Photo Caption: Picture of the board game which is available for download below.
Happy Halloween, MAR Family!
What Is “After Bone Town”?
To celebrate Halloween this year, MAR spotlighted a past contributor by gamifying their piece, originally published in MAR’s print issue. In this captivating board game, players take on the roles of characters living in “Bone Town.” “After Bone Town” is a board game inspired by Angie Macri’s poem “Bone Town,” first published in MAR Volume 42.1.
How to Play
Setup: Download and print the game board, instructions, and bone pieces from this blog post. We recommend printing the game board on 11″ by 17″ paper or across two sheets of paper. Cut out the bone pieces and window card. Before gameplay, place the bone pieces and window card in any empty spaces on the game board. Only one bone piece should be placed per empty space. The window card will also be placed on an empty space alone.
Components: Players will need 1 die, character tokens, bone pieces, window card, and game board. Players will need to gather tokens or charms to represent each character.
Winning: The first character to collect their two required bone pieces and the window card will be the winner.
Photo Caption: “Drone view of similar houses, driveways, and yards in the Utah suburbs.” by Blake Wheeler, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Mid-American Review fiction staff selected “The Unbearable” by Brianna Barnes for publication in Volume XLIII, Number 1, forthcoming.
Life has become increasingly unbearable for Judy, the protagonist of Brianna Barnes’ story—but reading about her existential crisis is anything but.
Our staff loved the psychological complexity of Judy’s character, whose actions are often nonsensical—and yet make perfect sense within the framework of her own skewed logic.
Judy is on a first-name basis with the agents at Poison Control, which she regularly calls while drunk to inquire about the effects of consuming certain toxins. She trolls the website FriendlyNeighborhood.com, posting under the pseudonym Carl Rogers and trying to get a rise out of the neighbors whom she lives alongside but rarely speaks to. She acts with certainty—even as she continually questions her relation to the world around her.
The story begins in the aftermath of a forest fire, which has forced a bear into the surrounding suburbs. Judy, encountering her neighbors’ comments about this online, finds herself intentionally stoking their concerns about the animal. As she reacts to the bear-sightings, the story delves into her thoughts on consciousness and her place in an indifferent world. Walking through the trees’ charred remains in the opening scene, Judy notes: “The fact that. . . she was fully surrounded by a resplendent and unrepeatable beauty did not mean she was being loved by the forest or by nature or by some capital ‘G’ God; she was just as unloved as ever within a beauty which preceded her and did not need her, a wilderness, after all.”
“The Unbearable” has a lonely, haunting quality in such scenes—but they are set alongside moments of sharp, critical humor that left many of us laughing to ourselves as we read. Ironic and funny portrayals of suburbia are sprinkled throughout the story: the particular smells and patrons of an organic grocery store, conversations between neighbors about recycling protocols in an online forum, and a description of Judy’s home, Pleasant Meadows, as “a suburb with profound rural pretenses, hyperbolic nature street names, and paranoid inhabitants.”
As the story follows Judy’s growing sense of her own “nonsubjecthood,” it builds to an ending that feels both surprising and inevitable—one that you certainly won’t forget.
In 1970, Bob Dylan released Self Portrait, his tenth studio album. It was met with poor reviews and disdain from fans, the long history of which is well-documented online. Curiously, Dylan made a choice that alienated fans, whether intentional or not. The opening track, “All the Tired Horses,” does not feature vocals from Dylan at all. Where had the dynamo gone? Where was the “Rolling Stone,” the Dylan of “Corrina, Corrina,” the young man “Blowin’ in the Wind?” What did he mean, foregrounding a voice, a choir of voices, that didn’t belong to him?
Around the time Dylan’s song was released, a young Kiowa-Caddo man named Tommy Cannon–popularly known as T.C. Cannon–returned from the Vietnam War and painted two horses under an ochre sky. One red horse, one blue. He named the piece All the Tired Horses in the Sun. Cannon tragically died eight years later, just a few months before his big opening show at the Aberbach Gallery in New York. While his life was short, Cannon was a prolific artist, known as both a painter and a poet. Was his painting a response to Dylan’s song? Inspired by it, surely, but carrying the message forward somehow? Transforming it?
Finally, in 2018, a year before being named United States Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo was commissioned to write a piece for a book about Cannon. She wrote “All the Tired Horses in the Sun.” The piece has to do with Harjo’s Mvskoke identity and issues faced by Indigenous communities; perhaps, the piece has something to do with not just Cannon’s painting, but Dylan’s as well.
Artists respond to the world around them; the world is filled with artists. How do we make sense of intertextual connections like those presented here? I don’t have an answer. We engage with art, think about it, are moved by it, and in some cases, make art in response. We keep our minds open. One avenue of entry that often proves to be interesting, if even as basic exploration, is the use of one work to frame another work. This is sometimes called a lens. So let’s use the Harjo poem as a lens for viewing the Cannon painting, and then listening to the Dylan song.
The poem begins with “Forever.” Harjo creates a landscape with anaphora and end-stopped lines. Readers have the sense of a weary propulsion. A tired procession of family, “my cousin. Auntie. Uncle. / Another cousin.” The poem opens in the center, and the subject is complexified. Up to this point, we are given context through the title, made to think of family members like horses in the sun, and then: “Vending machines and pop. / Chips, candy, and not enough clean water.” So we are handed food insecurity. Harjo’s choices are very intentional. The harshness of the end-stopped lines, the word choices having to do with junk food, and the absence of enough clean water paint a picture of a landscape that is difficult; it is hot, dry, “waiting and tired.” The final line of the poem is a call to action: “Go water the horses.” We the readers have the ability to positively impact our communities.
