Perhaps you never thought I’d meet President Ford or movie legend Marilyn Monroe, but I’m finally revealing what happened. Take a look at Night Visions. It’s free at my Thistle Finch free digital bookstore.
Tag: Literature
For more on yoga back in the day, when it came with its own natural inebriation
In my early journals review, I set apart two sequences from my ashram entries for presentation as Chronicle PDF downloads at my Thistle Finch editions blog. Remember, they’re free. One is Early Yoga, drawing on my initial experiences with the mysterious woman swami who came up to our town to teach classes. The other is Dark-Haired Beauty, a captivating fellow yogi, also from that introduction. In addition, the poetry broadsides Ahamsukhi and Ashram are available, as well as a photo album Ashram Memories. My, how young and green we were.
Do take a look.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
Perhaps Peter Max captured the visual reality
My Binghamton sojourn reflections at my Thistle Finch editions free digital bookstore also include a Chronicles set of notes, Escapes to Cornell, and the photo lookbooks/storyboards Somewhere North of the Big Apple, reflecting my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Dark Transit, for Subway Visions. In my life, these could have been the rings of Saturn.
Do take a look.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
And here I thought it was a dark stretch
My time in Upstate New York did generate a prolific amount of poetry, which you can now find as free PDF chapbooks at my Thistle Finch editions blog. Among them are Susquehanna, Splitting the Rent, Halle Street, Riverside Neighbors, and Still Tender. There’s also a prose piece, Escapes to Cornell. So much of note was happening in my life when it seemed nothing of importance was. On top of that, I do wish I had been journaling back in the summer of ’68 when I lived in a boardinghouse across the river from the office and had only a bicycle and my feet for everyday transportation. Whatever scribblings I had from then, alas, have been lost in letters to a long-vanished lover.
Do take a look.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet. Maybe you’ll even sit beside the river with me. I won’t say anything about the bed.
Dixie fiction friction
In the Southern literary tradition was a linkage with Scotland, a love of Walter Scott and, unsaid, its Presbyterian literal Bible, clans becoming klans, some of the same intonations and expressions, a shared rebellious nature, plus the repulsion of Quakers in general.
Yet many of its young writers in the ‘50s devoured Jewish influences (Mailer, Malamud, Bellow) and then the Calvinist Congregationalists of New England (Updike, in particular) and then their own Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. So I’ve read.
Their own writers had been presenting the Dixie heritage as all happy and macho, which did not fit what they observed. The Jews and Congregationalists, on the other hand, were presenting something hard and ugly about themselves.
From that, I’ve wondered: where and how my Midwestern heritage was being addressed or examined. I saw escape but no reality being addressed. Things that ought to be said but weren’t, at least in the mainstream view.
The best I’ve come up with is Jeffrey Eugenides, Greek-American of Detroit. And, my, how he delivers.
Advice from writers for writers goes way beyond the page
Just consider:
- “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” ― Sidney Sheldon
- “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing – writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” ― Lawrence Block
- “Be willing to write really badly.” ― Jennifer Egan
- “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” ― Octavia E. Butler
- “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said.’ … To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.” ― Elmore Leonard
- “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway
- “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” ― Tom Clancy
- “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” ― Ray Bradbury
- “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” ― James Baldwin
- “When your story is ready for a rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” ― Stephen King
Didn’t she have other things to do?
Could Anais Nin really keep such detailed notes of her daily activity?
Should you be interested in finding more …
As the Red Barn delves into my earliest journals, I’ve mentioned that we’re skipping over many of the entries that have already been distilled into my previously published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose. I do hope you find what’s turning up to be brilliant and, uh, let’s back up, somehow engaging. It was a unique time and journey.
Still, I’m coming across material that seems more suitable for a different typographic and visual presentation apart from a straight Red Barn post, and that’s led me to create a Chronicles category at my Thistle Finch editions free digital editions “bookstore.” Offerings at that site allow me more flexibility in formatting, especially for you to download or print. Quite simply, it often feels more “literary,” with its own satisfactions.
Initial posts there as an outcome of my journals review are now available as free PDF downloads. Among them are New Novelists Back Then, notes from a lively contemporary fiction course, meaning cutting-edge novelists back in the ‘60s; Hitching, drawing on thumbing-on-the-road encounters in the hippie era; and The Past Still Speaks, three literary quotes that still resonate.
Another presentation there is a photo album, Mulberry Row, with images of a dormitory quad that prompted much of the action in my novel Daffodil Uprising. Collecting those images, which become this “lookbook” or “storyboard” was helpful in re-envisioning the narrative. Perhaps it will help readers, too, in internalizing the scene.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
As I’ve said, writers’ advice goes beyond the page
Here are some more examples.
