Dan Jorgensen's Blog, page 38

'There's a genuine magic in what they do'

 

“I love artists. I find themfascinating. To me, there really is a genuine magic in what they do.” –Elizabeth Hand

 

Born in Yonkers, NY on March 29,1957 Hand studied drama and anthropology in college and considered a stageacting career before getting into writing. Since 1988, she has lived in coastalMaine, the setting for many of her stories, and Camden Town, London, thesetting for her several of the historical fantasy novels.  She’s written more than 30 novels and dozensof shorter works. 

 

While Science Fiction and Fantasyhave been her primary focal point, she said she didn’t read much ScienceFiction as a kid.  A self-proclaimed “total Tolkien geek,” shestarted reading Samuel Delany, Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school,starting her along a path toward her own works. Her first novel, Winterlong, came out in 1988 and her mostrecent, A Haunting on the Hill, in 2023. Haunting was her third winnerof the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award for Outstanding Achievement inPsychological Suspense – the other two being Generation Lost and WyldingHall.

 

Hand also writes television andsci-fi movie spin-offs and serves as a regular critic and reviewer for the WashingtonPost, Los Angeles Times and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

 

“I never think about genre when Iwork,” she said.   “I've written fantasy, science fiction,supernatural fiction . . . suspense.   Genrés are mostly usefulas a marketing tool, and to help booksellers know where to shelve a book.”

'The crossroads of time, place and eternity'

 

“The writer operates at a peculiarcrossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. (The) problem is tofind that location.” – Flannery O'Connor

 

Born in Georgia on March 25, 1925O’Connor is one of America’s most important literary voices – writing 2 novels,32 short stories and a large number of reviews and commentaries in herrelatively short lifetime (she died at age 39 from cancer).

 

Much of O'Connor's best-knownwriting on religion, the “writing process,” and the South is contained in hervoluminous correspondence with other writers and educators.  After her death her longtime friend SallyFitzgerald collected and published a book of her letters under the title TheHabit of Being.   That book and other lettersmaintained by Emory University are a key part of O’Connor’s legacy.

 

In 1972, O’Connor’s posthumouslypublished Complete Stories won the National Book Award forFiction and has been the subject of enduring praise, including being lauded bymany critics as the best book to ever have won the prestigious award.

 

O’Connor said as a writer sheenjoyed “studying people” and advised young writers to always be aware of theirsurroundings and the people they encountered.   “The writershould never be ashamed of staring,” she said.  “There is nothingthat does not require his or her attention.”

A Writer's Moment: 'The crossroads of time, place and eternity'

A Writer's Moment: 'The crossroads of time, place and eternity':   “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. (The) problem is to find that location.”  – ...

'An ancient and honorable act'

 

“Storytelling is an ancient andhonorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's onethat I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewardedfor.” –  Russell Banks

 

Born in Massachusetts on this datein 1940, Banks wrote 20 books of fiction and poetry.  He was best known for his accounts ofdomestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary, often-marginalizedcharacters, frequently drawing from his own childhood experiences growing upin poverty.

 

Winner of the John Dos Passos Awardfor Creative Writing, he also earned numerous international awards and had hiswork translated into 20 different languages.  Two of his books– The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction – notonly became international best-sellers but were made into successful featurefilms.

 

A member of the InternationalParliament of Writers and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he wrote rightup until his death early in 2023, publishing a novel The Magic Kingdomin 2022.  A posthumous collection of hisshort stories, American Spirits, was published in 2024.

Also a winner of the prestigious Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Fiction,Banks noted, “There are people like me who want to be writers simply because they loveto write.  My life has been shaped by mywriting,”   

A Writer's Moment: 'An ancient and honorable act'

A Writer's Moment: 'An ancient and honorable act':   “Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheart...

'I teach in order to learn'

 “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:   It goes on.” – Robert Frost

I’ve always loved the poetry of Robert Frost and thought about his imagery and attention to the land while recently driving and walking in the rugged countryside of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming.  I don’t think Frost ever visited there, but I’m sure if he had, the world would have had another great book of poems about his experience.

Frost, who was born in California on March 26, 1874 grew up and spent most of his life in New England. His realistic depictions of rural life, the beauty of the land, and command of American colloquial speech – all while examining complex social and philosophical themes – may never be equaled.   
Poetry is a simple process, he liked to say; just an emotion finding a thought and the thought finding its words.  Like every writer he hit dry periods, but unlike many he had something to say about that.  “Poets,” he noted, “are like baseball pitchers.  Both have their moments.  It’s the intervals that are the tough things.” 

Honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, Frost also was a great teacher at some of America's greatest colleges.   “I talk in order to understand,” he said.  “But I teach in order to learn."

A Writer's Moment: 'I teach in order to learn'

A Writer's Moment: 'I teach in order to learn':   “ In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:   It goes on.”   – Robert Frost I’ve always loved the poetry of Robert F...

That 'most fertile' writing ground

 “A theatre, a literature, anartistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.” –Dario Fo

 

Born in Italy on this date in 1916, Fo often said he was “an idiot” who just happened to win the NobelPrize.  But “brilliant” would be a more apt descriptive title for the multi-talented Fo.   Anactor, playwright, director, songwriter he was arguablythe most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre during hislifetime.

 

A master of satire and irony, hegrew up the son of a self-educated writing mother and day-laborer father whoalso was a traveling actor in the ancient Italian tradition of regionalperformance, lampooning local politicos and religious figures.

 

“When I was a boy,” he said, “unconsciously,spontaneously I learned the art of telling ironic stories.”  Fo’s writings – translated into 30 languagesand performed worldwide – address issues ranging from dictatorial brutality to organized crime.  He especially found politics to be fertile writing ground.. 

 

 “Every artistic expression," he said, "iseither influenced by or adds something to politics.”

A Writer's Moment: That 'most fertile' writing ground

A Writer's Moment: That 'most fertile' writing ground:   “A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.”  – Dario Fo   Born in Italy o...

'You make community with others'

 

“Poetry is for me Eucharistic. Youtake someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into yourbody, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a communitywith others.” – Mary Karr

 

While she calls herself a poetfirst, Karr, who was born in Southeastern Texas in 1955, rose to fame with thepublication of her memoir The Liars' Club.  But her poetry have won her most acclaim,earning her a Whiting Award, the Pushcart Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship forher poetry.   For Saturday’s poem, here is Karr’s,

A Perfect Mess

Iread somewhere
that if   pedestrians didn't break traffic laws to cross
Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,

the whole city
would stop, it would stop.
Cars would back up to Rhode Island,
an epic gridlock not even a cat
could thread through. It's not law but the sprawl
of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved
the unprecedented gall
of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand
up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.
They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical
as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,
the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black
as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant
it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.
For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,
paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.
And it was my pleasure to witness a not
insignificant miracle: in one instant every black
umbrella in Hell's Kitchen opened on cue, everyone
still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,
the sails of some vast armada.
And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress
to accompany the piano movers.
each holding what might have once been
lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next
the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled
under the corner awning,
in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles
zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette
around. The city feeds on beauty, starves
for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,
to my deserted block with its famously high
subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure
longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon
opened its mouth to drink from on high ...