Trading Failures for Successes?

 

(The second in a series on my attempt to hike to the top of the tallest peak in the continental United States. You can find the first here.)

“Everything I have I count as loss/Everything I have is stripped away/Before It started building I counted up these costs/Ain’t nothing left for you to take away.” Hello Hurricane – Switchfoot

At present, I find myself deeply influenced by pretty much all of the music of Jon Foreman. Most know him from his group Switchfoot, some from his side project Fiction Family with Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins, still others from his solo seasons EPs.

In my case, I listen to pretty much anything he chooses to put to record, including Switchfoot’s vastly underrated cover of Beyonce Knowles’ “Crazy in Love.” If I had to rank current song writers, Foreman’s in the top three.

So, given my musical and lyrical man crush on his work, it’s really no surprise “Hello Hurricane” came to mind as I trudged down Mount Whitney without finishing what I came to do. But it was an odd convergence.

I think at first I wanted to hear these lyrics as encouragement. You know, I may have failed, but really in the big picture I’m way more blessed than cursed or something like that. And, at another moment, that would have been a valid, potentially comforting interpretation. But with a little distance, I think it was something else.

A short digression to get to where we’re going. Consider it a switchback in the trail of this piece. One of the guys in my hiking party, Dave, is the originator of a process called the 100 Things Challenge. If you want specifics on this process, see here and then buy Dave’s forthcoming book. Generally, it’s about looking at the clutter of things you have and how they’re standing in your way of living simply content.

This concept is never more apparent than when one is backpacking. You carry only what you need, plan very specifically so you’re prepared for contingencies, and truly enjoy all you have (dehydrated sweet and sour pork from a plastic pouch is only truly edible at the end of a long hike).

So here’s the intersection. You’re never as aware of what you need as when you put a limitation on what you can have (as in the case of carrying what you will need to survive a mountain or trying to maintain only 100 personal possessions). What you have, then, is at once much more critical, and, strangely, much more easily defined as temporal.

In our acquisitive culture (that culture being more generally human than merely Western and capitalistic), we expect the inverse of this relationship, only to find that the more we get, the more we have to have to convince ourselves we are secure. Our possessions fail to bring joy or peace. Instead, they breed a fear of going without so strong we fail to see how rich we are.

I can hear your thoughts at this point. “But, did I really read this whole blog for a shopworn message on the evils of consumerism?”

Ha. To quote Lane Hall, you’ve been “Trojan-horsed.”

Where Jon Foreman and Mt. Whitney merge for me is in the way we treat successes like possessions, desperately piling up easy wins to ward off the sensation that we are all failures. However, the more cheap “triumphs” we collect, the more we suspect our lack.

Only the reality of an earned failure can shift our view and move us embrace the message of Foreman’s chorus.

“Hello hurricane, you’re not enough/Hello hurricane, you can’t silence my love/I’ve got doors and windows boarded up/All your dead-end fury is not enough/You can silence my love.”

Michael Dean Clark holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is an assistant professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Currently, he is somewhere between Milwaukee and San Diego.

John Matthew Fox's "Requiem for a Daughter"

John Matthew Fox joins the blog to share how he came to write "Requiem for a Daughter," the Editor's Choice in fiction that will be appearing in Relief 4.1.

I wrote "Requiem for a Daughter" in 2005, or maybe it was earlier, or later.  It depends whether you count the living, the thinking, the drafting, or the revision.  Deborah Eisenberg said that she took eight years to write the eight stories in her collection, "The Twilight of the Superheroes," and even though I'd like to be faster, there's a process you can't rush.

For this story, the tri-part structure of the college, daughter, and student arrived at once, in my first draft, but the rest took more effort.  After I'd had it down for a few years, I rewrote it as a short screenplay, and reimagining it in a different medium helped me better understand the story.

The ending--with the bittersweet dialogue--was influenced by Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Decalogue," specifically film two in the ten-part series, where a doctor confronts a moral dilemma.  Kieslowski's last lines shoehorn an enormous amount of emotional complexity into few words.  Of all my influences from film, he's made the biggest impact--I watch "The Decalogue" and his trilogy "Three Colors" on an annual basis.

Relief News Tuesday 6.29.2010

4.1 Shipping!

Just yesterday we received the printed copies of issue 4.1!  They will be shipping from ccPublishing's president's office sometime in the next two days, so they will be on their way to you by the weekend! So exciting!

This does man that the pre-sales will be removed from our side bar, but we will still be selling the .pdf file from our store at a price that is much less expensive than a printed copy.

Some personal rearranging

This week, our Editor-in-Chief, Christopher Fisher, moved to Virginia.  We are very thankful that he and his family made the trip safely, and we hope his family settles in soon.

Our Web Editor, Ian Philpot, also started a job with Willow Creek Community Church this week as their Web Content Developer.  This is great news as Ian just graduated with an English degree in May and already has a full-time job working in his field of study.  He is very thankful and feels extremely blessed by his new job.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 6.23.10

Photo courtesy of Elaina Avalos. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Interview: Through the Ohlen Harris Veil

In a cross-blog post, Deanna Hershiser interviews Relief's creative nonfiction editor, Lisa Ohlen Harris. Although my editor friend Lisa is a few years younger than I, she's wiser regarding all things literary and nonfiction. She can tell you, after reading an essay, what sort of writing this is and what one might do to make it better. I love people like her.

