181:191 International Literature Today - International Writing Program - The University of Iowa

International Literature Today
Journal

by
Laura Schell

9•10•07

Kiran Nagarka was delightful.  In his introduction he seemed to take on a new persona with each of his four biographies.  He did not fail to mention that each one was under our discretion and our beliefs in them completely optional.  He is passionate about his work to the point that it shows through even his slightest mannerisms.  And he seemed to have the tough hide that I believe every successful writer needs.  What is the literary scene like in India?  “C’est moi,”  he coolly answers.  He was witty and dynamic.  At one moment he made me laugh and by the next he had brought me to some sort of epiphany.  When he read his “meditation on neighbors” I began thinking about all the conflicts that arise because of language barriers.  I can’t help but wonder why people cannot understand one of the simplest facts of life--the human race is unique.  Each person is in different surroundings and situations.  All of us are born into different races and ethnicities.  Some of us are born into a land of extensive freedoms, some of us are unfortunately not.  To me life has always been full of choices, my choices.  I realize that I have taken this freedom for granted.  I also realize that my particular surroundings have apparently shrunk considerably.  I extend my perspective and life is no longer just about me.  Kiran’s book about children who lived next to one another but could not become friends because of their religious differences, made me think of a series of questions that can be summed us in this short poem:

God or no god
If God than which God
Which war for which God
Which prayer to which God
(Is peace a choice, God?)
Which book about which God
Which ritual for which God
Which life
for a god?

Then I was sucked into the dramatic imagery of Kiran’s relationships with words.  He read a excerpt from his novel, I believe it was God’s Little Soldier.  He was elaborating on how his main character was swimming in a lake when he was swarmed by words.  And the man appropriately develops a relationship with the word love.  But the one thing that Kiran said that still sticks firmly to my mind was “any language is as capable as you”—simple and painfully true.  I am suddenly reminded of the power of words.  And I think, “So this is why I have to read 17th century literature…because the power of words, such tiny elements of this world yet have so much influence, have struck a cord between the people of today and yesterday, and many, many days before that.  The power of words have transcended time. 

Elena Bossi was nervous but charming at the same time.  I thought she was accurate in saying that the principle question of all writers is “who is speaking?”  She said, “The voice is the thing that brings the truth.”  It is this voice that I believe many authors to be afraid of losing through the process of translation.  While many authors, like Elena, are still trying to find it for themselves.  It seems that a writer’s voice is so hard to find because it is so easy to lose—through other’s people perceptions of the work or maybe even through the perception of the writer on their own work an hour after they have written it.  Sometimes, I find that my voice is lost in the static of my own overanalyzes.  

 I could relate (even though she was talking about monsters) when Elena said, “Sometimes we are afraid to see what in what in others also resonates in us.”  But in a way I feel that this may be our downfall as writers.  When it comes to stories—non-fiction or fiction—is it not the reflection of ourselves in the character(s) that draws us to stories in the first place?  To be able to relate to a diverse audience is an author’s greatest gift.  And I know that she is referring to her essay about the many mutated beings of fiction, but if you look back, some of the most famous monsters have gained society’s sympathy because they are portrayed as having feelings—just like us.  Think about it… Shrek, Sloth from The Goonies (“Hey you guys!”).  Okay, maybe I should mention some more classic monsters like the Hunchback of Notre Dame,  Dr. Jekyll and Mr., Hyde,  even Frankenstein.  No one loves him, not even his maker, who in his pursuit to find Frankenstein dies.  Frankenstein, overcome with guilt, greaves for his creator and then commits suicide.  How can you not feel bad for him?  He did not bring this upon himself.  His creator did. He was created into an unfortunate situation just as some of us are born into one. Writer’s should not be afraid of their voice, even if they are in an unfortunate situation because someone will relate,  and that is part of the attraction.  And this is proven by the immense collection of tragedies that are considered classics throughout the history of literature.

I gained a lot of insight from Elena when it came to examining the effects of storytelling in different perspectives.  It was very honest of her to share what some of her struggles are as a writer.  I just wish she could have shared more of her strengths! J

Alex Epstein was the author from this segment that I enjoyed reading the most.  He was able to build up these complex images in just a few sentences.  Each very short story took my imagination a flight, then sadly I would be cut short.  It was just enough to leave me wanting more, so I eagerly move on to the next few sentences—a great marketing trick.  But I have to say, after interacting with him in person, I am not sure if it was just his timid nature that was showing through his work.  Were his stories so short because he was holding back?  Or did he feel a few sentences were all that was needed to get the full effect? I admired him for his minimalist ideals.  It is true that there is only so much you can say and most of the time you don’t need much to say it.  This, of course, being a lesson I learned from Ezra Pound in a poetry class here at Iowa that turned me on to Imagist poetry.  After reading an imagist poem I feel as though I have had a sudden clarity in thought.  I got much of the same response to Alex’s stories.

I could tell that he was having a hard time explaining himself, and I don’t blame him.  It is nerve-racking for any writer to talk about their art form—how they came up with it and what the process is like.  What experimental form of creativity isn’t hard to understand.  They are complex concepts.  But he seemed to gain composure and summed up his craft beautifully when he said that his work is “the captured emotional moment between two people.” 

Another interesting statement he made was that every “Israeli writer will eventually write about political conflict and the bloodshed all around us.  But we want to write about real things—love, etc.”  If I could come to him with a new set of questions I would ask him why the bloodshed is not considered real to him?  I would not  hold it against him.  No, I don’t have a vague idea of what it is like to live in a country that has been torn apart by war for centuries.  And I know that when it comes down to it,  love is the most real element of humanity.  But from his sample writings, which had repetitive themes of dreams and death, I would have guessed that Alex was writing as a way of escape from the things such as  the bloodshed that surrounds him.  Maybe it has become ‘too real’ for his liking.  Or maybe I think this because I’m the kind of person who doesn’t remember her dreams.  Epstein could believe that dreams are pathways into the subconscious.

I would describe Beaudelain Pierre as a realist, as I believe most journalist are.  They are very knowledgeable about what is going on in the world, and feel confident in forming strong opinions.  I, on the other hand,  am a creative writer who sadly likes to disassociate myself from the world and form my own ideal opinions which I for some reason believe can actually come true.  But until they do, I always can count on fiction.  Therefore,  I was fascinated by her because she is the exact opposite of me.  At one point in the presentation Beaudelain said, “It is not necessary to think that we are at the center of the world…There is always someone in a better or worse situation than you.”  These are words that would probably never come from my mouth, but when she said them, with such emotion, they rang true.  Sometimes it’s extremely important to remember that you are just a small part of this enormous world and that so many things are happening beyond our own life’s bubble.

As Beaudelain continued, I realized that even a realist can have some ideals.  The tears welled in her eyes when she talked about Haiti, exposing a kind of love that cannot be expressed but only felt by understanding the word home.  “In Haiti the young people are very disoriented,” she said ,“and many people think that they have no future.  My novel was to show them that even if you cannot see you future, God can help you and people who have been successful can help you too.”  Unlike, many of the other authors in the program, I feel that she is focused on writing to establish a connection between the Haitian people,  not to particularly to establish a connection between Haiti and the world.  She elaborated on the idea by saying, “I am ready to show the young people that you have to stay in order to help your country.”  I wonder where all the young Haitians are going?  Still, I feel for her struggle, because I also believe that it is the faith that people have in their country that ensures that country’s continued existence.

Angelo Lacuesta gave a very riveting picture of his country.  The Philippines—where buildings are rebuilt with the regularity of a harvest.  Within this process of renovation after renovation, it seems that Philippines are developing an identity disorder to the point that they have become dependent on American culture and the English language.  He said that the development of genuine Filipino literature has proved insufficient and that the thinning number of readers has resulted in a thinning number of writers.  What a shame since it seems that the Filipinos are in dire need to connect to the roots of their heritage.  Angelo also said, “the literary effort is always a heroic effort.”  I only hope that Angelo can see himself as one of those heroes because the power of words are often overlooked when it comes to one’s own writing.  But it is there that people find the most power in us as writers and believe that same power resides in them.  We just can’t be afraid to show it. 

Angelo described his writing process as a “psychological exercise.  And as he expanded on this idea, I could see that I use a similar process myself.  I think that that every element of a story must be related to what the writer wants the reader to get out of it, not all the different things a reader could get out of it.  We must choose one.  Which,  for me, can be a tedious progression because I like to go off on these tangents that may make more sense in a conversation because I can quickly go back to the main idea, but in writing they eventually find their way to the chopping board.  As reluctant as  I may be to see this flow of my pure thoughts fly out the window, I must accept that the idea has become muddled in unnecessary explanations.  Like Angelo, my primary objective is to make the writer disappear.   Therefore, the base of a story should be a simple, concise idea where “the details will be called up by the psychology of the story.”  It is not until this technique is mastered that a writer can see how “every story is a universe in of it’s self.”

