What I'm reading...

After Bradley and I met last for coffee and a little 5x5 chat, we headed to Garrison Keillor's WORLD FAMOUS (maybe?) bookstore, Common Good Books. I love this place - it's underneath a coffee shop in a beautiful old building, so there's lots of exposed stone and crazy architectural features. It's also just big enough to house a very interesting collection of cookbooks, Minnesota themed books, and children's books... along with all the regular good stuff you expect to get at a book store.

But let's go back to that children's books part. I thoroughly LOVE fiction for all ages of children. Picture books with wonderful illustrators can stop me dead in my tracks, and I will be honest when I say that I enjoyed every single Harry Potter (although I promise I have not read Twilight and have only thought about reading it a solid three times).

I was absolutely thrilled on our little stop at Common Goods, then, to see Wildwood, by Colin Meloy (yes, of the Decemberists) with illustrations by his wife/my favorite illustrator Carson Ellis. Carson has a charming style that is chock full of tiny minute details that give me the shivers. An entire book with spot illustrations from her is a dream come true!

It was an added bonus that the book is actually smart and adorable. The little foxes in their soldier's uniforms are so cute, and the main character Prue is believable and the kind of pre-teen that I'd actually enjoy the presence of.

Wanna know more? Watch this cute video and GET THE BOOK. If you are embarrassed to be seen reading a book for 12 year olds when you are a grown person, you can claim you got it for your cool niece for Christmas or something. I don't think you should be embarrassed about it, though.

Nonprofit Status!

Hello readers.  I'm very excited to inform you that 5x5 is officially a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization recognized by the IRS.  This is very exciting news, because it's a major step forward for the magazine, and because it means I know how to fill out complicated IRS forms.  That's right, we keep the overhead low by doing everything we possibly can on our own, and sometimes we cross our fingers and hope that we've done it correctly.

Alright, I did get some help with the financial side of it from an accountant friend, but I paid him only with wine and my pleasant company.  Thanks, David.

And, of course, thank you for reading, contributing and donating.  While 5x5 started out as my own personal project, it quickly turned into a collaborative project between hundreds of people.

What else is going?  Here it is.  We've pushed our deadline back one month for the winter issue because we simply haven't had as many submissions as we'd like to see.  This is somewhat of an anomaly.  As you know, our fall issue was our biggest issue yet.  We're hoping that our winter issue will be just as big or bigger, but we need more submissions to make that happen.

Please, if you've been thinking about submitting, now is the time.  If you've been thinking about telling your friends about us, do it today.  We want to see your work, because, as I mentioned above, 5x5 would be nothing without its contributors and readers.

Thanks.  Sincerely.  Thank you all for your help so far, and we look forward to doing great things for literature and the arts together.

Creating a Literary Community for Yourself

Part of the process of getting published is finding literary magazines you love!— and want to read whether or not they have accepted your work recently. I like to call this a literary magazine community—a community that showcases the type of writing you love, and the kind of writer you want to be.

But how to begin?

Get obsessive! Read up on editors, and the authors they’ve published. Have a heart-to-heart about the magazine’s mission. Don’t be daunted by the various demands for submitting work (no simsub is always a tough one). Really decide if this literary magazine is right for you and your work… and most importantly, walk away if it isn’t.

The truth is, your work is publishable—in the right place and at the right time. It may seem time consuming “getting to know” some of the hundreds of literary magazines out there—but it is worth it. Perhaps you can send out a fifty simultaneous submissions to a fifty different magazines—but if you are writing in Terza Rima and 49 of the magazines do not publish work written in form, then you are already wasting your time (and the editors, too!).
No one likes receiving a rejection letter, and though it is inevitable, it also doesn’t have to be excruciating.

Become aligned with the views and ideals of the magazines you’re submitting to, and you’ll become aligned with the greater community of writers. We all want to be published…all of the time. But in lieu of that, isn’t it better to support the cause of literature, and the literature you like best?

I love being a part of 5x5 because I believe in the short form. I like efficient, powerful imagery. I like it when a writer says just enough. I also like writing centered around women’s issues and am a huge fan of Earth’s Daughters. Even if I am not published in every and/or any of their issues, I want to see this kind of writing in the world.

So what do you want? How do you describe your work? Be honest…most of us don’t write in a style that is going to appeal to every person out there. What writers inspire you? What literary magazines have published them? Build a community a literary magazines that reflect your truth and talents as a writer.

Memory and Effigy

I recently read a draft of a poem that had the line "Why recently, I am so drawn to dilapidation."  

If you read my last post, you will know that I most whole-heartedly agree with that statement!  Again and again, I am being drawn to images, places, and people that are past their prime.  Whether you want to call it dilapidation, beautiful ruin, or even something melodramatic like the gorgeous flaw, the fact remains that what is imperfect is far more interesting than something seamless and perfect.  Perfection has its place, perhaps with Plato or in heaven.  But here on earth, what garners my attention in writing are flawed characters, broken dreams, and the imperfect world of objects.

Who wants to read about St. Blandula's struggle-free life, where she was always immersed in the divine and never tempted?  Not me.

There is an impulse within all of us to look back at the past through rose colored glasses.  We call this nostalgia or the "good old days."  History shows us again and again, that people like to recall a semi-mythical past in which their culture was at its greatest.  The ancient Greeks (specifically Hesiod) called this their Golden Age, an age where men "lived with the gods without sorrow."  There is a reason that the good stories from Greek mythology come later, at a more flawed stage of mankind.  Where would our fairy tale princesses be without the long climb up to the castle throne?

So it is with each of us.  When we begin to write, we may want to edit out the very parts of our stories that make them the most compelling.  We might want to avoid the unpleasant or embarrassing aspects.  Or even believe that our memory is absolute fact.  That hazy world of the "good old days" beckons us, whispers in our ear to return, and ultimately to enter into an idealized, struggle free piece of writing.  We become the lotus eaters that Homer warned us about.  In other words, boring.

We, as writers, need to ask ourselves what we truly wish to show in our writing.

