2017-2018

2017 sep-dec

"Resivoirs without boundary": Reflections on the Prose Poem

No other literary form is more immediate than the prose poem. A sugar-coated capsule you place on your tongue, the prose poem does not wait for your spit to dilute the taste--it must be swallowed whole. Once ingested, it lingers like Sartre’s nothingness, lies deep within your being, echoing within the heart’s core, coiled, worm-like. Then, it explodes. It breaks you apart into fantastic fragments like white light through a prism, into different fingers and folds of the multifoliate rose of yourself and itself. And once you’re done piecing together the shards of your self from off the floor, you delight in the thought of having another.

Such is how I’ve felt about the prose poem, that strange mutant of a form disowned and adopted by writers of all factions. The first prose poems I read were a brilliant series by David Keplinger called “Further Entries in the Notebook of Anton Chekhov.” Of the five or six prose “entries,” one about a man lying naked in a motel room struck me for its immediacy of situation and emotion. The amount of suspense distilled in a few lines of prose, enacted when the man hears knocking on his door, is enough to overshadow a few hundred pages of a thriller novel. 

Then, there are the surreal prose poems of Charles Simic. Here on display is the essentially psychological beauty of prose poetry: it takes the rhetorical form of prose and turns it inside-out, upside-down, with false logical connections and complex, uncommon imagery. In a poem about a beheaded man ordering beers for both himself and his head, Simic ends: “It’s so quiet in the world. One can hear the old river, which in its confusion sometimes forgets and flows backwards.” Pulling the rug out from under the logical progression of prose paragraphs, Simic creates a tension unique to the prose poem.

Finally we turn to the prose poems of the Danish-born Carsten Rene Nielsen, whose poem “Questionnaire” is the source for this reflection’s title. Shown to me by Keplinger himself, Nielsen’s prose poems are the culmination of everything I love about the form: inventive, beautiful, and forever strange. With the knowledge that existence implies the cyclical fracturing and piecing together of self, Nielsen writes:

        You are lying in the dizzyingly high grass. You remember it as an aurora borealis, 

        an insignificant, brief happiness. Or: you are thirsty and and dream about melting 

        glaciers, chipped cisterns, reservoirs without boundary, nights on your back on 

        irrigated fields. Or: you have fallen in love with the world and sit in a library with 

        the first edition of the Belgian astronomer Quetelet’s catalogue of 10,792 stars, a 

        register of all the world’s totem animals, a book on mushrooms that grow only 

        under our duvets at night, a natural history of the glove. Or: you are here. Right 

        now. 

Feel free to piece yourself together again and read more.

________________________________________

David Keplinger’s “Further Entries in the Notebook of Anton Chekhov” is found in his poetry collection The Clearing. His collections of prose poems include The Prayers of Others and The Most Natural Thing.

The referenced Charles Simic poem, “The dead man…”, is found in the 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning collection The World Doesn’t End.

Carsten Rene Nielsen’s “Questionnaire” is from The World Cut out With Crooked Scissors: Selected Prose Poems, translated by Keplinger himself. 

Counting Down to Commencement

I always thought the ripe old age of 18 was so far away. Now, front and center, is my senior year of college. To sweeten this up even more, it is my senior year of college as an English major. By this time, us English majors have written hundreds of papers each accompanied by a large cup of coffee. Now, we face the dreaded question posed to us by family members concerned with keeping up the family expectation and career counselors whose expert input is mandatory for the undergraduate curriculum.

They ask, “What are you going to do after school?”

Whenever I tell someone that I am an English major, they always ask me if I am going to teach. I adamantly shake my head and confess that children and I do not get along. However, teaching is a great option for those who feel comfortable in the classroom and want to teach others about English. I never really saw myself as a teacher because I do not personally have the patience for kids. Teaching takes a certain kind of person, someone I am not. There is also the graduate school and teaching certification to consider, which leads me to my next point.

Graduate school is another option for English majors. Many of the professionals and experts in English literature have a Master’s degree or higher. This is a great way to continue on after undergrad to pursue a certain career that might require a certain degree level. Though, there are things to consider when looking at grad school. At Arcadia, there is a great MFA graduate program that a lot of English majors pursue not only because of the program itself, but because there is no looking at a different university. In many other cases, there is a transition from your undergrad university to a graduate university, which is something to think about.

I myself find this next option quite appealing: the gap year. I’m sure many parents’ ears are bleeding at the sound of this because there is always the follow up, “But a gap year would make it so hard to go back.” After spending 16 consecutive years learning the craft of English, the idea of two more in a rigorous graduate school may not appeal to some. A gap year would provide some space to travel, work, or just relax. Especially as an English major, this would give you the time to write and spread those alumni wings.

And finally, there is always the option of one and done. Some people might only want one degree and then move on with additional adult things like finding a job to pay all those school loans. Though it is slightly uncommon for English majors to only have a bachelor’s degree, it has and can be done.

We are all in school because we wanted to learn more. We wanted to study English literature and create stories, poems, interpretations, memoirs, and an intellectual way of thinking. Don’t let the fear of the dreaded question stunt your progress. In the end, it’s about what you can do with what you’ve learned in a way that makes sense to you. 

Although keep in mind, adulting from here on out is going to require a cup or two more of coffee.

Anxious to Pursue Creative Writing

Now that I have attained my Associate's degree, I am ready to look for a four-year college to transfer to. Selecting a four-year college can be tricky. There is much to consider with factors ranging from location and size to degree programs and tuition. Personally, I want to be able to focus on my classes without worrying about my finances and not be weighed down by some job that ultimately wastes my time and hinders my college experience. I no longer want to work in fields unrelated to my passion. 

I love creative writing! Ever since childhood, I wanted to make a series of my own. It started from my fondness of animation. I enjoy the exploits of intriguing characters, exploring their world and its concepts. I was entertained, but also, inspired. Being able to entertain and inspire people with my ideas would be one of the greatest honors. I also like the idea of helping people get their creative projects published. I was thrilled to discover I could make a living in a field I am truly passionate about. I am certain that taking creative writing courses will improve my writing skills and give me a better understanding so I may assist others in their literary pursuits. 