Kahaled Khalifa  seemed to recognize a part of himself as he gazed around the lecture classroom before he began.  He recalled being a crazy student at a university and said, “No one slept because I was not sleeping.”  And I believed him, because although his hair is peppered with dark grey and the wrinkles in his forehead have deepened with years under the Syrian sun, I see that the mischief still sparkles in his eye and his smile is that of a young child.  He says he writes because he cannot work.  Which is logical, but I feel that Kahaled finds himself lonely in the lifestyle of a writer.  It takes a lot of alone time in order for a writer to get his or her thoughts together in a cohesive way.  And he admitted that this was very hard for him. 

Kahaled, much like Epstein and his fellow Israeli writers,  also believes that no Syrian writer can write literature without writing about politics.  I guess this is no big surprise on either of their parts considering both writers are amongst severe political conflicts in their homeland.  The fact that both mentioned this as an enormous influence in their writing made me feel shameful for the lack of knowledge that I have about the politics of my own country.  It is just that I am so turned off by the lies corruption, and greed.  The news is skewed and therefore it’s screwed.  One channel you get a liberal biased opinion and on the next you get a conservative biased opinion.  I have conservative parents and liberal siblings.  Can I believe what I hear on the news?  Can I believe other people’s interpretation of what they heard on the news?  I have become so  skeptical that I have found it impossible to form an opinion of my own.  In communications studies they would call me a  When it comes to politics, who can I trust?  What can I believe?   The only true answer is—no one and nothing but myself.  But I doubt myself because I am so young and I feel naïve.  Sure, no system is perfect, but I must remind you that I am an idealist and if things aren’t going my way I selfishly look the other way.

  How can I stop this cycle?  These questions have a sign above them in blinking red lights that reads “URGENT!”.  Instead, I pick up my pen and work on a poem about how the sun has begun to fade earlier each day now that summer’s last thunderstorm had rolled in.  Are people like me the potential cause of the world’s demise?  How the intentions of each writer seems to differ!  Or are we all just expressing the awareness of our surroundings, our worlds--just in a different way and to a different audience?  And which is more effective in moving the reader?  Should one write about their own political opinion, hoping it will convert all those that previously opposed?  Would the majority see it as just another opinion and throw it out?  Or should one write about something that is timeless, and molded from the nature of our very being?  Is this a cop out from writing about what “really matters”?  Has nature been set aside by the rapid speed of our technological, industrial, political world.  Does nature matter anymore?  So many questions with no particular answers.  This is the internal struggle of a writer.

My ears could not help but absorb the deep, bold voice of Kei Miller.  He revolved his talk around the word texture.  He said that within his process of writing he often asks himself, “What shape does this story form?”  He believes there is no need to invest or create because the story is all right there in front of him, there is only the need to see and tell about such things as:  a city that is raided by gang wars, but the one bullet that crashes through the stained glass window of a church enters the body of the dead woman at her funeral and all others are left unharmed, a plague of baby crabs causes a beach community to panic, they look to the sky to see if God is coming, and God did not come but the sun did, before Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Jamaica the country wants to rid the streets of mad people so they dump them in a poisonous lake.  These are all things that are real to him.  He described them as being real things that have the “texture of fiction”.  They are things that have happened and will always happen.

I thought that Kei was smart to believe that he could get the best constructive criticism from people outside of his country.  “After you have earned the trust of your home country you can do no wrong,” he said.  “Sometimes it is more helpful to write for an audience that is a little more hostile.”  This was such an insight into his personality.  I believe Kei to be the kind of person who takes everything with stride and just enough humor to get him by.  I think so many writers are over sensitive when it comes to the way people react to their work.  I believe you must understand that you are allowing the most personal parts of yourself, that I think are inevitably revealed in every writer’s work, to be subjected to the opinion of others.  A writer must choose to accept this and learn from it.  They must also be able to choose which criticism is actually constructive and what is better left ignored.   But what must remain in the writer’s mind is what they think of themselves. With the confidence that he exudes, I believe that he could handle this criticism very well.  Now if only I could get there.