Sometimes editors edit because writing just hasn't worked well for them. Not so with Lisa. Her first book, Through the Veil, will soon be released by Canon Press. Its offerings include an essay which was listed under "Notable Essays of 2008" in Best American Essays 2009, along with two others that have made the Notable lists in volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing. Another of the book's essays was shortlisted for a Pushcart Prize and received special mention in Pushcart XXXIII.

Below are Lisa's answers to my questions about her adventures as a literary character and writerly person.

DH: First, tell us the scope of your journeying. Where all have you been? Who are your fellow life voyagers?

LOH: I met my husband-to-be on a study tour in Damascus, Syria, which is also where Through the Veil begins. We married a year and a half later in Oregon and immediately after our honeymoon we moved to Philadelphia, where Todd went to grad school at Westminster Theological Seminary. We returned to the Middle East in 1996 with our one-year-old daughter. Two more daughters were born during our years in Jordan. Since returning to the States, we’ve lived in Delaware/Maryland, Pennsylvania (where our fourth daughter was born), Texas, and finally back to Oregon, where we intend to stay. I’m grateful for the breadth of experience and culture I’ve had over the past twenty years—which gives me plenty to write about—but I’m so glad to be back home in Oregon.

DH:When did you decide you would be a writer?

I wrote my first creative essay in 2004, when we lived in Texas, and I immediately became enchanted with the idea of creating literature from life. At that point I had no idea whether I would write magazine articles or a newspaper column or what. I joined a couple of online critique groups and started to see that my writing tended toward the kind of stuff published in literary journals. It wasn’t until my work started being accepted for publication that I knew writing would be more than a hobby for me.

DH: What led you to the MFA program you're completing? How did your education enhance your essay writing?

LOH: Having an MFA enables me to teach writing at the college and graduate levels. I entered the program with a firm belief that no one needs an MFA to write well. While I still basically believe that, I’ve found that my writing has grown leaps and bounds in the past two years. For years now I’ve received helpful critique from fellow writers who are about at my same stage in the journey, but the MFA has given me the opportunity to also receive critique and direction from established writers and editors. Having these friendships is a benefit I hadn’t anticipated when I started the program .

The hurdle for me was how to make graduate school fit into my existing life. I’m in my forties and married, with four school-age children. At the time I applied for MFA programs I was also the primary caregiver for my elderly mother-in-law, who lived with us. The low-residency programs—and the Rainier Writing Workshop in particular—are designed for those who cannot relocate to a graduate school community for two or three years.

The Rainier Writing Workshop (RWW) was my first choice for several reasons. First of all, I recognized nearly every name on the nonfiction faculty listing, writers like Brenda Miller, Robin Hemley , Lia Purpura, and others. RWW’s program takes three years rather than two (with the three-year program costing about the same as a two-year program elsewhere), so MFA candidates are writing an estimated 15 hours per week rather than the 20-25 estimated for a two-year program. RWW also holds only one on-campus residency per year—in August—whereas nearly every other program has two residencies per year.

DH: You've stated that writing fiction is not for you. What is most appealing for you about creative nonfiction?

LOH: I am completely enchanted with the process of seeing life through a literary lens and uncovering the metaphors and portents and deep connective threads running through the stories that make up my life. This is a matter of aptitude as well as preference. I can see story structure in life, in thought, in rambling reflection, in imagery, and I can’t imagine ever tiring of this adventure—both the living and the writing. It’s magic to me, making life into literature, complete with the limitations granted by believability, truthfulness, and honoring those I write about.

DH: Which came first, your essays or the idea for your book?

LOH: I had written only a handful of essays when I began to mine my memories of living in Damascus. The memory of a slightly alarming interaction with some Bedouin women in Damascus combined with some research about the Crusades and became my first Middle East essay, completed in December, 2005. I realized right away that this concept could become my first book. I pulled out my journals and research notes from Damascus, and for more than two years I just kept writing essays about living in Syria and Jordan, submitting finished work to literary journals all along the way. In the “Acknowledgements” page for Through the Veil I say that I learned to write by writing this book.

DH: Lately you've been teaching and editing. How do those occupations fit with your writing career?

LOH: It’s hard for me to say which I love more—writing my own essays or coaching other writers. I’m glad I don’t have to choose between the two. Both fit together in this writing life.

DH: How would someone interested in receiving one of your coaching sessions go about contacting you?

LOH: I give a brief description of my critique and editing service on my website. To talk more about writing and editing or about a specific project, interested readers should email me. Although I have worked with local clients, most of my coaching takes place via email and telephone calls.

DH: What plans are in the works for Through the Veil's unveiling?

LOH: I only have two definite events scheduled—a book release in the Dallas, Texas, area in early July and a private book launch with friends here in my hometown in mid-July. I have felt bizarrely shy about promoting my book, and I’ve decided that’s okay. If Through the Veil is worthwhile, readers will recommend the book to their friends and the news will spread.

My book has been picked up by several book clubs for next fall, and at least one of these groups has invited me to come speak to them. I’m hoping for more invitations to meet with writers and readers to talk culture and craft.

DH: Thank you, Lisa, for taking time to visit. I’m excited to read your finished book and to imagine the richness of your prose giving more readers windows into worlds unknown. I’ve learned much from you about the art and craft of writing, and I’m looking forward to seeing others benefit from all you have to offer.

Deanna Hershiser also published this interview at her blog, Capturing a Story's Glimmer. Her recent essays have appeared in BackHome Magazine and Prick of the Spindle.