Applied to the Cannon painting, Harjo’s poem provides the figures with further meaning. The two animal shapes are so close to one another that they touch. The blue from the horse’s coat is echoed in the lighter-toned saddle of the red horse. Their heads are down, likely to indicate that they are grazing. This is a family, pressed down under the weight of a sky that takes up two-thirds of the canvas, a hot ochre with marshmallow clouds. The saddles indicate these are working animals. It wouldn’t be a stretch to link a working horse conceptually to the grim reality of Indigenous dispossession in our American history. So we have the sense of hot work, with one’s family, in an open landscape with no space for shelter.
To my eye, the Dylan song–stay with me, I know it’s odd to go backward–ties the three works together. Making a lens of the poem makes the song quite simple, and in my opinion, poignant. There are only two lines of lyric in the song:
“All the tired horses in the sun, / how’m I supposed to get any ridin’ done? Hmm.”
If we apply the connotative landscape we have built by working backward, we have a picture of the horses in our minds. They are family members, moving through life under a hot sun, without enough clean water. Our families are working, the sun can be oppressive, and there is not enough. There is never enough. How can an artist–existing in a political landscape like the one inhabited by Dylan and Cannon in the 70s, the one Harjo has inhabited throughout her long career–rationalize the act of making art? How do you unpack the choice to be creative when there are so many practical problems in the world that need fixing? And how do you grapple with becoming a symbol–as Dylan was–for something you may not want to stand for?
Simple: you focus on what you have to. You make the art. There’s no sense in hand-wringing.
Abigail Cloud and Haley Souders were interviewed on September 11th, 2024. This interview took place in East Hall at Bowling Green State University. Abigail Cloud is the Editor-in-Chief of MAR, and Haley Souders is serving as the Winter Wheat Coordinator this year.
During this interview, we discussed preparing for Winter Wheat 2024. We talked about the festival’s history, favorite memories, and all the work that goes into making Winter Wheat.
Interviewer:
Okay, then. Let’s get started. So my first question is: Where did the idea of Winter Wheat come from? This is my first time here at Bowling Green and it’s my first time being involved in these things. So, I don’t really know a lot of the background of this event.
Abigail Cloud:
Winter Wheat started in 2001. It was actually my first year here as a grad student back then … The idea was to create a community-based writing event because there weren’t any around here. You know we have the ginormous AWP conference. We have other sort of regional conferences but there wasn’t any variety in like smaller festivals that were not gonna cost people a lot to go to. So the idea was to create something that had readings, that had sort of camaraderie among writers, which is what Mid-American Review is all about. And then also to generate new work beacuse a lot of conferences don’t involve creating new work at all. Like that’s not something that exists at most conferences and festivals so that was really the focus from the start. And that’s why the name ultimately became Winter Wheat because we’re planting the seeds for future harvest, essentially. And it speaks to our Midwestern status and everything, but in point of fact the alternate name was Wheat Stalk. So like Woodstock. But ‘stalk,’ like stalk of wheat, and you know that’s, we’re very clever. But it was mainly to create an event that the area was lacking and that didn’t really exist in the landscape anyway.
Interviewer:
Okay. Anything you want to add, Haley Souders?
Haley Souders:
No, Abby knows the history way more than I do so.
Interviewer:
Okay then so I didn’t know you were here when Winter Wheat started.
Abigail Cloud:
Yes.
Interviewer:
You got to watch that process.
Abigail Cloud:
I did. I was very involved in that process as a grad student. Karen Craigo and Michael Czyzniejewski involved all us grad students in the planning and the creating. We were all on sort of micro committees to get things done because it was our first time, too, with that big of an event. And it was still small, but it was, you know, learning the planning at a university. Like learning the offices and people that you need to talk to. And figuring out what the structure was going to be like, you know, getting, getting the guests locked down. All that kind of stuff. So it was, it was pretty detailed, pretty intense.
Interviewer:
Wow.
Abigail Cloud:
Good couple months.
Interviewer:
Okay then. So you had a very extensive history with Winter Wheat. What is one of your favorite Winter Wheat memories?
Abigail Cloud:
(to Haley) Do you have a favorite Winter Wheat memory from last year?
Haley Souders:
I don’t know. The thing I’m just thinking about right now is when me and Caleb were bringing in all the food from your car. I don’t know why that’s sticking in my head. Just like setting up all the snacks and the coffee station. And then Mays (Kuhail, 2023 coordinator) coming in and saying, “Actually you should put the pastries by the coffee.” And it was being, her being really aware of the flow of everything.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, yeah. It’s been interesting having that ability of, we have our own sort of coffee corner and coffee and snack corner, which we do now instead of getting catering. And it’s nice because we can have exactly what we want. No more, no less. It just, it does make things really nice.
Haley Souders:
Yeah.
Abigail Cloud:
I think most of my favorite memories from Winter Wheat are from years where I wasn’t in charge. Because I was able to go to workshops. And so, the one that I always use as an example is going to Mary Biddinger’s workshop on Organizing a Poetry Manuscript, a full-length collection. And I went because I had a manuscript and after I came out and I sat down. And I didn’t go to anything else. I sat down with, you know, my list of poems and all my poems. And I reorganized the whole manuscript, or started to, under an entirely different principle that I had gotten while in that workshop. And that is essentially the form in which that book eventually got published. So it changed everything, right on the, right on the spot, which was really incredible.
