Your Breath Into Words (Michael Intro) (06/12/2021)

Your Breath Into Words | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Intro by Michael Meyerhofer.

Whether it’s in a plane or a bar or on a dating app, every time I meet someone new and they find out I’m a writer, the first thing they do nearly every time is apologize in advance for all the grammatical mistakes they’re about to make—as though writers move through the universe with red pens behind their eyes, forever critical and scowling. Now, to be fair, there’s some truth to this. Being a writer requires a dash of perfectionism and that’s a hard thing to switch off, just because you’ve left the reading or the conference and now you’re standing in line at Taco Bell. But every time someone apologizes for their trivial mistakes with language, I flash back to things my students have said over the years, earnestly inquiring what we’re going to study in an English class since, you know, they already know how to speak English. And it falls on me to explain that there’s so much more to language than where the comma goes. Most seem genuinely stunned when they learn that the mistakes they fear the most are, in fact, the ones that will see them penalized the least. There’s a lesson here, I think—one that goes beyond the classroom, beyond the page. Consider the petty regrets we haul about like old furniture, all those harsh words we tossed into the garden like firecrackers, the forgiveness we withheld or perhaps gave a bit too quickly. Now consider instead the mistakes we didn’t make: the book we were afraid to read because of its rough subject matter, but we read it anyway; the tough essay or story or poem we didn't want to write because we knew it would probably come out mangled and unlovable, but we gave it our best shot. The position we were afraid to fight for but did, the hug we didn’t want to give but knew even as we shifted our arms that it was the right thing to do. As writers and readers, we rarely give ourselves the credit we deserve. Maybe that’s a good thing, a way to keep us humble (or at least rein in the arrogance a bit). Maybe being ignorant of what strange, amazing creatures we really are makes it easier for us to walk into whatever classroom life offers and learn something new, some small lesson or fact or phrase that seems to fill our chests like holy water.  Either way—yes, I admit it, I’ll always notice your misplaced comma, your starkly dangling participle. But more than that, I’ll notice the breath you’ve shaped into words, the little song you’re putting out into the world, which I’m lucky enough to hear.  Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here.Michael MeyerhoferPoetry Editor

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2021 WIGLEAF TOP 50 – ATTICUS REVIEW SELECTIONSCongratulations to Melissa Bowers for being selected for the Wigleaf Top 50 and Alyson Dutemple for making the longlist!READ MORE

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONBUGHOUSEby M.W. Brooke"Before his mouth could trigger, I scrambled away from him and Mama and retreated to the bughouse I’d left by the fence. I lifted the roof and plucked the first resident I could find."READ ON

POETRYTHE VERY EDGE OF ALL THINGSby Paul Jaskunas"Not wantingto showitself theshadowedcreaturesteps alongthe very edgeof all things"READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONBLACK JOY: CROSSING TIME AND SPACEby Michèle Alexandre"On lucky mornings, we hopped on taps taps—crowded Haitian buses—to bridge the miles. A long commute on foot to school without parents or adults shepherding us is such a different upbringing from my daughter's that I sometimes have to pinch myself."READ ON

MIXED MEDIAFIVE FRAGMENTS AND A GESTURE TOWARD WHOLENESSby Robert Miller and Sandie Friedman"We were inspired to do this project by a memento of Sandie’s–a single framed page, containing text and a photograph, from W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. That it’s a page extracted from the novel, and therefore fragmentary, gave us the idea to create partial, fictional texts that relate in some way to accompanying photos. Robert took the photographs, and Sandie wrote the fragments."READ ON

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