Caroline Bock's Blog: Caroline Anna Bock Writes, page 4

FISH SELL

"Fish Sell”
On seeing the trade paperback of my book for the first time
By Caroline Bock
(originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books, 2014)


The cover of Before My Eyes hasn’t changed, but the feel of it has. Grittier. I expect it to smell like cigarettes.

It doesn’t.

I flip to the back first, as if the ending may somehow have changed.

It hasn’t.

On the last page is an advertisement for another novel, LIE, and I see that I wrote that, too.

I actually never forgot that I wrote LIE, my first novel. Though sometimes it feels like I never published anything (except that poem I wrote in third grade) — that someone else wrote all those words over all those years.

I can still remember that first poem. My father stared at it and its “tall, towering trees” published in the school’s mimeographed newspaper.

“Toots, we got a writer in the family,” he said with his kind of praise, expansive and vague. It took me a minute to know that he was imagining me older, not 8 years old. Until that moment, I hadn’t particularly wanted to be a writer.

If my father were looking over Before My Eyes, he’d ask the sale price first ($9.99), and then how many I expected to sell (a lot, maybe). And then he might ask: “Why don’t I bring the book down to Thunderbird?” He’d sell a few for me at his flea-market table in Florida where he sold souvenir T-shirts to Canadian tourists.

“I can’t promise you how many books I’d move, toots. I’m the guy known for the fish T-shirts, not books. Did you ever think of slapping a picture of a shark on any of your novels? Fish sell, toots.”

You’ll notice that there is always a mother, damaged or dead, in my novels. I’m working on writing a mother into my next book, but I may have to kill her off. My father raised me, and I have trouble with mothers.

I have never seen a shark or written about one. Before My Eyes is about paranoid schizophrenia, gun violence, and the teen psyche at the end of a long, hot summer.
It is largely set at the beach, but there aren’t any fish.

Some people glance at Before My Eyes and ask, “What age is this for?” because it is marketed as a YA novel. I wrote it with teen characters surrounded by adults who don’t see what is happening before their eyes. I think adults should read it first.

If you read Before My Eyes, you’ll immediately glean that it starts near the end and moves backward. The world is different if you think you know the answers, but you don’t.

I see the world moving forward and backward at the same time, roots overlapping one another, the trees from my first poem. I see myself writing in notebooks at 8 years old and today. My father is gone, dead now, but here with me, looking over my shoulder, talking about fish.

“Fish sell, toots.”

The trade-paperback version of Caroline Bock’s Before My Eyes is now available wherever books are sold. For more about the author go to www.carolinebock.com.

IN DISPRAISE OF POETRY: FINDING JACK GILBERT IN D.C.

��� When the King of Siam disliked a courtier, He gave him a beautiful white elephant." ���.��� In Dispraise of Poetry by Jack Gilbert  
I made a great find this past weekend at Capitol Books, a
used bookstore in D.C. , with floor-to-ceilings offerings in a row house near the Eastern
Market���a copy of the poet Jack Gilbert���s Views of Jeopardy, his first book of
poetry from The Yale Series of Younger Poets, published in 1962. I am not a
collector of things��� I���ve never felt the urge to bring anything but words into
my house.  
I believe there may be a chapbook out there. I remember he
published one while I was at Syracuse University, the one year he taught at
this upstate New York college, and I believe I even bought it. But it���s lost to
the years and a dozen or so moves.  
���Three days I sat Bewildered by love. Three nights I watched The gradations of dark. Of light ������             Before
Morning in Perugia by Jack Gilbert            What I remember most about him was that he was slight man,
white haired and in his sixties by the time I was his student. He was
passionate about the poetic line and about women, especially those  he found himself with in places foreign
to him, a guy from Pittsburgh, and I find that these passions imbued in this
early set of poems. 
������ When I got quiet she���d put on usually Debussy and leaning down to the small ribs bite me. Hard.���             Portrait
Number Five: Against A New York Summer by Jack Gilbert            I think of him so young writing these poems, and want to cry
out, but instead I read on, gorging on the lines, ebullient with my find.

��� Caroline
 
 

IN DISPRAISE OF POETRY – FINDING JACK GILBERT IN DC

“When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
He gave him a beautiful white elephant...”
—In Dispraise of Poetry by Jack Gilbert

I made a great find this past weekend at Capitol Books, a used bookstore in D.C. with floor-to-ceilings offerings in a row house near the Eastern Market—a copy of the poet Jack Gilbert’s Views of Jeopardy, his first book of poetry from The Yale Series of Younger Poets, published in 1962. I am not a collector of things— I’ve never felt the urge to bring anything but words into my house.