Simone Inguanez was charming, smart and stunningly beautiful.  I remember reading her poems and loving her simple style.  I noticed how her poems were narrative, and unlike traditional poetry, contained no particular rhyme scheme, as well as no real grammatical formalities such a capitalization or punctuation.  She also used italics to bring emphasis to selective parts of the poem.  I have seen this before in my more contemporary poetry classes so it was no big shock.  But her particular work brought up some new questions, that I unfortunately failed to ask in class for some real brownie points.  So I am forced to ask them now with no one to answer me.  I began to wonder if this modern style consists of a technique that is concentrated less on form or more concentrated on form, just a form of her own?  Was the form of the poem not important to her because the poems are meant to be heard not read?  And therefore, what is more important—the sound of the poem when it is read out loud or the way the poem looks when it is read on the page?  A modern writer can disregard the rules of language to make their own—no matter what their mother tongue is.  Simone even said, “I don’t want language to become a barrier.” It all goes back to Objectivist poets like Zukofsky, Oppen, and Niedecker.  It makes me look back to all the ideas I came up with while writing a paper on Niedecker’s My Life—How she deconstructed language in order to be more truthful in expressing her stream of consciousness.  And suddenly I’m glad that class was only a semester long because it’s extremely hard to explain a modern, experimental art form.  So maybe it is better that I did not get to ask Simone these questions after all. 

Besides, it is the overall effect that a poem has on a person that Simone is most concerned with.  “I’m drawn to people, places and situations…I am obsessed with images and sounds,” she said, “And through poetry I can paint what I cannot paint and strum what I cannot play.”  I believe that to be the challenge of every writer.  Just another form of translation.  Only this time it is how a thing that can only be hear or seen is translated into something that can be read.  Instead of a translation of language from country to country.  It is a translation of beauty from one art form to another.  And Simone was able to do this effortlessly because she concentrated on the simple elements of life. “I am a minimalist who puts such emphasis on everyday ordinary things,” she explained.   As a result,  she presents the powerful emotion associated with this everyday thing by tightly condensing it into a few lines of poetry. 

At first,  Hamdy El Ghazzar came off as egotistical.  I was given the impression that maybe he and his group of intellectuals thought too highly of themselves.  But seeing confidence as no crime, I was intrigued.  As he introduced his novel Black Magic, I realized that he was the first author to mention his translator.  Maybe this guy isn’t as self-centered as I thought and he continued to surprise me.  I was especially enticed when he said, “There is passion and nothing else.”  I think about the proceeding of my typical day and know that there are some things that lack passion.  Like doing my laundry for example, or waiting in line at the post office.  But then I realize that he may be on to something, because all of these minute happenings all lead to me fulfilling my passion.  I’m living, and doing the necessary things that living people do in order to go on to the next day.  And maybe, like Simone, I can start to see the excitement and importance of these ordinary things in my life and therefore have passion for them.  But then I am distracted by the Hamdy’s contradiction. 

He begins talking about his writing process and describes it as “painful”.  This idea of writing as being a hardship on him is repeated again and again throughout his talk and even resonates in his writing.  In one part of Black Magic he writes, “I’m no narrator or storyteller—words are among my enemies.”  And I can’t help but wonder what passion lies in that?   And if it bothers him so much to write, then why does he do it?  But as quickly as I had lost confidence in Hamdy, I gain it again.  One of the questions that he was asked concerned the relationships Egyptians have with America.  His response was careful but compassionate.  He said, “We like American people very much indeed.  We share ideas.  We share food.  We even share the very little money we have.  We are very interested in American culture, especially when it comes to water.”  Then with a hesitation I could tell he was thinking of a nice way to express the negative feelings toward Americans that must be present in Egypt.  Then he broke the brief silence and said, “But if you support hate than you can’t ask the other for love.  All of the American people I love hate war.”  It was then that I knew why he was a writer.  Words may be enemy, but he sure has a way with them.   

Ognjen Spahic is pleasantly odd in every facet of his being.  His novel Hansen’s Children is an extremely unusual story about the last leper colony.  But even between such gruesome descriptions he was able to write a thought provoking statement like, “Perhaps physical ugliness made it easier for that other, more deeply ingrained side of human nature to come out.”  When asked about what research he did to write such a story, he responded with a very matter of fact tone, “none” and we all laughed in astonishment.  We were amazed that such a young writer like ourselves could expand his imagination so far and still come up with a believable story. 

