Does Chaos Breed Creativity (Jen Intro) | The Weekly Atticus (04/20/2019)

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Just about a year ago, I was in Israel for business. It was the first time I had been back in the country since leaving there to return to live in New Jersey the summer prior. It just so happened my trip fell on the same week as a retirement celebration for my poetry mentor at Bar Ilan University. I was grateful for the chance to spend time with my creative writing program friends and faculty.However, what’s unavoidable when you’re meeting friends you haven’t seen in a while, (especially if you’ve left the country) is to answer questions about your well-being and the well-being of your children. At the time, my being wasn’t so very well, mainly around the matter of my dissolving marriage. Amongst writers, though, it’s less common to hear the generic, “I’m so sorry,” when sharing details of your mid-life crisis. Instead, you’re offered multiple versions of, “Well, it will make great material some day.” And I know they’re right: it will make great material someday, for something, even if the something is only a “Dear Jen” column I create for women-on-the-verge.Many artists, writers, and philosophers have expounded on the benefits and detriments of boredom and pain as it relates to life and art.  What’s been made clear to me during this time — a two-and-a-half year period of confusion, overwhelm, and imbalance — is that chaos does not breed creativity. In fact, trauma experts have found that without a baseline feeling of safety, security, and groundedness, one’s imagination, and hence ability to create art, is severely impaired.When one is bored, however, presumably one feels safe — from hunger, from illness, from violence, from tumult. Boredom allows time for observation and reflection; both necessary, I’ve found, for creating publishable writing.These days, I’m still not writing much. I’m focusing more on healing a hypervigilant nervous system and feeling grateful for the opportunities here and there to be bored. I’m comforted, though, knowing I come from a tradition in which adversity is often transformed into literature and literature into healing. Someday soon, when I’m "outside the situation," when I’m bored and writing again, you can remind me of this time, and I will know then, for certain, this time was just a pause, not unlike the space between a slow inhale and a long exhale, not unlike a blank page between chapters.Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here.Jen MaidenbergColumns Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Congratulations to the winners of our Poetry Contest:Josh Myers, Connie Post, and Emily Lake HansenREAD THE WINNING POEMS!Thank you to everybody who sent us their work.With just under 1000 poems submitted, it was a fierce competition!

Print Annuals are shipping!The first batch went out last week. If you are a Patreon Subscriber,yours will be going out this week.Get yours here!

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam GustavsonEDNAWe've had time to reflect over our short break, and accordingto our 23andme results, it's come to our attention that we aregenetically predisposed to publishing good shit.

BOOK REVIEWIN SEEKING CLOSURE, THE DIVE IS FOREVERA Review of LOCKED GRAY/LINKED BLUE by Kem Joy Ukwu from @BrainMillPressReview by Alina Grigorovitch @newtothepublic"Ukwu’s language is unadorned and masterfully deliberate, holding a reader’s attention while slowly peeling away one layer after the next to paint the most subtle portrait she can."READ ON

FICTIONTHE PARTYby Perry Glasser"We believed we might learn new indiscretions and repeat them with strangers as yet unmet, but then pulleys creaked, chains rattled, and the empty lift sank below floor level."READ ON

FICTIONTWO STORIES by Lori Sambol Brody"He dances to last year’s number one pop hit in a church, walls covered with flat-looking medieval Mary and Jesuses, wearing only black tights, bulging in the crouch."READ ON

NONFICTIONWINGSby Anne Gudger"He wraps me up and we stare, open mouthed, at Winged Victory. At Female power and love and grace and Don’t Fuck With Me. Earth and Air. Fire and Water. All the elements caught in marble."READ ON

FILMTHE HIGH LIFE OF LOW LIFESA review of HIGH LIFE from director Claire DenisReview by Emily Moeck"...a two-hour body horror jumble masked in artful close-ups and pastel light leaks."READ ON

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