Let's Always Go On Reading (Michael Intro) (06/27/2020)

Let's Always Go On Reading | The Weekly Atticus

June 27, 2020

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

Lately, I’ve spoken with quite a few people who wondered aloud if they’d already suffered a mild strain of coronavirus sometime in the last few months; that they exhibited no symptoms besides perhaps a slight twinge of fever, then recovered without much fanfare and went about their lives with new antibodies humming through their bloodstream like miniature Greek warriors in full battledress. However, most of these people concede that this is just idle speculation, and they might instead have suffered a coincidental touch of the flu (after all, it’s not like the rest of the world’s ailments stopped roiling just because coronavirus took center stage). 

For some reason, this reminds me of a particular phenomenon I noticed years ago when I first started teaching creative writing, whether in classrooms mostly populated by young students or at community events inhabited by people whose hair is even grayer than my own: many people are quick to offer definitions of what poetry is, even though most freely admit to never having read anything younger than Frost or Dickinson. They are just as quick and confident when they describe the rules and qualities of a good story, even if they can’t name the last novel or short story they read for fun.

Countless times, I’ve heard fellow writers and educators chalk this up to naivety, a kind of common cold we all must suffer at times. Others attribute it to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias in which people fantasize themselves as far more intelligent and competent than they really are. Of course, all of this could be true. But there might also be something else at work here, something we’re missing.

Sure, we humans have mixed feelings about the unknown; yes, that probably goes double for artists and readers. All of us occasionally find ourselves shrouded in half-light, unable to see the path, pretending we aren’t as lost as we appear to be. But I don’t think it’s just the fear of appearing flawed or silly that motivates our claims to false authority. Rather, I think on some level, we all grasp intuitively that there’s something we’re missing, and wouldn’t all our lives be just a little bit brighter and clearer if we had more knowledge—more poetry—humming through our blood like antibodies? 

So let’s go on offering our half-baked definitions, our flawed explanations. Let’s go on changing and challenging them, abandoning them, remaking them. Let’s go on reading.

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Michael Meyerhofer

Poetry Editor

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS REVIEW

FICTIONTHE HARVESTby Andrew Bertaina"...like many couples we knew, we’d fallen in love with the way our conversation used to bend and slither as a river through the countryside, from art, to politics, to the strangeness of the human condition"READ ON

POETRYAFTER SLIM AARONSby Ruth Tobias"I’d rather be crouching behind a dumpster with a leaky eyeball in a swarm of flies. Even the moonlight is sunlit."READ ON

MIXED MEDIABEGINNINGSA short film by Les Bro"'Beginnings' is part of my video series exploring aspects of the emotional experience of African Americans in time and space."READ ON

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