Peak(ed)

 

(The first in a series on my attempt to hike to the top of the tallest peak in the continental United States.)

On top of Mt. Whitney is a stone hut erected in 1909 to protect hikers from the elements should they be stranded on the peak. This is the highest building in America, something I only know because I’ve seen pictures of it. But that was supposed to change when I joined six friends with the express purpose of hiking to the top of Whitney, striking a pose next to the hut, and fulfilling a life-long goal.

I failed. It sucks.

I’m tempted to justify that statement, maybe deflect a bit. I did make it to 12,100 feet above sea level, which is 700 feet higher than I’ve ever hiked. I wasn’t quite in the shape I wanted to be for very legit reasons. I came down with a decent case of altitude sickness. The night before we hit the trail, snow dumped on what was already the most difficult and dangerous section of the hike. I am extremely afraid of heights and falling from them. I’m getting older.

All of these factors were in play and impacted my trip. But it’s simply more accurate to say I failed.

I think right now I’m supposed to add, “but it was a good failure.” I’m not going to. This isn’t one of those lessons learned deals, unless that lesson is that failure blows and disappointment lingers. I assume most of us don’t need to be reminded of that, let alone think about it while they watch three guys from their group reach the summit without them.

I should note that I am really happy my friends made it, and not in that Miss America Runner-up way. In fact, I think I’m happier for them than I would have been had I made it myself. The sting of imagining how great it was up there – something my fiction-generating mind does quite vividly – makes me appreciate their accomplishment even more.

It’s lame but true. It’s also true that my trip to the foot of Whitney was an amazingly good time. I spent time with two of my closest friends, guys I definitely don’t see often enough. We talked deeply and joked shallowly and hiked the hill together. And when the thin air made my head hurt so bad I thought I was going to vomit every time I moved, they skipped the summit and hiked down with me to make sure I didn’t fall off the mountain.

I guess this is the spot where I should write “so, without my failure I wouldn’t have…” fill in the appropriate friendship platitude. But I won’t do that either.

It sucks that, in a way, my failure cost them the chance to finish what they started. But my guilt is what allows me to feel the grace they extended me on the mountain. It’s what enables me to hear and believe them when they say the time spent with me was worth their own disappointment in not summiting.

Maybe I can trust them because we all share the same failure together.

I find it no coincidence that while I sat reading in the airport on the way home, Flannery O’Connor’s words spoke directly to my failure and its necessity.

“(The writer) begins to see in the depths of himself, and it seems to me that his position there rests on what must certainly be the bedrock of all human experience – the experience of limitation or, if you will, poverty.”

And, in case I started feeling the urge to make a moral out of the mountain, she said this.

“The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it….you can’t make an inadequate dramatic action complete by putting a statement of meaning on the end of it...”

Michael Dean Clark holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is an assistant professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. His latest authorial activity is going through his pile of rejection letters and rating them on a scale of painfulness and sarcasm.

Writing “Transistor Radio: A Story of Love and Technology”

Thomas Allbaugh joins the blog to discuss how he crafted his story "Transistor Radio: A Story of Love and Technology."  After, you can read a snippet from his story that will be appearing in Relief 4.1.

I think there’s a story in how I wrote this story.

First, for about four months, I had only this phrase:

“I discovered the unconditional love of the transistor radio.”

Then came the approach of our university sponsored “Writers Read,” a fall semester reading of faculty and student writing. As the “read” usually works well in showcasing poetry and short prose, I think of it as an opportunity to test and play with ideas in short forms before an appreciative, critical audience. This time, I decided to explore the phrase above. As I did so, I began to detail a “top forty” world I had known as an eighth grader. Out of this exploration of a time when I owned a transistor radio, an account of first love emerged, and I wrote the story in one sitting. Though the love story seemed telescoped in the first draft, I read it for the reading, and hearing it and seeing audience responses to it, I was encouraged to expand on the characters and a few of the episodes. I often find that hearing a story helps me to see what is wrong with it, what is working. I was encouraged even more when Relief accepted it for publication.

Though editor Chris Fisher rightly wanted the narrative to move more quickly to the love interest than it did at first—and he is right that the love story is the real core of this one—I also was grateful that he chose to retain the details of the narrator’s growing sense of his family’s sinking economic status in comparison with the continuing prosperity of his peers around him. So this story really benefited from his editorial insights.

Here is a small piece from "Transistor Radio: A Story of Love and Technology":

"Thanks."  She slouched on her right leg, her left foot in pointed black shoes aimed at me, her left knee bent.  Though she had not developed breasts yet, her legs were wonderfully curved and slender from playing in sports. "I mean it.  That was great." She just nodded. Standing next to her for the first time, seeing the deep brown strands of her hair parted across her olive forehead and her retainer against her close, full front teeth, I wanted to tell her how great her band was.  I wanted to lie, to tell her that I played something cool like the guitar.  "Mike plays violin," Nick said.  He was across the room, unplugging the PA system. Carmina looked up then, as if noticing me for the first time, "Really?" I wanted to deny this.  I wanted to run.  As always, my failures to meet the criteria set by my peer group were made crystal clear. "Well," I said.  "I sorta used to."  This was as true as I could make it. Nick looped a microphone cord nearly around his hand and elbow.  "We should have him helps us with some Emerson Lake & Palmer.  Or the Moody Blues.  You know them, right Mike?" I smiled.  "Yes."  I had never heard of Emerson Lake & Palmer.  Or the Moody Blues.  Neither had been on late-night transistor radio.