I believe there may be a chapbook out there. I remember he published one while I was at Syracuse University, the one year he taught at this upstate New York college, and I believe I even bought it. But it’s lost to the years and a dozen or so moves.

“Three days I sat
Bewildered by love.
Three nights I watched
The gradations of dark.
Of light …”
—Before Morning in Perugia by Jack Gilbert

What I remember most about him was that he was slight man, white haired and in his sixties, by the time I was his student. He was passionate about the poetic line and about women, especially those he found himself with in places foreign to him, a guy from Pittsburgh, and I find that these passions imbued in this early set of poems.

“… When I got quiet
she’d put on usually Debussy
and
leaning down to the small ribs
bite me.
Hard.”
—Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer by Jack Gilbert

I think of him so young writing these poems, and want to cry out, but instead I read on, gorging on the words, ebullient with my find.

Views of Jeopardy

Have you ever found a book at a used bookstore you treasure?


--CarolineBefore My Eyes

EIGHT GOALS TO CHANGE THE WORLD...THE UN MILLENNIUM GOALS: A RE-READING, A REVIEW

EIGHT GOALS TO CHANGE THE WORLD ... at the turn of the millennium... specifically: "At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security." ��� United Nations.


Today on NPR, I heard that the United Nations is reviewing the results of its Millennium Goals...
I wrote a version of this short essay inspired by those goals for a collection of essays, Spirit of Service (Harper Collins, 2010), and I thought it timely to re-read and reflect on my original work...

Influence, Tested   ������ Let it be said by our
children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey
end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the
horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom
and delivered it safely to future.���Barack Obama, the
culmination of his inauguration address.
  
We often feel like others have more influence over the
course of events than we do.

We especially feel this way when we are tested with such
big, intractable, and really hard problems: hunger, poverty, disease, genocide
and environment sustainability  to
name a few.  We think that as long
as these problems are not in our backyards, we do not need to stand up and take action. It���s for others, the government, to be
graded on anyway.    
In his inaugural address, with a heavy snow on the streets
of Washington, D.C., on January
20, 1961, another President challenged this stance by declaring: ���ask not what
your country can do for you ��� ask what you can do for your country.���  A lesser known line follows that widens
this vision:   ���My fellow
citizens of the world: ask not
what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of
man.��� 
We have dithered too long over the idea that others will do
what we can and must do as citizens of the world. The United Nations 
has outlined eight millennium goals to raise up the people of the
world. Together, we must go forward into the journey of the 21st
century.
ACTION STEPS-- 
���Understand the eight specific
millennium goals outlined at www.un.org (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) 
��� Join the hundreds of millions
across the globe working to impact the UN Millennium Goal #1 ��� eradicating
extreme poverty and hunger across the world by 2015.A focused global effort to show support for the fight
against poverty and for the UN millennium development goals is being organized
by Stand Up and Take Action, a global advocacy group.  Locally, use your influence to organize a teach-in about
world poverty and the UN millennium goals.
Personal Post Script, June, 2015: This goal of eradicatin,  extreme poverty and hunger certainly wasn't reached. War in too many places intervened. In the United States poverty, is now eloquently termed "income inequality." But the fight must go on. In the United States: 15 dollar minimum wage is a start. What other ways to jump start this campaign on a local and global level?

--Caroline
And if you are looking for a compelling summer read consider my new young adult novel: BEFORE MY EYES (St. Martin's Press, 2014)
 

FISH SELL...and other thoughts on BOOK MARKETING and MY POP

FISH SELL... was originally published earlier this year by the wonderful Washington Independent Review of Books...but I've been thinking a lot these hot summer days of my Pop and of his unorthodox real-world advice so I'm reprinting and sharing it here...
Beyond the Book
���Fish Sell���On seeing the
trade paperback of my book for the first timeBy Caroline Bock 
The cover of Before My
Eyes hasn���t changed, but the feel of it has. Grittier. I expect it to smell
like cigarettes.  
It doesn���t.  
I flip to the back first, as if the ending may somehow have
changed.  
It hasn���t.  
On the last page is an advertisement for another novel, LIE,
and I see that I wrote that, too. 
I actually never forgot that I wrote LIE, my first novel.
Though sometimes it feels like I never published anything (except that poem I wrote
in third grade) ��� that someone else wrote all those words over all those years. 
I can still remember that first poem. My father stared at it
and its ���tall, towering trees��� published in the school���s mimeographed newspaper.
 