There was a time when I was unable to fulfill academic progress due to issues with my mental and physical health. I suffered from social anxiety, depression, and stress. The conditions worsened my agoraphobia at the time. Because of this, I frequently experienced dyspnea, rapid heart rate, chest pain and pressure, and lightheadedness. These health issues hindered my focus in all areas of my life and were treated accordingly. 

My anxiety would be crippling at times. It was to the point where I would be too afraid to board a crowded train or hesitate to enter a full room. I would often feel awkward and in the way. Regrettably, there were times when I where I wanted to sleep and not wake up. I was able to overcome it with the help of medical assistance and support from friends and family. 

The help I received made me more confident in myself. I was reminded that I was not alone and that there are people that care and wanted me to succeed. I realized I had as much of a right to live, strive, and be happy as anyone else did. I was fed up with being depressed and stressed and decided to be the most positive and productive person I can be. Afterwards, my physical health improved. Now that I overcame that ordeal, I have never been more driven to accomplish my academic goals. 

A Four Year Old Game Still Worth a Mention

Without getting into any debate about the literary merit of video games (though that is certainly an interesting and emerging discussion), let’s talk about a visually beautiful and narratively intriguing game. 

Emily Carroll and Damian Sommer released The Yawhg in 2013, so there’s a chance you may have heard of it or even played it yourself. For those who haven’t experienced this choose-your-own-adventure video game, it’s easy enough to get into. Playable with one to four people, you pick your nameless character and begin week one with the information that the Yawhg will arrive in six weeks, except no one in the world of the game knows. Dramatic irony in place, you pick a location for your character to spend the week. After choosing a place, from the arena to the woods to the slums, you are given another choice between two tasks. You then see (a beautifully illustrated rendition of) your character doing their task and are offered a narrative, often with more choices embedded. After that, other characters get their turn and it becomes week two, where you repeat the process until week 6. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that you are then offered a different set of choices after the Yawhg hits. After that and some epilogues, the game ends, but it is so easy to want to play again.

The great thing that kept me coming back for more playthroughs is that there are plenty of narrative possibilities. Of course, you could play again and see what happens if you make a different choice in the narrative of a particular location, but more often than not, you get a completely different narrative altogether. The variety of narratives also offers a blend of the mundane to the fantastical.

Some days you drink in the tavern, some days you brew potions in the alchemy tower. Sometimes in the palace the king asks for advice on how to woo the queen, sometimes a demon baby terrorizes the hospital. This mix of realistic and much less so creates both an intriguing world and experience for players. Whatever the event, though, odds are you will either gain or lose stat points. These stat points also have an impact on the success or failure of your narrative choices, though I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what influences what.

With each round, called a week for the game's purposes, the Yawhg gets closer. The music, sound, and visual designs all change as the game progresses. Fog rolls in and eerie music creeps into your ears, reminding the you that something is going to happen soon. Yet, all you can do is explore your town and experience the narrative Carroll and Sommer have created. 

The game becomes, thematically, a representation of the unpredictability of life and how we are sometimes powerless at the hands of fate or random chance, depending on your personal philosophy of life. No matter your view, The Yawhg is a game that can be played over and over again without having the exact same in-game experience, but you will leave the same every time—feeling a complicated mix of loss and achievement while wanting to play again. 

Music and Storytelling

Music is an important part of storytelling, it tells stories within its notes and rhythms and it’s up to the listener to determine that story. No matter the song, no matter the genre, music is key.

Now some people listen to music while writing and others prefer complete silence or other noises in the background. Music isn’t important to the writing process, it is important to the storytelling process. The song could have lyrics or it could be lyricless, but it is always a source for inspiration. Consciously or subconsciously, music informs our storytelling. A chord or line from a song could inspire a whole new path in your piece of writing. From stories to poems to plays music can change the entire direction.

I remember once when I was working on an old story of mine, back in the days of the YA dystopian novel trend. I was writing about your typical girl in a dystopia involved in some kind of revolution and a love triangle. All very standard. I thought that the whole love triangle was going to end one way, until I heard the song “Just a Game” off the Hunger Games soundtrack (I know, more dystopian). Anyway, the song gave me the inspiration and the idea to take the story in a different direction than I had originally planned, all because of the story I perceived from the music. And I think the story was better for it.

I probably need more than my ten fingers and toes to count the number of times a song or piece of music has inspired a part of my creative works. As a violinist, I’ve performed a lot of classical music, which I’ve found to be a particularly lucrative source of inspiration. Sometimes while playing I’ll zone out and story ideas will come to me based on the music I’m playing and hearing around me at the moment. 

While lyricless music, like Two Steps From Hell (seriously guys, check them out, they’re great for storytelling), and classical music are some of the big sources of inspiration for me, any genre can work. Whether you’re a fan of alternative, pop, country, metal, or any other kind of music out there it can be an amazing source for story ideas and inspiration.

If you’re into writing longer works like novels, I even have a prompt/exercise that revolves entirely around music that can help inspire and even potentially plot a whole novel’s worth of story. The exercise is from the book Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror edited by Laurie Lamson. It’s a pretty easy prompt and I’ll give you a rundown of the instructions now:

1. Get a lined piece of paper and number it 1-30 (you can make this whatever number you want, it all depends on the number of chapters).

2. Take out your music library, Spotify playlist, Pandora station (is that still a thing?), etc. and put it on shuffle.

3. Shuffle it 30 times (or however many numbers you have on your page) and write down the title of each song one by one next to your numbers (ignore titles like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony or Adagio in C Major unless you think you can put a spin on that). Congrats! The song titles have now become your chapter titles.

4. Now that you have all of those down, try to connect the dots between the song titles to try and form some kind of story out of them. By the end you might just end up with a brand new story idea, and best case scenario, perhaps an almost plotted out novel.

Now, this exercise only really works for novels as far as I can tell, but if any of you poets, playwrights, screenwriters, etc. can come up with a way to make this method work for you then by all means you should go ahead and do it!

Anyway, I could keep going on and on about how music intertwines with storytelling but I should let you all get back to your writing. But give listening to music a try, and really listen, you might be surprised by what you find. 

John Green and the Lack of Dr Pepper

On October 10th John Green’s newest novel hit bookstore shelves. Turtles All the Way Down is his first novel in six years. I was eagerly awaiting my preordered copy that Tuesday. After my last class, I was heading to NYC to see John Green on the opening day of his book tour. My friend, Cheyenne and I boarded our Greyhound bus and read our books the entirety of the trip. When we arrived in the city, I was only one hundred pages in but we still had two hours until the event. I kept reading but couldn’t bring myself to finish it. 