He was very nervous in front of the audience, starting with apologies for his broken English.  And he soon explained that it was not just the audience that was making him nervous—he is just a nervous person.  He said, “ I write the same way—in a nervous break down.  And then, for some strange reason, I want someone to read it.”  This desire for someone to read your work is something I relate to.  Once I feel comfortable that I have beautifully expressed what I wanted to say—I want someone to appreciate it because I know what it is like to read something and be inspired.  I was a reader before I became I writer, and I feel that this is a natural progression for most writers.  Ognjen explained his own experience of this transition in his off-beat way.  “The most important moment in my writing was going from a passionate reader into a writer,” he said.  “It was like having a sex change or I guess it was more like becoming bisexual—it was dramatic and exciting.”  It is weird for me to say that I can relate to that but I can.  The only thing that worried me about Ognjen, was his lack of self-confidence, which I talk about a lot.  I just think that as soon as you meet a writer you can tell, they either have it or they don’t.  And I don’t believe that this notion was because of his nervous nature, although it may stem from there.  It just became obvious when he said, “I am a young writer with nothing important to say, but maybe my readers will find something important in my writing.”  I can relate to his attitude in a similar way that I too am a young writer and often feel that I have not experienced enough of my life to write a novel,  but I still write and when I write I believe this writing to be worth reading.  It has to have a special meaning to me, no matter how miniscule and therefore should relate meaning to my reader.  I just think that a writer should carry themselves with confidence and determination.

I was excited to hear an Asian writer speak because I feel like the Asian culture, especially when it comes to language is so foreign to me.  As soon as Lawrence Pun came to the front of the room you could tell that he was an educator.  He was ready to go with his PowerPoint, and I was ready to learn.  He described Hong Kong through allegories and metaphors.  The allegories were “floating city” and “invisible city”, which represent the discontinuity between China and Hong Kong.  The night before,  I stared at my computer screen which was displaying the International Writer Program Webpage.  As I scrolled down to Lawerence’s name, I remember wondering why the Wikipedia link went to Hong Kong and not China.  Curious, I ventured on to link and found a potential answer.  I had not known that Hong Kong was under British rule as a colony until 1997 when Hong Kong was returned their soveignty.  It was no wonder that there was some unresolved tension between Hong Kong and it’s motherland.  I also thought is was interesting that Lawrence spent a lot of his childhood in Korea during this 15 year transition from British back to Chinese rule.  And I wonder what his families intentions were for leaving.  Could they not bear to be called a brit?  Did they feel that their culture was lost?  And how was it any better in Korea?

The metaphor that he gave to describe Hong Kong, was “fishing village”.  In this way Hong Kong became a international entity, a global city.  Then Lawrence came up with a metaphor that was more personal to him as an individual and a writer.  He said that his final metaphor for the city of Hong Kong is “my city”.  Lawrence seems to really believe in the affect that your surroundings have on your personal identity.  When he steps into his country he can be called by his real name in Cantonese and everyone will know what it means.  KWOK-country LING-spirit.  But Lawrence also did not fail to mention how the language of Hong Kong is changing.  In a process to make the traditional Cantonese less complicated, they have developed Mandarin.  But, in my opinion, by the way that he explained it, it has only made things more complicated because the two languages exists simultaneously.  And I wonder, since the Chinese government is trying to abolish that traditional language, is this considered a progression in language or a sure path to the end of one? 

István Geher I found to be especially different from all of the previous writers.  This may be because he came off as the most traditional and conservative writer that we have seen.  Or it could have been the abundant excitement that poured from István’s giant blue eyes.  He was so ready to talk about his craft and his language that he seemed to jump around in front of the room with each new topic that was brought up.  It seems that the traditional part of István came from the roots of his father tongue—Latin.  Therefore it made sense that István’s poetry has strong religious affiliation.  István described his writing process as a continuous cycle of remorse and atonement.  To me,  this process seems dark, and too isolated in order to be relatable—even though religion is supposed to be something that strings people together.  But I can understand how his poetry becomes a part of how his beliefs and doubts go together.  I relate to this because I often question what my beliefs are and what they mean to me in my poetry as well.  I think it is particularly interesting that Latin became a defense mechanism against the Germans during WWII.  Latin therefore was a beacon for religious text and music as well as a refuge during a time of religious persecution.

