Author Joni Tevis Fights Jon Krakauer, Wins

This is a short rant on descriptive lameness v. greatness, and yes, Tevis' debut, The Wet Collection, came out awhile ago (Milkweed Editions 2007), so this post isn't particularly timely, but, you know, whatever. Better said late than never:

Literary descriptions of the desert plant Fouquieria splendens (aka: ocotillo, desert coral, coachwhip, Jacob’s staff), were, for me, somewhat ruined by Jon Krakauer. In 1988 he published an article in Outside about canyoneering in Arizona, including a day-trip traveling down the Salome Creek, east of Phoenix. En route to the canyon, he gives a perfunctory nod to the desert landscape visible from the old road they’re strolling along, “an abandoned jeep road lined with a thousand towering saguaro and flame-tipped ocotillo…”—and because I read this just as I was moving to southern Arizona, and it was fresh on my mind the first time I ever laid eyes on this crazy plant, I have never since been able (and this surely reflects a personal failure of imagination as well) to separate this incredibly pedestrian—though perfectly accurate—description from the actual thing itself: I see an ocotillo in bloom and I cannot help but think flame-tipped.

I see an ocotillo in bloom and I cannot help but think flame-tipped, that is, until now. Joni Tevis, author of The Wet Collection, and the included essay, “Jeremiad of a Bad Drought Year,” has officially cracked my metaphorical cloister, and the possibilities of language, of ways to loop words and meanings through and around each other, seem once again boundless. Tevis has taken Krakauer's 2-D description to the anvil and hammered the shit out of it, worked it over, refashioned it, reimagined it into a thing more akin to a Calabi-Yau manifold—a many-dimensioned thing of wonder. She writes:

"In a faithless time I have gone to the desert and seen there ocotillo, devil’s buggy whip, naked canes rising from the stony ground. Gray, stippled with thorns, it rattled in the wind, and no plant has ever looked so dead to me. But I’ve seen, too, the desert after rain, when the ocotillo’s tips force out petals red as any cosseted rose. The ocotillo plays at death, crying a song to the cold desert wind; the ocotillo in bloom is a god’s hair ablaze with fire, or blood."

To be fair, nuancing words isn’t really Krakauer’s forte. He’s a mountain man, an adventurer, these days more of a journalist, and maybe that’s okay. Here, he’s a travel writer moving through a landscape—see an ocotillo, describe an ocotillo, traverse a canyon, narrate that activity—while Tevis seems to be something categorically different, that is an essayist, embedded and invested in place, and as such, language is part and parcel of her game. I suppose at the end of the day, I don’t really expect Krakauer’s imageries to knock me out, and I don’t expect Tevis to scale Everest. They’re just different personalities, different voices, and as lame as his adjectives here are compared to her metaphors, we read different writers for different reasons, and I’m glad they’re both on my bookshelf. Who, after all, wants to listen to The Decemberists when you’re in the mood for The Stooges? Or Tori Amos when you’re in the mood for Le Tigre? Or Morrissey when you’re in the mood for Dylan? Or…maybe you’ve had enough of this mixed metaphor. But you get the idea, I hope.

Krakauer has given us some great writing, but he’s no virtuoso when it comes to wordplay, and I herewith renounce flame-tipped, and all such depthless adjectives. Tevis is a boss wordsmith, and she has, for me, rescued the ocotillo from being typified by two blah words and a hyphen. And her book, The Wet Collection, is like a butter churn. Her language is like cream. An ocotillo in bloom is God’s hair ablaze.

Best American Essays 2011

Just got my hands on a copy today. Haven't had a chance to read through it yet (except for Robert Atwan's foreword, which is actually pretty great). I'll probably try and put together a more comprehensive look at the anthology, but I wanted to put this post in as a chance for some preliminary conversation: Does BAE give us an accurate representation of the Essay? Will the "Notable Essays" section continue to be more interesting? Will magazines outside of New York get more recognition? Let me know what y'all are thinking and I can try to talk about it more in an upcoming review.

