot. I told my buddy Brian about it and we believed fervently that there was a beast tunneling in the woods behind my house and then we got to junior high and didn't believe anymore (and didn't hang out anymore, either).”

Truthfully, I’m not sure that’s the weirdest story from my childhood. I mean, childhood is weird, man.

Tomorrow, John Cotter and I head west to Iowa City, where we’ll read at Prairie Lights; from there we travel to Northfield, Minnesota, to Minneapolis, and finally Milwaukee. Here, John provides a few more details.

To Virgil: Toward the end of The Aeneid is a simile that caught my eye: “Just as in dreams when the night-swoon of sleep/ Weighs on our eyes, it seems we try in vein/ To keep running, try with all our might,/But in the midst of effort faint and fail;/ Our tongue is powerless, familiar strength/ Will not hold up the body, not a sound/ Or word will come: just so with Turnus now….” (Fitzgerald trans.)

We’ve all had this dream. Running from a threat, we’re mired in dream-tar. Virgil wrote about that dream 2,030 years ago (give or take), and that dream was common enough then for Virgil to use it to explain the way Turnus’ moved while fighting Aeneas! When our sleeping selves calls up that imagery, we’re tapping into something ancient. Perhaps what chases us in the dream has changed. Maybe not. We wake from the dream and a spear pins us to the ground.

16. Werewolves & } Small Press Saturday

2010-10-01T22:18:00.002-04:00

John Skipp’s latest anthology, Werewolves and Shapeshifters, is published. I’ve not read much of it yet—my author’s copy arrived two days ago and most of my reading time is owned by Virgil’s The Aeneid and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (and assorted secondary materials). I read Steve Duffy’s “Side-Effects May Include.” I realized after the first line that I’d read it before, but I thoroughly enjoyed it again. I must have first read it in Exotic Gothic 2 (ed. by Danel Olson).

Duffy first came to my attention with his first collection, a set of M.R. James pastiches. Then “The Penny Drops” (written in collaboration with Ian Rodwell). I also published "Glass Stoppered Bottles" in issue #3 of New Genre. Soon after, I started to see weirder stuff, altering my first impression that Duffy’s scope was limited to (excellent) quiet ghost stories. Specifically, two stories in early issues of the journal Supernatural Tales that riffed off of urban legends and 1960s history hinted at a post-modern ripple, and let me see that his style could be very contemporary. I’ve not read his newest collection, Tragic Life Stories. I will, I will!

Werewolves and Shapeshifters will, like its zombie counterpart, reach a massive audience, much larger Duffy (or I) typically reach. Some of the people who buy it for the big, comfortable names will make some exciting discoveries.

(My contribution to Skipp’s anthology is “The Animal Aspect of Her Movement.”)

BY THE WAY, join me Saturday, Oct. 2nd in Newton, MA for Small Press Saturday, “as [Newtonville Books] celebrates independent publishing with the editors and contributors to these fine presses”: Rose Metal Press, Ampersand Books, Dzanc Books, Madras Press, and Small Anchor Press. The event starts at 2pm. I’ve been told that following the event, there will be a wild boar hunt. Venus has warned me not join in, told me the portents are all bad, has begged me to stay with her, but what the hay, how often do I get to hunt wild boar?

15. Readings } Portland, ME & Chicago, IL

2010-09-27T00:04:00.004-04:00

John just finished reading Ciaran Carson’s translation of Inferno, so we talked about Brunetto Latini, Dante’s former teacher, mysteriously damned (by Dante) to the ring of the sodomites: “To me he seemed like one /who, in the fields around Verona, runs /for that prize, a length of green festoon. /He seemed to be the one that wins, not loses.” The conversation turned to Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent piece in the New York Review of Books about Edmund White’s latest book City Boy; Mendelsohn criticizes White’s “intellectually grotesque” reading of Inferno, specifically regarding Latini: “This reflexive tendency to reduce everything to the dimensions of [White’s] erotic interests and predilections can become wearying….” Then I brought up a short essay by White himself, and a line that had caught my eye regarding The Beats: “Early on, when they were just inventing themselves and their original brand of writing, Ginsberg and Kerouac decided to turn all their friends into myths.”

