Hey, in case you didn’t notice, Michael’s review is now up over at RATTLE and it’s pretty fantastic. Check it. They are a great place and Michael’s a great writer. Win, win.
Peace, Meghan
27 Monday Feb 2012
Posted Uncategorized
inHey, in case you didn’t notice, Michael’s review is now up over at RATTLE and it’s pretty fantastic. Check it. They are a great place and Michael’s a great writer. Win, win.
Peace, Meghan
15 Wednesday Feb 2012
Posted Uncategorized
inOh, you didn’t hear the news? Check it out. Mark your calendar for February 25th.
And you didn’t see what great things Michael stirred up did last time? Well, that’s here and worth your time.
02 Thursday Feb 2012
Posted Sub-Review
inTags
art, michael dickman, photography, poetry, review, sub-review
I went to the eye doctor yesterday. I hate it, so I go years without going and the day I do go is full of frustration. There is something disorienting and horrible about not being able to see correctly after they puff air in my eye, make me take anxiety-ridden tests (1 or 2, 2 or 3, 3 or 1, so on… ), and then, worse of all, dilate my eyes. Horrors. All of a sudden I go from 20/20 vision to struggling with the shapes of letters, lights that seem too bright, shadows that are too dark, and how nothing has edges anymore. For a few hours, everything is blurry and hard to focus on. I want the edges as a reference and guide for living through my day, so that I can grab for a glass without missing or see the expression on my husband’s face while he works. It is much the same in art – the audience desires borders for reference and guidance.
In photography, aesthetics are crucial. The lighting, the type of film, the camera, the subject, the background, and the framing all play a part. The photographer chooses each one of these (and more) to create one photograph. The boundaries they choose direct or distract the viewer’s attention. How they frame the subject is integral to the final product. Diane Arbus is a master of framing in a way that directs the audience to the subject more fully. Many of her photographs deal with subject matter from the “fringes of society,” but the way she framed her subjects brought them to the forefront. She liked to “go where [she’d] never been” and takes the audience there by framing her subjects so intentionally. The details she keeps within the photos – broken baby carriages, cigarette butts, empty bottles, carpet, Christmas trees, beds, tables,etc. – are just as important as the subject themselves. By giving the audience hints about their surroundings, Arbus sets a tone with which to view the subject. The ordinary in the frame often soften viewers to the “strange” subject. Arbus is able to use a tool of her trade, the edges of a photograph, to guide the audience.
For instance, in Dominatrix embracing her client, NY, 1970, Arbus does not zoom in close to the human subjects, but leaves a lamp, phone, a robe over a chair, a wine glass. She chooses to frame her subjects, who would be strange to society, in a human light with all the dailyness most of us know. She provides context within the frame.
I would argue that framing should play a part in every artist’s decision making, no matter the form of art. Where to stop and where to begin, where to pause, where to diverge, where to converge again – whether musicians and their rests or painters and their canvas or poets and their line breaks, each must choose how to frame their art for their audience. In poetry, there are many opportunities to frame the work for the reader. Line endings and beginnings are one of the ways a poet can help the reader better understand their subject, they can be used to great power.
In “Flies,” Dickman’s line breaks are inconsistent and often times, sloppy. When a pause happens in the right place, the line sings. When a break comes too early or too late, the line is lost in confusion. There are many times throughout “Flies” when Dickman could have made a powerful frame for the reader to view his subject, but his lines dillydally or flit off like ripped pieces of paper. Dickman leaves his audience trying to figure out why, in “From the Lives of My Friends,” he has chosen to repeat “I am glad” so many times, with line breaks between and why “front and” is it’s own line while “The lives of my friends spend all their time dying and coming back and dying and coming back” is all one line. While I understand that this could be an attempt at the childlike construction of thought, Michael makes a good point that Dickman ” uses shortcuts to create emotional tension” and often his use of line break is an attempt at shortcut to emotion that fails.
Both Arbus and Dickman deal with difficult subject matter, they have things they want the audience to see through their eyes. Both Arbus and Dickman are risk-takers and the risks they take are worthy of an audience. But while Arbus guides the audience with her intentional framing (her intentionality can be seen in the way she worked, often for years, with the same subject, taking care to portray them exactly how she wanted to), Dickman’s “Flies” lacks the intentional crafting (framing) that could provide guidance and reference for his readers. Dickman could have re-focused and re-framed to produce a richer collection of poems in the way Arbus re-visited her subjects with her camera time and again to create just the right image for her audience.