The Economics of the Zone 3 Press CNF Award

Thanks, Ander, for the invitation to make public the accounting of Zone 3 Press's recent book prize. I am just home from a movement to support economic transparency of corporations, so it makes sense to at least make this process as clear as I can.

I occupy the same position as most contemporary small press publisher/editors in that I am also a writer. I also submit to press contests. The buoyant optimism I felt after reading about Lewis Hyde's gift economy faded when my first vigilant round of entries netted no prize winner--causing me to recognize that whatever I told myself when I licked those envelopes, I had expected something for my effort and fees, not to mention the dedication that keeps me at my desk writing in the first place. I'll leave aside the obvious question of whether transaction mindset is healthy or useful, just to note that, justified or not, it results in a sense of entitlement.

Which is to say, it helps me to know how at least one press spends their fees.

At Zone 3 Press we were lucky enough to receive 69 entries for our first Creative Nonfiction Book Award, after being a poetry press since 2006, and I am grateful for every submission--though as much for the attention as the $25 fees. The $1725 it totals--and that assumes all payments went through, and we had several issues with check payments--is not even enough to cover printing, which is approximately $2500 for 1000 books and postcards. Other expenses are the finalist judge's honorarium, an honorarium for the semi-finalist judges (who all read off-site and are unaffiliated with our institution), advertisements announcing the original contest and the contest winner, travel expenses and promotion of the winner's reading, and fees for book tables at festivals. There are also time donations by faculty and staff at Austin Peay State University who oversee the process--including making the books available on Small Press Distribution and responding to queries from contest entrants, and managing information as it passes through multiple hands. We are fortunate at our institution to have the Center of Creative Excellence, which provides compensatory funding, without which we would not be able to publish.

I hope my post demonstrates more than anything that I believe in the value of small presses, which are operating on well-monitored accounts--at the very least if the accounts are smaller they are also more closely examined--and that neither I nor my colleagues are milking cash cows when we are coming into the office on weekends and nights and summer days to help another manuscript into the world.

A short follow-up pending something longer

I invited Kristen Iversen, editor (or maybe co-editor) of Orphan Press, to post a fuller response if/when she's moved to (or has the time among her other projects--so many of us have so many projects), but in the meantime I thought I would excerpt (with her permission) a quick email she sent me and some of the other editors at Orphan:

For one thing, to the best of my knowledge many of the presses you mention in your email are funded, at least partially, by universities, foundations, grants, etc.  Orphan Press is basically me and Greg, a writer and an artist with a lot of passion, some good ideas (we hope), and very small pockets.  We're working to develop other sources of funding, but it's tough and it takes time...

the short answer is that we put a great deal of research into contest fees and the literary market in general, as well as the type of book we want to produce.  We feel that this fee is fair and in line with the market, particularly given our emphasis on high quality overall.  We are a very small press, completely self-funded.  Everyone is on a strictly volunteer basis.  Every penny raised from the contest will go to pay our winner and to cover print and production costs--and we still will likely fall short.  There's no profit here, except for the satisfaction that we hope to experience when we discover a unique and compelling piece of work, and we can bring it forth into the world in a beautiful way.  As the press grows and we perhaps become the fortunate recipients of grants, donations, or other forms of support, we may be able to change our fee structure or offer other ways for our writers to get their work out into the world.

I've also invited Amy Wright, from Zone 3 Press, to post about the experience of running a cnf book contest for the first time at that press. I also invited her to talk a bit about the economics of the press and contest. They'd run contests in other genres previously, I think, but this was the first year of their cnf book contest (the great Lia Purpura picked a manuscript by Essay Daily's own Nicole Walker, Quench Your Thirst with Salt, as the winner; it'll be out in Spring 2013).


My hope is that we can have some frank and open conversation about the contest system and how it does or might work in the world of the essay, creative nonfiction, literary nonfiction, and so on.