***

Thomas Allbaugh has published both fiction and nonfiction in Blue Moon Review,Mars Hill Review, Perspectives, and Writing on the Edge. He teaches writing at Azusa Pacific University, where he also coordinates the first year writing program. His first year composition textbook Pretexts for Writing was published by Kendall/Hunt in 2009. He lives in Southern California with his wife of almost 21 years and their four children.

Tom Noe's Poems

Tom Noe's poems “The Soul for Sale on eBay,” “Hiroshima,” “Awakening Next to My Wife,” “A New Kingdom of the Old,” and “The Lecher and the Wise Man” will all be appearing in Relief 4.1.  Below is a note from Tom followed by his poem "Hiroshima." In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More says that God intends for a human person to serve him “wittingly, in the tangle of his mind.” In writing poetry--the tangled interplay of word, image, sound, evocation and association--the mind probes the complexities of the heart in order to create and communicate beauty. For me, the best poem would be a coherent marriage of beautiful images, beautiful words and beautiful ideas. That’s the goal I strive for.

Hiroshima

World War True pursued its end in sins of the flash hydrogenising, rendering Homo Icarus a skeleton before his splash.

No matter whether or when its fire devours you or wind explodes you please take the turning either left or right into no matter it is all unto filmed ruination.

No time to flip coins hoping the reverse of the future comes up.

These facts dissolve the breath quoted in Genesis 1: --1 in a quadrillionth of a second when the blind saw the dying as the phosphorescence of a smoking white jewel its silting folds of lightning fog reflecting whispers of lit faces the cloud a pearl in the shell of earth's verticality of beauty.

Open your eyes to become blind part your lips unless there is time left to sing words to bear the displaced weight of what can't be spoken.

A rising continent of superheated air shrouded in the jewel and the accrual of death steaming the skin of the sea off.

We will make a star so that the scent of death reaches, touches every face.

***

Tom Noe is a professional editor and writer whose book publishing credits include: The Sixth Day (for children), Into the Lions’ Den and A Friend in God.His most recent project was the libretto for an opera based on the story of Eros and Psyche from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He’s currently working on a new play set in a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. His poetry can be found in Relief issue 4.1

The Story of Amy Frykholm's Creative Nonfiction Story

Amy Frykholm joins the blog to discuss how she came to write her essay "The Flesh of Strangers." After, you can read the first few paragraphs from her piece.

I wrote the first draft of this essay more than 15 years ago while I was still living in Estonia. I started a series of stories about my encounters there in a notebook with thick graph paper that a friend’s cat had peed on. I was so frugal in those days that I didn’t think to replace the notebook; I just dried it out. Or maybe that particular stink was stimulating to my creativity. I don’t know.

I wrote and re-wrote the essay for years, trying to figure out what it was about. Should I add a long section on the history of saunas? Should I put it in the broader context of my experience in Estonia? It languished.

Then three things happened in the course of one year. I met Lisa Ohlen Harris, non-fiction editor for Relief, at a conference and heard her read from some of her own work about living in Syria and Jordan. A light bulb of recognition went on. Then, while at Duke University for another conference, I saw an exhibit of Jennette Williams’ photographs taken in bathhouses in Hungary and Turkey. (link to Jennette William’s page; link to my review on the Century website) I felt another “click.” These bodies move me in a powerful way. Finally, I read a book by Varda Polak-Sahm, called The House of Secrets about the Jewish women’s bathing practices.

I began to see that the essay was about the mysterious process by which “I” have come to inhabit my body. Essentially, this is a story about incarnation, about the uneasy relationship between body and spirit. I was able to finish the essay, and I immediately sent it to Lisa, who had been a kind steward of the process. I am so glad that the essay has finally found a home after so many years of wandering. Thanks, Relief!

Here is a teaser from "The Flesh of Strangers":

The heels of my black boots against the stone and snow of the street pounded out a rhythm. "I exist," they said.  "I exist."  On a Friday afternoon of failing December light, I was a shadow against the fences of the houses in the Kivimäe neighborhood of Tallinn, Esonia.  My boots were smart and sharp.  They made me a taller, more polished version of myself.  But my performance  of crisp heels against cobblestone, the performance of my own existence, was for an audience of one.  No one else was on the street.  I struggled even to hear myself.  "I exist" was the mantra of my feet, but my mind preferred a less substantive existence, slipping along the back streets in the low light and the slugh of early winter, shade without form, unnoticeable. Living in a foreign city, I had become increasingly timid.  I wanted to be invisible, a false native, blending in as I skirted the ancient city wall on my way to teach English classes.  When I went to the marketplace, I asked for a kilo of tomatoes first in Estonian and then, if I received a confused look, in Russian.  I hated being noticed, and I hated my fear of being noticed.  All of this pretending was a strain on my existence.  I became less and less sure that I did exist, silent as I so often was, lurking like Dostoevsky's Underground Man. On this Friday afternoon, I was on my way to the sauna, a two-story building of crumbling Soviet concrete.  Every Friday, when I finished teaching my last class at the Estonian Academy of Music, I packed a sponge, a change of underwear, shower shoes, and soap in a plastic bag emblazoned with a Miller Lite logo and walked a few blocks to the neighborhood sauna. In my small flat on the edge of the city, a shower was no easy task.  I had to turn on every spigot in the apartment full blast for forty-five minutes until a little steam would waft toward the ceiling of the red-tiled shower room.  So I undertook the process rarely, preferring to heat a little water on my stove and bathe quickly in the hallway from the shadeless windows.  By Friday, I was dirty.

