Month: June 2015

Katie Booth’s work has appeared in Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, The Fourth River and Vela, where she also edits the “Bookmarked” column. She has earned recognition and support for her work from the Edward Albee Foundation, the Blue Mountain Center and the Massachusetts Historical Society. She teaches writing and journalism at the University of Pittsburgh. Her creative nonfiction piece, “Still,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your piece in 10 words or fewer.

Excavator birds. Burned out house, brink of demolish. Flashback: fire.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This was one of those pieces that I struggled with for years. I won’t bore you with the details of its many transformations and deletions. I will say that it only really broke into its current shape after I read “Stillness” by Charles Baxter, and let the piece unwrap around a single moment.

What was the best/worst feedback you received on this piece?

Once, after I read it aloud, a friend said, “It sounded like it was very beautiful, but I couldn’t actually hear you.”

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

I recently published a fiction story which was a thinly veiled story about my great-aunt’s experience as a native speaker of American Sign Language in an oralist deaf school in the 1930’s (where Sign was forbidden and punished). She had spent so much time, over years, letting me interview her, answering all these stupid questions I had—both for this story and a larger study of that moment in Deaf culture—but I’d never shared my writing with her. When I found out she had cancer, I was living in China. I couldn’t deliver it myself, but I finished the story and emailed it to my mother, who interpreted it into Sign Language for my aunt. It was published in Indiana Review this year, which was wonderful, but I was far happier to know that the story made it to my aunt, in her own language, before she died.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

Yes! At the risk of sounding like I didn’t read past the first piece, I’ll say that Jennifer K. Sweeny’s “Parenthetical at 35” is my favorite. She does this wonderful poetry-meets-essay thing that I’ve tried for years to pull off, but never really have—not like she does. The images she creates are so taut and layered; returning to it now, I’m shocked at how short the piece is. There’s such a full world within it, and such a quiet unfolding of the story that holds it together. I love this: “I had wished to live in a country of bad weather and nested inside a winter inside a winter inside a long night.” But for all the slow lingering of Sweeny’s piece, I also love the rushing thoughts of Wendy Cannella’s “Immortality,” and Nancy Hewitt’s “Measured,” both of which move breathlessly forward, ending in such unexpected ways, among the extension of the details we began with, but with expansive breadth.

Can you show us a photo of you holding your MAR contributor’s copy?

Thanks for the interview, Katie!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Wendy Cannella’s poetry has appeared in Phoebe, Free Lunch, and Southern Indiana Review; her article “Angels and Terrorists” is featured in The Room and the World: Essays on the Poet Stephen Dunn (Syracuse University Press). She earned her MFA from Vermont College, PhD from Boston College, and has taught at Boston College and Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in Coastal Maine with her husband and two daughters. Her prose poem, “Immortality,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Will I receive partial credit for a haiku?

To live forever
is to endure much housework;
consider a maid!

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

“Immortality” represents my first attempt at a prose poem. The subject begged this particular shape, demanded it, really, the way a clean shirt demands to be folded squarely. The concept arose through dialogue and scraps of drifting commentary, and involves more quotations than I would ever dare press upon a lyric poem.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I thought, oh no, does this mean I have to write more prose poems? There is something in me that, like the speaker of “Immortality,” just might equate a long prison sentence with a long prosaic sentence, especially one I myself have written.

I also thought, wow, this is the journal I have loved since encountering Stephen Dunn’s poem about seagulls in its pages in the mid-1990s (what I have long considered to be the greatest decade of all time, a belief recently made official in the New York Times). That poem by Dunn is titled “Radical” and ends like this:

Then the gulls began quarreling
as if what was happening
could be a matter of opinion,
but they were merely experts,
there every morning, not to be trusted.

Merely experts. I love that paradox, and I was hooked on MAR.

What was the best feedback you received on this piece?