Yo Orphan Press

So we got your cnf book contest info forwarded on the twitter (thanks Brevity), which was exciting. I'm super happy to hear of another press "Seeking engaging, innovative, or experimental creative nonfiction writing in the lyric essay, memoir, graphic memoir, meditative essay, personal essay, flash essay, literary journalism, nature meditation, or hybrid forms." All to the good. But what's up with the $45 entry fee for said contest?

I get that the economics of writing contests are tricky, especially so in prose, even more especially so in nonfiction (I wonder what the economics are of, say, the Bakeless contest in nonfiction; I know the AWP economics loosely*), and super especially so in any sort of vaguely experimental prose. And for a startup press a contest is a tricky beast indeed. But a $45 entry fee is quite a lot for a $1000 honorarium + publication. That's on the border of the golden 1:20 ratio between entry fee and possible prize money that I usually use to determine whether a contest is exploitative of its entrants.

It seems to me really likely to limit your entries (though I suppose you probably only need 22-23 entrants to break even if you're not factoring in administrative overhead and any judge's honorarium).

I'd be interested in hearing back from y'all about the thinking behind this. (I'd be happy to setup an account to post back here if you like.)

I post this in the spirit of open and frank discussion, not in the spirit of discouraging what looks like an exciting new press for the essay.

Ander

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* As the preliminary judge for the AWP Book Prize in Nonfiction a few years back, I think I read about 120 book submissions, and forwarded ten to the final judge. As I remember, it was a $25 entry at the time (now it's $30 for nonmembers and $15 for members). So you can do the math on that. There's some administrative overhead, as any contest coordinators can tell you. I think it was still a $1000 prize + publication, though now it's up to $2500 (nice work, AWP). Which is pretty reasonable.

Between Song and Story: Essays for the Twenty-first Century

Like my friend and co-editor, Sheryl St. Germain, I’m very pleased Ander asked us to write something about our anthology, Between Song and Story: Essays for the Twenty-First Century, because it gives me a chance to write about me. (I’m not entirely kidding, but please continue reading anyway.)

As a recent MFA graduate I brought a student’s perspective to the challenge of editing our collection. I wanted the essays selected to nurture my own writing by challenging my ideas about the form and encouraging experimentation. In short, I wanted teachers from whom I could learn. Think of the anthology as a kind of portable writing workshop on the craft of the contemporary essay.

We chose to use the word essays in our title instead of the term creative nonfiction because we felt the word essay, from the Old French essai, (meaning a trial or an attempt) best reflected the kind of adventurous spirit readers will find celebrated in the anthology. And it is that sense of possibility that most attracts me to the genre. The essay’s malleability allows a writer to shape the form as she wishes.

Ander suggested that Sheryl and I each comment on our favorite essays. What a great idea, and yet I find it difficult to do, because each essay in the collection moves me in some way. Nevertheless, I have chosen a few I wish to highlight: Joy Castro’s “Grip,” Linda Hogan’s “The Bats,” BK Loren’s “Trends of Nature,” Dinty W. Moore’s “Son of Mr. Green Jeans: An Essay on Fatherhood, Alphabetically Arranged,” and the three very brief essays we included from Lawrence Sutin’s A Postcard Memoir. I focus on these pieces, not necessarily because I love them best, but because in each I find something interesting to learn and qualities I wish to emulate in my own work.

In “Grip” Joy Castro opens her essay with a description of the torn “bullet-holed paper target” hanging over her son’s crib. The object is both tangible and symbolic and serves as the departure point for Castro’s exploration of the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child. She organizes her essay into five discrete sections separated by white spaces. Her choice creates a kind of staccato rhythm for the piece, reminiscent of the sharp sound a gun makes. The essay’s power resides in its brevity and restraint, and the lyricism of her language.

Linda Hogan brings a poet’s sensibility and a naturalist’s appreciation to her beautiful essay, “The Bats.” Her title strikes one immediately because of her choice of article; “The” makes a difference. She conveys in her first words that her interest in these creatures that “live in double worlds of many kinds,” is specific and personal. Her essay moves between a narrative about two encounters with bats, one in a park in frigid Minneapolis and another in a cave in Germany, and the lyric. In the end, it is the beauty of her language I find so compelling. Imagine perceiving the world through sound, as bats do. Imagine a world where “Everything answers, the corner of a house, the shaking of leaves on a wind-blown tree, the solid voice of bricks.”