Though lightly attended, the reading in Portland was a great pleasure. Chris Bowe (the owner of Longfellow Books) gave excellent introductions, excellent because they were not merely recitations of bios John and I wrote, but a response to our work. People came because they read and were intrigued by descriptions of our books. Cupcakes were served that were frosted to be Color Plates. After John and I read we answered thoughtful audience questions for an hour.

After the reading, fog fell. John and I sat outside and ate burgers at Shay’s (seated near us, a group attempting to consume a fishbowl filled with an absinthe-blue cocktail). We walked for a while, drove a while, ended the night in a locked courtyard surrounded by sprinklers with a stoned couple who’d been asleep or screwing when the gates were closed, and couldn’t figure out how to get out. We showed them the way. As a gift, they handed us two marbles, one with the face of Mao, the other, an eye.

I read twice in Chicago, Friday (the 18th) with Jennifer Karmin at Myopic Books, and then as part of the Orange Alert series at The Whistler Saturday night. Matthew Klane and Amy Nowak drove from Iowa city to see me and Jennifer; Jennifer packed the room and I was just as pleased to see Aaaaaaaaaaalice sold as I was to sell a couple copies of Color Plates. This was the first time I’d seen my book, and it’s an odd moment: books by other people are real, books by you own self are objects imported from an alternate reality.

After the reading at The Whistler, I ate a brilliant meal in Logan Square with Rose Metal Press co-publisher Kathleen Rooney, her husband Martin, fellow reader Davis Schneiderman, Jennifer Karmin, and the poet Snezana Zabic. I’m terrible about self-promotion. Snezana emailed to ask if I was reading in Chicago days before I left, then told me she would be at my reading. I, of course, should have invited her. I was delighted she was there.

Lastly, an odd moment in Portland. Very early in the morning—was it four? was it five?—I woke to a noise—a “huff, huff.” I swore it was made by something at the end of my bed. I sat up—waited for my eyes to adjust—they didn’t, quite, heard the sound again, got up, walked to the door—I was now sure the noise came from the hall. I peered through the peephole—nothing—opened the door, and stepped into the hall. At the end of the hall—where the hall met a bay of elevators, stood an enormous white horse. It huffed. It turned its head and the dim light caught something—something crystal that sprouted from the horse’s forehead. I panicked, slammed the door shut, stood behind it a moment, breathing hard, calmed myself and thought: I did not see a white horse in the hallway of the Holiday Inn. I opened the door, looked out, and I was right, of course, there was no horse. Not only that, but the hall was configured differently. It did not end at a bay of elevators, the elevators were down a side corridor. I went back to bed.

14. Links } They are boring.

2010-09-21T22:20:00.004-04:00

Not all of them are boring.

"Neglectorinos no more!" [blog post by Don Share re. my essay "This is Not Sad; This is Not Funny"]

Fall Books Preview ["Golaski is a champion of experimental and genre-bending fiction"; a reading at Longfellow Books, Portland, Maine, 7pm, Sept. 24th]

"...and August's rare delight may be April's fool." [blog post by Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne, re. "Green"]

Small Press Spotlight ["Adam Golaski is embarking on an ambitious and adventuresome multi-city book tour..."]

"Someday on Planar Surface" [another story by Matthew Pendleton; read his lovely fiction in print by purchasing New Genre #6]

"Checking in with Rose Metal Press" ["I've been through magic and through life's reality / I've lived a thousand years and it never bothered me... don't try to reach me cause I'd tear up your mind / I've seen the future and I've left it behind / fictionaut! fictionaut!"]

"Sekrit Project Reveals" [LiveJournal post by Althea Kontis re. Werewolves and Shapeshifters, an anthology edited by John Skipp]

Color Plates [Goodreads marked it as to-read]

Raw Dog Screaming Press Retrospective [Gorelets post by Michael A. Arnzen re. Worse Than Myself, Sheep and Wolves, and 100 Jolts]

Cinnabar's Gnosis [a weird review of an anthology in honor of the writings of Gustav Meyrink I contributed to. "Proustian selves by cassette tape. Proustian selves as flies."]

"Open Letters Montly: August, 2010" [Like Fire blog post re. "Green" and the August issue of OLM]

Worse Than Myself [a review posted by the Speculative Fiction Junkie. He points out that "many of the horrors in close proximity to comforts." So true!]

