Ha Jin, Rescheduled

Ha Jin, who won the National Book Award for his novel, Waiting, will join washingtonpost.com's Off the Page on Thursday, Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his new novel, A Free Life.

Ask questions now or during the discussion:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/21/DI2007112101456.html

Ha Jin joins us in the first of a series of Off the Page interviews to kick off the publication of a book based on these washingtonpost.com interviews: Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between, edited by host and writer Carole Burns and being published Dec. 10 by W.W. Norton.

Let Herbert Hoover Be Your Muse

Here’s a unique opportunity for writers and visual artists: spend four weeks at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site! Yes, this is the Herbert Hoover site that’s just outside Iowa City, where I grew up, and was (and probably still is) the site of many field trips from good old Robert Lucas Elementary School. Let me know if you go: I can steer you to some good restaurants and a top-notch pork tenderloin!

By the way, Herbert Hoover was more interesting than you might think. He was the first president to be born west of the Mississippi River, and he grew up as an orphan.

Here’s the announcement and application guidelines:

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site
Artist in Residence Program

Artists have long contributed our national parks. Painters such as Thomas Moran stimulated the establishment of national parks in the 19th century by documenting the unbelievable landscapes of the American West. Today´s writers, composers, and visual and performing artists are invited to interpret the history and beauty of Herbert Hoover National Historic Site through their work.

About the Program: Herbert Hoover National Historic Site offers two residencies each of two to four weeks from May 1 through October 31. Residencies are open to all professional American artists. The National Historic Site will provide lodging and a secure, environmentally-controlled place to lay out equipment and supplies at no cost to the artist. Supplies and personal transportation must be provided by the artist.

The artist must be willing to interact with park visitors while working on the site. Artists will make at least one presentation based on his or her medium, interests, and experiences. Each artist is asked to contribute a piece of work created during his or her tenure to the park´s collection. The Artist-in-Residence will be enrolled as a Volunteer-in-Parks, which provides worker´s compensation insurance. The artist should be in good health, self-sufficient, and ready to work closely with park staff and the local community.

How to Apply: Applications must be post-marked or delivered to the park between November 1, 2007 and March 1, 2008. There is no application form, but your application must include:

1. A resume (1-2 pages) and summary of creative work (exhibitions, collections and publications where your work has appeared). (4 copies)

2. Samples of recent works: visual artists provide six (6) 35 mm slides or 4x6 prints with a typed list of slides with titles, medium, and image size (height by width); writers submit no more than ten (10) double-spaced, typewritten pages of manuscript; and performing artists must provide a five (5) minute audio and or video tapes identifying or demonstrating your craft. (4 sets of each)

3. A statement of what you hope to achieve from a residency at Herbert Hoover NHS and how you envision your interpretive program(s) will be presented. (4 copies)

4. Your preferred period of residence from May to late October (two week minimum).A panel from the park and the local arts community will select the Artists-in-Residence from the pool of applicants by April 1, 2008. All applicants will be notified as soon as possible. Selections will be made based on merit and how the artists´ work can advance the mission of Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, and will be made without regard to race, religion, sex, disability, marital status, age, or national origin.

All samples will be returned at the end of the selection process. You do not have to include a self addressed stamped envelope. For more information or to submit an application, call Adam Prato at (319) 643-7855 or write to:

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site
Artist-in-Residence Program
P.O. Box 607
West Branch, Iowa 52358

For more information, check the web site.

Split This Rock Poetry Contest

Split This Rock Poetry Contest to Benefit Split This Rock Poetry Festival
Washington, DC, March 20-23, 2008

Kyle G. Dargan, Judge
$500 for 1st, $300 for 2nd and $200 for 3rd place.
1st place winner will read the winning poem at the festival. The poem will also be published on the festival website at www.SplitThisRock.org. All winners receive free festival admission.

Postmark Deadline: January 15, 2008

Send three unpublished poems, no more than six pages total, any style, in the spirit of Split This Rock. Simultaneous submissions OK, but please notify us immediately if the poem is accepted elsewhere. The theme can be interpreted broadly, and may include, but is not limited to, work addressing politics, government, war, and leadership; issues of identity, including gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, disability, body image, immigration and cultural heritage, etc.; poems on community, civic engagement, education, and activism; and poems about history, Americana, and cultural icons.

Staple one cover page to your submissions containing your name, address, phone number, email, and the titles of your poems. This is the only part of the submission which should contain your name. Enclose a check or money order for $20 made out to "IPS/Split This Rock," an entry fee that benefits Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Submit to: Split This Rock/IPS, 1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Winners will be announced on Split This Rock website by early March.

About the judge - Kyle G. Dargan’s second collection of poems, Bouquet of Hungers, has just been released by the University of Georgia Press. He is the managing editor of Callaloo and teaches in the creative writing MFA program at American University. His debut collection, The Listening, won the 2003 Cave Canem Prize, and he has received fellowships from the Bucknell Seminar, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and The Fine Arts Work Center.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national community of activist poets. The festival will present the rich variety of socially-engaged poetry being written in the United States today and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change. The program includes readings, workshops, panel discussions, poetry contests, film, walking tours, and activism.

For more information: info@splitthisrock.org, www.SplitThisRock.org

Rule the World vs. "I Don't Think The Story Has Earned This Ending"

Take heart, writers! Apparently it is easier to try to rule the world than write a novel. Napoleon started a novel (a love story!) and got to page 22 before “turning his literary attention to political matters.” (Details here.)