BK Loren’s poignant narrative “Trends of Nature” is published for the first time in our anthology. I find much to admire in this piece, but most of all, I appreciate what is true of the best personal essays: the writer’s honesty and the bravery such candor frequently requires. We trust Loren’s observations of coyotes, because she is willing to scrutinize her own behavior with the same degree of insight.

I keep returning to Dinty W. Moore’s “Son of Mr. Green Jeans: An Essay on Fatherhood, Alphabetically Arranged,” in part because I’m fascinated by the way his capacious mind works. Moore uses the alphabet as the organizing principle for his essay. His ingenious choice creates a framework in which he is free to consider a range of apparently unrelated subjects without losing sight of the essay’s central theme. His exploration of fatherhood is humorous, touching, and surprisingly informative.

From Lawrence Sutin’s A Postcard Memoir, we included three flash essays, each of which is paired with an image: “Pissed Off at Three Years and Four Months,” “Tower of Silence,” and “Young Man with Rifle, Black Dog and Dead Ducks.” Each essay is but a paragraph long, its shape on the page mirroring that of the related image. Sutin’s choice to use postcards as writing prompts creates a unifying structure for his memoir, while allowing each entry to stand alone. The pairing of photograph and prose serves to enhance our appreciation of each and provides Sutin with the necessary distance he needs to explore his complex past.

I believe our anthology tells a compelling story about the wealth of experimentation and multi-faceted character of the contemporary essay. I encourage you to read that story yourselves. I trust you will be challenged, inspired, and entertained.

