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Personal Essay: How I Almost Met Dan Stevens Eight Times on a Mission from MAR, Part I: The MFA Can Kill You No. 1

MAR is excited to publish a three-part essay by Suzanne Hodsden, a recent graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program and MAR‘s Technical Editor. Stay tuned for additional installments. Photo: Ian Freimuth

Part 1 – The MFA Can Kill You
By Suzanne Hodsden

I saw my exit and bolted. Around the doctor’s legs and through the exam room door, my mother hot on my trail, hollering after me, using my full name. First, middle, and last, if you get my drift. Suzanne. Elizabeth. Hodsden.

Between my feet and my freedom there was a couch, one of those overstuffed floral monstrosities and the octogenarian seated on it was sucking air through an oxygen tube. Seeing me and my speed, her eyes bulged up and she had just enough time to cover her face before I high jumped the couch and slammed against the door, knocking my breath loose.

I clawed at the door handle, but mom’s hand clamped down over mine and pried my fingers loose. She hauled me back, the tiny squawky flailing mess of me, to where the nurse waited with the syringe.

This is how I was vaccinated for Measles, Mumps and Rubella and qualified to enter Ohio public school in 1986.

Nearly three decades have passed but my attitude toward my medical care has not matured. I hardly ever see a doctor, and I don’t take pills if I can help it. Instead, I favor a carefully crafted cure for sickness made out of fierce denial and medicinal whisky. It’s always worked for me, and I’m famous for it.

So on Easter Sunday when I staggered into the living room and declared that I’d like to be taken to the ER, my family lost their minds.

***

Make no mistake, the MFA can kill you. I’ve done the math. Two programs in three years equals fifty-four credit hours. Roughly 225 students works out to approximately 2,812 marked essays (multiple drafts). 167 pages of critical thought, 8 short stories, 1 screenplay, 4 issues of Mid-American Review (MAR), two trips to AWP and a 367-page novel thesis, written-revised-defended. And the reading. I can’t even begin to calculate the reading.

Not everybody ends up in the hospital, but some do. I did. Intimate relationships shatter. Personal hygiene and grooming habits dissipate. I don’t know how I became the kind of girl who eats Kraft dinner out of the pan with a dirty plastic fork, but I did it. It was, by far, the three most stressful years of my life. It was also three of the best. It was Dickensian.

I was released from the hospital under the stern directive that I return for testing once I’d graduated. After a full night of rigorous prodding, my doctors failed to make a diagnosis. They gave me a list of dietary restrictions that ruled out everything but rice and bananas and let me go. I made my decision before I hit the parking lot. If I had to spend the rest of my life eating like a toddler, I’d do it. I wasn’t going back.

***

I went back. Turns out there’s only so much plain rice you can eat. And it will most likely be another three years before I can look at a banana.

I submitted myself to a battery of tests so barbaric that one day they will be afforded the same esteem we reserve for bloodletting and the leech. The doctors decided that my condition was genetic but aggravated by stress and “life choices.” They scheduled me for surgery.

In the final weeks of the MFA, professors reiterated the importance of “sticking with it” once we fled the nest. People who sniff at the MFA as an escape from reality aren’t entirely wrong. It’s easy to live a creative life when everyone around you is doing the same thing. Once we walked out and blinked up into the harsh light of the world, many—we were told—would cave in and become bankers. Don’t be bankers. You’re writers. You’re storytellers. The world needs you. Keep writing.

I would. Writing—to me, at least—is more of a condition than an aspiration. I’d do it because I can’t not do it. And I’d nail down a practical and livable life in the meantime. That life, I decided, would take place in Cleveland.

Why? Condensed version: it’s cheap and I grew up there.

I spent the weeks of my diagnostic adventures getting to know the city again, its twists and odd angled turns. A lot has changed, but it’s still shaped like a big toilet bowl. Make enough left turns through Ohio City, Tremont, Warehouse, Downtown and you’ll still end up down in the Flats, home to exotic creatures with either botox or gills and big retractable bridges that mesmerized me as a child. I could have a life here, and as soon as I’d had surgery, it would start.

***

I was downtown taking a look at a gym when I got a phone call from the surgeon, canceling my surgery, and scheduling me for more tests. I’ll confess that I didn’t handle the news well. What ensued was nearly an hour of arguing with the doctor’s offices and placating a mother who wondered where the hell I even was. She knew something was up because the doctor called the house first, looking for me.

You’ll never find me, I thought viciously. I’m behind Jacob’s Field, but you’ll never look here. My long latent six-year old emerged and snickered with glee. Circumstances have changed, baby. I’m bigger. I’m stronger. I have a car and a credit card. I spent my twenties being a hedonist vagabond (ESL teacher), and there were close to twenty foreign couches set and ready to receive me.

My mother anticipated this line of thinking and texted: Don’t you even think about going to the airport.

She’d catch me, even if she had to flag me as a terrorist. I started getting texts from friends asking me where I was. She’s tricky like that, enlisting an army. Just as I was about to release a primal scream of rage, a car pulled up and I recognized the occupant. My synapses exploded with the following thought process:

I know you. I do. Did my mother send you? Check the rolodexes. Ah ha! I have it. I do know you, but you don’t know me. I don’t have to say a word to you, and I won’t. It’s rude, of course, but I’ve had a bad day. I’m sick, my mom is making some serious threats, and I can’t decide between Prague and Istanbul. I can’t deal with meeting new people just now, so roll along good sir, and leave me to stew in my own bitter solipsism. Roll along! Go!

Granted, I didn’t say anything out loud. I just stared. And he stared back. One of us had to blink, so I walked away, but before I did, I got a look at myself in the backseat window. The look on my face could have peeled paint.

This was the kill-shot to my rebel moxie. Enough was enough. I crossed the street, moxie-less, and drove home under the white flag of surrender.

I called a friend. “I just saw Dan Stevens.” I said.

“Who?”

“Matthew Crawley. Do you suppose that means something? Like a sign?”

“No. Just go home, okay? Your mom is going nuts.”

“Ok.”

“But be careful driving, all right?”

***

Hollywood is considering Cleveland more and more for the same reasons I am, but though rumor has it that Marvel rolls through and lets loose their superheroes, I’ve yet to see one.

Not everyone knows who Dan Stevens is, but they know the show he’s on. I’ve missed a great deal of pop culture during grad school, but I’d have had to be living in a nuclear bunker to miss Downton Abbey. Who’s Dan Stevens? The British actor who played Matthew Crawley, the one who died in a car crash right after his fictional wife gave birth to their fictional baby.

That’s the pop culture reference. In other circles, namely my own small literary pool, he’s the actor who judged the Booker. Editor-at-large for the lovely The Junket—an online zine edited by Cambridge grads, intent on poking each other along in their literary aspirations. He’s been discussed.

I couldn’t have told you what he was doing in Cleveland, but it was him. I’m sure of it. My glasses need replaced, but he was less than four feet from me. If he’d been closer he’d have run over my shoes.

This news amused Abby Cloud. In addition to being editor-in-chief of MAR, Abby’s a bit of an anglophile and can explain Cricket to an American in under ten minutes. I’ve seen her do it. She told me that if I ever saw him again, I should recommend MAR.

I agreed. If I ever saw Dan Stevens again, I would give him a copy of MAR. No problem. I agreed mostly because I thought there was no way I’d ever see him again. Still, I carried a copy of MAR in my purse, issue 34.1, as a gesture of good faith. I didn’t worry much about it. I’d never see him again.

I was wrong.

(To Be Continued)

Suzanne Hodsden is Mid-American Review‘s Technical Editor.
Her fiction appears most recently in Crab Orchard Review. Find
her on Twitter: @zannahsue.

“My Little Pony’s Easter Message” by Debbra Palmer

I studied the pony as I peeled the foil from another chocolate. Her silky mane draped over one eye. Between the chubby cheeks on her oversized head, a slight smile curled like an apology. Or intuition.

After last week’s magic, let’s keep the pony love going with our second My Little Pony Contest winner: “My Little Pony’s Easter Message” by Debbra Palmer.

My Little Pony’s Easter Message

For years on Easter morning our friends who also didn’t have children left an Easter basket at our doorstep without waking us. We always knew it was them, and they knew we knew. But afterward we’d text them. “Can u believe it? Easter bunz has struck again!”

We’d gorge on peanut butter eggs, chocolate bunnies, marshmallow peeps and jellybeans. But our favorite were the toys: Slinkys, troll dolls, Etch-a-Sketch key rings, wax lips and a mini Gumby.

After three years of this we decided to be Easter Bunny too, and snuck a ridiculously over-filled basket onto their porch before sunrise.

“Is this sad?” I asked my husband on the drive home.

“No, I like candy,” he said as the sky broke open in pink clouds.

Returning home, we found a basket at our door. We must have passed our friends on the highway, or maybe they’d taken a different route. It hadn’t occurred to me this would happen. I’d imagined them waking up and finding their basket like we always had. I silently berated myself for not thinking of this simple logistic.

This year, our basket was topped with a retro My Little Pony our friends had defaced in ink with the words “He is Risen!” I recognized the My Little Pony from childhood, though my mother never let us have them. She thought they were like Barbies, sexualized, shapely plastic figures with eye makeup and dyed hair that little girls swooned over. I explained this to my husband.

“She is kind of hot,” he said rubbing the pony’s blue speckled behind. He whispered into her ear. “Hey little filly, you are so fine! How ‘bout a ride, pony? Ooooh, I might be in looooove.”

“Stop it,” I said trading him a mini Krackel for the pony. I showed him how to stroke her purple hair.

“It’s mane, not hair,” said my husband digging for jellybeans. I studied the pony as I peeled the foil from another chocolate. Her silky mane draped over one eye. Between the chubby cheeks on her oversized head, a slight smile curled like an apology. Or intuition.

At this moment, I saw My Little Pony for who she really was—a girl so pretty she broke everyone’s heart. She didn’t know how, or why, it just always happened, and she couldn’t help it, so all she could do was apologize. And when that didn’t work, she tried apologizing in ways that made her hate herself. And when people talked, they always said she deserved it. My Little Pony’s atonement? Denied.

Later that Easter day, our friends called to say the Easter Bunny had come to their house, too. We all pretended to be surprised and inventoried the contents of our baskets like children. But it was the last year the Easter Bunny walked among us, the year we passed each other in the predawn. We made no apologies or revelations. It just seemed best to wait for him to come again.

An Idaho-born Oregonian, Debbra Palmer studied writing at Portland
State University. Her poems have appeared in Calyx Journal, BLOOM,
Pectriloquy (CHEST Journal for the American College of Chest Physicians)
and The Portland Review. She is the writer and director of the feature
documentary Sky Settles Everything profiling an old-time cattle rancher
and his poet cousin, Verlena Orr. Currently, she is exploring the southwest
and working on a collection of poems inspired by the military alphabet.

We are in the process of posting all four My Little Pony Contest winners on this blog. To read another winner’s prize-pony work, see “Friendship is Magic” by Marci Rae Johnson.

Pony Photo: Hina Ichigo

“Friendship is Magic” by Marci Rae Johnson

At AWP 2014 in Seattle, amidst the star-studded panels and readings, one event stood out from the pack as the most magical. That’s right, folks. We’re talking about the MAR My Little Pony Writing Contest.

The challenge was simple: write a poem or flash fiction piece somehow celebrating the magic of My Little Pony. From a herd of pony entries, four winners emerged. Today, we’re pleased to publish the first of the winners: “Friendship Is Magic” by Marci Rae Johnson.

Friendship Is Magic

This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only
interest a specific audience. (November 2013) – My Little Pony, Wikipedia

You are all my very best friends,
you cutie pies you pink
and purple lovelies I have kept
in the original packaging until
the day I need you most,
until the day the stars fly out
of the sky and I can’t stop
crying with the one eye
remaining, the other having
already been given to the Friends
of the End of the World. You
my sugar cubes, my rainbow
brood, each with a sign that makes
you unique, the mark of the beast
the pony, the unicorn that remains
after the flood made everything
new. It doesn’t matter anymore
what your sin, it’s all afire O
the Grand Gala, the Pink Gala
where everything you eat is sweet.
Put the sugar in your mouth,
O taste and see. The magic
makes it all complete.

Marci Rae Johnson teaches English at Valparaiso University, where she serves as Poetry Editor for The Cresset. She is also the Poetry Editor for WordFarm press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Collagist, Quiddity, Hobart, Redivider, Redactions, The Louisville Review, The Christian Century, and 32 Poems, among others. Her first collection of poetry won the Powder Horn Prize and was published by Sage Hill Press in 2013.

The magic will continue when three more winners are revealed in the coming weeks. *sparkle*

Photo: Sharyn Morrow

Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

MAR Asks, Carrie Shipers Answers

This latest contributor interview may go down in MAR history for being the only one to include a sentence like, “His biggest decision is whether to lick his rear end before or after he takes a nap.” But that kind of poetic insight is what we’re here for, folks. Enjoy this lively interview with Carrie Shipers, whose poem “How Sandbag Lives Up to His Name” appears in our Spring 2014 issue (Vol. XXXIV, Number 2). Carrie’s poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New England Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other journals. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ghost-Writing (Pudding House, 2007) and Rescue Conditions (Slipstream, 2008), and a full-length collection, Ordinary Mourning (ABZ, 2010).

Quick! Summarize your story/poem/essay in 10 words or fewer.

My eleven-pound dog keeps me safe.

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

I’ve been in love with dictionary poems since being introduced to A. Van Jordan’s amazing collection M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A during my MFA program. Unfortunately, as much as I love those kinds of poems, I’m actually pretty terrible at writing them. One of my challenges with “Sandbag” was to let the dictionary definitions do their work without my over-explaining or simply repeating them. As I revised the poem, I trimmed as much as I could from the non-dictionary parts of the poem and tried to trust the juxtaposition between the authoritative voice of the dictionary and the more searching voice of the speaker.

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

One of the first times I sent this poem out into the world, an editor wrote on the rejection slip, “Of these, Sandbag shows the most promise.” On one hand, I was thrilled to get a personal note of any kind because I know how busy editors are. On the other hand, I kept thinking, “Of course Sandbag shows the most promise! He’s a dog! His biggest decision is whether to lick his rear end before or after he takes a nap.” (Sadly, these are exactly the kinds of arguments I have in my head with editors, even when I know they’re right.)

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

Since I’m currently writing a series of poems about professional wrestling, I really hope no one asks me this question. I’d hate to knock over the potato salad while demonstrating some of my best wrestling moves.

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success?

This might sound silly, but I’d been submitting to 5 AM for a decade and always got rejected, although sometimes I received an encouraging note. About a year ago, my poem “A Bed of Grass and Stolen Hay” appeared in the magazine’s last issue before its current hiatus. I really hope the magazine eventually continues publication, but I’m thrilled I finally made it in there.

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

My writing brain works best in the early morning hours, which means I’m usually at my desk by 5:30 or so. In the four years since my husband and I adopted Sandbag, he’s been sitting on my lap while I constructed most of my first drafts, including this one.

Do you have another favorite piece of writing in this MAR issue?

I’m totally in love with Janet Smith’s poem “To Do List.” Every time I read it I’m reminded how often we seem to make choices designed to make us miserable rather than happy, and how easy it becomes to justify these choices as necessary or responsible rather than seeing that they’re really inspired by fear. It’s easier to keep crossing items off our lists than to move through the world anticipating joy, even when the items on the list are making us actively unhappy. I especially admire these lines: “Decide it’s okay you never see / Prague. Work late for no reason. / Turn down the music. Keep your shoulders / hunched in case of unexpected attack.” Reading them reminds me to do the opposite, for which I’m grateful to their author.

Thanks for the interview, Carrie!

Laura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor

Submit a Winter Wheat Workshop Proposal

We are now accepting workshop proposals for Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing, which will be held Nov. 13-15, 2014 on the campus of Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Workshops are held Nov. 14-15.

Interested presenters may propose workshops in any area of creative writing, including but not limited to the craft of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry; publishing; revision; the writing process; and more. Each workshop is one hour and fifteen minutes long, and preference is given to workshops that include writing time for participants. The proposal deadline is Sept. 10.

Curious what type of workshop proposals we’ve accepted in the past? Here’s a sampling of several workshops held at Winter Wheat in 2013:

2013 Accepted Winter Wheat Workshops

“Whose Story Is It? Ethics in Creative Nonfiction” with Sarah White
Whose story is it to tell? You have a creative nonfiction piece you want to write, but it involves your mom, your spouse, your child, that crazy ex-girlfriend from high school…. Where do we draw the line? If it’s part of my experience, am I justified in sharing it? Let’s discuss the ethics of nonfiction.

“Haunted Places” with Catherine Carberry and Katrin Tschirgi
By exploring our past and collective memories, we see that haunted places provide a wealth of inspired stories and allow us to understand the intersection of past and present, living and dead.

“All Scenes Are Duels” with Brad Felver
In this session, we will examine ways to create and elongate tension in a scene. We will consider a few famous examples, discuss potential strategies, and then try our hands at infusing scenes with tension.

“Writing the Imaginary Landscape” with F. Daniel Rzicznek and Bryan Gatozzi
This exploratory workshop will offer suggestions and prompts for writers of all genres hoping to sharpen their senses of expanse and enclosure. Writers will come into closer contact with their physical and psychic surroundings while investigating the landscapes of memory and imagination.

“Poetry with Personality: Writing Persona and Character in Poetry” with Casey Nichols
This workshop will discuss the ways in which we write about people we know (or people we don’t), the challenges of writing from the perspective of a persona, and what our persona poems reveal about ourselves. Participants will spend time writing to create a strong persona or character of their own.

“Diagramming the City, the Experience, the Population of Butterflies: Using Maps and Cartography in Creative Writing” with Anne Valente
In this interactive session, we will discuss and test out using maps to enhance or even define creative work. Writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction alike can find innovative ways to use maps and cartography to diagram both tangible and intangible aspects of their creative writing.

Proposals can be accessed here. Please email your proposal to Abigail Cloud (clouda@bgsu.edu) and Laura Maylene Walter (lauwalt@bgsu.edu) by Sept. 10. If you prefer to submit your proposal via mail, please use the address below:

Mid-American Review
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403

Good luck!

Join us Nov. 13-15 for Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing! Winter Wheat features dozens of panels focusing on publishing, craft, and technique for writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Keynote readers for 2014 include Sharona Muir, Anne Valente, Marcus Wicker, and Allison Joseph; Mid-American Review editors will also offer publishing insight.

Part 1 – The MFA Can Kill You By Suzanne Hodsden

Part 1 – The MFA Can Kill You
By Suzanne Hodsden