"The Open Letters Monthly Anthology" [an announcement by stevereads: "here is the brooding, authoritative essay-voice of Adam Golaski still at the dawn of his career"]

"Adam Golaski's book of little stories..." [blog post by Rose Metal Press, with a link to the Little Stories blog]

13. Color Plates } “the subtle intersections between appreciation and invention”

2010-09-10T12:47:00.005-04:00

My publisher sent me a link to the short review of Color Plates that appeared in Publisher’s Weekly. It’s a positive review, for which I am grateful.

Built into the review is an assumption that the reviewer made about the book: that because the paintings that are the book’s inspiration are 19th century paintings, the stories must be set in the 19th century. They’re not.

Neither are they explicitly now, though. The reviewer has picked up on something that the stories couldn’t escape: even though they’re all set in the present (or a time like the present), something essentially 19th century was brought into them. Or, maybe what the reviewer has picked up isn’t that specific. Maybe the stories don’t feel like they’re set in the 21st century because they’re set so much in their own world.

12. Color Plates } I came across this note:

2010-09-03T01:06:00.000-04:00

“The first Color Plates reading I ever gave (three from Toulouse-Lautrec) was at the 2003 World Horror Convention in Kansas City. I read to an audience of three: Alice Henderson, Kimberly Zagoren and Phil Locasio. That same night I read a fourth plate, ‘The Toilette,’ to a much larger crowd for the Morbid Curiosity-sponsored flash fiction contest. Alice won third place.”

All Hallows #32, published two months before Mr. Locasio and I met at the convention, featured fiction by both of us: his “Sundown in Yellow Scar” and my “Back Home” (collected in Worse Than Myself). My path hasn’t crossed with Ms. Zagoren’s since that weekend; she’s the author of two books (that I know of). Ms. Henderson and I attended several conventions together. We’ll be together again when Werewolves and Shapeshifters, edited by John Skipp, is published this October.

Two weeks from now, Rose Metal Press and I will debut Color Plates in Chicago.

11. Reading } Brookline Booksmith

2010-08-14T22:50:00.002-04:00

With a simple, short-range radio device attached to my throat, I controlled the machine pictured above by reading “Holy Ghost.” It’s a burden lugging the machine with me—it weighs as much as a “portable” 1920 Singer sewing machine—but the effect it has on audiences is dramatic, and by all accounts my reading was very much enjoyed. Joy Crelin reported seeing "a weird kind of light map" (pictured below); Liz T. told me she heard—an undercurrent running beneath my story—the low-frequency sounds of blue whales (usually not audible at all!). In the end I’m glad I brought the machine, but I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to.

John read from Under the Small Lights the chapter “The Straw Bed” (“Tell me a story. Tell me about Maybe.”) and from the chapter “Birdlike.” Both very funny but charged with the drama and pain insecurity so easily makes. Before he read—and you won’t believe me, I’m sure—John poured wine for the audience.

After we read, after John and I signed books, John caught up with some old friends who came and I began to browse the used books. While looking at the spines of medieval romances a gentleman handed me a poem, written on a page torn from a Simon & Schuster hardcover (their logo to the left of the handwritten poem—I never saw the title of the book). It was a found poem made of lines from my story. My favorite line is, “toss holy ghost; crisp theory proposed”—in the story, it’s Chris’s theory—I don’t know if “crisp” is a deliberate change or if he just heard me wrong. My thanks to the anonymous poet.

We went for a meal, then, about nine of us. Melissa Goodrum led a toast to our success and to the success of our books. Thank you.

On my way back to my car—a slow walk with that heavy machine—I thought about the conversation I overheard at the college bookstore about that student of mine who was killed—I thought about the strange condition of “some of her organs” and I worried (needlessly, foolishly) about the condition of my own. A Green Line trolley rattled past me then, the lights off in all the cars. The wind that followed the trolley cooled me. I reminded myself: this was a good night.

10. Reading } Brookline Booksmith

2010-08-11T11:55:00.002-04:00

First, an anecdote: overheard at the college bookstore, two students talking, one of whom I realized was related to that former student of mine who was killed when a motorcycle lost control and careened into her. The relative said, “…what was weird was some of her organs were found partially crystallized. The doctors said she might have been dead before the accident. One of the doctors said, ‘dead on her feet.’ My mom couldn’t take it, she freaked out, she was so angry, I thought she was going to sue them or something.” The other student asked the question I would have asked—at this point I stood hidden behind a bookshelf, listening intently: “What do you mean, crystallized?” The relative said, “Like, encrusted with crystallized blood? I don’t know. I couldn’t ask. My mom was freaking out.”

I debated whether or not I could introduce myself to the relative; by the time I decided I would the two students had gone. I went outside to see if I could spot them, but the parking lot was crowded with freshman (it’s orientation week). I checked on a book order (Richard Rolle’s Fire of Love), and left.

Okay.

Tonight I’ll join Andrea Henchey, C.S. Carrier, and other Hartford-area poets for our monthly Inescapable Rhythms reading at Real Art Ways. The featured poet is Lisa Olstein. That the reading begins at 7pm is a lie.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Brookline (MA) reading with John Cotter. That reading does start at 7pm, and since I consider myself to be John’s opening act, I’d appreciate it if you were there on time. John will read from Under the Small Lights, his new book (steadily gathering praise). He’s an excellent reader, and he’s been reading all summer so he’s in shape.

This is the last reading I’ll do before Color Plates is published (look for it in mid-September). My publishers have arranged a pre-order setup (which somehow includes autographs), and I’ll have copies of my old (though recently re-promoted) book Worse Than Myself on hand. But tomorrow night I’ll read something with the desperate scent of unpublished all over it.

John says he’ll buy you drinks if you go.

9. Atlas } What kind of map is it?

2010-08-09T19:32:00.000-04:00

8. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight } A single line.

2010-08-01T09:39:00.000-04:00

line 424:

Þat þe scharp of þe schalk schyndered þe bones [Middle English]

scharp = sharp blade, schalk = man, and schyndered = cleave or burst asunder

So that the sharp blade sheared through, shattering the bones [Brian Stone]

That the shock of the sharp blow shivered the bones [Marie Boroff]

So that the man’s sharp blade cut through the bones [R.A. Waldron, in a footnote]

So that the sharp blade shattered the man’s bones [A.C. Cawley, in a footnote]

Cut through bones and skin and fair [Burton Raffel]

So that the sharp edge sundered the man’s bones [W.S. Merwin]

The cleanness of the strike cleaved the spinal chord [Simon Armitage]

That man’s sharp stroke shattered the bones [Adam Golaski]

Note the location of the word “man.” Cawley and Merwin apply “man” to the Green Knight. Waldron applies “man” to “sharp blade”—which could be read as the sharp blade of the Green Knight, though at this point in the poem that sharp blade—the axe the Green Knight carried into Arthur’s hall—is in Gawain’s possession, and is Gawain's (won by accepting the Green Knight's challenge), so Waldron might be applying “man” to Gawain.

Gawain is a man. The Green Knight is not. That’s why I chose to apply “man” to Gawain.

I wrote “that man” instead of “the man” for the repeated “a” sound.

In my translation, it isn’t the blade that’s sharp, but Gawain’s stroke. Sharp is precise, but sharp is also smart—it at least seems smart to chop of the Green Knight’s head. Too bad about about the irrational supernatural.

Like Stone, I chose to shatter the bones. Shatter maintains my alliteration and is a more violent verb than sunder, sheared, shivered, cut, or cleave. My “shattered” is more aggressive than Stone’s “shattering.”

Raffel took words from surrounding lines, which is why his line is so different. Armitage’s solution was to alliterate with “c” as well as “s”—a big departure from the Gawain poet’s original line. I like Armitage’s line.

My translation of the first fitt of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is featured in this month’s Open Letter’s Monthly. My thanks to editors John Cotter and Steve Donoghue for their hard work in the service of “Green.”

7. Reading } St. Mark’s Series, NYC

2010-07-24T00:27:00.005-04:00

Above, the reading space at Bar 82. Host Greg Purcell (pictured below) announced that this was his final night hosting the St. Mark’s Reading Series; in a week, he runs out of furniture in New York City.