***

Amy Frykholm is a staff writer for The Christian Century. She is the author of two books: the recently released Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography(Paraclete) and Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (Oxford). She lives in Leadville, Colorado, the highest incorporated town in the United States.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 6.16.10

Photo courtesy of Elaina Avalos. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Jill Bergkamp's Poems

Jill Bergkamp writes a post about how she came to create her poems "Sarah," "Leah," and "Ruth," all of which will appear in Relief 4.1.  Her poem "Ruth" is included at the end of this post.

I wrote this set of poems in 2007.  At the time I was very curious about the lives of the Biblical Patriarchs; what I had been taught in Baptist Sunday school compared to what I imagined when I re-examined their stories as an adult woman and mother.  I wrote “Sarah” first, with a different title, “Limits,” and was told in a workshop that it was one of the worst titles anyone had heard – so I kept it in a drawer until a few months ago.

I wrote “Leah” after our family moved to Florida from California.  It was a difficult transition for me, and it comforted me to read about the Biblical patriarchs, how they were nomads and traveled to some desolate places; how they could have imagined God forgot about them.  Leah fascinated me because of how she faithfully kept plugging out children all the while feeling neglected by her husband.  Each child’s name is so telling, at first I had every name in the poem, but ended up only keeping four.

“Ruth” always fascinated me as a child.  She was so loyal to Naomi, and I think there must have been a flannel story about her gleaning in the fields, and then uncovering and lying under Boaz’s feet.  I remember being told the advice Naomi gives her, and it’s amazing to me, how we sat in Baptist church with paper juice cups and graham crackers and learned these nuances about female friendship, power, and seduction.  The focus I remember from the story of Ruth was the love and devotion between the two women, but somehow I intuited there was more to that story about how to survive loss.

Ruth

It doesn't matter if you loved him, only that you want to live. A mother, not your own, hums foreign melodies

whose strange notes keep you awake. And when the metrics of your heart are weighted sand she whispers counsel--

lay yourself bare on that threshing floor, no artifice. Face and hair are freight enough, you are not

finished. More aching field than widow. How easy it is not to be dead, only still, blooming late, eternity is not

the miracle here, and this is not the last song you know.

***

Jill Bergkamp is a California native who now lives in Florida. A graduate student in Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program in Poetry, Jill now serves as Director of Children’s Ministries at the United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches, as well as teaching English Composition.  She was the recipient of Relief’s first Editor’s Choice Award, and a Rona-Jaffe Foundation Breadloaf Scholarship.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 6.9.10

Photo courtesy of Sheena Tatum. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Relief News Tuesday 6.8.2010

We went to print!!!

Over a week ago, we submitted issue 4.1 to the printer. Sometime over the weekend, it was approved for print.  This means that we should be receiving the copies of 4.1 in about a week and they will be shipped out immediately.  This also means that this is the last week for presales, so if you haven't purchased 4.1 yet, get on it!

Prayers

Michelle Pendergrass, ccPublishing's President, could use your prayers.  Her mother passed away yesterday after dealing with some major health issues.  We ask that you pray for her peace of mind as she handles the busyness over the next few days.

4.1 Author Blogs

Starting this week, we will be featuring blog posts from authors that will be in Relief 4.1.  We will be including excerpts of their pieces to give you a little taste of what is to come.  So keep your eyes open on here and also on Facebook and Twitter.  -- We did post Gwen Weerts' writing last week, so scroll down and read what she wrote if you missed it.

Literary Confessional (Part Deux)

In an effort to balance the scales after I encouraged you to come clean about the books you haven’t read, how about exploring ones that you have?

Now, there are two ways to go about this and I leave the choice up to you (unlike that Frost guy, who, true to his ingrained sense of white, male superiority forced me to take the road less traveled by).

You can, of course, choose to talk about books that were truly meaningful experiences. These are the books you want people to know you’ve read because they make you look smart, thoughtful, or at least literate. There’s nothing wrong with this desire and I actually like hearing stories about these types of reading experiences.

For example, when I read Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays, I wanted to stop being a writer. That book is a clinic in how to write a novel. Nothing extra. Real people. Every chapter ends the way a great book should, and then another one starts. Sure, it’s a depressing account of the loss of meaning in 1960s Hollywood, but it’s so depressing you forgive it.

Or I could talk about Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. I’d never heard of the 109-page novella about freewill and bridge collapses until I read it. And then, I wanted there to be six more like it so I could teach an entire class titled “See, this is what novels about faith are supposed to look like.” Of course, I’d shorten that title, but whatever.

So feel free to drop down to the comments if option one is the way you’d like to respond. However, if you are feeling more daring, choose option two. Tell me about the books you’ve read that you wouldn’t normally bring up in conversation. Here, let me help.

 I’ve read the novelization of the Mel Brooks' movie Spaceballs at least six times. It’s still funny. Ditto the novelization of John Hughes’ Some Kind of Wonderful. Only read that book if you want to a) feel good and b) revel in nostalgia (the good kind of nostalgia, not that kind that rewrites the history of, say, Native Americans to the point where they were happy to find the reservation).