Interviewer:
So you got to experience what the purpose of Winter Wheat was.
Abigail Cloud:
I did. I did. It fulfilled its goals. And we love Mary anyway. I mean she’s an alum from here too. And is over at Akron and runs the poetry press there. So it was especially neat. It was special to have that from her with whom we’ve already had a connection.
Interviewer:
Okay. Awesome.
Haley Souders:
Yeah, in terms of workshops. I remember there were two people who came in from some other university and they, it was essentially like Hermit flash, I think is what it was.
Abigail Cloud:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Haley Souders:
Where they were–they would give us two note cards and one was like a weird topic and then one was like a weird format to write on. So some were literally like a concert ticket was the format, or academic essay is I think one that I got. And that one was like a really fun intensive workshop.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, getting exposed to new forms and new ways of doing things that other people have tried and that’s always an exciting moment, I think, at Winter Wheat.
Haley Souders:
Yeah.
Interviewer:
Cool. So what does the planning process for this event look like?
Abigail Cloud:
So, we have an extensive to-do list between us. And it is organized essentially by how far ahead of Winter Wheat it is. So it’s kind of monthly and then it becomes every few weeks and so on. And we kind of divide up where we are and the duties for Haley Souders or whoever is in that position are dependent on what that person wants to learn and what they might be good at. But also it’s a lot of that outside communication. And then for me it’s dealing with the university offices. So, you know, working with event planning, emailing parking services, things like that. So, the nice thing is that Winter Wheat has been around long enough that we know what we need to do. Like there aren’t usually big surprises. It’s always possible. But not common. So, we usually are planning far enough in advance that we know who the guests are. We’re calling for proposals and so on. But even that doesn’t happen as far in advance as a lot of conferences because we know what we need. And enough people are repeat Winter Wheat attendees that they also know, they know what to do. So a lot of web mastering and updating and a lot of kind of back end stuff preparing the various spreadsheets that we need. But, but yeah. (to Haley) What has it been looking like for you?
Haley Souders:
Yeah, I mean I think for me it’s at least a little bit less stressful just because you have done this a decent amount of times. And like you were saying with the responsibilities it’s laid out on a sheet, on a Google doc. It’s like you know everything that needs to get done. There’s nothing that’s going to fall through the cracks. So there isn’t anything that I’m having to stress out about it not getting done.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah. Yeah. We have all the contact lists already made. They need to be updated but they’re already made so you know it’s just stuff that needs to be done. But also has a time already assigned to do it.
Interviewer:
Okay then. How do you organize the workshop schedule?
Abigail Cloud:
I actually changed how we do that.
Interviewer:
Okay.
Abigail Cloud:
Usually, it is the coordinator and I sitting down with slips of paper that have the workshop title, genre, and preferred date on it. Last year, I gave those slips to the (Mid-American Review editorial) class and said here you go everybody. Make a schedule. And I had input and everything but I let everyone else puzzle it out. And figure out what would be the best arrangement. And I had to make changes, of course, but honestly it was kind of interesting to watch that puzzling process.
Haley Souders:
Interesting. I know I haven’t gone through that scheduling yet but one of the things that I have done so far is starting to make a spreadsheet of those different proposals. And what you’re saying with like the date, preferences, and genres.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, and there are fewer preferences than there used to be. Like we used to have to ask people for their, whether they wanted the projector and screen in their rooms or not. And now they’re in all the rooms that we’re in so we don’t have to ask about that anymore. We used to have to get a certain number of laptops from the union which was horrible. And then remember all the logins and everything. It was awful.
Interviewer:
Where is Winter Wheat held, by the way?
Abigail Cloud:
Education Building. Yup. Right there. So it’s right close to our parking lot, our preferred parking lot. And so it’s good for accessibility reasons. They also have those rooms often set up with active learning desks. So we can move them around really easily. … But it is nice to have a stable setting. We used to be in the union. It was in the union every year for the longest time but it’s pretty expensive. And we also can only have the university catering if we’re in that building. So I can’t, like, bring the Keurigs and set them up. They won’t let us do that. So, it’s nice to have the Education Building. It could be, there are things that could be better about it. But, you know. And it’s better than having it here in East Hall, which we did the first year. That was, this was where it was. There were only about 40-60 people anyway. So we fit. But, but I don’t want to do that with like 200 people.
Interviewer:
So 200 is what we’re expecting to get this year?
Abigail Cloud:
Anywhere between 200 and 300. And that counts the audience at the Thursday night reading which the Prout students are required to go to. So usually we are tapping out around 300.
Interviewer:
Okay, I noticed there’s going to be a book fair. Can you tell me about the process of getting books, reaching out to writers, literary journals?
Haley Souders:
Yeah, I mean that was part of what I was doing in August. There’s a list of different contacts for different presses and journals that has been used for a while now, I’m guessing.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah.
Haley Souders:
So I basically reached out to those emails. And there was a pre-used template that Mays and the other Winter Wheat coordinators have used that is kind of just advertising the book fair and asking if they want to be part of it again to fill out a certain form so that we know. I know later on we’ll have to start asking about like logos and marketing materials that they’ll use at the book fair. Yeah.
