It's interesting what you can learn from TV and how it allows you to let go and find something else that was always inside you. I've been watching episode after episode of the TV show called Breaking Bad and if you are not familiar with the show I suggest you stop reading this and start by watching season one, episode one. Don't worry this blog will be here when you get back. As for the admirers of this show not only is the writing excellent but the many things Bryan Cranston needs to be in this role is astonishing. He takes on a new personality every episode combined with the multiple ones he's infected us with already. It's a beautiful tragic metamorphosis that is a pleasure to watch...kind of like a beautiful butterfly with fangs. Then of course, I started thinking about poetry and how in order to evolve you can't just be one thing. You've got to put the all of you in there, not just the bits and pieces that make you look good but the things that show us where we could have been better. I've really been focusing on performance lately and trying to make my voice and Thomas do other things, damn that shit is hard. I'm just learning about crescendo and personality and if you fuse the two you get a much more cohesive performance but a not so cohesive explanation of why. I'm starting to write from the perspective of the words leading me and I not so much leading the words. You've got to let go. To be all things, you've got to let go.
heart-felt stories need popular actors to sell not hearts
Went to see Wes Anderson's "Moonlight Kingdom" the other night. It was a great, sweet and endearing film starring Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Frances McDermott, Edward Norton and a whole lot of children. The movie takes place in the 60's in some made up world that only can be found in the head of Wes Anderson and that made up world is New England. It's about two young kids who find each other and grow in each other's love. The setting has a boy scout flavor to it which really adds to the story but I have a problem with the cast. Usually Wes Anderson movies have an ensemble cast, each having their own significant stamp on the story but here anyone of the adult leads could have been played by lesser known actors because they were not in developement the children were. They were there to add scenery and sell the movie. It's a shame, heart-felt stories need popular actors to sell not just hearts. But hey what do I know, I'm just a 35-year-old unemployed poet living in his mom's house, sounds like there's a Wes Anderson movie in there, somewhere too.
Megan Mayhew Bergman: Birds of a Lesser Paradise
Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman, Scribner 2012By HEDY ZIMRA
Birds of a Lesser Paradise, Megan Mayhew Bergman’s debut story collection, is a disquieting foray into 21st century realism. There are twelve stories united by their connection to the natural world and mothers. Each one is an examination of contemporary life told with mercy. The close study of motherhood, both animal and human, informs the tone of the stories and those that inhabit them. There are dystopian elements that keep the prose from becoming sentimental, population control activists, artificial organs that keep people alive for too long, bow hunters. Animals such as the whale, chinchilla, raccoon, feature prominently with copious details that offer an empirical texture to the sentences.
In the first story, “Housewifely Arts,” which was published in both One Story and Best American Short Stories 2011, the eponymous bird is a metaphor for distance. A single mother is on a road trip to Myrtle Beach with her small son in search of an African Gray Parrot that she had given to a roadside zoo after her mother’s death. A strong voice is immediately established. “I am my own housewife, my own breadwinner. I make lunches and change lightbulbs. I kiss bruises and kill copperheads from the back creek with a steel hoe.” The narrator wants to retrieve Carnie so that she can hear her mother’s voice once more. A sound that she cannot remember with clarity, but she is hoping that the thirty-six year old parrot is still capable of flawless mimicry.
“In our house, the word breeding was said with the same vitriol used when mentioning Republicans, Tim Tebow, and pit bull fight clubs,” says a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant in “Yesterday’s Whales”. She and her partner are population control activists for the EWU (Enough With US), frequenting coffee houses to spread their message and recruit new members. The prose is sharp and bittersweet with Mayhew Bergman reminding us of the power that biology wields over our modern lives.
The stories in this collection each have a tenacious voice and gaze out into the world with psychological depth. Regret and acceptance collide on the page. “Remember,” I told my mother, “I’m not obligated to look after the bird.” “Well, she said, “I’m not obligated to look after you.” Mayhew Bergman’s keen observations of the animal kingdom are so convincing that one wonders how she didn’t have a prior career as a zookeeper or scientist. The writing could be the offspring of an Alice Munroe and Amy Hempel marriage. The controlled nature of the prose with descriptive language used when necessary echoes Hemingway’s Men Without Women. Even some of the stories feel inspired. “Yesterday’s Whales” reminded me of “Hills Like White Elephants” with a woman’s body changing and an unplanned pregnancy. Her ability to elevate the mundane into a something profound at the single sentence level makes this collection worth reading. Her characters, both gusty and damaged, exist to listen and propel each other forward through their lives. In a sea of oft too-clever writing and sarcasm, this felt unusually authentic.
Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman, Scribner 2012, ISBN: 978-1-4516-4335-0
Hedy Zimra reads poems and fiction for PANKand teaches high school in Providence, RI.
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the pores of the dead
So I started reading the book House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and I've got to tell you this book is freaking me out a little. All this book is about is a family who move in to a new house on Ash Tree Lane but there are mysteries surrounding the house. After the family's 2 children go missing this book gets real intense. Is it fiction or poetry or prose or is it its own brand of literature and chaos? I've never seen a book formatted in such a way that the form is as jarring as the story. I thought I had goosebumps but realized they were the pores of the dead. It's a very jolly book. I haven't even made a dent in this 650 page opus but I am trying. As I keep reading the more uncomfortable I get which seems to be the design of the book. I predict once I am done with this book I will need some psychiatric care and medication and a good Dr. Seuss novel. To quote a small line from the book, "This terror that hunts." When it comes to this book I can't help but feel like one of the hunted.
and then of course the moon
So on thursday we were all there to witness the end of Hydrogen Jukebox. A great event put together by Brant Lyon that combined music with poetry. An event that always kept us wanting more. It sucks saying good byes to "could be's" but sometimes that's what you have to do to move on to the finer points of life. Hydro was on its way to becoming a great event and a may stay staple of the poetry scene. Kat George hosted and at the end she asked who would take over Hydrogen Jukebox and keep it going? Maybe because it's still fresh in my heart but I don't think I can see anyone hosting that series again, maybe if it's under a different banner but it's hard to not associate the Hydro with Brant and I think that is a good thing. The last performer of the night was a Mr. Karl Roulston who told me that Brant was the one who convinced him to start getting back into the poetry scene again and he said it has changed him for the better, something else great that Brant has done. He ended his performance with repeating "Brant Lyon" over and over again and then the crowd joined in and then the sky, the birds and then all our hopes and wonders and then of course the moon.
For those of you who don't know check out the Hydrogen Jukebox CD called "Brain Ampin'". This can be found on amazon.com