On the other hand, a single, hand-written page from the manuscript was just sold at auction for approximately $35,000. (Via The Elegant Variation)

More on New Year's Resolutions for Writers

Writer James Tata writes a blog I enjoy that he describes as, “an informal log of recent enthusiasms.” He recently expanded upon his suggested additions to my posting of “New Year’s Resolutions for Writers”:

“I suggested replacing ‘subscribe to literary journals’ and added ‘Write only to please yourself. You might be surprised how good a writer you actually are.’”

You can read all the details here, but I thought this was especially important for us to remember:

“As for writing to please yourself, that's a cliche of creative writing instruction that is no less true for being a cliche. I once read, somewhere, Mary Gaitskill say that it wasn't until she gave up trying to please other unknown-to-her people with her fiction that she started writing the stories that she eventually and paradoxically went on to publish. It's not just writing for audiences or editors that can harm a writer's work. Writing to please that teacher from ten years ago, or writing for the sake of Literature, or writing to settle scores all implies doing it for the benefit of someone else, and we can never, ever know what someone else wants. As far as writing goes, one can't really please anyone, so why even bother? Besides, if you are at all serious about writing, I doubt you'll find a harder critic of your work than yourself, so just take it easy and turn it into a game.”

"Exisiting So Intensely": Rilke

I realize I’m starting to sound obsessed with The Writer’s Almanac, but I couldn’t resist passing along this section from today’s entry. Rilke’s language is, of course, beautiful, and I hadn’t realized the journey to those words was such a struggle.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotations from his Letters to a Young Poet:

“There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come…patience is everything.”

Here we go:

“It's the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, (books by this author) born in Prague (1875), who made a career as a poet by seducing a series of rich noblewomen who would support him while he wrote his books. One princess let him live for a while in her Castle Duino near Trieste, a medieval castle with fortified walls and an ancient square tower. Rilke's room had a view of the gulf of Trieste, which he loved. In a letter from his room he wrote, "I am looking out into the empty sea-space, directly into the universe, you might say."

“It was that winter of 1912, alone in the castle, that Rilke later said he heard the voice of an angel speaking to him about the meaning of life and death, and he started a poem that began with the lines, "And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic / orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me / to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming / presence. Because beauty's nothing but the start of terror we can hardly bear, / and we adore it because of the serene scorn / it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying."

“Rilke wrote two poems about angels in almost a single sitting, and he knew that he had begun his most important work, but then he got stuck. He eventually left the castle, the First World War broke out, and he struggled to write anything for the next decade, while he was slowly beginning to suffer the symptoms of leukemia. Finally, in February of 1922, he managed to finish in a single month what he'd started a decade before. The result was a cycle of 10 long poems that he called The Duino Elegies, about the difference between angels and people, and the meaning of death, and his idea that human beings are put on earth in order to experience the beauty of ordinary things.

“In the Ninth Elegy, Rilke wrote "Maybe we're here only to say: house, / bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window — / at most, pillar, tower... but to say them, remember, / oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves / never dreamed of existing so intensely."

Bragging About My Friend on The Writer's Almanac

I am so excited that Garrison Keillor selected this poem by Rick Mulkey, one of my wonderful poet-friends, to read on his radio program, The Writer's Almanac. I met Rick and his fiction-writer-essayist-wife Susan Tekulve, in South Carolina; they were wonderful hosts and guides while I spent four weeks teaching as the Julia Peterkin Visiting Writer at Converse College in Spartanburg. Fine writers, awesome cooks, and fun people—I first met Rick and Susan when I won the Julia Peterkin fiction award, and I came to the campus to give my reading. Susan picked me up at the airport around 8:30 p.m. and asked if I needed to eat anything. I’m sure she was expecting to offer one of Spartanburg’s nice sit-down restaurants…but I mentioned a local landmark, The Beacon Drive-In, a ramshackle, old-time drive-in famous for its sweet iced tea and “chili-cheese-a-plenty,” which basically is a cheeseburger buried in no less than six inches of onion rings, french fries, and chili. You have to love someone who's willing to eat that with you!

Back to the literary side of things…I highly recommend Rick’s new book of poetry, Toward Any Darkness, where this evocative poem is found. It was featured on The Writer's Almanac on December 1, 2007.

Bluefield Breakdown
by Rick Mulkey, from Toward Any Darkness. © Word Press, 2007.

Where are you Clyde Moody, and you Elmer Bird,
"Banjo Man from Turkey Creek," and you Ed Haley,
and Dixie Lee singing in that high lonesome way?
I feel the shadow now upon me...
Come you angels and play those dusty strings.
You ain't gonna work that sawmill Bother Carter,
nor sleep in that Buchanon County mine. Clawhammer
some of that Cripple Creek song. Fiddle me a line
of "Chinquapin Hunting." Shout little Lulie, shout, shout,
I need to hear music as lonesome as I am,
I need to hear voices sing words I've forgotten.
This valley's much too dark now.
Sunset right beside us, sunrise too far away.
I haven't heard a tipple creak all day,
and everyone I loved left
on the last Norfolk & Southern train.

Go here to listen to the poem being read. (How to listen)

Many of the poems in the book cover the same southwestern Virginia, mining town landscape. Here's another one that I admire:

Abbs Valley Abstract
by Rick Mulkey, from Toward Any Darkness. copyright Word Press, 2007.

We are steepled churches on Route 460
starved for light. We are the summer
of potato blight. Pressed down
by ancient seas, we're limestone quarries
that lived two lives, as tide and rock.
We're born to cracked facades
and leaky roofs. Anchored by root and briar,
we never move. Our cats grow feral
on barnyard mice. We bark like squirrels, or say
nothing at all. We are the shout
rising from the mine's black throat,
and the quiet after the shout. We stand
in rain and rotting hay. We paint road signs
that read "Dangerous Curve," Dead End," "Keep Out."