A good friend told me that after reading “Immortality” she now dumps her clean silverware, unsorted, into a kitchen drawer. So, poems can bring change.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Oh, I see you haven’t met my young children yet…

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

I find myself returning repeatedly to Jennifer Sweeney’s piece, “Parenthetical at 35.” The poem performs a number of remarkable balancing acts, not the least of which is its form—which teeters between stanza and paragraph, lyric and narrative. The question of form is related to the poem’s problem of the parenthetical, as Sweeney writes: “What to place in this raw absence, this […].” I love a poem unafraid to tell its own story and this one is spoken by a central “I” who is wise enough to step aside and allow the poem’s own logic to determine how events unfold. In this way, the “I” occasionally gives way to information which seems to rise up from the groundswell of the speaker’s world: “For headaches, feverfew. For cold womb, false Unicorn root. To ward off hibernating insects, Osage oranges in the windowsills. For twin ghosts, divide fire in two equal parts.” By the end of the poem, the reader must go back to the beginning to understand just what is missing, what is finished.

Thanks for the interview, Wendy!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of three poetry collections: Little Spells (New Issues Press, 2015), How to Live on Bread and Music, which received the James Laughlin Award, the Perugia Press Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, and Salt Memory. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, American Poetry Review, Linebreak, New American Writing, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily. Her poem, “Parenthetical at 35,” appears in MAR 35.1.

Quick! Summarize your poem in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

winter, abundant with losses, no baby, wringing my hands

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

This poem was one that steeped for a very long time. Though the time of the poem was at age 35, I wrote it three years later when I was out of the fire, no longer living a daily prayer that I would finally succeed in getting pregnant, no longer living in a perpetual Michigan winter but in the California desert. I was napping with my baby boy, and I just heard the poem. It entered the room, my body, entirely. I said lines over and over so as to not lose them and eventually was able to get to a pen and paper. I had most of it down after that afternoon, but worked in the next months fine-tuning its many different movements; there was such a lot to contain. I didn’t show it to many people and sent it out only a few times. It just felt like such a dense poem for an editor to take on, I wasn’t sure if it would get picked up.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I was so happy to find out this poem would be published, but by MAR? That was wonderful. I had admired the journal for a long time, and I felt particularly read and witnessed by the editors regarding a poem that felt so different from anything I had ever written. I received a kind note about the correlation of the “35-ness” of my title and the anniversary of the journal and was touched that my poem opened this issue.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

My most surprising and successful moment as a writer was finding out that my second book had won the James Laughlin Award. I was in Prague for the month and unreachable by phone or email for about five weeks. At the end of the trip, I asked a secretary in our apartment building if I could use her computer to check my emails. When I opened the weeks-old message from the Academy of American Poets, I let out such a joyful shriek that the secretary knew something wonderful had happened and brought out a bottle of wine even though it was only 9 am. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone yet, but I told that woman who gave me one of the warmest toasts, and we drank to it together. So unexpected. Perfect moment.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

After college, I spent six months in Siberia, Indiana, town of 25, as a volunteer. I lived in a mobile home across from a tiny church with an old rectory and convent on either side which now housed adults with severe disabilities who lived under the guidance of a Benedictine nun and a lay houseparent. Beyond the homes, there was an organic farm with goats and chickens. I was there to assist both homes and help with the farm. There was no computer or tv; I only spoke to those ten people on that plot of land and little else. It was an incredible time full of tenderness and longing, deep silence and doubt.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I was on an artist residency at Hedgebrook in mid-February, and on Whidbey Island, the barred owls were mating. They nested in tree holes lined with feathers or grass along the path I followed each evening to eat dinner, my head spinning the day’s new fragments around. It was on such a walk when I was struck upside the head and brought down to the forest floor. Disoriented and dazed, I assumed fallen branch only to look up from my knees and see a female barred owl flying off, her three-and-a-half-foot wingspan sweeping slowly and silently through the alders. I found out later that barred owls have fenestrated wings which make no sound, and I can affirm this is true. The owl incident caused a stir among the other writers who were not as interested as I was in being hit in the head with an owl, but I appreciated the desire to have an intimate experience with nature and being met with an ambush. It seemed the perfect instruction for the writer, some totem of wisdom smacking any comfortable notions of progress upside the head, and saying Wake up, get with it.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

