Anatomy of a Dress

On her side, reclining on her elbow.
This mechanism, this apparition,
Suppose we call it Projection A.

She floats in air at the level of
The eye, completely anonymous,
Born, as she was, at twenty-one,

Without lineage or language, only
The curving of her hip, as motionless gesture,
Eyes dripping blue, so much to learn.

If just abover her head there hung,
Suspended in air, the slightest crown
Of Gothic prong and practick bright,

The suspension, as in solid space,
The suspending hand withdrawn, would be
An invisible gesture. Let this be called

Projection B. To get at the thing
Without gestures is to get at it as
Idea. She floats in the contention, the flux

Between the thing as idea and
The idea as thing. She is half who made her.
This is the final Projection C.

The arrangement contains the desire of
The artist. But one confides in what has no
Concealed creator. One walks easily

The unpainted shore, accepts the world
As anything but sculpture. Good-bye
Mrs. Pappadopoulos, and thanks.

Wallace Stevens 1947

This seems so familiar! I can’t quite put my finger on it!

Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem with Time

He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
Haven’t they landed yet? At last
Dugan throws it on the table and says,
This reads like a cheap detective novel
and I’ve got nothing to say about it. It sits,
naked and white, with everyone’s eyes
running over it. The week before
he’d said I had a problem with time,
that in my poems everything
kept happening at once. In 1969,
the voice of Mission Control
told a man named Buzz
that there was a bunch of guys turning blue
down here on Earth, and now I can understand
it was with anticipation, not sickness. Next,
Dugan says, Let’s move on. The attempted poem
was about butterflies and my recurring desire
to return to a place I’ve never been.
It was inspired by reading this
in a National Geographic: monarchs
stream northward from winter roosts in Mexico,
laying their eggs atop milkweed
to foster new generations along the way.
With the old monarchs gone (I took this line as the title)
and all ties to the past ostensibly cut
the unimaginable happens–butterflies
that have never been to that plateau in Mexico
roost there the next winter. . . .I saw this
as a metaphor for a childhood I never had,
until Dugan pointed out
that metaphor has been dead for a hundred years.
A woman, new to the workshop, leans
behind his back and whispers, I like it,
but the silence is seamless, as deep
as outer space. That night in 1969
I could turn my head from the television and see
the moon
filling the one pane over the bed completely
as we waited for Neil Armstrong
to leave his footprints all over it.
Nick Flynn

Back at home, unemployed, casting a million tiny filaments into the abyss. The object is to watch them knit into net and gather something–anything–up. Am beginning to realize that my angry, angry response to Nick Flynn’s blithe dismissal of my writing abilities came because it came in the week of my job-quitting, my shaky conviction that while I may not be very good at life, I was a demfine writer.

I actually still think I am a-okay with the writing. The rest of it’ll come. It’ll have to.

Dear Diary, today Nick Flynn taught me how to write a language poem (it only took a day!) Basically you free write for a really long time and then you take everything that sounds good and put it together, like a technological collage made of glitter and dried macaroni and magazine slogans. Being a poet is easy. Writing camp is so great!

Love, Farren

PS Wanna read?

Braid slipped in a back pocket.

They bear up no bodies only shadows that shapeshift
The choice is to self-parent–

Asp-mouth. Carbon teeth.

This does not live where you live, or vibrate at the strike of your feet.

One vocation will pay me and for the other
I will pay and pay and
Pay.

Arabesques make inroads for the timorous

Dead lover—only dead to me, only dead because I wouldn’t give him up

Does this water move—if I set a paper boat on its face would we sail? Would it rain again?

Listen for the sound that comes before the sound of bees. By the time you hear the bees it will be too late.

A mouth clamped shut because the body folds over. A body bowed.
When the plane lifts its iron skirts

you can see every plastic capillary, every lead plug.
Mapped by bees

always whittling, always screaming about the stings, but that’s how they love you

I remember a disquisition on forgiveness as a way to keep returning to the hurt

No grief, not grief, not black grief nor gray dread, not dead jealousy or jealousy in the act of murder,

Where water touches land

I remember lice, great monsters with hugely discernible bodies, I remember drowning them in a glass of water

These are guts multiplying like snakes, nests of reds and yellows and greens, and here you can see where they fit to a board

I remember returning to the hurt—the hurt was the love

Not black grief curtain descending grief God’s silent disappointment grief
But the moment of unfurling

Think about the timing. The elements must have chosen you.

A navel mouth singing heart’s songs in the shower’s clatter.

Watch for ice—those palaces will take up residence and freeze you out and clean

Not this and no, and not the stuff of this. This is not yours, not grief for holding, not for to admire or pass around, not to name or nurture

Am I steady enough, behind her curtain of lantana, to charm them?

What, then?

A storm, a weather system, a clatter in the shower, a ritual cleansing, a sacrificial
So, what: a body that never grew hair and skin sweet as honey—half as sticky.

I can’t smell fear but they lift off my body in agitated ripples

“sometimes you get to be the canvas but you are never gonna be the hand that holds the paintbrush.” Too jumpy, too liable to liable to move, no charmer.