There are of course other books I could list, but I’d rather you did. So pony up people and let’s hear about the books that moved you (or moved you to silence).

Michael Dean Clark holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is an assistant professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Currently, he is taking a break from writing to hike Mt. Whitney and watch the NBA finals.

"The Greatest Show on Earth"

Gwen Weerts, author of "The Greatest Show on Earth" which will be appearing soon in Relief 4.1, writes about how her Creative Nonfiction story began.

I began drafting “The Greatest Show on Earth” in response to a very underwhelming circus performance, which at first led to an inquiry into the nature of spectacle. Interestingly (at least I think it’s interesting), the first draft of the story was written in play/script format, with scene details in italics, and narrative commentary ascribed to a narrator or voice over. I loved the form for this essay, but as the story developed, it became more and more about wonderment, the terrific, the terrible, and less and less about the observer and the observed. The narrator, stage directions, and voiceovers also quickly subsumed the dialogue. As I began to revise the story, I twisted and contorted the storyline to justify the form, but in the end the story won. Still, I love the idea of using the form of a script to advance a narrative, and I’ve been waiting for just the right opportunity to revive it.

I’ve heard it’s a bit of a faux pas to share early drafts of unrevised work (after all, we revise for a reason), but to convention I say “Ha!” So here it is, the opening scene to “The Greatest Show on Earth,” as first conceived:

Act I

Scene One

A mountain vista in the background.  This is Skyline Divide Trail on one of the last beautiful days of the fall.  The low blueberry shrubs have changed into their late-autumn attire, a brilliant russet garment that transforms the alpine meadows from gold to ruby.

Voice Over:  About Skyline Divide, the Hiking Whatcom County book says, “The hike is steep at first, then eases off in old-growth forest for 1.5 miles before reaching a small opening around 5,200 feet. The path soon crosses the wilderness boundary and meets the meadowy crest of the ridge, at one of those places where your whole body involuntarily just says ‘wow.’”

Four hikers enter, wearing packs.

Jen: So, how was the show?

Gwen: Mm, it was interesting.  The drumming was fantastic.

Joshua: The contortionist was . . .

Kris: Pretty amazing?

Gwen: Uh, went on too long. The woman finishes his sentence, one of those irksome things that married people do.

***

Gwen Weerts has an MA in nonfiction creative writing from Western Washington University. She works as an editor for an optical engineering society, and after spending her days immersed in algorithms, debating the most judicious use of a hyphen in the present lens design textbook, she spends her evenings and weekends writing and speaking in run-on, but grammatically perfect, gibberish to her husband, dog, cat, chickens, garden, and anyone else who who will listen. Her essays have appeared in the quarterly publication Adventures Northwest, and she is working on a collection of stories from her year living and learning in sub-Saharan Africa.  Her short story, "The Greatest Show on Earth," can be found in Relief issue 4.1.

Relief News Thursday 5.27.2010

Official 4.1 Cover

It's right there in the sidebar, and doesn't it look great?!

4.1 Presales

If you want to get yourself a copy of issue 4.1 for 25% off, you have three and a half more days to do so.  Presales for 4.1 will only be good until 11:59 PM on May 30. So hurry up and order a copy already!

New Buy Page

Our Web Editor--who is writing about himself in the third person right now--was up very late last night perfecting a new streamlined Relief store. This is because we will soon be offering all of our issues as eBooks for your computer, Kindle, Sony Reader, etc.  We are also discussing expanding our store to include the infamous Relief mug, as seen in pictures below. (We can't make any promises about adding it yet, but if you let us know how much you love it, the chances of it becoming available increase by 100 times--I promise.)

Attention 4.1 Authors

If you are a 4.1 author, please check the e-mail account connected to your Online Submission System account for an e-mail from me. There is some time sensitive information in there, and I don't want you to miss it.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 5.26.10

Photo courtesy of Elaina Avalos. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!

Authors of Issue 4.1

Presenting the authors of our next issue:

	Tom Noe “The Soul for Sale on eBay,” “Hiroshima,” “Awakening Next to My Wife,” “A New Kingdom of the Old,” and “The Lecher and the Wise Man” Poetry Tom Noe is a professional editor and writer whose book publishing credits include: The Sixth Day (for children), Into the Lions' Den and A Friend in God. His most recent project was the libretto for an opera based on the story of Eros and Psyche from Ovid's Metamorphoses. He's currently working on a new play set in a Catholic Worker house of hospitality.
	Thomas Allbaugh “Transistor Radio: A Story of Love and Technology” Fiction Thomas Allbaugh has published both fiction and nonfiction in Blue Moon Review, Mars Hill Review, Perspectives, and Writing on the Edge. He teaches writing at Azusa Pacific University, where he also coordinates the first year writing program. His first year composition textbook Pretexts for Writing was published by Kendall/Hunt in 2009. He lives in Southern California with his wife of almost 21 years and their four children.
	Stacy Barton "I Read Chekov" Fiction Stacy Barton’s stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals including Potomac Review, Relief, Ruminate and Stonework. Her collection of short stories, Surviving Nashville, was released in 2007 and is available at www.wordfarm.net and/or www.amazon.com. Stay tuned for the release of the audio version of her collection, coming soon! In addition to short fiction, Stacy is the author of two plays, a children's picture book, a Ringling Bros circus, and an animated short film. Currently she works as a free-lance scriptwriter for the Disney Company. Visit her at www.stacybarton.com.
	Nicholas Samaras “Considering the Nature of God,” “Lighter Vessel,” and “The Along of My Time” Poetry Nicholas Samaras won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award with his first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker. His next manuscript is a complete Book of Psalms (150), of which these are three samples. Currently, he lives with his family in West Nyack, New York.
	Michael Wiley "God is Playing to an Audience Who is Afraid to Laugh," "The Stain," "Take this Moment," and "Daniel's Moon" Poetry Michael Wiley is a geezer who spends most of his time wearing stretchy pants and watching wildlife from his back porch. He used to have a philosophy of poetry, but he lost it about the same time he started watching birds. He's not quite a Luddite, but he still uses rabbit ears, his internet connection is dial-up, and he checks his email about once a month. He welcomes comments on his work, but he is likely to forget just where he submitted it, so don't take his non-reponse to your comments personally.
	MaryAnne Wilimek “Passing from Darkness to Light*” Creative Nonfiction (*Editor's Choice) MaryAnne Wilimek lives in northern Minnesota where she spends a good deal of time in the woods or on the waters with her husband Gregg and her dog Murphy. She is fond of gardening, traveling, photography, and occasions for quiet reflection. Her poems and creative nonfiction narratives have appeared in Lake Country Journal, Dust & Fire, and Northwoods Woman. She has work forthcoming in Radix and The Gettysburg Review.
	Lynn Kilb "Eternal Life" Fiction Lynn Kilb is a former broadcast journalist who turned to corporate communications (because the money was better) and then to fiction (because money isn't everything). She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing through the low-residency program at the University of Nebraska, and is living the advice she got years ago from a former news director: Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. Lynn has just completed her first novel set primarily on the altar of a Catholic church in Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
	Kenneth Steven "The Ice" Fiction Kenneth Steven is a full-time writer - poet, children's author and novelist. Some 25 of his books have appeared to date. He lives on the edge of Highland Scotland with his wife Ute, and from here he travels all over the UK to give readings and run workshops both for adults and youngsters alike. He's made a number of programmes for BBC Radio. Much of the inspiration for his work comes from the natural world; he spends as much time as possible walking in the woods and hills around the village where he lives.
	Josh Howatt "Unforgetting" Creative Nonfiction Josh Howatt is a freelance writer and editor. His writing credits include pieces featured or forthcoming in The Wilderness House Review, The Battered Suitcase, The White Whale Review, and Hear Us Roar. He is in the process of editing his first novel, The Law of Lilies, which he has begun shopping to literary agents and publishing houses.
	Jill Bergkamp "Sarah," "Leah," and "Ruth" Poetry Jill Bergkamp is a California native who now lives in Florida. A graduate student in Florida Atlantic University's MFA program in Poetry, Jill now serves as Director of Children's Ministries at the United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches, as well as teaching English Composition. She was the recipient of Relief's first Editor's Choice Award, and a Rona-Jaffe Foundation Breadloaf Scholarship.
	John Fox "Requiem for a Daughter*" Fiction (*Editor's Choice) John Fox received a Master of Professional Writing degree from USC and an MA in Literature from NYU. He won the 2010 Third Coast Fiction Contest and was a finalist for the Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange Award. His fiction has been published in Tampa Review, Adirondack Review, and Los Angeles Review. At his blog, BookFox, he writes about short stories.
	Jenn Blair "Washed" Fiction Jenn Blair is from Yakima, WA. She has published in Copper Nickel, The Tusculum Review, the Santa Fe Review, and Cerise Press. Her chapbook All Things are Ordered is out this month from Finishing Line Press. She teaches at the University of Georgia.
	Jeanne Murray Walker “Fleeting*,” “Learning to Print Sophia,” “Conference: On Aging and Grief,” “Who is My Nieghber?,” and “St. Louis Museum of Art: Self Portrait” Poetry (*Editor's Choice) Jeanne Murray Walker, poet, playwright, and teacher, is the author of seven books of poetry, including A Deed to the Light, Coming into History, and, most recently, New Tracks, Night Falling. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, Christian Century, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Image and Best American Poetry. An Atlantic Monthly Fellow at Bread Loaf School of English, Walker has also been awarded a Pew Fellowship in The Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, eight Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships, The Glenna Luschei-Prairie Schooner Prize, and other fellowships and prizes. For 20 years she was the Poetry Editor of Christianity and Literature. She currently serves on the Editorial Board of Image and Shenandoah magazines. Her manuscripts are archived in Special Collections at the Buswell Library, Wheaton College.
	Gwen Weerts "The Greatest Show on Earth" Creative Nonfiction Gwen Weerts has an MA in nonfiction creative writing from Western Washington University. She works as an editor for an optical engineering society, and after spending her days immersed in algorithms, debating the most judicious use of a hyphen in the present lens design textbook, she spends her evenings and weekends writing and speaking in run-on, but grammatically perfect, gibberish to her husband, dog, cat, chickens, garden, and anyone else who who will listen. Her essays have appeared in the quarterly publication Adventures Northwest, and she is working on a collection of stories from her year living and learning in sub-Saharan Africa.
	Eugenia Leigh “Angel Hunting,” “Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows,” “How I Drank Us to Death,” “Plastic Continent,” and “Illegitimi Non Carborundum” Poetry Eugenia Leigh received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and has led poetry workshops for incarcerated youths and high school students. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kartika Review, Inkwell Journal, and The Sow's Ear Poetry Review. Eugenia is a Korean American poet born in Chicago and raised in Los Angeles. She lives and writes in Brooklyn.
	Don Thompson “Truth,” “The Word,” “Fried,” “Sin,” and “Light Poetry Don Thompson has been publishing poetry for over forty years. He and his wife, Chris, live on her family's cotton farm in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California not far from the prison where he teaches. He has published several chapbooks in the past few years including Been There, Done That and Turning Sixty (March Street Press;) Sittin' on Grace Slick's Stoop (Pudding House;) Where We Live (Parallel Press;) and Back Roads, which won the 2008 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize.
	Christopher McCracken "But the Ball had been a Ball," "A Jar," "Empty Tree Full of Birds," "Heaven Will Smell Like the Airport," and "Ziplocked Everything" Poetry Christopher McCracken lives in Huntsville, Texas where he studies, among other things, creative writing at Sam Houston State University.
	Amy Frykholm "The Flesh of Strangers" Creative Nonfiction Amy Frykholm is a staff writer for The Christian Century. She is the author of two books: the recently released Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography (Paraclete) and Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (Oxford). She lives in Leadville, Colorado, the highest incorporated town in the United States.

Nicholas Samaras won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award with his first book, "Hands of the Saddlemaker." His next manuscript is a complete Book of Psalms (150), of which these are three samples. Currently, he lives with his family in West Nyack, New York.

Literary Confessional

I don’t usually solicit comments on my blogs, but I’m going to this time. Shamelessly. Mostly, I’m asking for response because if I’m the only one who does what I suggest, I’m going to look like a tool. But, no pressure…

What I propose is a little confession. Writers are readers. It’s what we do. It’s where we steal borrow take learn our best techniques. And, well, we enjoy it. If not, we wouldn’t dream of telling other readers about how we wrote the book they love so much. (What, you don’t do that?)

But here’s the rub: we tend to lie about books we’re supposed to have read. Seriously lie, and not just by omission or that nod we give when people ask, “So, have you read (title of unread book goes here)?”

It’s a weird impulse. All these completely unrelated inadequacies jump up your throat when you’re standing with two or three other readers and they’ve all (apparently) read something you haven’t. They know something you don’t. They’re more literarily hip than you. They might not invite you to the next spontaneous book circle because you’re not cool enough. They might stuff you in the next available locker or mock your hair.

Now try that feeling in a Ph.D. program where people throw out books you’ve never heard of and EVERYONE has read them SIX TIMES. So you lie. You nod, dredge up some part of the Sparknotes summary you remember or, failing that, drop some random non-sequitur line from a Mel Brooks movie. Hopefully the conversation moves on and you put the book on your list of books you have to read before promptly forgetting about it until you’re shamed again.

So, I’m going to try and get out in front of this for once (and I think you should too). I figure, if I admit to some of the books on my list of “shouldas” it will hold me accountable to move them over to being “dids.” The following are books I may or may not have led people to believe I read:

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Seriously, I’ve read the first ten pages of this book twelve times and, true to my undiagnosed culturally-induced ADD, I drop it for the latest Chuck Klosterman offering. But, I’m told, if you’re going to read magical realism not penned by Borges, this is where you start.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

While this is really a lit-nerd’s pick (no offense to my friends who are lit nerds), this book is on so many contemporary top ten lists that I sometimes feel like avoiding the New York Times books section as much as the novel itself. I hear it’s quite funny and I am a sucker for footnotes.

Underworld by Don Delillo

While most people I know prefer Delillo’s White Noise (a great book I can attest to directly), I need to read this one if for no other reason than it really suffered for coming out at about the same time as Candace Bushnell’s terrible Sex in the City (a book that is actually worse than the horrible show is spawned). So I need to get over the weird temporal association I’ve made linking the two.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I actually went to hear Diaz read from his novel a year ago and thought it sounded great. And then I got buried reading for my comprehensive examinations and writing my own book and never got back to it (not that my colleagues who I’ve spoken with about the book would have been able to tell).

Those are some of mine. What are some of yours? The confessional booth of the comments section awaits you below.

Michael Dean Clark holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is an assistant professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. While he has not read the books listed above, he has read many others. He has also (proudly) seen every episode of Walker Texas Ranger.

Photo Haiku Wednesday 5.19.10

Photo courtesy of Elaina Avalos. Directions:

1. Write a haiku inspired by the photo and post it in the comments.

For extra chances to win:

2. Follow @reliefjournal on Twitter

3. Follow @Quo Vadis on Twitter

4. Twitter @reliefjournal with your haiku and #PHW (Photo Haiku Wednesday)

* * *

The good people over at Quo Vadis have generously donated some prizes!!

The weekly winner will receive a Quo Vadis Habana Journal and a bottle of J. Herbin ink!!

Every week Relief will choose a random winner! So play along and tell your friends. See the information below for extra chances to win.

* * *

Winner will be announced via Twitter Thursday afternoons.

We can only ship to U.S. addresses right now.

You may only win once every three months, but you may play along every week for Twitter Super Bonus Points.

* * *

Would you like to have your photo featured on Photo Haiku Wednesday?

Email your photos to Michelle: photohaiku@reliefjournal.com

You'll get a photo credit link here on the main blog and you'll also be entered in the drawing for the Quo Vadis Habana journal and bottle of J. Herbin ink the week your photo appears on the blog!