Abigail Cloud:
We make a good, a logo handout and on the website so that people know who’s going to be there. We also, so it could be journals, could be creative writing programs, could be writer groups, could be presses. And then, we also have a table where we sell the presenters’ books. So not just the guest readers but also anyone who’s presenting a workshop if they have a book we will sell it for them. They bring us copies and we of course make a spreadsheet and everything. How many do we have? How much are we selling them for? And that’s an important part of the book fair too because we don’t pay our presenters. It’s a free festival so we want to at least be able to offer them something.
Interviewer:
How many writers and presenters do you have planned for this year?
Haley Souders:
I think so far in the spreadsheet there’s about 15 people.
Interviewer:
15?
Haley Souders:
15. And then I know that you guys will also be doing workshops. So that’s like 10 more. Unless you pair up.
Abigail Cloud:
It’ll be up to like 30 to 35, I would say.
Interviewer:
Okay.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the total that we would normally have. We had been up to like 60 different workshops a couple of years, which was bonkers. We don’t do that. That’s, that was like 10 running at a time.
Interviewer:
Wow.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, and that was too many. So having closer, anywhere between 30 and 40 is much more manageable.
Interviewer:
Okay then. What would you say is your favorite part of the process of working on Winter Wheat?
Haley Souders:
So far, I’ve really enjoyed getting to see the proposals before they’re released. And just getting to see everyone’s descriptions of what they want to do. And the workshops that they want to lead especially if it’s more unique and something that I would never have thought of for my own writing.
Interviewer:
Cool.
Abigail Cloud:
My answer is, is strange but it, it’s kind of in keeping with my personality. I really like as registrations are coming in, getting them logged. And seeing what people are going to and getting the counts of who’s signing up for what.
Haley Souders:
Oh yeah.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, I have a special spreadsheet setup that does lookups. So all I have to do is change a number and it’ll look up the person who’s registered and then print a schedule of everything they’re registered for. And it’s one of my favorite things. I love this thing. It’s so interesting to have that and to be able. I could even set it up to do merge list or like a mail merge. And to just run down the list, but that’s a little too intensive because I need to be able to check it. But it’s just nice to have been doing something so long that we do have a little bit of automation available. Which seems really strange but it’s true. It’s super true.
Interviewer:
Can you describe a challenge that you’ve had during the preparation process?
Abigail Cloud:
Rooms. Having rooms. So, the last couple of years we’ve really gotten lucky because Veterans Day has fallen on one of the days that we have Winter Wheat. So it, getting enough rooms on a weekday hasn’t been a problem. But this year it is because they’re classes in the Education Building up until a certain time on Friday. So we’re going to have to mess with the schedule a little bit to make sure that we have enough space. I think it’s going to work but it is sort of that type of thing that it’s going to hang over our heads because we can’t solve that problem until we know what workshops we have and when they’re going to be. So it’s kind of on pause, like it has to be on the back burner. And that is not an uncommon problem. But it is an issue that shows up almost every year so it’s solvable. But it is annoying. It is a nuisance, for sure.
Haley Souders:
Yeah, I think that’s probably the biggest issue there is. I know that one thing I ran into when contacting people for the book fair is just like journals going defunct and being on the list still. Which is just kind of sad to see. More so than it being like a problem.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah. Yeah.
Haley Souders:
Like, oh, I can’t send them an email, and more of like, oh, this is sad that this journal that has probably been pretty important to the community is now not there.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah. And it’s really kind of in some ways a sign of the times too. It’s just, you know, it’s not unusual to find journals going defunct but fortunately, there are others being created. So we just …
Haley Souders:
Yeah.
Abigail Cloud:
Swap in some information. …
Interviewer:
Is there anyone you’re looking forward to working with during this year’s Winter Wheat?
Abigail Cloud:
I’m stoked to have Jennifer Pullen coming. She teaches at Ohio Northern. And just had a fantasy fiction craft text come out. Craft text, text and anthology. So she’s going to read from her own work and talk a little about that book at the keynote. But then she’s also going to lead a craft workshop on Fantasy fiction. So I’m stoked about that because it’s nice to have sort of something that we don’t offer our students here in the program. We don’t have a fantasy expert. And that’s really what we try to do with that keynote spot, bring in someone doing something different than what we do here. Or someone who has a different perspective or experience. And plus I just, I’ve known her for a long time so I’m just excited that I get to feature her this year. It’s just fun.
Interviewer:
Cool.
Haley Souders:
Yeah. Jessica Dawn Zinz-Cheresnick. She’s doing, I think, a workshop on found images in poetry which seems like it’ll be interesting. I don’t know if I go to workshops or not.
Abigail Cloud:
You do. You do. If we can possibly make it happen. Then you do for sure.
Haley Souders:
Yeah. That seems like it’ll be an interesting one.
Interviewer:
What is it like working with graduate and undergraduate students for Winter Wheat?
Abigail Cloud:
Fun. I think it’s fun.
Haley Souders:
I think you work more with the undergraduates and graduates so far than I have.
Abigail Cloud:
It’s hard to wrangle a lot of people to do, you know to, for the volunteer work thing, which does fall on you eventually.
Haley Souders:
Oh yeah.
Abigail Cloud:
But it can be hard wrangling volunteers. You know what’s hard: It’s getting people to understand that when they’re volunteering for Winter Wheat they might be sitting and doing nothing for a while. And that’s okay because they are still monitoring. Like, your presence is the volunteering, like you’re monitoring a table or, you know, you’re a person who is present and that someone could ask questions of. But when people volunteer a lot of times they get a little sticky about it. Because it’s just like, oh, I really want to do something. Like sometimes sitting is doing something. Or a lot of times I’ll send them to a workshop to fill a space to, you know, be another presence. So it’s always a little bit funny trying to coordinate that. And help them understand what’s expected, which sometimes is nothing.