- “Always carry a note-book. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.” – Will Self
- “[F]ocus on your own journey, and try not to worry about what’s going on in the lane next to you. I know it’s hard, because it feels natural to compare. And sometimes it’s important, to know what barriers exist and how they impact marginalized writers. But from a productivity standpoint, the comparisons tend to do more harm than good. Because everyone’s publishing journey is different.” – Akemi Dawn Bowman
- “Everyone has ups and downs at different moments, and paying too much attention to what other people are getting is only going to slow you down. Focus on the page, and the words, and do what you do best—write.” – Akemi Dawn Bowman
- “We’re all students of the craft and every book we read is another chance to learn. Read voraciously. And write exactly the kinds of books you like best.” – Mindy Mejia
- “Always stop while you are going good and don’t worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it, you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.” – Ernest Hemingway
- “Words have extraordinary power—their definitions and colloquial meanings, the way they evolve, and where they come from. Be deliberate and selective about the words you choose. Be voracious about collecting new words for your authorial toolkit. Always look up words you’ve never met before. And above all, wield your words for good, for creativity, and for the cultivation of knowledge.” – Jeff Zafarris
- “You’re most likely going to spend a long time writing a book, and then more time promoting it, so make it something you’re passionate about so that even when you collapse into bed exhausted at the end of the day (or fall asleep on your couch with your laptop open, as I’m prone to do), you’ll feel fulfilled.” – Haley Shapley
- “A successful career in writing typically takes too long to achieve to be writing something you’re not passionate about. Write from your heart, and write what gets you excited to sit at your computer every day. Most of all, make sure you have a life while doing it—exercise, teach, build, vote, explore, learn, grow, fellowship, and most of all, love. It will not only inform your writing but you’ll also be a healthier person for it, mentally and physically.” – Christopher J. Moore
- “Write often. I won’t go so far as to say you have to write every day, but I do think you need to make this a part of the texture of your life, something that you do on a regular basis, like a workout schedule.” – Leslie Lutz
- “Then, learn to let go. Let go of old drafts that aren’t going anywhere, or scenes that don’t work. Don’t spend months tweaking a fundamentally flawed project when you can move on to the wonderful new projects that are percolating in your head. The ‘you must start what you finish’ attitude—although admirable—can actually be a pitfall, because it prevents you from taking a necessary course correction when you need it.” – Leslie Lutz
Who are they besides their latest book?
Contributors’ notes at the back of a literary quarterly or toward the beginning of a glossy magazine can sometimes be among the most entertaining reading in the entire volume.
Or they can be among the most deadly, as I’ve been thinking while scanning those in the Paris Review, where they run along the line of so-and-so is the author of the new insert-title-here book of poetry or fiction. It’s so one-dimensional.
Don’t know about you, but I definitely want to know what makes a writer tick – unique details help. Hopefully, something more than where they’re also teaching.
Yes, I know as writers we’re all hustling our books, but ultimately, we’re the brand, like it or not. (God, it hurts to admit that, but it’s true.)
The celebrity Proust Questionnaire at the closing of Vanity Fair magazine issues is a great prompt.
So here I am, pushing a whole lineup of volumes while hoping at least one of them jumps out at you and makes you get it, free or at a price – yes, I’m shy about asking for money – but still!
This matter of self-identity came into play with my poetry collection Hamlet, a village of gargoyles, which built on exercises where I found it much easier to say who I’m not than who I am.
So here I am, with a few potential contributor notes I may have sent out:
- As a youth, Jnana admired crystals grown from supersaturated solutions. Deep blue copper sulfate was his favorite.
- Jnana has found landscapes evolving into an awareness of spirituality and space, as well as settlement and wildlife.
- In addition to reading and writing, Jnana enjoys hiking and camping, birding, New England contradancing, classical music, opera, jazz, visual arts, genealogy and history, theology, Quaker practice, homebrewing, and a cappella part-singing. If there were only more time, he contemplates.
- Jnana Hodson never expected a film literature course under Harry Geduld would influence his poetry as much as college writing class under poet Dick Allen. But it did: the clash of thesis and antithesis producing an unanticipated synthesis in reaction.
- When Jnana first began reading contemporary poetry (for pleasure, independent of classroom assignment), he sensed that often the poem existed as a single line or two, with the rest of the work as window dressing. Now he reads the Psalms much the same way, for the poem within the poem, or at least the nugget he is to wrestle with on this occasion. Psalm 81, for instance, has both “voice in thunder” and “honey from rock.”
- Elk move through Jnana’s mind, its memory, more as emblem and ideal than creature. He has not tasted elk flesh or stroked the fur. What he’s known has appeared only on the forest floor as track and scat – no ticks on the neck or patchy summer skin. That, and the winter encounters viewed from a distance.
While we’re at it, let’s ponder the faces on back dust jacket or cover.
How few seem like people I’d like to meet. How much anger, hatred, envy, darkness – brooding – comes through? How little serenity, how little joy? Multiplicity of personality. Just who am I? Who are you? Empathy. Discomfort. All the rest.
Who are you in relation to all this?
Jnana's Red Barn 