02 Thursday Feb 2012
Posted Sub-Review
inBridge to Terabithia
by Katherine Paterson
(in relation to “Flies” by Michael Dickman)
Harper Trophy (An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers)
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019
ISBN 978-0-06-440184-5
163 pp., $6.99, paperback
www.harperchildrens.com
Rage
by Jackie Morse Kessler
(in relation to “Flies” by Michael Dickman)
Harcourt Graphia (An Imprint of Houghton Mifflin Company)
222 Berkeley St
Boston, MA 02116
ISBN 9780547445281
228 pp., $8.99, paperback
http://www.hmhbooks.com/hmh/site/hmhbooks/
Anyone who wants to write effectively from a young adult’s perspective – whether in prose or poetry – must do the miraculous. It is the literary equivalent of looking at an optical illusion.
Do you see a young woman or an old woman? You can’t see both simultaneously, yet that’s what the writing requires. The author must somehow conjure the authentic voice of an adolescent without losing – or fully revealing – the insight of the adult.
The novel “Rage” by Jackie Morse Kessler follows Melissa Miller, a dramatic, hackneyed, sulky teen from a conventional, privileged home who goes from cutting to pretty much falling in love with Death, who happens to look like Kurt Cobain (don’t get me started on what sort of underlying message that sends).
Like Michael Dickman in “Flies,” Kessler uses shortcuts to create emotional tension but fails to create three-dimensional characters. Melissa is sad, angry, self-loathing, and self-injurious. So of course she wears black (emo or Goth, you decide). Her loving parents don’t get her, her popular sister is embarrassed by her. Instead of complexity, we get a cliché suburban nightmare, a place where jocks are mean and dumb, parents are oblivious, and siblings are a source of anguish. Even though Kessler probably attempted complicated and conflicted, the characterization of Melissa only goes skin deep.
The premise of Kessler’s series – troubled teen* becomes one of the Horseman of the Apocalypse – is an interesting one, but execution should matter as much as plot points; writing for young adults should not sound like writing by young adults. Sure, the book is readable and entertains for the most part, but an author can bypass high diction without bypassing high quality. Considering how heavy the subject matter was, the book itself felt rather light.
(*It should be mentioned that a portion of the proceeds from Kessler’s “Riders of the Apocalypse” books will go toward an organization confronting the same issues as her protagonists. For example, “Rage” deals with cutting and self-injurious behavior. Hence, donations are made to To Write Love on Her Arms. I may not praise Kessler’s writing, but I praise her as a compassionate person raising awareness.)
Katherine Paterson’s “Bridge to Terabithia,” on the other hand, creates a believable – not to mention likable – character in Jesse Oliver Aarons, Jr.
Winner of the Newbery Medal, this coming-of-age story deals with family, alienation, loss, and fear, topic/themes shared by both “Flies” and “Rage.” Even though the diction is very simple, Paterson achieves emotional complexity in her young character. Lines like, “These girls could get out of work faster than grasshoppers could slip through your fingers” maintain a child’s perspective while displaying the author’s skill. Her phrases are layered in meaning and connotation. Here are a handful of other lines doing double-duty:
“The boys quivered on the edges of their seats like moths fighting to be freed of cocoons.”
“Jess’s feelings about Leslie’s father poked up like a canker sore.”
“…Brenda and Ellie looked like a pair of peacocks with fake tail feathers.”
“The icy mud sent little thrills of pain up their legs.”
Paterson manages to keep the novel fresh and interesting by surprising us with language. We have clever similes/metaphors that are imaginative but do not betray a child’s inner life. On a deeper level, the creative language reveals the socio-economic status of Jesse, his family, and his hometown. Paterson’s prose gives the right details in the right detail.
This is where “Rage” and “Flies” ultimately break down. They attempt to navigate an adult world through a youthful lens, and vice versa, but neither fully achieves it. The adult and child lens must be in cooperation with each other, not competition. “Rage” fumbles between the CW network and an after-school special while “Flies” wears a mud-smeared monocle.