Miriam-Webster defines an effigy first as, "an image or representation, especially of a person" but then more interestingly as "a crude figure representing a hated person."  We immediately know what we are interested in hearing more about.  Give me enemies for $1000 please.

The word effigy comes from Middle French and Latin, meaning to form or to shape.  It has a connection to the word dough.  As a former baker, I know intimately, what it means to shape loaves for the rising and baking process.  So it is with writing.

As you begin drafting or revising your pieces, I encourage you to write straight at the heart of imperfection.  Dig deeper into the flaws of your characters and narratives.  Is is through these cracks and brokenness that our strongest stories find their way into the world.

What Beginners Should Know

I remember my first fiction writing teacher telling me, "I think this story is great for a first time fiction writer."  I put it in quotes even though I don't remember what she said verbatim.  Dr. Rita Carey.  Thanks for that.  It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time.

Even at the time, I knew it needed a lot of improvement, but I didn't know how to make it better.  The foreshadowing was too obvious, and the dialogue was unrealistic.  As Ira Glass mentions, I could see that it wasn't great, but I didn't know what to do to make it better.  Dr. Carey knew what to tell me to give me hope.  Her words could be summed up as: "Good start."

There's so much room for improvement, and if you keep trying, you'll get there.  I had been reading great writing for years.  Books that had been written, revised, edited, published and then purchased by different readers for decades.  How could I possibly expect my first attempt at writing fiction to compare?

That's why Dr. Carey was the teacher.  Some of the other students in the class weren't as constructive with their criticism.  I remember one fellow classmate writing on my story, "Overall your writing is quite pedestrian."  I think he was bitter because I had given him some not-so-constructive criticism as well.  Let's face it, I wasn't qualified to be a teacher either.  But discouraging words can also be a sense of encouragement if you look at it right.  I cut his comments out of the paper and pasted them into my writing notebook as a reminder.

We all start somewhere.  And as we continue practicing, what we produce comes closer and closer to what we know is great.

Beautiful Things

I have finally purchased a digital camera.

It isn't that I'm anti-technology--I'm truly quite fond of it--but my film camera was still working pretty well(though I have about 7 undeveloped rolls lurking in a draw somewhere), and I knew that waiting would bring the price down.

Anyway, I'm one of those people. Those people who take pictures of everything. Those people who make you stop in the middle of something so I can take a picture of it/you partaking in it. Those people who ruin the ambiance of the moment by trying to capture the moment, and then the moments gone. Those people who will even try and make you re-enact the scenario if I missed it.

Forgive me.

I am not really even "into photography." What I am "into" is "beautiful things."

For me, a beautiful thing is something small that sums up a feeling. An image that can serve as a symbol for the spirit of an event. All of these events make up my life--these are symbols that represent the spirit of my life.

Beautiful things are different for every person, and sometimes they don't make sense later. In five years, will I appreciate the photo of two strangers wearing hot sauce holsters at Oysterfest? Maybe. Did I love it when I saw it? Yes! And taking a photo of this small event is for me a ritual that honors beautiful things.

Mishon

In Which Random Things Come Together and Appear to Make a Whole

Hello 5x5 Readers,

This weekend has been filled with a small accretion of idea bits and fragments, that have sort of reached a critical mass in my head.  If my mind were a junk drawer, it would be time to clean it out.

One thing that struck me this weekend was my tendency to pick up old books, even if I may never read them.  A great example of this is a book I got first published in 1939 called Cowboy Dances: A Collection of Western Square Dances by Lloyd Shaw.  This book is filled not only with photos of the dancers, but diagrams for dancing groups and a whole commentary on what music may be appropriate to listen to.  More intriguing is that the foreword is written by Sherwood Anderson, the author of the novel Winesburg, Ohio.

On Saturday, at the Farmer's Market, I saw a half dozen elderly couples square dancing.  It is one thing that I have always wanted to learn, but never gotten around to.  Do young people square dance these days?  Perhaps buying older books on subjects that intrigue me is one way to give form to my countless aspirations.

Right now, my friend is taking her elderly father through  Montana on his "last tour."  At the age of 88, she doesn't think that he will be able to make another foray into the Big Sky State where he spent the first half of his life.  She said that they were stopped in Ekalaka, Montana which is a town that nearly touches the divide between North and South Dakota.  I went to another book that I have to learn a little bit more about where they were at.  In Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman published by the Montana Historical Society, I learned that Ekalaka is named for the niece of the Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud.  She and her husband opened a store and saloon there in 1885.  The town is currently a whopping 410 people.

Over the weekend, I stopped at the small town of Garfield, Washington in hopes of eating at a BBQ joint and cafe run by an elderly couple.  I haven't been up that way in about five months.  When I arrived, the place was closed.  Instead, I ate at Grumpy's Bar and was told by the woman at the counter that the elderly woman was ill and her husband spent a great deal of time taking care of her so the restaurant folded.  Another place that I enjoyed visiting has faded off the map.

This morning I drank my coffee out of a cup I bought from the Steamboat Rock Restaurant in Grand Coulee, Washington this summer.  It was perhaps the ideal small cafe.  The woman who was our waitress had worked there for 36 years.  The decor was replete with wagon wheels and knotty pine paneling.  It probably hadn't been remodeled since 1960, and this was a positive thing.  Although things looked worn, they were spotless.  I bought a cup at the counter, because I know that someday soon, this place will probably also slip into history.

And that is what this post is really about, the way that life continues to slip into the past.

How elusive our points of reference can be.  Memory too continues to shift inside of us.  My recollection of the ham and egg sandwich I ate at the Steamboat Rock Restaurant will continue to haunt, even though it was perhaps the aura of the place that charmed me.  I begin to long for such things, especially when faced with the fact that I will most likely not be back to that part of Washington for years, if at all.

And this is where writing comes in, at the end.  Through writing, I am able to capture if not the actual moment, at least a texture of it.  If not the exact shape, then at least I can sketch its gesture in words.

Writing, can sustain us, even if all else recedes   

 

 

COMICS from the editor!

Hello readers!

It was my turn to write a Letter from the Editor for our Visitors Issue... but instead, since I was super inspired by all the comic entries we received for this issue, I drew a COMIC FROM THE EDITOR instead! How exciting.

Enjoy!

-Emma

From the Director

It’s just me again, but this time I’m writing to you as the Director of The 5x5 Nonprofit Organization of Literature & Arts Advocates.  No, it isn’t finalized yet, but the forms, and the check, have been sent in to the IRS.  This is a very exciting time for us.  That check was a big chunk of change, and we couldn’t have done it without our donors and readers.

What it mean for you:  All your donations will soon be tax deductable, and your previous donations will become tax deductable retroactively.  If you need that receipt, let us know.  It also means that all you have to do to help an organization committed to promoting artistic work from teenagers and beyond is buy a subscription and enjoy.  I guess that part was already true.

What it means for us: We can apply for grants that were previously unavailable to us.  We can also get discounted postage rates for mailing the magazine out.  Basically, it gives us more power to:

• Encourage and assist children, teenagers, and adults to read and write literature;
• Financially and instructively assist students interested in literature and the arts with improving their education;
• Help writers and artists distribute their work to the public.

Those words come from our “Purpose” in our official documents.  That’s what we’re all about.  Nothing more; nothing less.  We’ve gotten to this point with your help, and we’ll only continue to grow with your help.  This is a community organization, not a corporation.  Ok, technically some forms refer to us as a corporation.  Semantics.  But we’re here to work as a group, helping each other out.  And we’re glad you’re here too.

Find Your Taboo

I recently finished reading "Emotional Currency," by Kate Levinson--a book about exploring a less rational side to the human relationship to money. This book is slated as a woman's guide to money management because it encourages the use of storytelling in order to help the reader explore what hidden positive/negative experiences are causing the habits they have now.

In order to broach the taboo subject of money, Levinson suggests her readers write a money memoir. It is the perfect, safest way to "talk about" what can't be easily said.

Writing about my experiences with money has done as the book intends, and helped me understand the tangle of emotions I am overwhelmed with when I think about money. But I also realized I'd struck fertile ground for some interesting and charged personal essays.

Finding a taboo topic may be easier for you than it was for me. My big hint was that sinking feeling in my stomach and tightness at my throat. Approaching yourself this way may open a whole new realm for your writing.

Cheers!

A salute to comics

Do you know how excited I am to see our comic submissions increase in number with each issue? Comics are not an easy thing to create, and to find or create one to relate to our theme makes submitting even more difficult! So thank you, all you comic submitters - I appreciate you! (and I appreciate everyone who submits to 5x5, but today we're celebrating the comics).

So let's call this Comics Appreciation day! I can think of plenty of printed comics that I love love love (Scott Pilgrim? Blankets? American Splendor?), but I want to focus on web comics. I love that even though the internet is infinite, so many people manage to avoid the urge to simply go overboard and create a comic of ginormous proportions. If you've been trying to figure out comics for yourself, consider this: less is more! When you have multiple panels to express an idea, why not find the simplest way of putting it? You might be surprised by how limitations can bring out your creativity.

Check out two of my most favorite web comics, I promise you won't be disappointed:


American Elf, August 10th 2011

Jame's Kochalka's American Elf can, admittedly, be found in print, I enjoy taking the time to click through the extensive archive. James Kolchalka has been creating a single comic documenting something that happened to him each day since October of 1998. I started reading American Elf in college and can still remember getting a little emotional over the birth of his son! Each comic leaves me feeling satisfied, like I can totally understand a simple yet strong emotion that another person felt. That's a pretty impressive feat for four panels.


Hark, A Vagrant: Viking Comic, Redone

Oh my goodness, do I love me some Hark, A Vagrant and you will too if you like any of the following: history of Cananda, history of America, history of music, history in general, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, silly teenagers, ponies, Edward Gorey, and/or Nancy Drew. All of these things and more come up in Kate Beaton's hilarious web comic. Hark, A Vagrant doesn't have a continual storyline, but covers a different topic with each update - and they are all hilarious. Kate is smart and funny and deserves way way more recognition!


Do you have any recommendations for me? What do you read?

The Economy

Maybe you heard about the recent government shutdown here in Minnesota.  It's up and running now, just in time for me to receive my new tabs for my car.  My wife volunteers at a women's shelter, which would have been closed during the shutdown if not for volunteers stepping in to do the work of the regular employees.  The employees, although passionate about the work they do, were not allowed to volunteer.  Labor laws and all, which makes sense but also makes you feel like your hands are tied behind your back.  Politicians did finally find a way to work together, though.  Unfortunately, one of the areas they cut was education, to the tune of $700 million.  One district had to borrow money just to pay their previous expenses, the fees and interest from which equal the salary and benefits of a teacher.  And they expect to borrow more.

In addition to this, economists are predicting another recession.  Since we still haven't fully recovered from the last recession, this one will hit harder.

Where does 5x5 fit into all this?  We're just about to drop our filing papers in the mail to become an official nonprofit organization.  Literally, I'm going to make a few copies and send it off.  This means we can apply for grants for which we weren't previously eligible.  With the economy the way it is, there will be fewer grants to apply for, and the ones that are available will be more competitive.  We're not too worried about that though.

Thanks to our readers, contributors and donors, we have never had to step backwards.  We've only grown in the last two and a half years.  And we're still growing.  Our operating costs are low, because we do all the work ourselves, from reading, to managing the website and even printing and mailing the magazine.  We don't pay anyone to do these things, and we don't get paid either.  There are only four of us on the staff, and we all volunteer.  We do it because this is what we believe in.

We aren't going anywhere, despite the direction of our economy.  We believe art is still important, and encouraging the next generation is part of that.  Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who believe this.

Here we are working on the eleventh issue of 5x5, and it will have more art, more pages, more contributors and more readers than the last.  We hope you enjoy it.

On Digging Carefully

This week, I have been watching men in my driveway dig deeper and deeper into the earth.  It has something to do with an underground power line that has been defunct for a better part of a year.  The problem in getting the line fixed is that it’s buried below more than four feet of earth.  An even greater obstacle is that there happened to be a heated driveway on top of that.  Think of the heated driveway as an incredibly expensive, complicated crust placed on top of a pie.  It’s summer and somehow easier to see a pie metaphor from June until September.