This is a tremendous issue. The poem selections are wonderful, and the feature of prose poems/short shorts/flash nonfiction is truly a treat. I love the urgency, dislocation, and surprise of Clare Wahmanholm’s “Theory of Primogeniture: Barn”; the poem itself seemed to incinerate as I read it. Sarah Burke’s “The Rock Has No Children” is a deeply affecting poem in which the grief and refusal to surrender are portrayed exquisitely. It is also very much speaking to my poem; it’s a lonely conversation to live, and I was moved by how her poems and mine bookend the issue and perhaps provide a larger parenthetical relationship. From the feature, I especially savored “Immortality” by Wendy Cannella, “Diving Deep (My Father as Octopus)” by Bryce Emley, and “Violet on a Plane” by Lisa C. Krueger. I’ll say it again—I love this feature!

Thanks for the interview, Jennifer!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Claire Guyton is a Maine writer, editor, and writing coach, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Hunger Mountain, The Journal for the Compressed Creative Arts, River Styx, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and the anthology Summer Stories (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2013). Claire has been awarded the Maine Arts Commission’s Literary Fellowship and earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She wrote a short story every day for a year and blogged about the experience at dailyshorty.com.

Claire’s piece of flash fiction, “Three Things,” was a finalist in the 2014 Fineline Competition and appears in MAR 35.1. (This year’s Fineline deadline is June 15!)

Quick! Summarize your piece in 10 words or fewer. Extra points if your answer rhymes.

Man loses wife, gains life.

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?

I wrote this piece as part of my project of writing a short story every day for a year. This story completed my 46^th week, and I was surprised to have written something I liked a lot so late in the year because by then I was so mentally tired. I changed almost nothing, later, when I polished it before sending it out. It’s just one of those lucky pieces that comes to mind and then to the page almost whole.

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?

I laughed out loud, then kissed the husband, then fired off an e-mail to a couple of really good writer friends. I have admired MAR since my first days of serious writing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better home for this little fiction.

You’re at a family reunion and some long-lost relative asks about your writing. What do you say?

Nothing. I point to my full mouth, shrug, smile, chew with exaggerated labor, point again, shrug again, smile again, chew. What if I’m not eating, you ask? Of course I’m eating. The only way to get through a family reunion is by carrying at all times an overspilling plate of my aunt’s baked beans and my cousin’s brownies. Plus potato chips. You can always fill a gap in a paper plate (and your mouth) with potato chips.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

I wrote a short story every single day for a year. And blogged about it. It was very, very, very hard. But it was writing bliss.

Your biggest writing-related regret?

Hands down that I didn’t start writing much earlier. How I wish I could have a do-over.

Your biggest non-writing-related regret?

That I didn’t get good therapy while my brain was sleek and flexible and more willing to listen. I can see that I really needed good therapy then and would benefit from it now, but my brain is too stiff in the knees, too attached to streaming Netflix. Tired of all the chatter.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve writing.

For many years when I was a kid, an adolescent, a teen, a young adult… not sure when it stopped, actually… every time I got into a car with someone else or into my own car, I wondered if the car would blow up when the key turned in the ignition. I hoped it wouldn’t, of course. And I’ve been lucky so far.

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does involve writing.

I almost never use a semicolon because I find the mark unattractive. It’s such a shame, because the work a semicolon does is so quietly lovely—its whole sentence-aura is understated elegance, inviting thoughtful, well-constructed sentences. Yet that blotty speck over the comma… ugh. I just can’t.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue? If so, name it and tell us why.

This sounds so fake, but it’s true—I love it all and couldn’t believe I was allowed in such good company. If I have to choose, then I crown those you’ve already crowned, the winners of the short-short contest I entered.

Thanks for the interview, Claire!
Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor