Reading as a Writer: “Ace” by Richard Carr

Compressed squares of old junked cars in straight vertical piles fill the cover of Ace, winner of the 2008 Washington Prize, and the last of the four poetry books Richard Carr published this year that I’ve now read.  The junkyard feel of the cover actually turned me off initially.  I set this book aside to read last.  As it turned out, I saved the best for last.

Piercing details and language, hallmarks of Richard’s poetry, flash on the pages, bringing images into laser-like focus.  One in particular that has stuck with me: “Mother clung to me with bird-like claws….”  This phrase beautifully captures the discomfort of a mother clinging to a child.  The image that came to my mind was of a peregrin falcon, not a sparrow.  Later in the same poem, the mother is described, “against her relentless chirping,” and suddenly the word harpie comes to mind.  This is what I enjoy about Richard’s poems.  Reading them is a descent into pleasurable free association.  He understands the power of the word to evoke.  My imagination loves it.

This collection consists of four sections, “Ace,” “Carol,” “Miss Princess,” and “Little Ace.”  Each section focuses on the section title’s character.  More than with his other books, this collection is novelistic, with emotional action moving forward through thoughts, memories, scenes, and impressions.  The momentum is dramatic.  By the end of each section, the reader has a clear picture of that section’s character, intellectually and especially emotionally.  These people are far from the hallowed halls of the Ivy League or Wall Street (not a bad thing nowadays?), revealing human survival on an almost primal level.  This poetry sometimes is like eavesdropping on a character’s mental self-talk.  Or even the murmurings between the heart and the mind.

I didn’t find any of the characters particularly likeable, although Ace’s desire to find his grandchild and forge a connection is poignant in its humanity.  Their lives exist far from my own.  And yet, I’ve met bartenders who were wise beyond any expectation, as well as jaded and wonderfully entertaining.  Richard paints a picture in this collection of the disconnections of the human heart, that immeasurable distance between people that can be shortened in a second by a compassionate smile but never completely eliminated.  A foreign country within our own, which only reminds that each person is a foreign country within a unified community.  People are people.

Back to the cover: after finishing the collection, the compressed squares of junk metal on the front cover suddenly made sense.  Stacks of junked lives that continue to exist, maybe could be saved for something, but are never thrown away.  The hard metal of emotional resilience.

I enjoyed Ace and would recommend it.  Richard Carr is a neighbor.  I look forward to his next published collection….

Update on “Two Years and Counting”

The holidays fast approach, the new year is only weeks away.  I’ve slogged along with my projects and am ready to update my “To Do” list:

The Blog Itself: After reviewing many, many themes here at WordPress, I decided that I wanted to stay with the one I have.  It’s clean, with white space for easy reading, and I like the widgets on the right.  I re-arranged those widgets and added introductory text that originally had been a subtitle.  Finding the right photo for the header gave me the opportunity to peruse dozens of photos of Vienna and I found photos of several places I love in that city.  The photo that now serves as the header photo is of the Cafe Diglas on the Wollzeile in the First District of Vienna, Austria.  The entrance is to the left and the photo has been taken from a diagonal perspective to see how the cafe stretches up the adjoining cross street.  It’s an old fashioned Viennese cafe, although it looks like they’ve spruced up the exterior.  This cafe inspired one of the cafe’s used as a location in Perceval. 

The Perceval Novels: No change in the last two months.  I continue to seek employment, so I’ll keep my writing plans on hold for the novels until that situation has been settled.

Marketing Perceval: I found another publisher to query but haven’t yet put the query package together.  I plan to complete this task before the end of the year.  I also need to develop another batch of agents to query.

Short Stories: Lots of progress here.  I’ve completed Lights and it’s ready to submit so I’ve been researching possible markets.  I submitted The Shadow to three contests, not two.  I continue to develop The Negligee and will try to get a first draft down on paper before the end of the year if not sooner.

Essays:  One of the essays I’d submitted two months ago, Waking to Mozart, was rejected.  I’m looking for other markets for it.  Future Mind was published in Mensa Bulletin in the October 2009 issue under the title Money Talks.  I completed another essay, Word Power, and submitted it last month.  I continue to work on the longer essay, Rare.  Another essay idea burbled up the other day, one considering our “supersized” society.

Memoir (book):  I continue to develop this project.  Recently played with the idea of an experience with a contest threading through the book to anchor it in the present. 

eHow.com: After a gung-ho beginning, my efforts at this website have fallen by the wayside.  I need to decide if it’s worth pursuing….

Miscellaneous: While researching short story markets, I grabbed an opportunity for a free sample copy of one of the magazines in exchange for writing a review of it here.  The magazine arrived today.  Watch for the review in the coming weeks!

So, after two months, I feel that I’ve made some progress, although I would have liked to have made more, of course.  The holidays confuse and complicate life at this time of year, as pleasant as they can be.  I am determined, however, to mail the submissions and complete the first drafts….

I’m Late, I’m Late, for a very important….

Cyberspace and the digital world conjure for me the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and the rabbit hole.  I feel all too often that something I’ve sent off via the internet disappears into a rabbit hole to arrive not at the intended destination but some alien world across the galaxy from us.  I fear that the same could happen to intellectual property rights when dealing with digital or online formats. 

Recently, my scientist friend and I were talking about the Shostakovich 5th Symphony, specifically a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vanska that I heard in concert several years ago.  I wanted her to hear it and suggested she check out the Minnesota Orchestra’s broadcast concert archive at Minnesota Public Radio’s website.  But the concert wasn’t there!  I felt like I’d dropped suddenly down the rabbit hole because I’d perused that archive in the past.  Where had it gone?  A very helpful fellow answered my query, telling me that they no longer offered those concerts online due to rights issues. 

As a music-lover, I was not pleased by this.  But as a writer who owns intellectual property, I understood the broad issue.  Musicians, like writers, create a product, and like anyone who makes something to sell, they want to be paid for it.  In the realm of books, we now have e-rights for e-readers or other electronic formats that can be licensed to those who produce the e-readers.  At the moment, publishers are processing this fact, revising their boilerplate publishing contracts in order to clarify who owns the e-rights and for how long.  No writer should give these rights away (or any other rights, for that matter), and allowing someone to license the e-rights “forever” or some equivalent would be giving those rights away. 

Kindle, Sony’s e-reader, and other devices recently introduced to the reading public mean that the future is here now.  But what does that mean?  To me, it means only that readers have another way in which to experience stories.  They can read the words on paper in books, listen to them on CDs, or download them from the internet stores to read on their digital device.  It means that writers own another set of intellectual property rights for which they need to be paid, as they are for printed books and audiobooks. 

I’ve seen people on city buses with Kindles.  In sunlight, the screens are difficult to see, at least from my vantage point looking over a bus rider’s shoulder to peek at what he was reading.  It reminded me of the electronic readers in the Star Trek universe, specifically Star Trek: The Next Generation.   In Evan Quinn’s world, only 40 years in the future, people have the choice of how to read their books and magazines, just as we have today.  What enchants Evan, however, are “real” books.  He loves the smell of them.

Perhaps those Minnesota Orchestra concerts will remain archived but unavailable online, but that’s OK.  I think dealing with not having something at one’s fingertips, with not getting instant gratification could be a good thing….

That All-Important Relationship

Back in the day (ahem), editors edited.  They guided writers, taught them about language and grammar, illuminated narrative structure for them.  The best and wisest understood that the novel was the author’s not theirs and never tried to impose their suggestions for changes on the writing.  They were the pair of eyes a writer sorely needed to gain objectivity about what they’d written.  Those eyes needed a sharp but compassionate intelligence behind them, with a broad canvas of experience and knowledge.  Such editors still exist, but more and more, the most recent generation of editors do very little actual editing, from what I’ve heard from other writers and from editors themselves in published interviews.  The newest incarnation of the old-fashioned editor is the freelance editor.

Magazine editors are a different creature entirely.  The basics are the same, but the format is shorter, and the turnaround time faster.  A really good editor responds with specifics of what he/she needs; and while working with a writer on a piece, makes specific suggestions, focusing in on the parts that need work and those that please the editor.  I’ve learned a lot from good editors.  I really enjoy working with them.  The best respect my writing, my efforts, my time and intelligence, as I respect them.  They are not adversaries but allies in the process of publication. 

How I wish every editor out there were good!  But there is a range, as in any business, of intelligence, competence and ability to communicate to writers what they need from them.  There is a range of writers of intelligence and competence, too, but I want to focus on the editor here because more often than not, the focus is on the writer: how a writer needs to work with an editor. 

What to do when you encounter a less than stellar editor?  The first thing I ask myself is: how badly do I want this gig?  Sometimes, publication in the magazine is worth the aggravation of working with a less than stellar editor, depending on which magazine.  Sometimes, not.  The second thing: How much will I be paid?  The money better be good.  If not, I would respectfully take my leave.  Working with a difficult editor takes patience, clarity of your communication, and fearless but respectful questioning.  Beyond a certain point, vague feedback, changes without substantiation regarding the editor’s thinking specific to a sentence or paragraph, or lack of clarity in communication can frustrate me beyond words, especially when the editor becomes frustrated with me because I’m not getting what he/she has said.  But I’ve never walked out on a commitment.  I do the best I can and chalk it up to my continuing education.  Sometimes it’s a genuine relief if the editor kills the piece.

Most editors know what they’re doing, what they want and are able to communicate it well.  In the all-important working relationship between editor and writer, the editor has a responsibility to the writer as well as vice versa.  We just don’t hear about it as much as what the writer’s responsibility is toward the editor.  Both must want to forge the best possible writing between them…..