Interviewer:
Interesting.
Haley Souders:
Yeah, I don’t have anything to add to that.
Abigail Cloud:
Yet.
Haley Souders:
Yet.
Abigail Cloud:
You will. You will though.
Interviewer:
Okay, here’s my final question. Is there anything about preparing for Winter Wheat that we haven’t discussed that you would like to mention?
Abigail Cloud:
I want people to come with an interest in doing something a little bit new. Something that’s a little bit outside what they’ve done before. And be prepared to create on-site, on the spot. It’s nice to go somewhere where you don’t feel like you have to do a lot of studying or research or, you know, prewriting or anything like that before you come. You can just come and be. Be a creator. And give yourself that time to be a creator. I think that’s really important. I also really want people who sign up to come. Sometimes we get a lot of registrants who don’t come then, and you know there are appropriate reasons for something like that happening. But also, sometimes I think people get tired and whatever and you know the, the inertia. The energy requirement to overcome the inertia can be a lot. But most people find it really relaxing and really renewing. And I want people to feel that and be prepared for that.
Interviewer:
Well, thank you both for allowing me to interview you.
Abigail Cloud:
Of course. Thank you.
Interviewer:
And I hope that you have a successful Winter Wheat.
Jay Grummel (they/them) was interviewed on September 4th, 2024, for about an hour in the early afternoon. This interview took place in East Hall at Bowling Green State University, in between the rush of classes, in our office (aka the MAR blog editor office). The office is just a short walk from the MAR office, where Jay interned a few months ago.
During this interview, we spoke with Jay about their summer mentorship with Iain Bell. Jay was awarded the Hoskins Global Scholarship for their mentorship. We were amazed by Jay’s ambition and humble nature, which will be incredibly evident in the interview below.
Interviewer:
This is Jay. Senior at BGSU. One of MAR’s previous interns. They were just in London, correct?
Jay Grummel:
Mm-hmm.
Interviewer:
Awesome. My first question is, can you tell me a little bit about your mentorship over the summer?
Jay Grummel:
OK. I applied for the Honors Hoskins Global Scholarship. I was given the scholarship to study writing opera in Europe, specifically London, with the composer Iain Bell. Bell was helping me write a libretto. He is a London-based composer who’s written a couple of his own librettos for his operas. I was emailing a lot of English composers. Iain knows Bowling Green, so he responded.
Interviewer:
So you were just emailing as many composers as possible?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah.
Interviewer:
That is so cool.
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. So, Iain agreed to work with me for July. We would meet up about twice a week for about one to two hours each time. We worked together for about a month. We went through and wrote a few different drafts of a libretto. The project was writing and experiencing opera and musical theater in London instead of the U.S., mainly interpreting the differences between how they treat art over there compared to how the U.S. does. That’s the very best summary of what I did, so I wrote a completed libretto for an opera.
Interviewer:
What you just said was very interesting. What differences were you able to discern between opera and musical theater here versus in London?
Jay Grummel:
London has the Royal Opera House, which is comparable to the MET in New York. And they also have the West End, which is comparable to Broadway in New York. In both instances, tickets were extremely affordable for someone who doesn’t make a lot of income. The audience in the shows was different. Sometimes, in the opera… yeah, you’d get a lot of older people, but it was a lot of young people and young couples on dates. There’s a lot of younger people in the crowd.
Interviewer:
OK.
Jay Grummel:
When I talked to people in London about what I was doing, they understood what I was doing.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Jay Grummel:
Here, I say, oh, I’m writing a libretto. They’re like, what’s a libretto? Or, what’s opera? Or, isn’t opera dead? In London, you get a very different response when you talk about opera. London tends to really care about art and heritage. It’s not just artists. All around London, they have blue heritage plaques at places where artists, politicians, or people of importance live. Even if the vast majority don’t know them, if they are important to their field, they get a historical plaque where they lived or worked. They save everything, so that’s part of it.
Interviewer:
Is there almost more appreciation for history (in London)?
Jay Grummel:
More appreciation for history, the arts, and culture. Yeah. Anytime I went to see a musical, it was mostly college students or teenagers, both excited. I think art is more ingrained into their culture, and it’s easy to access. All museums are free. I even noticed which is again an observational thing. Kids, especially in Europe, up to high school age were still going on field trips. They’re always on field trips. They were always at museums. They were always outside doing something: seeing shows, seeing plays. I think part of it is that too because we (in the States) don’t normally get out of the classroom too much.
There were really big student discounts on everything too. Overall, it was more affordable too. Even with the currency difference, I would say it’s way more affordable to be in London doing artistic stuff. A lot of artists that I met live on their art.
Interviewer:
Really?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. I mean, Iain’s a very well-known composer, but, him and his husband, they live on their art. His husband is a playwright and an actor. They live on that in London, and the rent’s really expensive.
Interviewer:
That’s so interesting. I mean, I don’t want to make generalizations, but I don’t know if that’s common in the States at all.
Jay Grummel:
I don’t think it is unless you’re very famous.
Interviewer:
Uh-huh.
Jay Grummel:
I would say Iain’s quite well known, but he’s still working in a field that’s not necessarily super well known. Well, I guess, in Europe, it is different. Everyone kind of knows opera, so maybe that’s the difference.