���Toots, we got a writer in the family,��� he said with his
kind of praise, expansive and vague. It took me a minute to know that he was imagining
me older, not 8 years old. Until that moment, I hadn���t particularly wanted to be
a writer.  
If my father were looking over Before My Eyes, he���d ask the sale price first ($9.99), and then how
many I expected to sell (a lot, maybe). And then he might ask: ���Why don���t I
bring the book down to Thunderbird?��� He���d sell a few for me at his flea-market table
in Florida where he sold souvenir T-shirts to Canadian tourists.  
���I can���t promise you how many books I���d move, toots. I���m the
guy known for the fish T-shirts, not books. Did you ever think of slapping a
picture of a shark on any of your novels? Fish sell, toots.���
 
You���ll notice that there is always a mother, damaged or dead,
in my novels. I���m working on writing a mother into my next book, but I may have
to kill her off. My father raised me, and I have trouble with mothers.  
I have never seen a shark or written about one. Before My Eyes is about paranoid
schizophrenia, gun violence, and the teen psyche at the end of a long, hot
summer. It is largely set at the beach, but there aren���t any fish.
Some people glance at Before
My Eyes and ask, ���What age is this for?��� because it is marketed as a YA
novel. I wrote it with teen characters surrounded by adults who don���t see what
is happening before their eyes. I think adults should read it first. 
If you read Before My
Eyes, you���ll immediately glean that it starts near the end and moves
backward. The world is different if you think you know the answers, but you
don���t.
I see the world moving forward and backward at the same
time, roots overlapping one another, the trees from my first poem. I see myself
writing in notebooks at 8 years old and today. My father is gone, dead now, but
here with me, looking over my shoulder, talking about fish.  
���Fish sell, toots.��� 
The
trade-paperback version of Caroline Bock���s Before My Eyes is now available wherever books are sold.
For more about the author go to www.carolinebock.com . 

SPRING! WRITING TIPS and MORE!

Three quick ideas for spring cleaning���for your writing.
Experiment with point of view.Ideas:1) change
up a first person story to a third person2) write
a story from a minor character���s point view3) look at a picture sideways (see above) and describe what you see.  
 Two wise quotes on the current state of young adult fiction from the April 10, 2015 New York Times article with tastemaker editor Julie Strauss-Gabel :

1) ���You go through vampires, you go through dystopian, you go
through contemporary, you go through fantasy,��� Ms. Strauss-Gabel said. ���The
last thing you want is an author saying, ���That���s what���s selling right now, so
that���s what I���m going to write.��� That���s the point at which a trend gets icky.��� 

2) ���We���re in an era where the
definition of a young adult book is completely up for grabs, and people are
willing to reinvent it,��� she said. ���There���s no one saying, ���You can���t do this
in a book for children.��� ���
Last, singular thought: if you haven't read BEFORE MY EYES, my new young adult novel, it's out now as a trade paperback!

-- Caroline

SECRET WRITING: NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, BOOKS ALIVE and GRACE CAVALIERI

I write primarily fiction ; however, I love poetry and since these are the final days of National Poetry Month , I am going to share with you notes from a fabulous writer's conference I attended, BOOKS ALIVE, sponsored by the Washington Independent Review of Books , an incisive online writing and book review community. This weekend, they honored poet and poetry advocate extraordinaire Grace Cavalieri with their first Lifetime Achievement Award. Upon accepting the award, she gave her top four reasons why poetry still matters (and I may be paraphrasing her, as I quickly took these notes):
-Poetry slows down time. You read slowly and you write slowly
-Poetry preserves the beloved
-Poetry makes us notice the world more
-We are more fully alive when we read and write poetry
This makes me want to write poetry, my secret writing, and to me that is the world.
Does poetry matter to you?
������Caroline

   

Dear Bill Gates...ideas for your summer reading list

Dear Bill Gates: 
I���m concerned about your summer reading list , heavy on
nonfiction titles, lacking in fiction, classics, poetry, which reflect the
common core of what I believe every educated American should read (of course, I
will readily admit that this is totally subjective, and I want to stress that I
am happy that you are reading at all, something I stress to my own children).  
So, I have some alternative titles to your summer reading
list for you to consider:   
 
-The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, short poems, easy to
read at the beach, or choose any other poetry collection. 
-1984 by George Orwell. I am amazed at how often George
Orwell���s 1984 is quoted, especially in relations to politics and to technology.
I plan to re-read this summer, and I think you should too. ���He who controls the
past controls the future. He who controls the presents controls the past.���  
-The ���Battle Royal��� chapter (the first chapter) Invisible
Man by Ralph Ellison to understand the history of racism and pain in America.
The rest of the book is moving too, but it���s that first chapter you have to
read. 
-Hilary Mantel���s Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories,  or Lydia Davis��� Collected Stories, or George
Pellecanos��� Martini Shot, if you���d like some terrific genre short fiction��� one
nice thing about short story collections is you can feel free to skip a story
or two and still say you read the book. I���ve been reading a lot of short
fiction lately���short fiction focuses the mind, and these stories all present
character, image, conflict in the most concise way.    
-The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman
Alexie, my son just read this in 9 grade ��� talks about being the
���outsider��� and ���other��� here in America better than any young adult novel. One
other thought: Jacqueline Woodson���s Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of this year���s
National Book Award for Young People���s Literature, written in verse. I have it
on my TBR list and so should you.  
 
-Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, the Broadway show is a big hit,
but the graphic novel is a deep and moving tale of a father and daughter��� and
coming out. And it���s always cool to say you read graphic novels. 
I���m sure others would have suggestions for you that go
beyond your limited nonfiction and science/tech-focused summer book reading
choices��� any others out there?   
I���d just urge you to go farther and wider and be more open
and curious in your reading, and if you do, to share it with us all.   
Read on, Bill! Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! 
Caroline Bock 
*Full disclosure: I am the author of two critically
acclaimed young adult novels: Before My Eyes (St. Martin���s Press, 2014) and LIE
(St. Martin���s Press, 2011). You can also always read these book:)! More at
www.carolinebock.com   
 
 
 
 
 

Dear Bill Gates

Dear Bill Gates:

I’m concerned about your summer reading list, heavy on nonfiction titles, lacking in fiction, classics, poetry, which reflect the common core of what I believe every educated American should read (of course, I will readily admit that this is totally subjective, and I want to stress that I am happy that you are reading at all, something I stress to my own children).

So, I have some alternative titles to your summer reading list for you to consider:

-The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, short poems, easy to read at the beach, or choose any other poetry collection.

-1984 by George Orwell. I am amazed at how often George Orwell’s 1984 is quoted, especially in relations to politics and to technology. I plan to re-read this summer, and I think you should too. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the presents controls the past.”

-The “Battle Royal” chapter (the first chapter) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison to understand the history of racism and pain in America. The rest of the book is moving too, but it’s that first chapter you have to read.

-Hilary Mantel’s The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories or Lydia Davis’ collected short stories or George Pellecanos’ Martini Shot, if you’d like some terrific genre short fiction— one nice thing about short story collections is you can feel free to skip a story or two and still say you read the book. I’ve been reading a lot of short fiction lately—short fiction focuses the mind, and these stories all present character, image, conflict in the most concise way.

-The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, my son just read this in 9th grade – talks about being the ‘outsider’ and ‘other’ here in America better than any young adult novel. One other thought: Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, winner of this year’s National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, written in verse. I have it on my TBR list and so should you.

-Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, the Broadway show is a big hit, but the graphic novel is a deep and moving tale of a father and daughter— and coming out. And it’s always cool to say you read graphic novels.

I’m sure others would have suggestions for you that go beyond your limited nonfiction and science/tech-focused summer book reading choices— any others out there?

I’d just urge you to go farther and wider and be more open and curious in your reading, and if you do, to share it with us all.

Read on, Bill! Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Caroline Bock

*Full disclosure: I am the author of two critically acclaimed young adult novels: Before My Eyes (St. Martin’s Press, 2014) and LIE (St. Martin’s Press, 2011). More at www.carolinebock.com

REACTIONS TO RECENT READS

As part of National Poetry Month, (just past in April) I wrote four haikus in reaction to recent books I had read. I thought I'd share them here as well—it was a terrific exercise in reading and writing!

For The Girl on a Train…

WOMAN ON A METRO

On a metro car:
See or hear nothing, feel less.
Days of driving rain.


For The Buried Giant…

FOREVER TODAY

No past, no future—
misted memories, but all
connect, remember?


For The Great Gatsby…

THE POOL CLEANER

I cleaned the swim pool—
after cops fished Gatsby out—
more work, no more pay.


For The Collected Poems of Robert Frost…

A LOST WRITER

I don’t know these woods—
what crossroad to travel now—
lead me there, poet.


—Caroline Bock is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels: BEFORE MY EYES (St. Martin’s Press, 2014) and LIE (St. Martin’s Press, 2011) and is a freelance bookseller at Politics and Prose.

Before My Eyes