The main theme throughout the novel is mental illness. Aza Holmes is a high school student struggling with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a disorder with which Green also struggles. In addition to her internal OCD conflict, Aza external conflict circles around a billionaire, Russell Picket fleeing town to avoid arrest and Aza knows his son, Davis. Her best friend Daisy is very interested in the reward of 100,000 dollars for information on the fugitive. So, the two friends investigate starting with reuniting of Aza with Davis Pickett. Despite sharing a last name with Sherlock, Aza proves to be the worst detective. She is unobservant, can’t focus during conversations, and is often thrown into thought spirals wherein her ODC controls her thought process. Green has said that he didn’t want Aza to be a good detective because of her OCD. He doesn’t want to glorify mental illness. As he wrote in the novel’s summary “Aza is trying.” She wants to be a good daughter, friend, and student but gets lost in her “invasive thoughts” and “spirals” that more often than not she can no longer control where her mind is headed. I found it to be a fascinating read and at times I couldn’t put the book down. I needed to know what was to come. I wanted to know where Russell Picket was hiding. 

There is a certain part of the book that still haunts me. Particularly a scene (which is completely non-spoilery) where a group of four including Daisy, Aza, and Davis are eating at Applebee’s. Aza go-to drink is Dr Pepper but the waitress offers her Pepsi instead. I found this information to be very concerning because I know that Applebee’s in Pennsylvania do serve Dr Pepper. I took to Twitter to find my answer and almost immediately after tweeting John Green himself answered. His Indianapolis Applebee’s doesn’t have Dr Pepper. I got many replies of other people informing me of their lack of Dr Pepper at Applebee’s. New York, Iowa, Texas, and Minnesota all have Dr Pepperless Applebee’s. One reply was curious if her Applebee’s in Southern Indiana serves the soda so she investigated and it did. Now, my question has changed. If Central Indiana doesn’t have Dr Pepper but Southern Indiana does, what drink options does Northern Indiana Applebee’s have to offer? I highly recommend reading his new book and maybe you can answer the mystery of Northern Indiana's Applebee's or the mystery of any of the other states.

Reflections on "Without Sanctuary: Photos and Postcards of Lynching in America

When I think of Halloween, I think of all the black bodies hung from trees in the dark night as wind ruffled leaves weep for Justice. The black man, his children and his wife ask for Mercy, but he dies. In front of the silent eyes and cold hearts of European American men, women and children: his body swings, they cut it down to cut off his head and place it on a stick. I wish in my mind, human eyes didn’t stare back at me. I hope on the night of fright when everyone’s dressed in black: his soul, a shimmering blue black, will come to me and parade its beauty on the one day they find his color acceptable. I pray even then, that he isn’t shot dead in the street by some cop, who thinks he is a threat, to meet his death a second time. He doesn’t care for himself though, his time to reflect on the small beauties his life did hold, like the innocence alight in his children's eyes and times spent with his wife allows his soul to be uncorrupted. He said the tolls of true liberty were great, but with forgiveness to those who wronged him, he had finally achieved it. Yet, me I had to worry. The corruptive flesh, which weighed all my fellow humans, left me vulnerable and for my safety he didn’t want us to be seen together. I try to tell him that times are better now, but he looks at me and that lie becomes apparent. His physical body appears then, the holes in his chest from bullets inflicted postmortem, the missing arm taken as a souvenir and the burnt ear and eye on the side of his head that was thrown in the fire first, almost make me cry. Yet, he grabs me and says that we must remain strong, for he knew all too well that Evil has a lot of places to hide.

Grimly, I account for the fact that no one is dressed as Thomas Jefferson tonight. The President, whose name stands on many of our institutions, is famed for how he tamed the American government and not his racist arguments against African art. Jefferson scares me, I see the spread of his ideologies and cringe, when they question my right to say how I feel, the way I would like to say it. Society tells me not to dwell. Yet, I refuse to forget: Clyde Johnson, William Brooks, John Holmes, Lee Hall, Jesse Washington, Nease Gillepsie, John Gillepsie, "Jack" Dillingham, Henry Lee, and George Irwin and others (Adams). To the black spirits, who haven’t left to be with the Lord, I say dwell in our hearts, change our perceptions and take your time to tell your stories, we hear you. May all the black bodies under oppression in past and present be set free by the truth of our collective US American history. 

Citation:

Adams, James, and John Littlefield. Journal E: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, Twin Palms Publishers, withoutsanctuary.org/main.html.

Climbing Atop the Block

Writer’s block is a common issue, and one that is frequently visited by writers from almost any background, but it is still a problematic plague that sometimes just does not wish to be overcome. I don’t claim to have found any sort of panacea, but I can say that I’ve found a few ways to work around writer’s block, at least the majority of the time. 

The first time I suffered extremely from this affliction, it was at a writing conference I attended in high school, hosted by Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. All of the young creative writers at this conference would, at the end of our two-week writing pilgrimage, receive a rather hefty anthology containing works by all of our peers, written in the time that we spent there. As luck would have it, I had nothing.  

The deadline approached, and my panic and feelings of inadequacy grew with every moment that brought me closer to the final submission deadline. Finally, in a fit of desperation, I just took a few blank pages, I put a pen to them, and I finally figured out the importance of our workshop’s motto for those two weeks: Write hard, die free.  

I scribbled out a few words, not caring if the poems were good, if the lines made any sense. In about an hour, I had written four poems, most of which were bad, but the last one was salvageable. Since then, this has been my go-to method for dealing with such problems. No matter what you write, just write. Give yourself permission to be awful. That’s the truest way to take risks and find art.

Poetry in Music

Essentially all of the poetry submissions we received for last semester's issue were written in free verse, and while I recognize that it is the dominant style in modern poetry, at times I can't help but long for a poem with more definite structure and form. Now I find myself looking towards music to satisfy that desire. With that said, here's a lovely poem by Johnny Flynn, an extremely talented British singer-songwriter/Shakespearean actor, that also doubles as a song. I hope you can find some inspiration in it.

The Triumph Of Hellenism

It was a busy year for death

She crept about the palace.

And we had poor defence

And she had little malice

A gentle touch put here -

A sad and curt embrace.

A wooden kiss enough

To put them in their place.

And where my father went

Is not now common knowledge;

The inventory was lent

To some old Cambridge college.

I had little faith then,

Nothing spoke to me.

When what you see is Gospel,

The Gospel isn’t free.

And Krishna’s conch is sunk,

The lotus not in bloom,

Solomon’s song unsung

And prayers are called too soon.

So where my father went

Is wind against the Mountain

His love was all but spent

So mine is as a fountain.

All the fruit turn red,

Some of them are still green

But never will you see one

That’s stuck and in between.

As all came from a garden

Where the wind has died down low

And there my father went

To help the green fruit grow.

He tends them with a smile,

His fingers stroke the leaves.

He’ll never leave the garden,

It’s all that I believe.

My Time With the Zoo

"Some days are just unbearable!" It was a message on a poster with a bear on it that hung on one of the children's zoo breakroom walls and one I could relate to while working at the Philadelphia Zoo. It was an adventurous yet draining job. This is especially true if you are not used to being on your feet all day and introverted. The days felt so long, I only checked my phone for the time when I had to or if the battery was low. It was my first job and it started in the summer and I never wanted autumn to arrive so badly.

When handling animals and trash, I would often wear gloves, made of wool and thread that were so worn out that the outer layer felt like sand paper. It was typical of me to lift wheel barrels of hay and straw for the barnyard animals in the morning. Petting their fuzzy bodies was fun at first but tame over tame over time. Also, I could do without the saliva and droppings. Speaking of droppings, during Fecal Fun Month, I had to wait for each goat to poop out their round and pellet like waste, collect a sample and record it with a pencil and paper on a clipboard.

Just outside the Children's Zoo was one of dining areas and an area with a mini train ride for little kids. It was often littered with popsicle sticks and wrappers. Lunch breaks were something else. Of course, the most convenient dining area would frequently close without warning. This forced employees who would buy lunch on what would be a least a 10-minute hike to one of the others, wait for our food to be prepared, eat, and run back to our station. Did I mention we typically had a 30-minute break? It did not help that some idiot thought it was a good idea to get rid of the employee food line. Even so, the overpriced food was really good! I remember gulping down whatever sweet drink I bought on hot days and they had some of the best fries and chicken parmesan sandwiches I ever tasted.

On route to the most popular food area from the Children's Zoo, resided the Bird House. Upon entering, you were bound to be greeted by a loud caw from one of the many species of bird. The caws were constant and got annoying fast. I get they were being social with each other but after a while I wished they would put a cork in it. The building was full of large railings that had large open packs of dried beans for the birds to eat from. If you were lucky, the feather of an exotic bird would fall within grabbing range. If you were not, some other substance from the bird would fall on you.

2018 jan-Apr

Reading Recovery

I’m an ex- speed reader. As a young book addict, it was an obvious choice to pick up a technique that would allow me to read five or six books in a week. I quickly learned how to read vertically instead of left to right. The biggest challenge was breaking myself of subvocalization, of hearing the words in my head when I read. Most readers have this internal speech, and while it may slow them down, it’s generally beneficial to a reader’s comprehension.

As I got older, speed reading came in handy when I wanted to juggle assigned readings for school and the books I read for pleasure. It got me through most of high school before it stopped working. Just a few weeks after finishing a book, I had a hard time remembering details and keeping the story straight. I realized it wasn’t the amount I was reading that was hurting my detail retention but the way I was reading.

I started my “recovery” by training my eyes to read from left to right and allowing myself to subvocalize again. Training my brain out of speed reading was more challenging than training my brain into it. In a way, it was like learning to reading again. But once I was reading normally, I noticed my detail retention improving. I became a much slower reader and I didn’t have time to read as much as I wanted, but remembering what I read weeks and months later was more important to me.

While I’ve trained myself to not rely on speed reading, it isn’t totally gone from my life. I still use it to scan through academic articles for important content or skim through mechanical materials. And I can’t say that I’m perfect and never use it to get through particularly dense assigned readings or rush through a text when I’m pressed for time. It’s a tool I can’t ignore but should be wary of. After all, reading is more than just seeing words on a page.

In Defense of Loneliness

When I was younger and my parents would fight with their stern voices and colorful language, my only place of solace was a turmeric colored bathroom with outdated fixtures and a light bulb that hummed loudly. The bathroom would muffle the sounds of their mutual stubbornness, and I knew no one would bother me in this tiny, upstairs bathroom. I was alone and left to my own devices.

My routine was always the same. Read the back of shampoo bottles and pill containers and the ingredients of a drugstore acne face wash, and try not to sob uncontrollably about the current uneasiness of my parents’ marriage. Next, I would find a way to position myself in the bathroom, so that I was laying on the floor, staring at the small lumps on the ceiling that were not properly sanded off before being painted with a color similar to sweet potato upchuck. This position was quite precarious. I had to lay with my feet in the shower and my neck at a 45 degree angle between the base of the toilet and the sink cabinets. Then, I would start to cry, letting tears fall down the contours of my childish face, onto my neck and into my ears.  

Once my mom and dad got me an MP3 for Christmas, my routine changed. I would lay in an awkward position, listening to whatever music I was into at the time. In my head, I could be whatever clique I wanted. A boho chick with braids in my hair and a caravan full of homemade soup, or a punk rock gal with a jet black bob and Doc Martens. I didn’t have to be the sad, financially unstable girl going through puberty while I laid on the linoleum floor of my bathroom. I could conjure up any reality I wanted. My loneliness, a 12 year-old girl crying on a hard, filthy floor, wasn’t so lonely after all. I had me, and my alter egos. Women who went after what they wanted and had everything I had ever desired.

Most people are afraid of loneliness. They fear solitude like they fear spiders or being buried alive. Sometimes, I crave feeling completely and totally alone. Some days, I’d give anything to be back in that cramped bathroom, staring at a lumpy, yellow ceiling, tears running down my childishly plump face.

I do not fear loneliness. Mostly, I fear the day I am no longer comforted by my loneliness.

The Dangers of Make-Believe

When I was five years old, my sister was kidnapped by a ghost.

The story goes like this: my oldest sister Sarah, and her best friend Emily faked a letter from a ghost named Samuel Withel and hid it outside our house. In addition to Sarah and Emily, the game involved my sister Katie, her best friend, who was also Emily’s little brother, Luke, and me, who had no counterpart in Emily and Luke’s family, and spent most of my time running after them on legs that were too short to keep up.

The haunting quickly escalated, and SW laid out rules for communicating with him. The oldest, Sarah, had to go down to the basement alone and deliver our letters, and the next morning return to collect a response. Those weren’t the only documents: worn, nearly illegible papers revealing the existence of ghosts, aliens, and other creatures began inexplicably appearing in books, under rocks in the park, and, once, to our amazement, on a shelf in the public library. Katie and Luke were skeptical - they were eight, and thought they knew everything. But Sarah and Emily quickly shot down any doubts - they were ten, and therefore really did know everything. If they said the house was haunted, then the house was haunted.

One morning, Sarah went down to the basement to collect the latest letter from SW. But she didn’t come back, and the longer we waited for her, huddled together on her bed, the greater the collective feeling of dread became. When a blood-curdling scream split the house, we leapt off the bed and dashed downstairs to find her.  Eventually, she was found, tied up and gagged behind the furnace. But then a different cry was heard through the house - mine. I had been left behind upstairs, and, thinking for sure that Sarah was dead, was stumbling around in circles, blinded by tears and calling, throat raw, for my mother.

It’s a famous story now, but I barely remember it. Bits and pieces of it come back sometimes: the five of us clustered in my sister’s room, listening to the latest bit of news with a mixture of horror and wonder. Sometimes, my sisters joke that it was some sort of psychological trauma I’ve repressed from my memory, and is the reason I dislike scary movies, or the dark. But there are two things I know I took away from it for sure: a tendency to doubt anything my sister says, and an inherent fear of the basement. 

Why Reverse Culture Shock Isn't All Bad

When I was in Australia, my writing was inspired by butterflies and exotic birds and all things green and alive. I wrote elegant nature poetry and blogged about how amazing every single day was. The sun always shone, and it rarely rained. But when it did, I wanted to dance in it. It was warm summer rain every time. Not the cold, horrible, freeze-the-ends-of-your-hair, ice-sheet-on-your-car-window, kind of rain we get here. And when it rained, I mean, it rained. One time it rained for a week straight, down-poured nearly the whole time. It was magnificent. Unbelievable and astounding. It was warm and humid and the trees breathed out the clouds. I lived in the rain forest, nestled right next to the beach. How much better could life even get?

Coming back to the concrete jungle after spending the semester in tropical paradise is tough. The air is dry and the weather unyielding. Everyone speaks American English again, and there’s no accent to get lost in, no slang to figure out, no newness or wonder or awe. Being back here, something is missing. I feel like I left my soul in Australia.

So obviously, I’m not dealing so well with the reverse culture shock this time around. Yeah, it’s tough. But that’s life. And it isn’t all bad. These stark differences have rocked my world. And that can be a good thing, sometimes. It’s good for my writing. I’m exploring new and different ways of writing and reading and being. I’m a firm believer that the sad is more interesting and compelling than the happy. The anguish and grief I feel for leaving my new home abroad feeds my writing. My dissatisfaction lends itself to my creativity. And my writing is exploring topics unique to my home, to this place. 

The concrete jungle isn’t such a bad setting, after all.

Lillian La Chienne

You never really see your own loneliness until it’s sitting in a cage. 

It was January, in the midst of Mother Nature’s hissy fit of spitting snow and rainfall that made the ground a mixture of mud. I was in an animal shelter with a friend, and if you ask my mother, that was the first and biggest mistake. We walked through slim hallways packed with people, loud noises, and cage-upon-cage of animals. On our first lap, dogs of every size barked out of their cubicle, the noise echoing and reverberating in the small room. In the last cage in the farthest corner, a rusty colored dog laid on her concrete pad and stared. I stared back but continued. 

We made a total lap, perusing the cats and kittens with idle pleasure. By the end of it, at the point where my mother pointedly says that I made a second mistake, I turned around and headed back into the dog area. I didn’t know what I missed, but I missed something, something I had to see again. This time, I examined each dog carefully: rambunctious young dogs, scruffy little mutts, white-muzzled old dogs, tails wagging and howls resounding. And there she was again, in the last cage in the farthest corner. On her paperwork dangling off her door, it read that she was nine years old, and had spent a full year of her life locked in this shelter, waiting. She had not moved since my first lap, like the energy to move her large, sandy head was too much to exert. Her eyes, however, did follow, and when I stood in front of her door, she stared at me, her eyes pregnant with the question that laid hot on her heart: Will you let me out?

As I left the animal shelter with my third mistake of the day, I realized that this dog had asked me for the same thing I was desperately looking for. I had spent a good chunk of my adult life alone in a dark room, often writing but mostly yearning for a companion that could make being alive more meaningful. I lived in this cloud of loneliness for so long that my sadness felt like a default, and I became so accustomed to it that Lillian’s introduction felt like she had taken me out of my cage as well. 

It is with pure love that I introduce Lillian la Chienne: dirty blonde and eighty-five pounds of pure love, she was a French princess in her past life. She sleeps at my feet when I’m doing homework, wakes me up every morning with her cold nose on my cheek, and groans in pleasure when I pet her. She loves walks and car rides, snow and rain, and every type of food. She loves to experience life and forces me to love my own. 

In the end, she was never a mistake.

Spring Break?

It is very hard to consider this week to be spring break when there is still a bit of snow outside my window. When I think spring break, I image warm weather and sunny days, not a nor’easter. If you can get past the frigid air, a break is still a break. It helps to be home this year since last spring break I was aboard in London. Seeing my family for the week is lovely but I also enjoy seeing my dog, Trixie, shove her face into the snow each time she goes outside.

Each winter, Trixie forgets that snow exists. The first snowfall has her in a trance. She jumps up and down and can’t seem to lose her excitement. She asks to go outside by waiting at the door. When there is snow on the ground, she practically lives outdoors. Nor’easters are an excuse to play outside and cover herself in the snow. My brother and I always hope that the snow is wet enough to make snowballs. We throw them down the backyard and Trixie rushes after them. If the snowball hits the ground before she catches it, she’ll bury her face in the snow trying to find it. With as much snow as we currently have, it’s a blessing to have a Rottweiler, not a white furry friend. Trixie is many things but she does not blend in with the ground.

Watching the snow fall as we sit inside with blankets and freshly made tea is one of the best parts of winter. It’s hard to consider March as a winter month but when we have two nor’easters in less than a week it makes it a little easier. Luckily, this nor’easter hasn’t put out the power although trees were falling. The snow should be gone by the time this blog goes up but I hope you enjoyed as much as Trixie has.

How Times Change

Growing up in a struggling household my family didn’t have a television or computer. At school I was often the cause of teachers scratching out current event projects; I was the most uninformed intelligent student they had. Sometimes they would send a note home, asking if I was lying about my isolated upbringing to get out of assignments. I don’t know who was more embarrassed, me or the teacher when Mom would call and complain. 

In comparison its funny how I cannot live my life to the fullest without this technology now. As a student it’s impossible to work when nature intervenes and cuts the power to everything. I cannot read, write, or even receive notifications from safety patrols as the blizzard effortlessly continues. It’s almost as if Mother Nature or Danu herself is commanding me to put down the meaningless but complex problems which occupy all of my day and return to the world my ancestors thrived in. But I cannot, the storm is far too cold and I would grow ill. I would need a glow stick to venture out of the pitch black dorms and down the hazardous steps, only to be met at the door. The unquestionable modern green glow illuminating my face would only reveal my poorly told lie or fib as I seek an excuse to get past the resident assistant; never mind the fact I’m older than they are, I must listen to them. 

Ignore the truth that many of them don’t care, in fact most are uselessly handling their powerless devices as if to check what their friends are tweeting about. These friends are likely staring at blank phones in dismay, feeling as powerless as their devices. But I cannot ignore the instilled need to listen to others in authority, a call I’ve answered all my life. So I return to my dark dorm room, uselessly fiddling with my own electronics. Every morning or afternoon I read at least one new book or story online, to ground myself and face the demands of life. The routine is broken today, and I feel like a boat without its sail. I could study for my mid-term next week, or could I? My mind is as scattered as my re-read books in the room. No, I can’t focus. The storm doesn’t care, the assistants and public safety don’t care, and oddly enough, I don’t care. 

As I lay upon my bed and ponder the thought I watch the white increase outside. Its colorless color convinces me it’s alright. For today at least, I will be like Danu, blanketed and uninterrupted by the world. My responsibilities can wait.

Roommates

Before you go to college you always hear these “horror stories” about what it's like to live with a roommate. You suddenly have this random person in your life 24/7, someone who, most of the time, the University chooses for you. And if we're being honest, most of the time the university places you with a person that you have nothing in common with despite their handy personality quiz. People warn you about living in a confined space with one other person. They warn you about sharing your things, sharing your food, sharing your life and your time. When you first arrive, you're shy and just trying to figure out this new person. The RA’s even tell you in your roommate contract that you don't have to be friends, you just have to put up with each other. What they don't tell you is that sometimes you get a really amazing friend. 

Not to be cliché or anything but my roommate and I are basically sisters and we had never met before summer orientation. We met on Facebook after she randomly stated that she loved country music despite everyone on the Facebook page bashing country. I took a chance and private messaged her simply to say “Hey, you're not alone. I like country music too!” One random message and here we are, two years later we're still living together. I'm not trying to say it's all sunshine and daisies because obviously, we're only human. Yes, sometimes we really don't like each other. Yes, sometimes we wish we lived in single rooms. But look at the facts: your roommate has seen you at your absolute best and your absolute worst. You're living in an 11 x 14 room together so you're forced to see each other in every good and bad moment all the time. At the end of the day, you're never going to find a better friend than your college roommate because I bet you that's the person who is still going to be your friend in 50 years.

The Homeland

I am 100% Italian and it is every Italian’s dream to go to the homeland. My mom speaks fluent Italian and her parents are from Bari. Bari is located in the southern part of Italy. My junior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to be invited to play on a international softball team that was going to play in Italy. This was one of the most life changing experiences I’ve ever been a part of. 

On the first day, my team and I visited the Colosseum. When we got there I thought I was dreaming. The structure in front of me was not just some picture in my history textbook. It was right before my eyes. As we were walking inside the Colosseum, I felt like I was back in ancient Rome. I could hear the crowd cheering as the gladiators fought to the death. I could see the fear in the gladiators eyes while they rode in their chariots to their ultimate doom. All around me were tall cracked stone columns. The stone arches standing above amazed me as I marveled at the ancient accomplishment. 

My next two days were spent touring architectural structures including, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In photographs the structure looks like it was about to tip over, until I actually saw it in person. What fascinated me was that the building stayed leaning even though it was originally vertical. My team and I also visited St. Peter’s Basilica. The Roman encrusted letters over the entrance were incredible and there were detailed stone sculptures at the top of the building of saints and popes. The outside wasn’t even the best part, it was the inside. Everywhere I looked, there was gold. There were shrines dedicated to different saints and tombs of past popes. When I looked up, it told a story about God and even the ground I walked on told a story. The one thing that really grabbed my attention as I walked into the Basilica was the huge golden yellow, stained glass all the way at the end of the building. There were shiny gold angels surrounding this bright yellow light. There were rows and rows of pews facing this outstanding Catholic symbol. I can’t even put into words how beautiful it was, it was truly a spiritual experience.

Spring is in the Air

It seems as if Mother Nature enjoys playing games with us; one week is snow the next is sunny and 75°. However, this weekend brought out spring activities everywhere. From Scarlet and Grey Day to baseball, ‘Spring’ is so close. 

Accepted students swarmed Arcadia’s campus on Saturday, walking around their soon to be homes. Food trucks lined the outside of Habor Green, free food, it was a college student's dream. Eager incoming freshman toured the rooms, the campus and all the campus buildings while meeting their future roommate. Such a nostalgic day as my freshman year comes to an end.

However I have learned, when one door closes, another opens; Major League baseball has officially started! The Philadelphia Phillies destroyed the Miami Marlins saturday night 20 to 1. However, the actual game that night was me versus the wind. I shivered non stop throughout all 7 innings and physically forced myself to buy warmer socks to avoid hypothermia. 

Sunshine, baseball and new beginnings are what Spring is all about. Although the weather is not right, Scarlet and Grey Day and the Phillies game gave me the closest feeling to spring all year and makes the wait so much worse. While Mother Nature plays her games, I will be watching Baseball. 

Play ball!

The Art of Writing and Editing No.1 - Richard Wertime

Many famous literary figures have argued that there is a sort of spectrum, per se, when it comes to literature, with editing and writing on its opposite ends. The line of reasoning sort of goes: if you’re a good editor, you can’t be a good writer and if you’re a good writer, you can’t be a good editor too. However, Richard Wertime, an English professor at Arcadia University, seems to have made a living blending the two forms just fine. 

During his early high school years, Wertime was introduced to his love of literature by a friend of his, future novelist, Max Byrd, who encouraged him to submit work for the school’s literary magazine. After that, Wertime continued on to graduate at Haverford College in 1964 and pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Today, Richard Wertime is still an English professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English and the Humanities at Arcadia University. While his focus has shifted towards educating students about classical literature and fiction writing, Wertime still continues to write countless professional articles on such subjects as psychology, medieval literature, Shakespeare, and Italian culture. 

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Wertime about his experiences working as a contributing editor for Archaeology for 23 years and writing his critically acclaimed memoir about his tumultuous childhood and relationship with his father entitled Citadel on the Mountain: A Memoir of Father and Son. 

INTERVIEWER: 

In 1972, you became an editor for Archaeology, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in America. How did you become apart of the editorial staff of a magazine like this one? Did you have any interest in archaeology? 

WERTIME:

Well, from the very beginning of my career at Archaeology, all the way back in 1972, I was editing for the magazine as well as writing for the magazine. And I was hired because I was an assistant professor at Rutgers in New Brunswick and the editorship of the Archaeology at that time was in the process of changing hands and being handed over by an older person, a woman who had been a classics specialist and archaeologist in Greece all the way back in the 40’s and 50’s, to a young woman from Penn who wanted to try to begin building a serious readership for the magazine. Now, at the point in which I came aboard in 72, the magazine had a worldwide circulation of only 13,000 people. It was a fairly rudimentary kind of publication, it didn’t have yet to come to the sort of glossy thing it was known to be today. 

Rather than being hired to edit the essays that were coming in by archaeologists in the classical sense, I was being asked to rewrite them for the purpose of them being readable to lay audiences because archaeologists are notoriously bad writers. Most of them have no sense of how to present something on paper and they sort of dive right into the recitation of the data they’ve collected from their digs, and so I became the rewrite guy. And quickly enough, I began getting sent by the magazine off to places like the boondocks of Arkansas to attend archaeological training sessions in the middle of the summer. And eventually I developed two specializations, one was in the Etruscan archaeology in Italy because I was going to Italy all the time and I spoke Italian and then I also developed an interest in Maya archaeology in Mesoamerica: Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras. However, I became after several years, the senior contributing editor which I would be more and more active in writing my own articles for the magazine at the same time continuing to re-write submissions for the magazine.

INTERVIEWER: 

In your opinion, how is a scientific journal like Archaeology different from let’s say a regular, literary magazine?

WERTIME: 

Well, because Archaeology is owned by The Archaeological Institute of America it is a refereed scholarly journal despite the fact that it is the popular version of the journal of the AIA, which is the scientific journal that archaeologists often publish their first scientific results in, but with no eye to a popular audience. The consequence of us, however, of being a referee journal is that every piece that comes in has to be sent to a professional archaeologist for peer review, [then] sent back. 

INTERVIEWER: 

So did all of this back-and-forth affect the editing process for the magazine? I mean it must have been very time-consuming to wait for these articles to get peer-reviewed first before you could edit them.

WERTIME: 

Definitely. Actually, one year when my editor-in-chief and I were going to be presenting a big workshop at the annual meetings of the AIA in Boston, we decided we were going to sit down together and figure out how many separate steps were involved in a manuscript coming in from an archaeologist to the point where it actually appeared in print in the magazine. So we mapped it all out and were astonished to realize that there were thirty-six steps involved in that process between the initial submission and it’s going into the magazine and partly because it’s an illustrated magazine and so you have just not the difficulty of deciding what you want the writing to look like, but how it’s going to appear on the page in relation to the visuals that you're going to include, boxes describing features of the site for example and so-forth-and-so-on.

So it’s more complicated than even we thought, and so when we presented this to the interested members of our audience they were impressed that kind of diligence was exercised because those steps included having the article, for example, sent back to the original author after it had been either re-written by me or in the case of articles that had come in in foreign languages that had been translated so they had to go back to the translators and they had to come back, so I took them in hands again, and back and forth and back and forth. So, labor intensive. 

INTERVIEWER:

So after the back and forth, when you finally got your hands on the pieces, did you have any specific set of rules or guidelines that you followed? 

WERTIME: 

Yeah, there was no checklist, per se, but because I had done this for an extended period of time I definitely had a working methodology. Now in the working methodology, it involved first and foremost my reading of the whole piece and trying to decide what the thing was essentially about and what oughta come first in the agenda or the billboard at the beginning of the piece because archaeologists would characteristically open their version of an essay by piling on data, and only after piling on a lot of data, which would be essentially meaningless to a lay reader, they would say “Well what this adds up to is an amazing discovery that this Bronze Age culture did such and such and such and such.” So I was very often saying “No, no no”, you know, “exciting Bronze Age cultural development, that has to come first and then of course the data that validates that has to come afterwards. So, my first rule of thumb was that I had to get to the beginning of the essay what was going to be important for our reader to know. 

And then the second criterion was basically the human interest criterion. Why would a person picking a magazine like this be excited about a bunch of hand-forged nails discovered on Mulberry Row at Monticello, for example, Thomas Jefferson’s estate? And so I would go on from there. Now obviously the other thing was turning the writing into readable prose, because archaeologists tended to use a great deal of jargon that would be insider-information amongst members of their scientific community, but were not necessarily going to be current with a lay audience and so another of my tasks was to make sure that people understood in the context of the article they were reading what the terminology meant and very often you simply insert in parentheses, you know, a quick explanation of what the term meant.

INTERVIEWER:

Did your experience as an editor help in any way in writing your memoir, Citadel on the Mountain, or any of your short stories? 

WERTIME: 

Oh my goodness, yes, because after all, I had, by the time I had settled in really serious works like Citadel, I had been an editor, for you know, for Archaeology magazines for decades essentially, well a decade and a half anyway cause my book took thirteen years to write all of it from the very beginning of it and you know. But sure, you know. The other thing is in being any sort of professional writer, one of the first things that you learn is that within the time frame available to you and of course, there's a great difference in doing something like writing my memoir and meeting deadlines for the magazine because if you’re a journalist you always got a gun to your head, with some exceptions, and you can’t say as deadlines approach and publication looms Oh, I need more time!” You either get it done or you don’t get it done and can’t go to press.

But many of the same principles of just being incessantly attentive to specific details, to getting it right because that’s absolutely crucial in a field like archaeology because you just don’t have a lay audience reading the magazine, and this is the other thing that makes it interesting, the professionals are reading this too because a) in some cases, they’re not going to be reading all the scientific stuff about a particular dig, but they are going to be reading Archaeology magazine, and second of all, because Archaeology's circulation during the time I was working for all those years went from a worldwide circulation of 13,000 to 250,000 people which meant that a lot of archaeologists themselves were reading this because they would aspire to publish in it. Because as a very famous historical archaeologist who lives in Florida once said to me, he said “Dick, a single article about my excavation that appears in New York Times science section will be $100,000 in grants to support my work”. Just one article. And he said, “An article in Archaeology has the same kind of impact, it just enormously inflates the potential for getting the grants that will support your field work.”

INTERVIEWER: 

Well as you’ve mentioned, there are a lot of positives in getting  work published in magazines and other platforms. However, I know, especially with memoirs that are so deeply personal like Citadel, that many writers actually face some harsh backlash and criticism. Did you face any of sort of that from your family or colleagues? Did that fear it initially deter you from writing it?

WERTIME:

(Laughs) You’re, you’re looking at a man who was driven from the Wertime clan with iron tongs stuck in his back, right out the door into perdition. I mean yeah, I took a very heavy hit from my larger family, but there’s some amusing stories and I’ll sure to make them brief.

INTERVIEWER: 

Yes, please, go right head. 

WERTIME:

At the time my book came out, my father’s oldest brother, who was a full twelve years older than my father and lived until he was ninety-five, and lived for many many years after my father died because my dad died at the age of sixty-two from pancreatic cancer. And so, after my book came out, my uncle Rooney, who was the dean of the family and had been district attorney at Franklin County for twenty years and was a hot shot lawyer and so forth and so on, at the family gathering [he] denounced me, absolutely denounced me in front of the clan for writing the book. And it turns out, that his rationale for denouncing me was not that I was spilling family secrets so much, as that as far as he was concerned, my father was a genius and his being genius granted him the privilege of doing any goddamn thing to his family that he wanted to. And then, however, having denounced me and saying “You really have suffered an indignity upon your father’s memory because he was entitled to do any brutal thing he wanted to you boys when you were growing up” like “Oh thanks a lot,”, he conspiratorially turned to me and said, “You know, but you really captured your dad!” (Laughs) 

INTERVIEWER:

So how did that sort of reaction from your uncle make you feel? 

WERTIME:

Well, I was very pleased by that because as I was writing the book, I said to myself, “You’re gonna be doing this in novelistic form, a lot of this is sort of right in your face rather than an explanation of what happened.” Don’t explain, depict. Show, don’t tell. And so I said to myself, “You have to become a ventriloquist to effectively throw your father’s voice, you’ve got to make sure that your dialogue in your book really sounds like him.” So I would work very hard to remember the peculiarities of my father’s sayings, and so in the process of learning to throw my father’s voice I suddenly remembered he had very odd ways of saying things, that were sort of very baroque and so I remembered to have that in the book. 

INTERVIEWER:

Since we’re talking about the writing process for your memoir, I wanted to ask about something. In an interview with The Paris Review, famous editor Robert Gottlieb mentioned that there are two places in which writers struggle the most, the beginning and the end. When you were writing Citadel on the Mountain, did you have the same struggles? 

WERTIME:

Well, that’s very interesting because I have, over the course of my entire life, my best writing has come about through a very peculiar, characteristic pattern in which out of the blue, out of the blue, a title occurs to me. And out of the blue, a first line occurs to me, and as often as not, over the whole course of my writing life going way back when I was seventeen and decided to be a writer, this pattern of having a title appear to me and a first line appear to me has left me feeling even though the whole thing isn’t written yet, it’s already a curtain, it’s already coming down and secured from that title and opening line and all I have to do, well not all I have to do, but all I have to do is let the blind down. And that’s what happened with Citadel on the Mountain, except not only was I given the title out of the blue, and was I not only given the first line out of the blue, I was given this whole chapter of the book out of the blue and sat down and wrote it in the rapture. My god, where does this come from? What it is was, was a fantasy of visiting my father at the citadel on the mountain after he had died, and it was pure fantasy, but a really powerful fantasy. This was thirteen years before the book was published and I said to myself, “I’ll be damned if I ever write this!” I didn’t think I had the courage at that point to even write this book at all. I said “That is either the first chapter of the book or the last chapter of the book. Probably the last.” Well, indeed it is the last chapter. 

INTERVIEWER:

And what about the first chapter of your memoir? 

WERTIME: 

Now the first chapter was requested by my publisher because the first chapter of the manuscript I sold was this very compelling episode of watching my father getting ready to go to work when I was a young boy and he was working for the state department, and he was an infantile adult male, and he did nothing but have temper tantrums before he went into work (Laughs). But my publisher, Jonathan, said “You need a preface to this book, you need to”, ironically the whole business of framing it out and forecasting where everything is gonna go, and so I wrote that. But it turned out to be effortless, completely effortless. But my challenge for this book was to decide, which is partly why it took so long [to publish it], what it was going to be about. 

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Fortunately after thirteen long years, Richard Wertime was finally able to figure out the best direction for his critically-acclaimed memoir, Citadel on the Mountain. By using Citadel  as way to not only exorcise his past trauma but to understand the way in which these events have helped shape him in the man he is today, Wertime has created one of the most brutally-honest but eye-opening pieces of literature he has written to date. To form your own opinion of  Citadel on the Mountain, pick up a copy here.