It could snap, or lose its nerve sensation, and suddenly you’re rudderless, or oarless. They are improper, those nested insides.

A sleep like tv snow. Who moves too fast. Who accommodates in quantity where lacking in quality. Who tells herself stories in order to survive

the loamy underlayer

It’s littered the edges of its territory with brown shards.

I was standing in the shower this morning and last nights dream started echoing back around me, snatching at my hair. Something about a friend on the phone; he sounded desperate and scared.

Also realized that I am pretty spoiled for instructors. The Michener Fellow tells me MOST hotshot writers are strutting and egomaniacal and unprepared. She tells me that her class banded together and asked to have Marie Howe, who didn’t like any poem unlike the kind she writes, removed as workshop leader. “Though,” she considers, “I’d probably follow Brigit Pegeen Kelly to like, Tennessee. Or anywhere.” We had undergrad creative writing professors who fostered our tastes, wherever they ran, and were invested in our spiritual and creative development, even while they underwent personal upheaval over their own. Can’t expect quality like that all the time, I suppose.

This morning I had a meeting with Herr Flynn, for 30 minutes before workshop convened. He’s scheduled meetings with each of us, ostensibly to discuss where we are as writers, what we are and should be reading, and our manuscripts (since we won’t actually be covering those in workshop). This morning we started off with the typical awkward exchange: I showed him my Legitimate Dangers anthology (re: a discussion yesterday about Rachel Zucker) and we were off.

I showed him Dana’s section and pointed out the poem “Chill Core”, told him it was one of my favorites. He said yes! I can see the influence in your authoritative voice. Okay, well what did you think of my manuscript? “What do you want to know?” Can I apply to grad schools with it? And then I fell down the rabbit hole.

Let me see if I can try to crystallize what he told me. “If I were on an admissions committee in Houston, there is no doubt this collection would make the final cut. You have craft, you have polish, you’ve earned your chops. But your writing leaves me unsatisfied. It’s didactic and authoritative. There’s no room for questioning, no edge, and so if given the choice between your poem and a poet who’s taking chances and is not as good, I’d choose the latter. What do I really have to teach you? I’m sure you’ll do fine on your own, you’ll publish here and there, there are lots of small presses and you’ll probably eventually get a chapbook or whatever–”
Can you tell me what you’re talking about, my lack of heart, of edge?
And then he hastily chooses a single line from the center of my Animus poem, “Why so many? Demanded I, of myself.” and declared it a syntactical departure from the rest of the poem. “I still don’t understand what you mean. Okay, my poems are too polished. What do I do to crack them open?” And he describes the way he cuts articles out of the newspaper, collects rocks and feathers, amasses great piles of things that draw him in and interacts with them until he starts writing about them. Well, I do that too. What’s the difference? “Well, it’s time to have class.”

AND THAT WAS IT. Nick Flynn shat all over me and then I sat through another two and a half hours of completely random and sudden (he hates that word!) migration from one subject to another without really dropping anchor anywhere long enough to absorb a lesson, truly. Here’s an example: Kunitz! He wrote this book, but I can’t remember who published it, I think it’s a Warren Wilson something, I don’t know, what are we doing here? Oh yes, Kunitz–and he talked about the 3 types of poems: circular, linear and didactic. So the best poems are crossover poems– “Excuse me, Nick? Can you tell me what a circular, linear and didactic poem is?” They are what they sound like! A circular poem comes back around, a linear poem goes from start to finish, and a didactic poem tells you something. So anyway– and off we went, into fetishes-as-”objective corrallative” land.

Here are a few of many of my theories.

- I over-edit my poems. I shine the shit out of those bitches until even I, with my infinitely literal, parsing intellect, understand how they move and what they mean.
-I write in a way that Nick Flynn does not like, and a way that is not especially popular. In a world of textured language-y “interiority” poems, I write lyrics that circle closely around a narrative hub.
-Due to above, I might make Herr Flynn a little uncomfortable because that is not what he writes/what he wants to write/he doesn’t know what he writes.
-Nick Flynn is trying to piss me off so I’ll write harder to spite him.
-Nick Flynn did not actually read my manuscript (I am actually pretty certain Mr. Hollywood has only given it a cursory scan. He didn’t know I had a poem about a pomegranate in it? And another workshop member told me he admitted to feeling ethically conflicted by the fact that other workshop members paid $750 for his consultation of their complete manuscripts?) and made all this stuff up based on his initial impresson of me: intense, Jung and Plath-obsessed, obsessed, rigorous.
-Dana: “The poems that got me into NYU were pretty sure what they were about.”

Here is what Nick Flynn alluded to, and here is what I will never accept: if you were a painter, your pieces would hang on hotel room walls and never in the MOMA. You will toil in mediocre obscurity until you give this up or die.

Here’s what I know: I’m 24 years old and my mandates are personal and they involve keeping myself held opened and offered up and writing until my hands fall off, and dictating thereafter. As for Mr. ADD “What class am I in? What are we doing? Whose clothes are these?” he can SUCK IT. I’m going to be a writer, and he can just take “edgy” and clutch it lovingly to his chest as he plummets over a cliff.