So the men have been excavating underneath the heated driveway, delicately, nearly tunneling their way out of the light and into the secret depths of the earth.  Think of trying to locate a spicy whole clove in the center of a just set peach pie, by digging into the side of it, but making sure that you never disturb the perfect golden crust just centimeters above your spoon.

Writing can be just like this—the delicate searching for an ideal word, image or phrase just out of grasp.  A blind reaching into the dark after something that we can only sense somewhere ahead of us.  So often, for me writing is a stretch or leap into the unknown, a wrestling with an angel in the dark.   Let me be clear that not all (or even the majority) of my poems are angels, fallen or otherwise.  But it is rare that I ever see my opponent clearly. 

Sometimes writing can be an act of excavation.  Only after going deeper and deeper do I finally catch a glimpse of what I was digging for.  In the case of the men outside, it was a snarl of black utility lines that looked so much like a clustering of black snakes, eager to slide out of reach of the shovel.  There are times when I am so frustrated, dirty, and fed up with writing that I want to throw the shovel into the ditch and bury the whole project.  Nevertheless, somehow, I always keep on digging, if haltingly toward my goals.

While at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, another poet asked me why I wrote poems, why not some other genre.  The answer I gave him was immediate and without thought, “Poems allow me to access my inner life.”  My certainty surprised me.  Poetry, after a handful of years, has become the way in which I make sense of my inner and outer world.  It is the eye through which I order my universe.

A poem usually begins as a question or conversation that I am having with myself.  The words and images arise from that unmappable center I call the inner life.  Others may call it the unconscious, the higher self, the muse or the soul. 

It is the deep place where the sable snakes lie slumbering in the dark. 

It is the single perfect clove has scented your entire kitchen from the middle of a pie. 

That is where my writing, at its best, comes from and it takes a spade, a shovel, and a hell of a lot of sweat to get there.  

E-Readers

For a few months now I've been weighing the pros and cons of buying an E-Reader.  There are many debates surrounding this issue.  One debate is which device to buy: Nook (Barnes & Noble); Kindle (Amazon); Kobo; Sony.  Once you decide which device you like the best (I’m leaning toward the Nook), there’s the issue of the catalog behind it.  Although, for the most part, they’re all going to have the bestsellers and such.

The reason I’m leaning toward the Nook is that it’s small, touchscreen and e-ink.  Yes, I’m only interested in e-ink, because what I really want to do is read text that I would otherwise have to read on my computer (or print, but that would waste a lot of paper).  I’m trying to avoid LCD lights shining into my eyes.

This leads to another debate: electronics vs. real books.  I prefer real books.  I love the feel of the paper; I love the smell of a used bookstore.  I’m also a visual and kinesthetic learner: I remember that Milly said, “Wasn’t this the damnedest thing?” on the top of the right page, about a quarter of the way through the book, although I may not remember the page number.  This is something that will be lost with an E-Reader.  While there will still be “page numbers,” they will seem arbitrary, and there will be no left and right pages, no top and bottom.

Sidenote: once books disappear entirely, pages will become an abstract idea.  A marker in the text, yes, but for someone who has never seen a real book, it will have no concrete meaning.  Like “dialing” a phone number for someone who’s never seen a rotary phone.

Sidenote: Yes, I believe that eventually books will disappear.  Maybe not entirely.  Maybe they’ll still exist in poorer countries, and religious groups may still print their holy books, but the big publishing companies will be something very different, if they’re around at all.  I’m talking about the distant future here.

I’m not a luddite.  I like change, although I’m not generally the first person go out and buy the newest gadget.  I’ve been burned before; I bought a Minidisc player in high school.  Of course there are pros and cons to E-Readers, and for the most part the pros outweigh the cons.  But here’s the problem I see, the one problem that has deterred me from buying an E-Reader: you can only buy/download books from huge corporations.

What about Magers & Quinn, or Village Books? 

Powell’s, the biggest independent bookstore, is fighting to be in the game.  Google ebooks and Adobe Digital Editions can be read on Nook, Kobo and Sony, but there’s no mention of Kindle.  This is where it starts to get complicated and I want to reach for a paperback and forget the whole electronic thing.

And then there are libraries.  While an electronic file can be downloaded many, many times, this benefits the publishing house, not the library.  Harper Collins recently limited the number of times the library can lend an eBook to twenty-six.  This is estimated to be the lifespan of a real book.  After twenty-six times, the library would have to buy another copy from the publisher.  Of course, publishers need to make money too so they can pay their authors and CEO and everyone.  I'm not saying they're completely wrong here, but are they the only ones who should benefit from the eternal life of eBooks?  Shouldn't we all be able to benefit from technological advances?

I want an E-Reader that will allow me to download books from anywhere.  I don’t want to buy the Nook and then only be able to buy books from Barnes & Noble, although I know that’s exactly what they want.  I also want to be able to buy books from small, local bookstores, but even if we could, small bookstores don’t have the manpower to convert paper into computer files.  And, why would a person go to the store to buy something they can download at home?

The point here is that E-Readers seem to favor large corporations, and I really want to support the local stores, where local writers hold readings.  I don’t think there’s an easy answer here, and I’m afraid that one day soon I’ll give in and buy a Nook.  I’ll buy it so that I can read PDFs, like all the submissions 5x5 gets, but then I’ll want to buy a new book, and the electronic version will be cheaper than the paper version, and “I don’t have time to stop by the store before work, but I can download it right now before I leave the house,” and I don’t have room on the shelf for another book anyway.

When I started 5x5, I advertized it as a real magazine, printed and mailed.  Since then, we’ve gotten requests for an electronic version.  What do you think?

Interview with Paul Piper

I had the excellent opportunity to pick the brain of writer/teacher/librarian/and generally-just-nice-guy Paul Piper. Dogs and Other Poems, his fourth collection of poetry, celebrates the sweetness and humor of life’s mundane and often glum aspects. Told from the perspective of both man and dog—we rediscover the world from a new angle—the tip of a cold, wet nose.