Interviewer:
So Iain agreed to work with you and do this mentorship with you over the summer. Does he teach classes?
Photo caption: Iain Bell and Jay Grummel
Jay Grummel:
No, he’ll mentor people occasionally. He’s mentored a couple other composers, but he’s never mentored a librettist (before Jay). He’s written libretto before, but he’s never mentored a librettist. I was that first for him, but, no, he doesn’t teach at a university or anything.
Interviewer:
OK.
Jay Grummel:
He didn’t go to university at all. He doesn’t have an undergrad or anything. I think he believes more in the untraditional sense of learning.
Interviewer:
That is so interesting.
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. I know he’s working on more operatic projects than anything else, but I don’t know if he does orchestral or chamber.
Interviewer:
OK. One second. You just said, this is also not the next question, but you just said orchestra, chamber and opera. Are those different things?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. Orchestra is a piece for an orchestra. Chamber is a piece for a smaller ensemble, I guess. So, the orchestra usually is more than 60 people. I don’t know what the average number is. I’m trying to think of what the BG orchestra is. The chamber is normally five to 10 people. They’re all different things, but they’re musical terms. They get a little complicated.
Interviewer:
Opera is just singing, right? Or not?
Jay Grummel:
No. It’s similar to acting. Have you seen Phantom of the Opera?
Interviewer:
No…
Jay Grummel:
OK. Musical theater is derived from opera. The difference between what people will say about musical theater and opera is… opera has a specific type of singing and tends to not have dialogue. Some operas have lines where they’re speaking, and some don’t. So, for example, older operas tend to not include dialogue. Usually, in an opera, the entire time they’re singing. Instead of musical theater, you’ll get dances. Dialogue and stuff. Not a lot of operas do dances. There’ll be some scenes where there’s dancing, but it’s very specific.
Interviewer:
I am sorry. I tried to look at some of the terms beforehand just so I wouldn’t be so…
Jay Grummel:
You’re fine. I’m also not amazing with the terms, so I don’t really… You don’t have to hold yourself back. It’s, they’re tricky though. They are tricky. They’re almost purposely complicated because, yeah. Classical arts and music and stuff to me are a little pretentious. Some of the terms you don’t really need to know because they’re a little… Even saying libretto instead of text to me really annoys me. Because you say libretto to someone in America and they’re like, what the fuck is that?
Interviewer:
I see.
Jay Grummel:
But, if I say, I write the lyrics. Yeah. Then, they know. In the context of the opera, people know what you are talking about. But, people in the opera world for some reason are really anti the idea of calling it lyrics.
Interviewer:
Interesting. So, really keeping to tradition.
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. It’s a very traditional art form. I know people are trying to break out of tradition. A lot of new composers and new librettists are writing about things that are a little bit non-traditional. The one I wrote about is LGBTQ+ based.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Jay Grummel:
In older opera, you were way more likely to have just men instead of women like you’ll have one woman to five men. That kind of thing on the stage. In my opera, I wrote it split 50/50, but the main characters are all women. I know a lot of people are trying to break tradition, and a lot of opera houses are trying to take on things that are breaking tradition. I know rural opera houses are trying to become less pretentious, but it’s still there. I know Americans view it as way more pretentious than Europeans do because Americans view it as almost a European export for some reason.
Interviewer:
Do you think that is influenced by the sort of romanticized view that most Americans have of Europe?
Jay Grummel:
I think so, and it’s also because when opera migrated to America, it was an upper-class thing, which is why any professional opera house is expensive to go to. Maybe, Americans know opera came from Europe, so we knew it as this higher-class thing brought over by higher class people.
Interviewer:
I see.
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. My partner, he’s a cellist, and he mentioned because a lot of these small towns in America would have opera houses, but they didn’t actually have the funding for opera singers or to put on the opera. So, a lot of these small towns have the opera house to be viewed as higher class even though it wasn’t being used for traditional opera. Sometimes, (the opera houses) they’re used for community theater. BG used to have one.
Interviewer:
Oh wow! I didn’t know BG had an opera house.
Jay Grummel:
Yeah, in Europe, there are a lot of older opera houses still in use. I went to the Deutschland opera house in Germany, which is really old. But, people can afford to go there. It’s not like the way that America has viewed it for so long. In America, the genre has just become a hollow symbol of class.
Interviewer:
Really?
Jay Grummel:
People in New York will literally buy Met tickets and only be there for an hour or 30 minutes to make face. The socialites of New York for some reason do that, and it has become really ingrained into the culture. However, in Germany, if tickets haven’t been sold before an opera, then two to three hours for the show, they’ll decrease the price to 5 euros for people under thirty.
Interviewer:
Wow, would you say art’s almost (in Europe) treated as a necessity?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah, I would say that.
Interviewer:
How did the mentorship contribute to your personal and professional growth?
Jay Grummel:
Well, I got the mentorship by finding composers online and emailing them. I explained in the emails what I wanted to do, and why I wanted to do it. I also offered to pay them for their time, which I did with the Hoskins Global Scholars Fund offered by BGSU. Honestly, not a lot of people responded. Very few people responded, but Iain did. Iain was the one that worked out the best. Now, I’m very close to this composer. It’s like name drop whenever you want. Networking was really helpful for the professional side.
Interviewer:
Wow, OK. How did you decide that, if we can really go back, how did you decide you wanted to be a librettist?
