Are You Writing? (Amber Intro) | The Weekly Atticus (04/27/2019)

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The season of rebirth is not necessarily a time of renewed inspiration for me. When the weather is warm, I have to fight to settle down and still myself. The impulse is to get out, get glorious. As soon as the sun shines, I like to find myself laid out on a blanket, the rays warming my skin, and the grass, and the urine of every well-loved dog in the county. Bless the flowers, bless the floating clouds. Luxuriate. Smile at the stranger in the grocery store. This is the mood Spring puts me in, and it’s not a mood conducive to holing myself up, scratching away with a piece of lead and wood on paper.  It was in this mood that I walked into a local independent bookstore looking for Jericho Brown’s latest work of genius, The Tradition. In the promotional photos for his book, Brown is pictured with an entirely appropriate garland of flowers around his head. It’s an earthly halo. He glows.  The store didn’t have a copy on hand. I ordered one. It should arrive in a few days. I hate leaving places empty-handed, especially independent bookstores, so I looked around. First, I looked at the shelves devoted to spotlighting books of poetry for National Poetry Month. Next, the best-selling fiction. I glanced at the non-fiction best-sellers. I continued to coil around the small store, a mouse through a maze, my whiskers twitching.  I wasn’t finding anything to catch my fancy, which was making me antsy. Years ago, in high school and college, I could walk into a bookstore and almost immediately fall in love with every other title I set my finger on, at the top of the spine, tilting it back a bit, sweeping it off the shelf like a bungee cord pulling a flesh-and-bone human back up to the bridge.  Had my taste become refined? Or have I simply become crotchety? Am I harder to please, less willing to give a book a chance? Am I an intolerable snot?  I do think, as a writer, over the last few years, I’ve developed a greater sensitivity to repeated, familiar, mass market work. I want something to surprise me without trying to surprise me. I want raw-hearted honesty without melodrama or entitlement. I want grit, worth. I want something that will make me squint through sunscreen to read it. I wasn’t finding that. And I was rather put out. Then I started looking again. Jeannette Walls’ The Silver Star caught my eye. I read her harrowing memoir in graduate school. I read over the back cover, hopeful. It sounded good. What you need when you’re lost, afraid, and alone in a bookstore is an author you can trust.  Next, back over at the poetry wall, I came across an unpretentious slip of a book. It was The Lumberjack’s Dove by Gennarose Nethercott. It wasn’t asking for attention. I like those books best. I opened it, read it, and sucked in my breath. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Finally, I picked up a work of nonfiction, God: A Human History by Reza Aslan. I was set for a well-rounded period of reading. I was satisfied. I heard the alarm bell go off in my head, so I found my companion and announced that I’d reached the danger zone that all bookish sorts know. I was on a tear in a bookstore. What all three of the books I took home with me have in common is that they all gave me a little tingle of jealousy. I realize that’s what it takes these days. For me to like a book, a part of me has to flip through it, frown, and think, “I wish I’d written this.” And that’s what I like about books. I like that they fuel me to write. And the books that fuel me to write are the books that I feel that I — operating at my highest level of talent and attention and wisest use of my time —could (or would) write myself.  Writer, I feel I’m supposed to be saying something to you. I feel that this little communication is meant to be in service of the writer who reads it. However, allow me to turn this thing on its head. Allow me to indulge in a few questions. You don’t have to answer them aloud, you don’t have to raise your hand. Just know the answer in your heart, and I’ll know my answer, too. That will suffice. Are you reading? Are you jealous? Are you zealous? Are you writing? We're glad you're here.Amber ShockleyAssistant Poetry Editor 

ATTICUS NEWS

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam GustavsonHANKYou are a badass. Start the weekend like one... with The Weekly Atticus.

BOOK REVIEWEND OF ONE WORLD, BEGINNING OF ANOTHERA Review of PORTRAIT OF SEBASTIAN KHAN by Aatif Rashid from 7.13 BooksReview by Bailey Drumm "Rashid gives us the chance to look at millennials in a different light. A tension between passion and privilege arises in conversations and interactions — about love, the future, or even topics of study."READ ON

FICTIONALL YOU WANTED WAS THE OCEANby Kate Finegan"Tonight, I hope, you’ll be too tired to remember all you’ve gotten is a scuffed-up snorkel bought on sale. This weekend you’ll get your full wish list, surely, from your father."READ ON

POETRYMY DEATHby Katie Schmid"My daughter brings me a book to read and we laughat the pictures. I smell the top of her head,sweat and fruit. In the corner of the room he stands,waiting for us. Welcome, I say. And, not yet."READ ON

NONFICTIONOR IF SHE IS HERSELFby Caroline Plasket"I am back in the house and this time I cannot decipher my own things from the things of the woman who now lives there. She is next to me. She is moving as I move."READ ON

MIXED MEDIATECTONIC PLATESA videopoem by Colm Scully"Among my poetry friends there are few working in engineering or science, among my workmates very few seem to enjoy poetry. To me this must be the essential synthesis. This poetry film is attempting to cross the gap."READ ON

FILM REVIEWTHE SQUEAKY CLEAN HISTORY OF GAME OF THRONESby Alison Lanier"Game of Thrones has evolved past the stereotypical soap opera in any number of ways: from budgeting to genre to the quality of the performances. But the bones are there. It innovates from its pedigree."READ ON

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