I read an unpublished story (“Holy Ghost”). Kira Henehan followed with an excerpt from Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles; there’s music in that prose.

Julia Holmes allowed her Mr. Meeks full control of the microphone. We listened to Mr. Meeks, rapt.

The audience was excellent—a modest turnout that filled up the room nicely, including the appearance of good friend Jenna Lawrence. Later, there were noodles. Even later I returned to my hotel room. No dreams there, by the way. An odd moment on the way home, though:

I left Manhattan by train. I read Chambers’ “Yellow Sign.” An hour out of the city I noticed, seated across the aisle and two seats ahead of me, a young woman who looked exactly like a student of mine who was killed shortly after her graduation (she was struck by a motorcycle).

The air on the train was too cold—the young woman stood to get a hoodie to wear over her dress. Embroidered in white on the front of her black dress was a familiar pattern—why familiar I couldn’t say until all at once what at first appeared to be only a symmetrical design coalesced into the face of a horse. We entered a tunnel, and the red light from an exit sign made a long line from the horse’s forehead to the young woman’s throat.

We left the tunnel, the young woman pulled on her hoodie, and sat down. For the rest of the trip I stared out the window.

6. Reading } St. Mark's Series, NYC

2010-07-20T10:53:00.003-04:00

My last visit to Manhattan was made strange by a dream. At the door to my hotel room I hesitated; I unlocked and opened the door. Something very large stood in the tiny room. Before I could reach into the room for the wall-switch, my eyes adjusted: a horse. It took a single step toward me. Light from the hall lit its massive white face and:

From between its nostrils was erupted a crystal tooth, grown haywire from the horse’s lower jaw, a horn as long as the horse’s head. The horse took another step. A sharp intake of breath. Mine. The yellow-clear crystal horn filled swirling with blood and the horse’s white face became pale blue.

The next morning I woke, fully dressed, on the bed. I’d left the door partially ajar. I had nothing worth stealing, but I looked around on instinct; Watson’s The Double Helix remained on the side table, my papers and pencils on the desk, my bag on the valet, my wallet in my back pocket. My keys were beneath my leg--likely slipped from my pocket during the night. I’d slept through my alarm and missed breakfast.

At home, as I unpacked, I noticed a small tear in the shirt I had slept in, a tear no longer than a paper clip, located just beneath the pocket. Slowly, I touched my chest. I’d ignored a soreness there all afternoon, but then it broadcast in hot ripples.

I won’t make too much of this. I slept on my keys, after all. I booked the same room in the same hotel for this Thursday. I was in Manhattan last month to see John Cotter read from his new novel; I’m returning to Manhattan to read in the St. Mark’s Reading Series. I read with Kira Henehan, author of Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, and Julia Holmes, author of Meeks. The reading takes place at Bar 82, on 136 2nd Avenue, between 9th Street and St. Mark's. The reading begins at 7:30pm “sharp.”

5. Worse Than Myself } The Man from the Peak

2010-07-19T21:58:00.007-04:00

This is old news.

“The Man from the Peak,” a story original to the Montana half of Worse Than Myself, was singled out by Ellen Datlow for reprint in her Best Horror of the Year (vol. 1). Often stories that appear in best-of anthologies appeared first in hard-to-find, little-known journals or in similarly obscure small press anthologies and collections (as did mine); a best-of can grant these stories a second life in front of a larger readership. That’s why they’re important. They’re better, too, than end-of-the-year lists or industry awards, because there you have it, the thing itself, the story: now you may read it and decide for yourself whether or not to look up an author, a magazine, a press, etc.

(For a brief while it looked as if horror would have an unprecedented wealth of best-ofs, but most never appeared and a couple vanished after only a volume or two; for example, and of interest to me, Horror: The Best of the Year from Prime Books. Volumes for 2007 and 2008 were edited but never appeared. I know about the 2008 edition because Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, its editor, selected “What Water Reveals” (also from Worse Than Myself) to be included.)