Jay Grummel:
My partner’s a cellist, and he loves opera. We were watching The Met on Demand when I started to think I don’t know, I was interested in the poetry of the text, at least the English versions. You can hear the poetry of the text. It’s interesting, I thought I could put something that I had already done which is poetry to a narrative, a stage, and form with music, which is kind of a lot going on. But, I liked the idea of collaborative art because poetry is very solitary. Poetry is very intimate. Even with readers, they’re reading it by themselves most of the time, it’s a very one-on-one kind of work that you do outside of workshops. But, with opera, you have singers. You have directors. You have composers. You have the orchestra. You have all these artists in one thing. All these artists in one thing making it what it is and I thought that was interesting and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted a collaborative community, and I enjoy hearing different people’s opinions on how things are interpreted. A lot of my research before Hoskins was how music adds to the story. Like, the example of Harry Potter was the easiest one that everyone knows. In the beginning of the movie, you know you’re in a different world because of the fantastical music, right?
Interviewer:
I do know that one.
Jay Grummel:
You’re watching a bird fly around, and nothing about that’s super magical, but the music in the background is immersing you into this fantastical feeling. I had an example from Tosca, but it’s really hard to explain. Yeah, I like to use the Harry Potter example because it’s super easy, and I show a video of Tosca because I’m like here’s how it works with opera, right? In Tosca, she’s realizing that the person she thought was alive is dead. You feel it from the music before anything is said. The music goes silent and then it starts slowly back up intensely, and you feel the grief happening before she even realizes that the grief is happening. It’s a way to immerse people into the art at an almost subconscious level.
Interviewer:
In a dramatic irony way?
Jay Grummel:
Yes. Then, you have to think about how the composer took the story and then did that with it. I think that’s really interesting, but that’s basically it. I kind of joked around about it being my honors project with Abby, and Abby said, I mean, you can do that… and I said, oh, OK!
(Abby = Abigail Cloud, Editor-in-Chief of MAR)
Interviewer:
Wow! When I first heard about you going to Europe, I really thought, these Handshake jobs are getting crazy. But, it’s so much more than that. It’s incredible and shows so much ambition that you really created an opportunity for yourself. That’s amazing.
Jay Grummel:
It was yeah. It was hard because it was lonely because it wasn’t like school or anything. I had to sublease an apartment, and I had never been to Europe prior to this. I just showed up in London by myself. I had no idea how the train system worked. My credit card stopped working… It was a whole thing.
Interviewer:
How do you feel about the tubes now?
Jay Grummel:
I love the convenience, but there are too many damn people in that city. I unfortunately flew in and got to the tube station at 8 a.m., which is rush hour for work. I was just there with this giant suitcase. People would just touch you. Like, you’re there, it’s just packed. There is nowhere to go, and people are mean.
Interviewer:
They don’t have that midwestern kindness. This is just a tidbit question, but what is the thing you miss most about Europe now that you’re back? And, what did you miss most while you were there?
Jay Grummel:
Mexican food. There’s no Mexican food in Europe. It’s horrible and really sad. I’m not a Tex-Mex person all right, I’m a Lupita’s person. I like traditional Mexican food. When I was there, I just wanted a burrito that didn’t taste like shit. I’m going to think of an actually good answer.
Interviewer:
I also love Lupita’s. (For anyone reading that’s not from BG, Lupita’s is a staple.)
Jay Grummel:
I also miss the appreciation that people have for heritage. In London when you tell people that you’re a writer, they’re like, Oh my god, that’s so cool. I’m so happy for you. You tell people you’re a writer in the States, and they say, what the heck are you gonna do with that? How do you make money?
Interviewer:
Oh, yeah!
Jay Grummel:
Yeah… But, I miss the birds.
Interviewer:
Can you share any accomplishments or contributions you’re particularly proud of from your mentorship?
Jay Grummel:
I also get to work with Griffin Candey. He’s a composer and advocate for LGBTQ+ voices. Griffin is nice and cares about new opera. He was also a resident artist at the Cleveland Opera House. And, Iain and Griffin are friends. Iain was actually Griffin’s mentor as well for composition which is different from libretti. I felt like I got to bring a fresh American perspective to the table. Iain said something along the lines of admiring American determination. He said something like, a European wouldn’t have emailed me randomly and been like hey please work with me.
Interviewer:
Well, I don’t think most Americans would do that either.
Jay Grummel:
Hm. Well, Iain said something about how he loves that Americans will do anything for art. I think he may have met some really nice Americans. But, I guess, coming from a place like America that views opera as unreachable or untouchable… I’m trying to put my voice into this space, especially as someone who comes from a lower-class family. I’m not necessarily the kind of person or from the kind of family where someone would find themselves in opera or even in Europe at all.
Interviewer:
OK. I just want to go back to that one thing you said. Do you feel making that community or building community was a big accomplishment?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. I felt like I finally found a community of people and artists that understood what I really wanted to do.
Interviewer:
Do you think with writing an LGBTQ+ focused, woman-focused opera, do you think that it was important that your mentors were also advocates?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah. I think with Iain being LGBTQ+ and an advocate for more women in opera that helped a lot with his understanding of what I wanted to do with the piece. I thought it was important. Like, if it had been a mentorship with a more traditional composer or librettist, it would be a little bit of a different conversation. So, Both Iain and Griffin are really focused on LGBTQ+ stories and women’s voices. Iain wrote a Jack the Ripper operawith no Jack in it. It’s about the victims.