The innate musical ear that István has could be seen by the way that he tapped his foot with the rhythm of his poems, and then the way that his Hungarian singing resonated in all of our ears—we didn’t know how to react.  He is clearly talented in a way that I could never be.  I grew up with music constantly in the house, but to play an actual instrument proved harder for my sister and I while it came natural to the men of my family.  István said that he plays the piano and I am green with envy.  Then I think, if only I had kept up with those lessons than I would not be struggling to find the metre of the lyric poem that I know is in me and I so desperately want to write.  I am inspired by the way that István begins his thought process before writing a poem.  He said, “I first think of the tune of ideas.”  For me it is the idea, then come the words, and the sound of the poem comes last.  The fact that he can switch that progression up and think of the idea and the music without the presence of the words yet is unbelievable.

I believe that Ra HeeDuk’s talk struck a cord for all poets because she talked about the most fundamental elements of poetry.  I think that every poet has an “obsession with the essence of things”.  Even the smallest things become important to us because our thought process is based on metaphors.  We look at that very ordinary thing for a moment and we realize that it represents so much more, and that all it represents can be seen right here, within this thing.  The job of the poet is to make that larger concept be seen by others.  And in this way very complex ideas and emotions are simplified in a beautiful way that can be widely understood.  Ra was also smart in introducing her favorite book on poetics to make her explanation of her writing process easier.  She said that Paz’s The Bow and the Lyre mentions how poetry can “reconnect individuals who are isolated in a modern tradition built upon discontinuities.” I see poetry as achieving this by being a comprised of all the components that we as human beings all share.  Our world is growing and changing at unstoppable rates that get faster and faster.  Sometimes we can get lost in all the business that a modern life throws at us, and find no time for human connection.  Even if it is just a moment to reconnect with yourself.  Have we become so preoccupied with the routine, machine-like rituals of our day that we have forgotten our range of emotions and thoughts that we share with the world?    And oh, what a big world it is.  It is overwhelming, and perhaps that is the origin of what appears to be a hesitation to reconnect, when it should be our priority.  And like Paz says, poetry has this ability because it has a similar structure to love and religion—two of the most important things that drive people everyday to whatever they are doing.  Ra has taken this message to heart.  She sees the union that poetry brings between her and the world.

I also loved the idea that Ra believes that poems are not made but given and born.  I often feel this way as well.  If I am forced to write a poem it will not come to me.  And then I am consequently forced to write and turn in something that is uninspired and I hate it.  It is when I think of a poem in the middle of a conversation with my mother on the phone, or in the middle of a French test where I am supposed to be thinking of how to conjugate penser—that is when I know that that thought, that idea was given to me because of a reason.  So I write it down in a brief sentence (which usually becomes the first line), and I move on to what I was supposed to be doing in the first place until I can come back to what is really important—the poem.  I think this is the same voice that Bossi was talking about as well.  Many of the writers that have talked to our class have associated their writing process with schizophrenia.  It is a scary thought, but completely true.  Maybe writers are all schizophrenics, we just are able to control it, because we do not resist the voice that is inside us, and let that refusal take over us.  Instead we stop, we listen, we give the voice time to tell us what it wants to and we express it to the world.  In this way schizophrenia has won the battle, we just make sure that it doesn’t cause a full on war against our very self.   We need our ‘self’ to experience all the other things we write about.

Shakir was witty and thoughtful at the same time.  He focused his talk on how he developed as a writer.  He claims that he first had to find his own identity, which was difficult in his case because of the tension between the Turkish and Bulgarian languages.  He grew up learning Bulgarian, but he considers he mother tongue to be Turkish.  But since he only knew Bulgarian during his childhood and early adolescence his identity crises became more complicated.  “I had to use the language that caused my identity crises to find my identity,” he says with a laugh.  “And now I prefer to be called a Bulgarian-Turkish writer” If that means that his identity crises continues or that he has found a balance between the two identities, I am not exactly sure.  When it came down to it, it seems that Shakir, like all of us, just wants to be a great writer.  But every writer has their doubts.  When referring to his poems Shakir said, “I hope that they are very inspired.  If not, then perhaps they should be longer.”  I was also intrigued by his comments on being a both a writer and a translator. As a translator, Shakir said that he realized how hard it is to translate and that it affected his own poetry writing.  I can imagine how this skill would allow a writer to perfect their craft and also to be sensitive to the way that the work is perceived by others.  Often times I find, that I am so wrapped up in what my work means to me that it ends up making no sense to others.  Is this a crime?  Well, not if the work is not published.  It hopefully I can decide what is to be left to the imagination. But when it comes to actually publishing a work I can see how being a translator is difficult.