Best Horror of the Year (vol. 1) received a good amount of attention because it’s the first in a series more likely than most to last and because it’s pretty good. Reviewers liked it. In as many reviews as not, my story wasn’t mentioned, but in two reviews, my story was singled out. Orrin Grey, for The Innsmouth Free Press, wrote that “‘The Man from the Peak’ might be my favourite story in the book” and Michael Lambe, on his blog, wrote: “…my favorite in the collection is Adam Golaski’s ‘The Man from the Peak’…. It lulls you in, then gradually, dreamily and subtly, creeps you out, and finally brings you face-to-face with pure, unadulterated, bloody HORROR…. That one story alone is worth buying the collection for.”

Perversely, the review of the anthology I enjoy the most is a negative Amazon.com customer review by Vicky Stow. She found it disappointing. She did like one story (“Beach Head” by Daniel LeMoal), and she admits to giving up without reading the last two stories—which are, by the way, “The Man from the Peak” and “The Narrows” (by Simon Bestwick). I ache for Ms. Stow to weigh in on my tale!

(Bestwick’s story is among the finest in the book. LeMoal’s is excellent and unique. “Loup-garou,” by R.B. Russell, does something so fine it must be the best of the bunch. I would be proud to have written any of the three; Russell’s I don’t think I could have.)

4. Some Notes } Two Panels at Readercon 2010

2010-07-14T13:06:00.003-04:00

On a hill by a rock surrounded by parking lots and with a cup of coffee carried from the hotel, I wrote an introduction for the panel I was to moderate Saturday afternoon called “Down There in the Gutter: The Fiction of the Unpleasant.” I wrote: Here we are on Burlington Mall Road, which is pretty awful. Its designers—presumably humans, presumably not sadists—designed a strip devoid of much pleasantness. Even if all you like to do is shop and suck down Frappachinos, there are much nicer places to do so. Places where you’re not blinded by concrete. If this were the setting for a “literary novel,” it would be called bleak—as it would be called in a horror novel.

I spoke then about Peter Straub’s essay “What About Genre, What About Horror”—the inspiration for the panel. I said that Straub’s essay argues that so-called literary fiction is a) a genre and b) like horror, as it’s “about” low-rent feelings and experiences: adultery, alcoholism, the indignities of ageing, poverty, anxiety, abuse, fear, etc., etc. That this is also the subject of literary fiction is not acknowledged, whereas horror fiction announces that this is exactly its subject —often via intermediaries such as book jackets.

The point of Straub’s essay? Maybe that both genres are potentially the same (especially since so much literary fiction contains elements of fantasy), or at the very least, not so unlike that both genres can’t be taken seriously (or not taken seriously).

The point is also that Straub has ceased to care much about the difference.

The panel sputtered a bit, but Straub contributed some fine thoughts, as did Kathryn Cramer, and Kit Reed and Mike Allen who brought their background in crime journalism to the discussion. Allen, as he notes on his own blog, tended to play devil’s advocate, which helped a little with the sputtering. Barry N. Malzberg seemed wholly uninterested. I have a sneaking suspicion many in the room felt the same way. Still, we had a big turnout, and two brilliant comments from the audience.

Feeling (correctly) wholly unprepared, I moderated a second panel on Sunday called “The 9,191,935,961 Names of God: Metaphysical Hard SF.” Again, I wrote an introduction to focus my thoughts (and, ideally, to guide the panel): If science fiction can examine any subject of concern to us, it must be able to examine concerns not obviously scientific, but philosophical and—as the panel description puts it—spiritual. The title of this panel, though a reference to Olaf Stapledon’s Starmaker, brought to mind that Arthur Clarke story, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” in which a programmer is hired by monks to make a computer that will end the world by writing all the names of God. Clarke’s story—in spite of the computer—is in no way hard SF. Generally, philosophical and spiritual concerns typically lead to soft sf. Forgive the long build up. My first questions are 1) can you [the panelists] speculate on potential hard sf approaches to the “soft sciences” and 2) can you cite extant examples?

I never needed to ask another question. The panelists took off, with great energy, especially Benjamin Rosenbaum and Ron Drummond. Paul Di Fillippo, Ed Meskys, and I contributed when we could and when we did I’d say we did so well. Certainly with pleasure. The audience picked up on our energy, and jumped in with numerous excellent points.

The image above, from NASA, is of star cluster NGC 3603.