Dogs and Other Poems is your fourth book of poetry…what inspired this collection? How long has the process of writing and publishing Dogs taken you? What distinguishes the poems in Dogs from the poems in previous collections?

These things are always mysteries to me, but I began writing poems after walking my dog each morning or evening, or things would come to me during the day. Pretty soon I had around fifty poems written from the point of view of my dog. I think about how different creatures perceive us humans a lot so this was an offshoot of that. These became the core of the book. Other poems accumulated, and after I had enough for a book I began sorting them and working with my editor Allen Frost. My books, other than my two initial chap books, have not been consistent with regard to theme or format; they are rather collections of work I’ve done during different time periods. The poems in Dogs took roughly 2 years to write, put together and publish.

For several weeks now, I’ve been focusing on the issue of getting into the “writer’s” head space. Do you find you have any rituals or methods for getting into the mood to write?

None. A lot of poems come to me when I’m out walking. I’ve been at this long enough that many poems come almost fully formed and don’t require a lot of fiddling. I have never been successful at “creating” or “regulating” or bringing into being the head space that shapes a poem. That’s part of the magic of it. Since I am not a “poet” per se, and write non-fiction as well as fiction, I’m not devastated if I don’t write poetry for months on end. I simply turn to another form of writing.

Do you find that certain content chooses a certain genre?

Well, I think certainly that is true. For me, poems are small packages, and they possess an inward and outward movement (for me). I know that’s not true of all poetry, since there are incredibly long, narrative poems (Beowulf, Merwin’s the Folded Cliffs, The Inferno). So if the idea/impulse/inspiration has a strong narrative arc I turn to fiction. Then it just becomes a matter of how long the arc seems to be, which determines whether it’s a short story or novel. Non-fiction is often just a subject (Wikipedia) that I want to learn more about, and I have several markets for this type of article. I am working on a book about Wikipedia however as well, exploring the way information is produced.

You say all of your poetry “is in some form, praise,”—is this also true of the fiction and non-fiction you write? Do you consider all poetry, anybody writes, a type of praise?

It’s really only true of a certain number of poems in that book (Dogs), so that was a bit of hyperbole.
Not at all. There are multitudes of poetry. Many are condemnations or written in anger. I think a lot about hubris these days, and I also think a lot about my influences. I am extremely grateful that I have been significantly moved and shaped by other voices. No artist is original. We are all an evolution of one voice.

I’d love it if you’d elaborate on who your influences are, and how hubris plays into that.

I’m not sure if (or how) hubris plays into my influences, except that I’m typically drawn to people who seem to have a generous spirit. My mind was wandering a bit there. I have tons of influences – the Black Mountain poets, the San Francisco and New York schools of poetry; Asian poetry, surrealism, language poetry, experimental and avant garde work. One area I haven’t investigated as much as I should is spoken word/slam.
If I can say something else about hubris, is that it seems to eclipse a sense of wonder that is important to me.

How about giving us a little insight into what you’re working on now…

I am primarily working on a novel entitled (tentatively) A Soul Loves Most What Is Lost. The title comes from C.E. Morgan’s amazing novel called All the Living. I’m not sure who she stole it from, but quite possibly the Bible. It’s about a Japanese American woman who is facing death by pancreatic cancer. She was raped in a WW Two internment camp, and is returning to those memories with the intention of confronting one of her rapists.
It’s tough going but I have around 80 pages thus far. It’s tough not only because of the subject matter, but also getting into a woman’s, and a Japanese woman at that, head and soul.

And is your process with this similar to poetry—letting the Muse inform you in the moment?

This varies depending on the day. Sometimes I’ll have a scene in my head that I want to write, and other times (like today) I’ll read back through the previous page or so and let the muse hold my hand. Sometimes we actually cover some ground.

Decay and Ruin a Writer's Companions

For some time now, I have been hypnotized by ruin.  I don't mean the moral ruin that I was always warned about in church, but the ruin that comes to everything as the result of time.  None of us is safe from decay.  

My first lesson in ruin came from the continual round of seasons in Montana.  The biting, frigid winters and the sometimes brutal summer sun baked and broke open anything that was left outside.  Wood weathered, paint peeled and the asphalt split and fissured.  Every year hard freezes pushed up a new crop of rocks into our garden.  The elements stripped and cracked the paint from the picket fence, turning the wood gray.  Potholes and crevices gaped open all the roads in town from the freeze-thaw-freeze of spring.

Ruined library books swollen with summer rain.  Rusted cars that I buried in the sand pile only to discover years later.  The small African frog who didn't last long as a pet, reduced to a perfect tiny milk-white skeleton three months after I exhumed its grave.

Growing up in a rural environment taught me that I too would one day be reduced to so many brittle bones in earth.

Perhaps this is one reason that the poetry of Richard Hugo appeals to me so strongly.  He wrote about a landscape in decline.  Boom towns became bust towns in a matter of years.  Hugo's poems speak not only of rural decay, but also of the slow decline of the inner life.  Hope slips away like so much snow melt in July.

I have spent the past two 4th of July holidays in Butte, Montana, perhaps one of the greatest examples of urban decay in the west.  Butte boasted a population over 100,000 people from more than 75 countries in 1910.  Now only 34,000 remain.  Butte, once the copper mining capital of the United States is more relic than the "richest hill on earth."  Nearly one dozen mining headframes dot the landscape.  Uptown Butte displays its former glory in brick, weathered wood and fading advertisements.  It is still standing, but just.

Ruin calls on me to mourn.  Decay resonates with some inner part of me that whispers, "All shall fall to time."  I admit that I am melancholy by nature, but urban ruin also elevates my vision.  My imagination rises to fill in the crumbling walls, empty windows and fades signs with new life.  

I begin to realize that as so many others have faded from these places, I will as well, but perhaps some writer or artist in the future will also wonder about me, in the same spaces--where I called to the past and it answered back.

In the Beginning

I remember how I became a writer.

It was a couple weeks into my first college level literature class, the topic of which was modernist poetry. I had been confounded by Ezra Pound's lines: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough." Why was there no explanation, no dramatic sweeping declaration of love and/or death? It was up to me, and only me to understand these scant 14 words--and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the intrigue.

Then there was William Carlos Williams and ee cummings (and MANY wonderful others). For the first time I was reading poetry that resonated with me as a human being. The mundane, the broken, the lustful, the anger and outrage, the grit and fists and dimension of the language--to me--it blew Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Poe out of the water (I like to envision it like a game of Battleship).

So after class, I went out to my car, found a scrap of paper and described something I had seen that day. Something simple but that I couldn't get out of my head. Of course, I had written other poems, diddies with ABAB rhyme schemes about a blue-eyed love--but I had never written an honest poem about something that existed in my reality.

I wish, for the sake of symbolism and nostalgia, I still had those lines, but like many other things I've written and forgotten, it was the act itself, not the product, that mattered.

Though I have read and loved many other writers since that time, the modernists will always be where it began for me--how I learned to relate to the world as a poem and write poetry that others relate to.

In parting, I'll leave you with my favorite WCW poem:

To Elsie

The pure products of America
go crazy--
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure--

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express--

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she'll be rescued by an
agent--
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs--

some doctor's family, some Elsie--
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us--
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

ben shahn

There's been a big debate happening on a few blogs right now about Ben Shahn, a Social Realist painter who gained notoriety as a fine artist in the 30s and as a commercial illustrator in the 60s. Some say Shahn spawned a generation of bad artists today that hide behind a history of faux naïve art, while others claim that they can certainly draw "good" if they want - but they choose this childlike effect because it interests them personally.

Personally, I'm a little torn. Certainly, anyone who says that Shahn was no artist and couldn't draw worth an ice cream sandwich must be unable to see the amazing deliberate way Shahn could use a simple line to express weight and motion.. and also has never tried to draw like Shahn themselves. Sorry, Soccer Mom, but there's a good chance that your kid couldn't draw that - because there's an entire life of proper fine arts training behind these "crude" appearing lines.

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However I do grow slightly weary of artists from every era calling the faux naïve card who pick up this style without much training or experience. Folk art might draw from the "uneducated" with no background in the arts - but while it can appear similar to this style it's not the same. But! An illustrator who has diligently worked on their craft and has landed in this style will always catch my eye over an illustrator based more in realism.

Personally I feel that one must really explore their relationship with art and work through many stylistic phases before moving into the simplistic. It's a style that I would love to be able to claim someday, but I know I'm still working on it.

I'm still kind of torn on the whole subject, though! It's a pretty tricky one - what do you guys think?

my own little blatant Shahn rip-off from a few years ago, a portrait of Marlon Brando from "On the Waterfront".

Illumination

Light.  Enlightenment.  Epiphany.  Illustration.  What do you think of when you think of Illumination?  Coming of age stories?  Maybe stories of Americans traveling to the Far East and learning about Buddhism.  That’s possible.  Maybe that’s the story I would have written.  It’s certainly the first thought I had when I thought about a short fictional piece centered on the word Illumination.  But, of course, as artists will do, our contributors in this issue dug deeper than that.  They found nuances of meaning that most of us may not have thought of and they expressed those thoughts in their own creative ways.

As an editor, I enjoy choosing a word and letting other artists define that word for me.  A dictionary has so many limitations.  We like to leave it more open ended.  Using poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual arts and comics, we’re able, collectively, to come up with a definition of the word that could never be conceived of in a dictionary.  Part of that is that we devote twenty-eight pages to it rather than a few lines.  But it’s also that we get so many different views expressed in so many different ways.  It is—dare I say it—illuminating to see how these highly creative people each view and describe the same word.

5x5 has been going strong now for over two years.  If you do an internet search for literary magazines, you’ll find that there are a lot that don’t last a year.  There are also a lot that publish their issues in seemingly random intervals.  We’re proud to say that we publish four issues per year, at the beginning of each season.  And we couldn’t do that without you, the reader and the artist.  For all the work we put into this, it wouldn’t exist without the community of writers, illustrators, photographers, and other various artist, as well as readers and donors.

Thank you all for being a part of this adventure.  I hope you find our latest issue illuminating.

Out with the Old

I found myself on a frantic de-cluttering spree yesterday--possibly inspired by staying in bed reading until 11:30 AM and then drinking a pot of coffee—I pulled boxes and bags out of the closet, tossed out those “someday-I-might-use-these-for-a-collage” magazines, created folders and spaces for the floater papers that so sneakily nest in a pile on the dining room table.

For the most part, it was time to say good-bye to the stack of journals, 5 years in the making, that I’ve been carting around (and creating) through several moves, in several cities, jobs, and educational programs. More importantly, it was time to let go of the material proof of my creative process and let go of the idea that I might somehow use this as fodder for future work.

Why, you ask, is this so necessary? How, you ask, does this improve my ability as writer?

If there is one thing I experience day in and day out as I wrestle with my creativity, (and the entire reason why I am a huge proponent of Morning Pages) it’s this: the less I tax my conscious and subconscious brain with expectations and responsibilities, the more I am able to create with a natural and deep ease. It just isn’t practical to obsess over the poems I could have written yesterday, when there is plenty of poetry to write today.

Take stock of what nags you when you sit down to write, find a way to address it, and say good-bye.

Mishon

On Making Lists

There is a statistic going around that the “average” American has read one or fewer books in the past year.  Although I find this terrifying, I know there are a lot of us reading fanatics picking up the slack.

Near the first of January, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, my good friend posts a list of all the books she has read for the year.  She makes note of books that she reread and a total page count for the year.  I felt inspired by her reading list.

I tried to think back over the month of December about all the books I had read.  I was certain I could recall each book.  I then tried to think back a month further.  That’s when I ran into trouble.  I couldn’t remember every book I had read and I wasn’t keeping track.  Perhaps it is part of entering into middle age and that my memory is no longer as good as it was.  Maybe it is the fact that I am in an MFA program and I sometimes find myself reading more than a book a week.  Whatever the reason, I thought it would be valuable to keep track of my reading habits.

From January until May, I have been careful to keep a list of the books I am reading.  I started noting the genre to remind myself, because even after a month I found myself wondering if some were poetry or short stories or something else.  This can be tricky as I tend to read a good deal of hybrid work or “compressed genres.”

What did I find out?

First, I found the majority of the books I read were poetry.  This makes sense because I am an MFA candidate for poetry at the University of Idaho.  I was surprised though, because I read 35 books of poems in five months.  Since I love statistics, let me break it down further.  This means I read 6 books a poems a month or 1.5 poetry books a week.

I also found that I read, on average, 12 books or about 1,250 pages a month excluding magazines, single essays and the like.

One other trend was that I found I decompressed by reading genre fiction and so far, almost entirely by a single author.  Tanya Huff was my go-to author for reading where I just wanted to “have fun.”   (I read five of her books over five months.)

I don’t know if you want to start a reading list or journal of your own, but I find it very useful.  Some authors even keep reading diaries, which later become books of their own.  How many books have you read in the past three months?  Can you name them all?  If not, consider keeping track.

music to create to

Hey 5x5 buddies,

I thought I would continue my string of multimedia posts with a write up about music. It is almost required that I have some sort of sound playing in the background if I sit down with the intention of really working on some art. I know that some people can only listen to a specific genre - be it gregorian chants or new wave - but I like to keep my soundtrack varied. My favorite art-makin' tunes keep my ears entertained but generally don't get too loud or quiet. Interesting vocals and some cool sounding instruments are a big plus, too.

Here are some of my greatest hits, in no particular order:



I adore Andrew Bird - his lyrics are strange and beautiful and he can whistle like a champ!



Fiona Apple was never really my thing... until, that is, my boyfriend introduced me to the unreleased version of her Extraordinary Machine album, which features the handiwork of Jon Brion. It's so great, I seriously listen to this album half of the times I decide to sit down and draw. It's girly and bitter, but not overly so.



Also: raps! I kind of like listening to rap when I need to wake my brain up, or if I want to dance around at my desk a little. Kid Cudi has the added bonus of featuring Ratatat on a bunch of his songs, a great combination! Songs with great music videos (like this one) usually get special treatment from me.

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Heaven Can Wait from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.

Oh, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Such dreamy, lovely music - and really, anyone who has worked with Beck and is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg is immediately awesome.

Time to Write

How do you find time to work on creative projects?  I'd like to know.  Do you work on it every morning?  Every evening?  One day a week?

I recently started working more hours at my day job.  I had already put my novel on the back burner; I haven't written a single word since I started my blog back in November.  I rationalized, telling myself that at least I was writing every day, and people were reading what I wrote.  But my passion is the novel.

Since I started working more hours, I've stopped posting every day on my blog.  Now I shoot for once a week. What I won't cut back on is 5x5.  I guess that means I'm more passionate about it than I am about my own writing.  This is something I've only recently realized.

So, amongst working fifty hours per week, editing 5x5 and maintaining a weekly blog, how do I fit my personal writing into my schedule, especially since I also want to spend time with my wife and exercise and simply relax my body and my mind from time to time?

I ask you because I honestly want to know.  How do you do it?  Are you satisfied with the time you spend on creative projects?  Do you have a routine, or do your creative impulses come sporadically?  Do you give yourself deadlines?

Please leave a comment below and let me know how you handle it.

On another note, our Summer issue is in the works.  We're narrowing down our final choices.  It's always very exciting when we get to watch a hodgepodge of creative works come together into a compact printed magazine. Your copy will be in the mail shortly.

Morning Pages

We all have an internal editor, which is very important in most situations—at work, discussing things with our significant others, most public activities. However, when we sit down to a blank page, the last thing we need is the critical voice of our personal filters stunting the flow of our raw creative force.

I have to admit, I have not read The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, but her idea of writing “Morning Pages” was passed on to me by a friend during the first year of my creative writing degree. Morning Pages are a simple discipline—write three pages a day (ideally first thing after waking), stream of consciousness, without stopping. These pages are not meant to be read by anyone…even yourself. And they aren’t meant to be brilliant, so don’t expect them to be.

At first, I had a difficult time not reading my entries, and not expecting them to be brilliant. I often leafed back through my journals, looking for little nuggets of genius to work from or turn in to class—and with absolutely no success. In fact, because you are to write three pages without stopping, many of my entries ended up repeating one or two words: so so so so what so what so what so what what what what. And nearly all of my journaling started with an account of my dating troubles and feeling terribly sorry for myself.

Those are things that you should find in a regular Morning Pages. The real process of writing without thinking and without stopping gives us an opportunity to voice all the terrible, horrible, wonderful daily distractions that bring us out of the creative mindset, and move us to a place of un-judged creativity. The act of writing Morning Pages safely moves us from the logical, critical mind to the deep, abundant subconscious.

Morning Pages are for visual artists as well as writers, so those of a less verbal nature should definitely try this out. More info is available at this website: http://www.theartistsway.com/pdfs/basictools.pdf

What I Know About Readings

I had the fortunate experience of giving a poetry reading with my friend and fellow poet David K. Wheeler on Wednesday.  He and I met in a poetry writing class at Western Washington University several years back and both worked for the same independent bookstore in Bellingham, although not at the same time.

Giving a reading (and royalty checks) are what us aspiring writers dream about.  There you are, book in hand, reading your favorite passages to a standing room only audience.  They hang on your every word.  The audience laughs in all the right places.  You get a standing ovation.  The reading energizes you and inspires you to continue writing.  You are doing it for the throngs of people who adore your work.  Right?

Yes and no.  Yes, you want to share your work with people for the sheer joy of it.  You also want to sell books.  Authors and bookstores hold author readings to advertise and sell a product.  In today's market, you as a writer are also going to have to be your own press agent and PR person.

First, you have to find a place to read, which can involve paying money.  Hopefully you will be reading at a bookstore who is selling your books and they give you a space for free.  But some bookstores do charge authors to do readings.  Even if you don't pay for it, you are at the mercy of the person who owns or manages the space.  They may not return your calls or emails.  The space may be double booked for the same night.  It happens.  More than you would think.

Now you have a venue in which to read.  How do you get people to come?  In the days before social media sites, it meant spending a great deal of time on the telephone.  I would argue, that a good author will still spend large amount of time calling people in the area to either come to the reading or help spread the word.  Facebook event pages and e-vites are great, but really how much of a draw to your event do they create?  I don't have any statistics to back up my claim, but I think that these sites bring in far fewer people than we expect them too.  Honestly, I get invited to five to seven events a week on Facebook.  It is easy to be overwhelmed and click No. No. No. all the way down the screen.  An e-mail doesn't have the force of commitment behind it.  Do send e-mails, especially the day before the event, but don't rely on them as your only form of advertising.

Another way to spread the word is through posters.  When Dave sent me the poster he created, I made copies on obnoxious goldenrod colored paper and hit the streets with thumb tacks and tape.  I live in a town with a small downtown core.  Since this was where the event was being held, I focused my attention to putting up posters near where the event would be taking place.  Putting up posters blindly won't net very good results.  Have a plan for where you are going to put up posters.  Have a reason for putting posters where you do, otherwise you are spending time and money (and deforesting America) without real cause.  Make every thumbtack count. 

One thing about putting up posters for an event that no one talks about is etiquette.  Don't be rude. 

If at all possible, don't cover up events for other people.  Usually bulletin boards are festooned with paper like a porcupine in a Post-It note factory, but try and make an effort to be conscientious.  If you cover up someone else's event, you may get an earful from someone, or worse, the venue where you are holding your event will get angry calls about trying to "ruin" someone else's event.  It also happens more than you would think.

Another thing to do is to make an effort to take down the event posters that you put up.  Your mother was right when she said, "Pick up after yourself."  Ideally, no one else should have to suffer the stab of a thumbtack from taking down your poster or look at your advertising in a coffee shop weeks and weeks after the reading has passed. 

Don't forget about the newspaper and community event spots on the radio.  People do indeed read the newspaper, especially in smaller towns.  Getting a write up in the local paper or even a list in the "Today's Activities" corner catches people's attention. 

Don't also be afraid to use the connections you have.  If you are in University town, contact and poster the English department, just be sure to get the approval of the administrative personnel first.  If you attend a church or social organization of some sort, let people know about your reading--but do it in an appropriate way.  The weekly newsletter or bulletin is great, but  make sure you don't hound people about an event. If you come on too strong, they may start to look the other way when they see you coming.

The most important thing to remember about holding an event is to be grateful.  Only eight people came to your event?  Fantastic!  You only sold three books?  Amazing!  Treat every single person who comes to your event with warmth and gratitude.  They may not purchase your book, but they will remember your smile and your name the next time they hear it. Sincere thank yous go a long way in creating fans. 

Readings are hard work, but they are rewarding for both the writer and the audience if you take the time and effort to do them well!

now and then

I've found myself looking back to my roots as an artist more and more in the past couple months. There was a long span of time, mostly in high school, when I would look back at my old sketchbooks and scoff at what I had done. "I'm so much better now" was generally the thought. Now, however, I can look at those same sketchbooks and think "I am where I am now because of this." The drawings of cats and horses from elementary school, cartoon versions of my friends in middle school, and (embarrassingly) a whole lot of anime things all informed my art today.

This drawing is Emma Trithart circa 5th grade. Check out those super fashionable hairdos! When I look at my work now, though, I can still see that hair is one of my favorite things to spend way too long on. I also still love drawing clothing.

I'm guessing I made this in 2004, right after I started attending the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Though my art used to have much more of a cartoonish and strangely elastic look to it (this lady must be Stretch Armstrong's sister), I can still see a lot of things that I've carried over to my style today. Thankfully I've dropped watercolor, as it is the most unforgiving medium in the history of the planet.

A lot of artists in their twenties (unless they're really lucky) go through a phase of feeling like they've lost their spark - especially ones a few years out of art school like myself. What if we all reach back to ourselves at 8 years old, when we didn't have to worry about student loans or whether or not we'd get into that gallery show? Perhaps that's the key to finding oneself again in any situation. I'm challenging YOU dear reader, whether you are a writer or a visual artist, remember what got you excited about your chosen medium so long ago.

And then submit the results to 5x5, of course.

Fiction vs Nonfiction

Hello Readers.

I hope you've enjoyed the blog so far. We know you're reading because we've been getting feedback. Thanks for keeping us in check. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned a book by Virginia Woolf entitled A Room of One's Own, and we mistakenly called it a novel. It's not. In fact it was first a lecture, and it later became a book.

I love that you called us out on that, because it emphasizes the idea that literature is a community. That idea is a large part of 5x5.

But it also brought up an interesting point. The issue with the word "novel" was that a novel is, by definition, fiction. Of course, you can have nonfiction novels, but then you have to have the word "nonfiction" in front to let the readers know that it isn't a traditional novel. It's a nonfiction novel.

Maybe you disagree with those definitions, and that would be fine. I'm not trying to argue semantics. The point is that there is fact and there is fiction, and then there is everything in the middle. I may go as far as to say that fact and fiction are ideas at two ends of a spectrum and that these ideas are never actually realized. Everything contains both fact and fiction, based on perspective, so everything falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Where exactly a story or a single statement falls in this spectrum can cause all sorts of debates. Remember James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces.

5x5 publishes fiction and creative nonfiction. So, theoretically, the fictional stories are very, very close to the fictional side of the spectrum. The creative nonfiction can fall pretty much anywhere in the middle, but the idea is that it falls much closer to the fact side. If you get too close to fact, however, you end up with journalism. We're not looking for something unbiased, if such a thing even exists. We want your bias, your creativity, your tidbits of fictional elements.

Only the writer is going to have the best idea of where his or her story falls on the spectrum, but we're all allowed to speculate and judge and make assumptions.

The debate over what's fiction and what's fact could go on forever. I'm willing to set that aside and take each story for what it is. A story.

And we want to read your stories. This is the last week to submit work for the Illumination themed issue. Please do. Our community needs you.

-Bradley