Interviewer:
Wow, that’s incredible.
Jay Grummel:
Iain also wrote for the New York Opera a Stonewall commissioned opera about the Stonewall era. He’s been a very big voice for women and LGBTQ+ in opera for a very long time. Iain was understanding the direction I wanted to go in. Like, you know how sometimes you can get a teacher whose more pushy with the direction they want things to be written?
Interviewer:
Mm-hmm.
Jay Grummel:
Iain was more like a therapist, almost. He was asking me very vague questions, and I’m answering them, and then, suddenly, I realized, oh, that’s what I want it to be. But, he was not pushing me in any direction which I thought was really helpful.
Interviewer:
You’ve written a lot of poetry, right?
Jay Grummel:
Mm-hmm.
Interviewer:
Let me ask about voice. Do you feel this experience, this mentorship, helped you find your voice as an artist?
Jay Grummel:
I would say yes. This mentorship helped me find my voice as an artist, but it also kind of helped me find my voice as a person. For example, when I came back, a lot of people mentioned how I became a bit more confident. I think with opera, finding your voice as an Artist is different from in poetry where it’s strictly your voice in a poem. But, in opera, you’re finding your voice hidden within the layers of the characters, and I think that’s really pretty.
Interviewer:
That’s gorgeous.
Jay Grummel:
Opera is a kind of combination of two understandings: lyric and narrative. As a poet, you are already kind of thinking about the bounds of the English language and what would sound well musically. As a poet, I’m big on the musical sound of a poem.
Interviewer:
Yeah, that’s really interesting, so kind of going back to what you said about finding your voice hidden within the layers of the characters that you’re writing. You’re writing these characters in the libretti, right?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah.
Interviewer:
Do you think that looking back at your poetry or even poetry you’re writing now with the knowledge of opera bleeds into your poetry? Can you find your voice hidden in the layers of the poems you write, or is it less?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah, I would think so. I tend to write poetry that’s a little bit less direct. My poetic voice kind of rests in this weird, surrealistic kind of feeling. But, even in poems where I’m not consciously thinking about its meaning while writing, I find parts of myself layered throughout the poem. If somebody reads my poetry, it feels to me, at least, that it’s distinguishable as my poetry. You could pick it out of a lineup.
Interviewer:
It seems these experiences are building on themselves for you as an artist. You’re sort of in this funnel, and everything is culminating.
Jay Grummel:
Well, it started freshman year. These things (experiences as an artist) keep tumbling into a bigger & bigger thing. It’s kind of become a tumbleweed at this point.
Interviewer:
So, you’ve already thought a lot about your love for these two things, right? How are you able to balance these two fields of art? That also leads to our last question. Has your work in opera/music impacted your creative writing?
Jay Grummel:
I think so because before I started really messing with opera, my poetry tended to be more, I don’t want to say self-centered, but… descriptive, direct experiences about my life. Then after starting opera, my poetry became more like I was writing from a third-person perspective where I’m watching a character and writing that way. And, now, I focus a bit more on the music of poetry as I mentioned. I focus on how the lines sound out loud more than anything else or I think, how would this sound if there was a background sound to it? I think I’ve kind of hybridized the two art forms together in my brain unconsciously.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Jay Grummel:
I love it. I think poetry and music should be combined more. Not even necessarily written together. When someone writes a poem, and the same person takes it and writes it to music which is something that composers have been doing for a long time. I think it would be way more interesting if done collaboratively. A lot of times a composer would find a poem and say, I like that, and I’m going to put it to music, and the poet doesn’t get a say in any of it.
Interviewer:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s so interesting. But it’s got to rhyme.
Jay Grummel:
No.
Interviewer:
Oh!
Jay Grummel:
No! Opera barely rhymes.
Interviewer:
What?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah, that is the difference between musical theater and opera. Musical theater does rhyme, because it’s more based on the American version of songs.
Interviewer:
Songs over there don’t rhyme?
Jay Grummel:
I mean, they do now. I don’t know about other languages. But, operas barely rhyme, most of them don’t rhyme. They just sound good and make words sound good together without necessarily rhyming. At least, not end-stopped rhymes. A lot of opera doesn’t do end-stop rhymes. Sometimes there are slant rhymes, but when that appears, I think it’s a more natural thing.
Interviewer:
OK, and this will be my last question. I think. You just mentioned opera barely rhyming. That reminds me of craft terms because a lot of older poetry would rhyme and use meters. So, with librettis, are there craft concepts that you go back to? Does libretti have its own craft terms?
Jay Grummel:
Yes, I think so, but in a more narrative way. For example, they choose to do, people singing over each other in a duet. That would not be a traditional duet. Like, in a musical where they’re singing at each other. In an opera, two characters singing over each other could create a large amount of tension or emotion. I would say the craft elements, at least, that I learned for libretti is more the script. It’s more the structure of how people are singing and when they’re singing. Or, where the composer places the Aria or solo, either at the end or the climax. Sometimes, people start an opera with an aria. Some people have feelings about starting an opera with an aria. Craft in opera tends to be more focused on the structure of whose singing, when, and how they’re singing it. It’s all important for the emotional timing of it.
Interviewer:
OK. Thank you! Well, that was our last question. Could you send along some photos of your experience for the blog?
Jay Grummel:
Yeah, I do have a photo at the opera house with Iain. I have a lot of photos of birds. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I love the birds more than anything else.