3. Readercon } Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper

2010-07-02T01:34:00.004-04:00

Readercon has long been important to New Genre. Editor David Hartwell made space for issue #1 on his table in the Readercon bookshop in 2000; most years since, we’ve had our own table. New Genre has never kept a publication schedule (opting instead to wait for not just good but brilliant fiction, drawn exclusively from so-called slush), but when a new issue does manifest, Readercon is where the journal has its debut.

This year, the New Genre table will present two new titles: Jennifer Karmin’s Aaaaaaaaaaalice and the Open Letters Monthly anthology. Of course, issues of New Genre will be available, including #6, where the Stephen Graham Jones story “Lonegan’s Luck” first appeared.

On Friday, between noon and 3, I’ll be a participant in a recitation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Roles have yet to be determined, but I’m angling for the part of the wall that stands between Pyramus and Thisbe, as then I’ll be smooch’d on two sides. At 5, I’ll read the Theodore Sturgeon story “The Other Celia,” part of a two-day celebration of Sturgeon’s short fiction.

Saturday afternoon, I’ll question the wisdom of publishing an essay on The Millions, as moderator of a panel called “The Fiction of the Unpleasant,” inspired by an article Peter Straub wrote. Straub will join me, along with Kit Reed, Kathryn Cramer, Mike Allen and Barry N. Malzberg. No, none very esteemed, but nonetheless. At 6:30, during the dinner break, I’ll offer a reading. What I read depends on how antagonistic I feel.

I’ll spend Sunday investigating the apartment directly beneath my own, where I’m certain there’s living a young woman whose skin is paper.

2. Some Notes for an Essay } Nina's Dance

2010-06-28T15:19:00.004-04:00

Above, Nina Joly, a former student of mine and a dancer/choreographer.

Notes in response to “Twins,” a dance choreographed by Nina to Calvin Harris’ song “I’m Not Alone.” Harris seems like a fool, but the song is strong; it’s not his anymore anyway. Nina dances w/ Lyz Hazelton.

I’ve no dance vocabulary. Nina reassures: “…most of that stuff doesn't have names anyway.”

[0:15 – 0:22] Early on, when Nina and Lyz turn their backs to us, they put their hands to their thighs/rears (the “rear grab,” as Nina permits me to call it), then move side-to-side for a few steps. They're lifting themselves up, while also doing something that might be crass.

[1:33 – 1: 47] Nina and Lyz here mostly move with their arms, but their hips move too—they keep their feet planted—the movements that aren’t made by their arms appear directly linked to their arms. (This is a moment when I “stood up” and thot, “Oh yeah, that's excellent.”) (Original note: “Yeah! It's the first chorus. That arm stuff! Yeah. Oh, I see. It's NOT just arm movement. You two are moving your whole bodies. That's what makes the arm motions so vivid.”)

[2:30 – 2:50] The strength of small gestures/movements, contrasted with a single bigger gesture (an upsweep of the arm). Often in the choruses.

Embracing, pulling apart. Steps taken together/mirrored, separate motions (“mirrored body movements—that are especially good to watch. two bodies/light waving” [1:50]. ) Nina is the leader but Lyz catches up, creates her own space with movement, and is the aggressor (in the end, she drags Nina from the stage).

The costumes are brilliant. Simple color contrast, dark and light but not black and white (so not obviously binary). The prim tops (pleated and buttoned up to the chin) and skirts (pleated, hem below the knees) allow certain moves to happen without becoming crass (the aforementioned "rear grab") or racy (both Nina [1:59] and Lyz [2:43] shake their shoulders vigorously; in the wrong costume, the only thing I'd see are breasts moving, but because of the costumes, I can see everything that's happening. By covering up, I see more than the dancers). (Nina re. my costume comments, “I’m also really pleased you like the costumes. I had always planned on doing something old-fashioned-ish, but I'm sure you understand how after you think about your own ideas for months and months, you can no longer gauge how things will be perceived. I'm so glad it was a successful choice.” I know what is meant by “old-fashioned-ish”—the costumes are not really old-fashioned at all.)

(Watch the video; a combination of two performances, shot and edited by Dave Joly.)

1.

2010-06-23T20:01:00.001-04:00

“I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the ‘Herculean’ labors, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be instantly detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them—thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners and soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. The poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason I was superior to the politicians.”

from "Apology" by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett.