Beth Kephart's Blog, page 17

scenes from a day of small-town unity, in Kutztown

At the Kutztown Folk Festival, Bill and I found hay balers, glass blowers, pot throwers, hex signs, the son of a Lebanese immigrant who has perfected leather. We found people, together. Open sky. A de-complicated Sunday after a most anguishing few weeks.

finding, in our books, the persons we must be now.

I write less here on this blog than I used to. The conversation I am having is mostly with myself. When my son calls and asks how I am—when friends ask—I have no news, no funny anecdotes, I am mostly absent. Perched on the edge.

I am reading, I am writing, I am reading more. I am reading memoirs or novels that might have been memoirs or books on the meaning of story. Eileen Myles (Chelsea Girls). Alison Bechdel (Are You My Mother?). Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts and Bluets). Decca Aitkenhead (All At Sea). Sarah Manguso (Ongoingness). Heidi Julavits (The Folded Clock). Ta-Nehesi Coates (again). Claudia Rankine (again). Joan Silber (The Art of Time in Fiction).

Every time I slip inside these books I am living, for a spell, as other. Walking, as they say, in others' shoes.

The news is crisis. It is a madness that requires us to absent ourselves from ourselves so that we might occupy the heart and mind of others. White. Blue. Black. Whatever color it is: take your own off, put another on, and see. Feel. Think.

Two weeks ago I taught memoir to a group of six who, in their glorious differences, were gorgeously one. Tonight we will have dinner with friends who know and love us. In between I am seeking, in the books I read, a path toward greater empathy and knowing. So that when I return to me I'll be bigger than I was. More capable of making some kind of earthly difference.

I should have seen her talk: Eileen Myles, Chelsea Girls

I made a mistake this past semester at Penn. I failed to go see Eileen Myles. She was there, in two-day residence, and I might have grabbed a seat when Al Filreis was doing one of his famous Kelly Writers House Fellows interviews, but I allowed my overwhelm (and the late SEPTA trains) to rule me.

So I didn't see Myles talk. And my students—David, Nina—they shook their heads. David said, Here, borrow my book, but of course I would not take it, for he'd written his own words next to hers and his whole body spoke of admiration. Nina said, She really was so good, she really was (Nina's gorgeous big eyes looking so sad for me). I shook my head, apologized.

Then I bought Chelsea Girls. I shook my own head at me. Because Myles writes like somebody smart might talk—rapid fire, scandalous, self-enthralled and self negating. She is beautiful and demanding. She needs and she takes. She hopes her poetry is part of her goodness, she steals from her affairs, she thinks a lot about what she wears (orange pants and bleachy shorts and Madras shirts and nothing), she has a lot of sex. And by the way, this is not memoir (it says novel on the cover), but the character is Eileen Myles and in the novel Eileen Myles does a lot of stuff (gets her photo taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, say) that Eileen Myles actually does in real life.

What I liked most: the nearly inscrutable ineluctable gorgeous stuff that forces your reading eye to stop. Sentences like these:

The whole process of your life seemed to be a kind of soft plotting, like moving across a graph which was time, or the world.

You knew she was a good person because she held back at moments of deepest revelation. She did not spill, and I always felt that to push her a bit would be sloppy and expose my own lack of a system of conduct.

You can't force a story that doesn't want to be told.

It's lonely to be alive and never know the whole story. Everyone must walk with that thought. I would like to tell everything once, just my part, because this is my life, not yours.

What I think: Like Anne Carson, Maggie Nelson, Paul Lisicky, Sarah Manguso, others, Myles is a form breaker, a smasher-up of words, a funny person with a serious talent. I should have seen her talk.

may the skies be

It was dark this morning when I began my work. I wasn't looking up; I was looking inward. Traveling the curve of time toward my childhood.

Toward this memoir I am making.

I needed proof of something after a while. A box where memories are kept. And so, still not looking up, still only looking in, I left one room for the other.

My eyes adjusted to present time. My words to present tense.

July 3rd. Four-thirty A.M. May the violence cease. May the skies be all the color we need. May the skies unite us.

the Juncture ad

We continue, at Juncture, to reach out beyond our own borders. Here is our first full-scale ad, which will run at a large conference in August.

in which my student, Anthony Ciacci, writes of home and shines in the Pennsylvania Gazette

Last semester, in my classroom at Penn, we focused on home—how the stories of our lives (and how we tell those stories) ultimately tangle with this construct.

As part of the Beltran Family Teaching Award program, I invited my current and past students to write of home for a special publication my husband and I designed. When Anthony Ciacci, a student from a previous year, responded with his essay, I was thrilled—loved the piece so much that I whispered its existence into the ear of Trey Popp, a Pennsylvania Gazette editor and friend. (Trey kindly visits my class each year to talk about editing and publishing, and I've been blessed to find my students' work appear in the Gazette pages, including these pieces.)

The rest, as they say, is history. This week, in the ever-gorgeous Pennsylvania Gazette, Anthony's piece, modified slightly for print, appears with its own lovely illustration and shine (read the full story here ). I could not be more proud—nor more happy. Anthony is a big-souled guy, an extraordinary brother, a faithful son, and a talent. We need hearts like his at this time.

Congratulations, Anthony.

the embattled memoirist (me)

And so, with memoir, I begin again. Writing toward an idea. Teasing remembrance. Stuck in the morass of something I can almost see.

One wrong sentence in ten long pages requires a rewriting of those ten pages. One wrong sentence is the false note that proves the premise wrong, casts doubt upon the entire enterprise. If I can't get that sentence right, then I can't get that memory right, then I can't settle on meaning.

When we say we love to write, we are also admitting to being half in love with the wars we spark within ourselves.

a conversation, and a medley reading of my books, with Carla Spataro

Yesterday, as part of this week-long teaching at the Rosemont College Writers & Readers Retreat, Carla Spataro asked me questions about themes (and food) and then invited me to read. I chose to share what I think of as postcards from my books—the opening words from stories—Small Damages, Going Over, One Thing Stolen, This Is the Story of You, Flow—that take place around the world.

The video captures some of that. I am grateful for the conversation.

Juncture has a new web site (and our next newsletter is launching soon)

Juncture Workshops has a new web site to accommodate our growing number of offerings. (We've added a Cape May, NJ, workshop; we'll be conducting a one-day workshop in a major garden next fall; and we'll be offering videos and online instruction by year's end. The new site makes room for all of this.)

I share the link here.

And: Those of you interested in joining the conversation are welcome to sign up for our newsletter (through the Juncture web site). The fourth edition features thoughts on the place of poetry in life stories, brilliant commentary by poet/memoirist Brian Turner, new "homework," a reader response, and memoir commentary and critique. It's free. 

Existing subscribers, please look for the next issue within the coming 24 hours.

to sit and watch the sea

Not long ago, in Cape May, I came upon this scene. Two dear friends talking up in the abandoned lifeguard chair. Side by side, and then some.

This is friendship. This is conversation. This is what we hope for, even when we sometimes disagree. To return again, to lift our feet again, to sit with another and watch the sea.