Ksenia Golubovich has a drive and passion for writing that I think all writers long for.  I can tell she spends many hours a day in front of her computer, allowing her thoughts to flow through to the page with unbelievable vigor, and there is no looking back.  She is proud of Russia, the mother of literature, and continues the acknowledged the love affair between her country and the written word.  Therefore, she is appalled that literature has been losing it’s interest in recent years due to the post-modernist era.  “Everything is post modernist, “she says, “post-everything, post-universe and Russian writers are the post-romantics.  But I believe there are countries at this time that are finding literature, finding the love affair.”  I continued to be mesmerized by how whimsical she made writing feel.  She described people as being musical partners and life as an orchestra.   And still she claims that she does not know of one good love poem from our generation.  And I agree with her, especially right now, while I’m in college—a place where sex is casual, infatuation happens every weekend night, and love is considered scary. 

I thought the story about how she became a writer was so real and honest.  “I never wanted to become a writer,” she says.  “It was something that just happened.  I was in Germany and something horrible was happening in Russia and I just began to shout.  I was waking everyone up and a decision was made—either I write or I get out.”  And how fortunate we are that she choose to write.  This woman is so full of compelling, even ground breaking idea, that I feel come natural to her and on a daily basis.  Like, the way she asked the age old question from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet—what’s in a name?  A name is given for so many historical reasons and she boldly asks, “When do you say ‘No! it’s my name! When is it my name?’”  I also related to the way she described her relationship with words.  We all hear words.  But I think writers really want to hear words and to associate the meaning with the sound and vise versa.  We ask the questions like, “why does that sound I hear remind me of this thing or person or concept?”  And like Ksenia said, “Sometimes to hear one word I need a novel.”

Honestly, I think the only Wikipedia link that I read in full was in preparation of Tom Dreyer’s talk.  I was flabbergasted and kind of ashamed that I had no idea such civil unrest was happening during my lifetime!  Reading South Africa’s history about apartheid almost made me sick to my stomach.  As I found out from Tom’s essay Strange Orange World, it is understandable that I remained in ignorance for so long.  Tom himself was naïve to the struggle of his own country.  He wrote, “I find myself in the awkward position of having led a happy childhood in South Africa that for the majority of South Africans was anything but happy.”  He eventually realized that his past was contained within a protective shell, and now that he had broken through that shell and was placed into the real world, he no longer knew how to interpret hiss memories.   I think it is very true that the past is much harder to give up for the writer because this is where most of us base of present ideas that lie within our work.  One summer a good friend of mine got the phrase “the past holds no future” tattooed to the back of her neck.  I remember that for some reason I wanted this to mean something to me as well, but it couldn’t and I didn’t know why.  Tom has made me realize that it is because I am a writer.  And now I have so much sympathy for his situation.  What a distraction it must be when the past that a writer looks to is shrouded in lies and deception.  But then I think all people’s childhood is in some way deceived, just not in such an extreme way.  We all grew up believing ridiculous things that our mother told us was true because we were to young to understand.  And like Tom says in his essay, “Carefreeness and enchantment have always been the birthright of a child.”  So I am gad that he does not get to caught up on how his past consists of naïve notions of the world, because that is what happens to the children who are fortunate.

One of the most interesting things to see in this class is the different perspectives that people have on the English language.  And this is a point that Tom brought up in his talk.  South Africa has 11 official languages which obviously causes tension.  So, the solution has become the national use of English, which as a result has become known as the “killer language”  Selfishly, as an American, I think “Great, a universal language that will tie all peoples and cultures together”  But what I do not realize is that a part of that people that culture is lost when the language is as well.    And how boring would our world be if everyone was blended together into one culture?  Would we even work well together this way?  I also thought Tom was right when he said that people expect people from certain places to write about certain things.  “But people are more complicated than that,” he says.  Sure, our surrounding effect who we are and what we have become, but not everything lies there.  People from different places are more similar to each other than we like to lead on.  We all have friends, lovers, family.  And although we may have different surroundings, we all eat, breathe and sleep in those surroundings.  I guess that I believe in what Tom said because I think that we all are human and we all long for a connection to one another through these similarities that we have, although our surroundings and situation may be different.  That is not what our stories should consist of, it should only be what makes our story unique.  In this way I think that the writer is truly as Tom says—“the mediator between the world of thought and the actual world”  As a reader I am interested in what the writer’s world actually is for them but, what I am really looking foe is what they are thinking about, and is it something I have thought myself or agree with—how can we progress our surroundings, not describe them as they are.  Tom has the perfect quote to sum this all up—“the mind of the writer and the world meet—and this meeting place is words.”

Chris Chryssopoulos was brief and resorted directly to the questions that we wanted to ask him.  Which sadly made his talk in class quite forgettable.  But I remember his writing sample from his anthology Fractured Planet very well.  My stomach turned as I was taken back six years ago, when I watched, terrified in my freshman rhetoric class in high school, at the twin towers that were shrouded with fire and smoke.  It all seemed like a weird dream.  I thought I was watching a war movie, not breaking news from New York.  It was interesting to see a foreign perspective on that day because when it was happening it had been all about us--here, and now.  Sure, we wondered who was responsible and felt a powerful mix of emotions.  I was confused and scared and angry.  But the words—fractured planet.  I guess I never really thought about how the entire planet had focused in on what happened to the United States that day, knowing that it had caused a shift in the world’s situation, not just ours.

Eliot Weinberger confined the two major periods of American poetry to the early 20th century and the 1960’s.  The modernist of the early 20th century wanted to intergrate American poetry into the European literary scene.  Then the 1960’s wave of poetry was a reaction of self-loathing among the people who hated the Vietnam war.  I think it was accurate for him to say that we are going through a similar pattern with the Iraq war.  It’s during these times that people look to poets and artists to express the multitude of emotions that sometimes seem unable to be expressed.  I also believe that it is when people are in search of a community within a divided nation.  Like Weinberger said, “there is an international consciousness particularly among young people.  It’s a pattern that happens when there is a sense that the world has changed.”  Therefore, people lean on others for support and guidance anyway they can.  Poetry, being so personal in the first place, is a great outlet for those that are able to express the general feeling and attitudes of themselves and others which makes it a powerful source of communication between the people of America as well as a communication between Americans and people in general.  It becomes a multi-dimensional conversation between the poet and the world.  But it wouldn’t be possible without translation.  And as Marvin Bell pointed out, this realization that there can be such an honest dialogue between people who are extremely different than one another brings hope for a world of alienation.  Even the gaps that remain within this country can be filled which is why, as Bell said, “the voices that are being sought over are our ethnic voices—African-American, Latin-American etc.  Tomas Salamun even went on to say that American poetry has become so powerful, and so big that it has become the world’s poetry. 

Eliot Weinberger also talked a little about his medium of work.  I believe that he considers himself an essayist.  He said, “the essay has never has an advant garde unlike poetry or prose.  The essay form goes down to the 18th century and hasn’t changed since.  But there are ways you can play with an essay that are completely normal but become extremely hard to translate with such an experimental form.” And this didn’t make much sense to me until I went to his reading at the Shambaugh House.  I saw how his poetry had characteristics of an essay.  But I would still consider his work to be poetry.  Especially when I consider how he said that the essay form has not changed much since the 18th century, which I believe to be somewhat false.  Maybe the essay did not change much, but poetry being seen as essayistic goes back to that very time.  Look at any Shakespearean sonnet or any sonnet of that time for that matter and you will find that it is an argument with three points with a clear and precise beginning, middle, and end that is shown in three quatrains.  Then the couplet brings a new light on the argument, acting as a conclusion.  So what has Weinberger done other than switched the literary jargon around?  I’m by no means saying that his work is unoriginal, or mundane—in fact I believe the exact opposite.  His catalogue of what people said when he asked them what the stars are made of blew my mind.  Also, he read another one that used the various sounds of the jungle to narrate a story.  He had a way of being so compelling and thoughtful, but never failed to put in a little humor.

All of the authors gave me a great sense of what was to come for me as a writer.  When asked what they thought about the intense competition behind the Creative Writing Program, they all had sound advise and opinions.  Bell said that we can’t blame people for competing to find that new ground-breaking style.  “It’s a youthful game that we must all go through.”   Weinberger was very honest when he said, “if you’re a young writer than you should be writing about the stuff that you’re going to be really embarrassed about later.”  As young writers, I believe that we don’t have much else to write about.  It’s all part of the learning process and perfecting the craft.  Which he agrees with when he says, “I just believe that young people should also be out in the world and having adventures because if you stay around campus then you don’t have very much to talk about.”  But when you have the guts to put your heart and soul out there, there can be a lot of self-criticism that comes along with your criticism.  I have always known I was going to be exposed to this and I have learned to take criticism with stride, because in the end I know that I can’t please everyone.