Margaret L. Whitford

Between Song and Story: Essays for the 21st Century

I’m delighted Ander asked us to write something about our new anthology of essays, just out from Autumn House Press. It’s called Between Song and Story: Essays for the 21st Century. We (co-editor Margaret Lehr Whitford and myself) showcase the work of 46 mostly American contemporary essayists (see the whole list here: http://www.autumnhouse.org/between-song-and-story-essays-for-the-twenty-first-century-edited-by-shery-st-germain-and-margaret-l-whitford/). The anthology offers a selection of essays that will serve as models for creative writing students at the undergraduate and graduate level. We’re interested in the form of the essay, specifically the play between lyricism and narrative, and believe our anthology is the first to highlight the ways in which both story (narrative) and song (poetry) inform the essay, thus the title, Between Song and Story. As a teacher and director of an MFA program, I wanted a collection adaptable to multiple teaching situations, in courses, for example, not only devoted to the craft of the essay, but more specifically to explorations of the lyric essay, the formally adventurous (or as some might call it, the “experimental”) essay, as well as those focused on nature writing, travel writing, or more nuanced explorations of place, since those are subjects that interest me. Several of the pieces in the anthology are pieces I’ve used in both graduate and undergraduate courses for many years with great success; others are from new writers who are helping redefine the genre. I love every essay in this collection, but if I had to pick the top five, I’d pick John Haines’ “Snow,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “The Ugly Tourist,” Michelle Morano’s “Grammar Lessons: the Subjunctive Mood,” Joyce Carol Oates’ “Against Nature,” and Tom Varisco’s “Let’s Pretend.” I’d pick them not because they’re necessarily the best, whatever that means, but because each offers something provocative with respect to the formal elements of the essay. They’re all great essays to teach, a lot of fun to read, and almost all of them explore deeply serious subjects with a sometimes wickedly funny voice. Three of the writers are older, and I think it’s important to remember that writers from earlier generations have been experimenting with form for quite a while—it's not something totally new. Writers like Oates and Kincaid, for example, were playing around with form while John D’Agata and David Shields were still in short pants. Oates “Against Nature,” which we reprint in our anthology, is a tour-de-force in what Ander might call “hacking” the essay: broken segments slide into historical reflection and personal narrative; she uses collage and rapid changes of voice and tone to juxtapose cultural narrative, quotes from other writers, and even a bit of mock literary criticism. Nature writing, Oates claims, "inspires a painfully limited set of responses in ‘nature writers’ . . . reverence, awe, piety, mystical oneness” ; she proceeds to show, on every page of this essay, why it need not. Full of allusion, irony and sass, the piece radiates energy. Jamaica Kincaid’s “The Ugly Tourist,” is both mean and hilarious, a rant written wholly in second person, a powerful diatribe against a thoughtless kind of tourism. “The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist,” she writes, “ is true: A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day.” But we feel a bit like an ugly person reading Kincaid, an ugly person able to laugh at her own ugliness. The piece both invites us in as readers and mocks us for our ignorance. We can’t get pissed off at her, though, because her voice is so mesmerizing and disturbingly funny. It’s quite difficult to sustain second person for any length of time in an essay, but Kincaid’s use of it is so compelling I never want it to end. John Haines died early this year, and while he may be best known as a poet, he was also a fine essayist. His small essay, “Snow,” is a lyric piece built simply on the act of looking at snow as if it were a page to be read. In an essay of eight paragraphs, the first of which lingers on the metaphor of snow as book, Haines evokes the whole of the Alaskan landscape, its muscular, foreign beauty that must be discovered through mindfulness and deep attention, the skills of hunter and poet. The story of the tracking of a wolverine, follows, and after a lyric pause another story, writ in the snow, of a battle between a moose and three wolves. “What might have been silence, an unwritten page, an absence,” he writes, “spoke to me as clearly as if I had been there to see it,” and here he’s speaking not only of the ability to translate a narrative from the snow, but of what is required of us to find meaning in our lives, the intimate seeing necessary to discover the pattern of a story or poem in whatever whiteness we find before us, snow, paper or screen. I began to fall in love for the first time with the lyric essay form, reading this essay many years ago; I experienced for the first time with the exquisite sense I would later come to cherish, that I was reading a poem disguised as an essay, a poem that had changed into comfortable clothes and invited me in for a drink. Tom Varisco is not known as an essay writer; he’s the head of a design/branding studio in New Orleans and has two self-published books, Spoiled, about refrigerators left out after Hurricane Katrina and Signs of New Orleans, a design and photo book that serves as a record of the city’s “sign language.” The piece we published of his, called “Let’s Pretend” is just one paragraph long. The paragraph uses graphics—words that melt, fade, morph into waves—as it purports to give directions to Café du Monde, a well-known coffee shop in New Orleans. At a certain point the words themselves get as shadowy and wavy as the city became after Katrina, then finally right themselves when the reader has found that cup of coffee. The piece ends with suggesting, having found Café du Monde, we can now “pretend nothing ever happened,” the text fading at that point so that it is almost unreadable. Maybe I’m prejudiced because I’m from New Orleans, but I’ve read just about every heavy tome written about Katrina, and I find that this piece, this one paragraph, gets to the heart of the issue more than anything else I’ve read on the subject. Michelle Morano’s “Grammar Lessons” uses grammar rules regarding the use of the subjunctive, specifically in Spanish, to explore a situation involving a boyfriend who tried to kill himself. It’s a brilliant, serous, and darkly humorous essay that evokes the doubt, guilt and anxiety one feels when someone close to you decides to try to kill himself. The essay is organized according to various rules of grammar, but the examples are anything but boring. Clarifying the difference between indicative and subjunctive, she points out that you’d use the indicative to say I was in love. Or, the man I loved tried to kill himself. Or, I moved to Spain because the man I loved, the man who tried to kill himself, was driving me insane. The rules for using the subjunctive serve as section headers from the rest of the essay. As everyone knows, the subjunctive can illustrate a wish or desire, as in I would love to continue singing the praises of the writers in this anthology but I am already over the word limit. If you are a teacher and think you might want to use this anthology for a course please email me at sstgermain@chatham.edu. I’d be happy to send you a sample copy.