NF: I want you to retain this ability to look through the lens of bewilderment. So put that concept up in your brain and let it rattle around. Or your soul.

FS: Wherever you’re empty.

Like a bathroom mirror, but not.

So of course I am totally freaking out. But the horror doesn’t stop there! Let’s step back and ruminate on Farren’s complete lack of ability to filter the words before they come out in a steady stream of–how did Lezlo put it?–word vomit? Yeah okay. Found a Lucy Corin book in the bookstore. Ten percent off! Everything must go! In line at the register, a very beautiful and effortlessly sundress-ed woman (why do I feel like the only female in the world who looks like a fool in a dress?) points to the book: “THAT BOOK IS SO AMAZING!” Exclamation points! Someone to chat about books with! “One of my mentors used to date her and was always promoting the bejeesus out of her stories! I’m very excited to get the opportunity.” WHAM. That woman’s face slammed shut like a door in the way of a gust of wind. So fast! I tried backpedalling like this: “Doesn’t she teach at Santa Cruz?” The woman edged away. “Davis, actually.” Yikes!

But seriously, it’s almost an out of body experience. It is on the one hand so mindblowingly awesome to walk by a guy going, “Well but you know he just ripped the premise off of Tolstoy,” (because yeah! I can totally get behind that!) or “MFA programs either have too many amazing writers or none at all,” or whatever — but on the other hand it just seems really pretentious. “Okay guys. I’ll catch you later. I’m going to go talk to Dorothy Allison now.” I guess, in any professional gathering there’s the requisite amount of self-important douchebaggery. I love that I don’t have to turn my nerding off around these people, but I also feel resentful about letting it out because it just seems like a lot of people here take themselves REALLY seriously and that is so offputting. Maybe I secretly feel like I am not “serious” enough and have preemptively decided not to play. Or cop some defensive stance under the auspices of letting my work speak for itself (whatever that means.)

Speaking of not taking things too seriously! So at our initial meet and greet this afternoon, while poor Nick Flynn surveyed a table of poetesses and looked very afraid, yours truly studiously requests a nuts-and-bolts explanation of how workshop will go. Will we read our work aloud? Will we be allowed to cross-talk during critique? Herr Flynn throws his arms aloft. “It’s summer! That’s boring!”

Ruh roh.

“I was thinking this workshop would be more generative, we’d think of the poems as more fluid and in-process. We’re not going to do critique.” Having not quite decided how to cope with this curve ball, I kept my face blank and practice “interested”. Maybe we’ll do writing exercises. I believe he intends to hand out some things. Let’s see where this goes. Meantime, there will be readings.

Tonight was Peter Rock (who piqued my interest by logging onto our message board to declare his physical attraction to Nick Flynn) — he read from a novel he’s writing based on a true story of a father and daughter living in a city park. The premise was so incredible it would be hard to write an uninteresting story. And he wrote some good lines, as well: something wonderful about how in sentences, commas were breaths between thoughts which goes to show that breathing and thinking are the same. Eileen Myles read after and was…niche-y. The hipsters love her and I don’t know why! She occupies the shit out of her niche, but, you know. I watch “The L Word” so in my mind, Shane did it first and best. And I dunno. She wrote great things about what it’s like to write — but that’s a writer’s favorite and easiest subject (she said, after being shocked at how many memoirs and instructional guides on writing by semi- and well-known authors she’s heard of this week.)

And Dorothy Allison! Dorothy Allison! Who stood behind me in line at the (Bon Appetit catered, just like college) cafeteria and talked about her partner’s new job, who read the shitout of her story. I wished passionately and unreasonably for the piece she wrote for the New York Times magazine about her first foray into cooking duck. At booksigning time I handed Peter Rock a copy of his book of short stories and said “I’ve never read anything you’ve written, but I liked your reading and your post on our Nick Flynn forum was funny. I can’t wait to read your book.” He seemed adequately charmed. Dame Allison I complimented on her duck recipe–she elbowed Peter in the ribs: “D’you hear that? This sweet girl likes my duck!”–then: what’s your name, sugar?

I have, by the way, signed up to talk to Tin House editor (and really wonderful poet) Brenda Shaugnessy and to read aloud–two things I would rather not have done. But the reasons I don’t want to do them–they will be hard, they will be embarassing, I might be laughed at–are just the reasons I should charge into both of them.

I am hellaciously sunburnt from our blissful yesterday afternoon on Lake Washington (must remember to tell you about Indian Food and Elliot Bay Books, and the blissful 4-hour train ride to Oregon. I would live ten months a year in continuous darkness and damp for two months of this. I never want to leave this place). And the mosquito bites I collected at dinner with Greg earlier this week are multiplying. Even in Portland, the mosquitoes are carnivores. I meant to bring along benadryl cream to keep them from itching but managed to pack Neosporin instead–and then apply it, patiently, to my itching, aching ankles for two days before I spotted the discrepancy. But the error is corrected and life goes on.

Tonight, I practice, in accordance with Herr Flynn’s admonition and homework assignment, looking at poems “through the lens of bewilderment”. More on this tomorrow. For now–

More pictures!

Seattle, Part 1