Memoirous

Review Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief Victoria Chang Milkweed Editions, 2021   “. . . one memory certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about . . .” Kenneth Koch, One Train May Hide Another Inside this volume are trails, threads, snippets, snails. One leading to another, down corridors, alcoves under eaves. Chang works with memory from an archival perspective mixed with contemporary flashes. Like in Koch’s poem where train cars can be stand-ins for just about anything in life where we are blindsided, caught up in a cosmic chessboard of ever-moving pieces, memory is a cautionary tale. One memory leads to another to another, foregoing, preceeding, succumbing. She allows each to wash over her in a series of “letters,” which reveals to readers the nature of her relationship to individuals/family, to reality, to past and present. Chang’s memories intertwine with those of her mother, reflections of her father, snapshots of time spent in poetry work

Lately Google has been sending me “photo memories.” Six years ago, four, three, highlights from 2021, etc. The best of April. And, usually, it’s a picture of my tent (or an old tent before my current one) set up somewhere remote: a hillside in the Scottish highlands, next to the GAP, Greater Allegheny Passage trail outside of Pittsburgh, a flashback to my Lewis & Clark trip, or my ride from Amsterdam to Norway. All these photo memories seem a million years ago. It is the selection, the zeroing in on the epic, that moment either early morning or at night setting up camp, alone, just me the tent and grassland or trees. It’s as if Google is teasing me—remember! See you are not gone, you are here! For some I’m sure, as soon my photo stream will only contain one kind of photo, pics of family, the baby, the grandkids, friends eating on the back deck. I dream of it reflecting other lives—not enticing me to come away, to go live with the fairies in a netherland, between everyday reali

Despite how I must look to strangers, I do not feel old. The essential Jane is still here, the Janie that woke up early in the summers to ride her bike to Indiana and back, the school girl often lost in daydreams, the one always with a plan that turned into disaster before ending up as innovation. Yet, today, with wrinkles and gray hair I appear (if anyone indeed notices at all) past all definitions of prime, competent, vital. Someone in need of Geritol—remember those commercials? Again, I’m dating myself. For most of us we walk from the car to the front door of the supermarket, down the food aisles, back out to the parking lot and no one knows that beneath our clothes, hidden under the flesh is a rock star. Lately, I’ve become fascinated by YouTube videos (sorry, not on Tik Tok, hahaha, too old!), featuring vocalists from the 80s—such as Natalie Merchant. Of 10,000 Maniacs fame, Wonder, These Are the Days. She’s old, has long gray, more salt than pepper hair, wrinkles like me, no

Recently I’ve had a spat of acceptances. I’m happy to announce, you can read my work, a creative nonfiction piece excerpted from my longer cnf project about cycling through the UK from top to bottom, John O’Groats in Scotland to Land’s End in Cornwall. This piece is called Life in the Midden about the mess of living while at the same time recognizing the random treasures along the way. Here is a link to Life in the Midden up now at Amsterdam Quarterly. Shortly, I will be announcing links to 3 other accepted pieces. An essay about writing called Writing Life will appear in Teach. Write an online newsletter for teachers of writing/composition. And a link to another creative nonfiction flash called Peeper Pond that will be out soon from Instant Noodles. Finally, another piece, a short story, called Keep Moving will appear in Adanna, a publication featuring writing for and about women. Again, publishing does not equate to any kind of reimbursement. It is usually considered content, a

  Drifts of cottonwood banked against the dollar store piles of fluff, caught in broom grass, milkweed wooly tufts collected by the side of the road Where am I? Michigan or Innsbruck? Is it late spring, almost summer, or midwinter? I ride my bike home after work, stopping along the way to admire the altered landscape of the Midwest, contemplating   a snow angel

Possibly because I’ve been reading the letters of poets Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge (SEE link my last post, http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2023/06/all-this-thinking-correspondence-of.html ) between the two, I’ve been dwelling in the past. Add to that I’m old. Not old old, but thumbing the pages of social security mail sent to me, encouraging me to sign up for Part B—or is it A, and is it Medicare or Medicaid, is it anything? What are we assured of? I’ve been dwelling in an existential crux, thinking about mortality, the passing of an age. Maybe family makes us/me think about all this. I remember after both my parents died within a span of months, going back to Ohio to clear out the dregs, the last of the last at their extended living facility/house in Canal Fulton. I thought it was no big deal. I had a car, gas money, the time—all the factors that have usually vexed me in getting away from my “normal” life in Chicago. My plan was to stay at the house and slowly unwind e

All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge Edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson University of New Mexico Press, 2022 I’m loosely connected to the Network for New York School Studies. I was part of a panel discussion last April where my focus was the intersection of flash in several New York School Poet’s work. I would have loved for the panel to have had more interaction—it was Zoom and we basically delivered remarks—but was happy for the chance to sit and hear others talk about a subject I love delving into: the New York School poetry scene. Recently, through an email update, I learned about All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge , edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson. At the Network’s YouTube channel I listened in on a conversation between the two editors led by Rona Cran and Yasmine Shamma. Reading books of letters or published journals/diaries can be an incredible revelation into someone

Two heavy sighs Hush Morning and night Pleasant or sad When in mourning or Before the burst of sun Cresting the treetops Hush All the other birds Are preoccupied The world caught up, yet Two lonesome sighs Hush  

Lately quite a few of these blog posts have been focused on minutia, observing small things, The moon is very big. I rarely saw the moon n the city, unless it was right outside my window.   Here, in Tiny House land, I can see if whenever it’s available, both morning and evening, off the deck. Last night it shone right in through my French doors casting pane-like shadows upon the floor as if my Tiny House were a stage with a spotlight.   I love these moments when I get to be a star.

Amsterdam Quarterly has accepted an excerpt from a forthcoming creative nonfiction project about one of my bike rides. When I say forthcoming, I’m being optimistic. I’ve been peddling/pedaling the manuscript to agents and publishers for a while now. Anyway, 2023 has seen some publishing bright spots: Civil War Reenactment= Miracle Monocle Unobserved= Mocking Owl Roost “Peeper Pond” forthcoming Spring 2023, Instant Noodles “Life in the Midden” forthcoming Summer 2023, Amsterdam Quarterly It’s nice to be wanted. Stay tuned for more updates!  

I hate being that person—Jimmy Kimmel, when he was on TV, before the writers’ strike, has a segment where he replays newscasters saying the EXACT same thing: January already, February, March, April, May, now June—but it’s true. It is June already. I’ve become that person. The kind of person who watches the seasons pass, observes the sky, dwells in small moments. Moments that have no time. Simply dwelling. This morning taking out recycling, I had déjà vu—not that there was recycling when I was a teenager—of the sky, a certain slant of light, the tone, reminding me of another time, long long ago. Suddenly my soul said: It’s June already—as if I didn’t already know.