WordWacky

Rarely am I treated to a new idea in the world of words. There’s something reminiscent of the refrigerator poetry that was so popular a decade ago, but somehow this is way cooler.

Here’s the latest in the series of Newspaper Blackout Poems by Austin Kleon:

There’s also a book coming out, so go preorder it. (Via @splintergen)

Want to read with me? I just joined the Infinite Summer initiative: a group of readers tackling Infinite Jest, the 1,079-page, heavily annotated tome by the late David Foster Wallace. (I think this book warrants the use of the word tome—if ever there was a valid Kindle argument…) There’s a daily post at the blog by one of several writers. I have had to abstain from reading them because I’m behind. I didn’t get my book until this week, so I’m on page 50, when I should be somewhere between 150 and 225.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother read to me every night until I could read myself. It was the highlight of my day—I was the child of a single parent, so one-on-one time was rare and precious. Add what was to become my lifelong addiction, story, to the mix, and you have one happy—if sleepy—preschooler.

Then there was school. Once everyone was able to read, we all would read the same stories and talk about them together. I was (am?) often the slacker, behind in my (school) reading, but I would still benefit from the social aspect of the reading, the discussion and analysis.

I’ve never joined or started a book club, though I’ve often thought about it. Post college, many of us are starved for some debate, a more in-depth reading of a book, or even just the fuzzy feeling of knowing someone else liked something, too. I’m pretty good about keeping up my Goodreads account, and while I often find good things to read there, it lacks the real-time interactivity that a classroom or a book club have.

So I don’t know if Infinite Summer will fulfill my need for social reading. As a social tool the Internet has its benefits (reach, specificity) and its shortfalls (anonymity, creepy people who profile well). And blogs tend to be less interactive—call them Web 1.5, perhaps. But I am following Infinite Summer on Twitter, so who knows. Maybe once I’m caught up and not concerned about spoilers I will really feel like part of the party.

As a child I wanted nothing more than to escape the world with a thick, long-lasting book. And now I want that same low-tech device to connect me to the world.

[Picture via MAKE:Blog]

My love affair with crosswords began in high school. See, when you’re cutting classes, it helps to have something to do to pass the time. I would do the Daily News or New York Times crossword, sometimes with my friend Denise. She would put two letters in a box to fit words that she wanted to place. It was infuriating.

That love affair revived a couple of years ago, and I dragged my wife in for a threesome. We’d trade the crossword back and forth when we were stuck, and sometimes — but not always — we’d get it all done.

It is my ambition to one day complete (solo, sorry honey) a Saturday New York Times crossword. Everyone thinks Sundays are the hardest, but that’s not true. It’s just the largest. From the Amazon listing for the Saturday book:

The Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle is the most challenging puzzle of the week, which is why it has gained such an eager following. The most serious solvers know that actually finishing the puzzle is no small feat.

No small feat, indeed. When I get any of the words in that puzzle, it’s a triumph. A girl can dream….

What’s NaNoWriMo? It’s National Novel Writing Month, the 30-day writing extravaganza, in which thousands of people around the world try to write a novel in the month of November. No, it doesn’t have to be a full, complete, edited novel, it just has to be 50,000 words by midnight on November 30. That comes out to 1,667 words per day, in case you’re counting.

Want to sign up? NaNoWriMo is the link.

So far it’s not going too well for me. My wife and I were planning to start at midnight, but she wasn’t feeling well, so we let it go. Not behind yet, but rest assured, I will be soon enough.

Starting… now!

I have often spoken about the gap between my taste as a reader and my ability as a writer. When you’re starting out in the arts (or, in my case, when you’ve been starting out for 20 years), you know good stuff when you read it, but there’s a painful lack of ability to reach that bar when you sit down to create. It can be career-killing, that gap.

Here’s Ira Glass, undeniably successful in his writing and his work, speaking about the gap and how to overcome it: [via Centrum]

Now whatever your creative pursuit, set some goals and get through it. I will be doing so, myself.

The word poverty originates comes from the Latin, paupertatem, via Old French, poverte. It is first recorded in Old English around 1225, as mentioned in a book published in 1868, Old English Homilies.

We use the word poverty, and its cousin, poor, casually, meaning broke, perhaps, or cash deficient. Yet we know true poverty when we see it, don’t we? In people who are homeless. Or people who debate between heating their houses in the winter and eating.

Growing up, I thought we were poor, my single mother and I, but she worked steadily, at the same job throughout my childhood, a good job by many standards — a job with the City that had good benefits. I didn’t have the same clothes or sneakers as some of my classmates, or a piano, and my mother slept in the living room of our one bedroom apartment in the Bronx. But in reality, by the definitions set out for us by the U.S. Government, we were not “poor.”

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines for 2008, a family of two, like ours, would have to be making less than $14,000 a year in the contiguous U.S. to be below the poverty line. We lived in New York City. It is unfathomable to me to think someone could live on that amount of money and still eat, get clothing, and use transportation to and from a job on that income in New York.

Apparently it is also unfathomable to the human services providers, too, because you qualify for food stamps at 130% of the federal poverty limit, for WIC at 185%, and often for Medicaid (depends on the state) at 200%. According to Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty, “Research suggests that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to meet their most basic needs.”  So if the guideline doesn’t even determine what we consider poor, why set it at falsely low levels? Seems to me there can only be one reason: to deny people benefits. (But I’m a cynic. If you can think of another, please speak up.)

I’m taking three steps against poverty, starting today. I urge you to find three things you can do to stop poverty, however you or the government defines it. Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Donate. I’m going to take Brian from Copyblogger up on his generous offer to match 250% of my $10 donation to Save the Children! Unheard of, really, people. You should donate ten bucks, too.
2. Educate myself. In addition to the research I did for this post, I’m going to read a book that’s been on my to-read list for too long: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
3. Vote. You heard it here first. And I’m not a non-profit, so I can say vote for That One, please. If you don’t, please don’t tell me about it.

Garrison Keillor and Andy Warhol may not have much in common. At all. But today’s Writer’s Almanac celebrated the birthday of someone much more well known for his visual art than his writing. Maybe.

Today’s poem, “Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations” by Peter Oresick is one with repeating lines (if anyone can identify it as a specific form, please let me know — I couldn’t find it anywhere). It begins:

Andy Warhol said, Always leave them wanting less.
Being born, Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Everyone will be famous, Andy said, for 15 minutes.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.

Being born, Andy Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Think rich, said Warhol, look poor.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.
Dying, Andy said, is the most embarrassing thing….

At first I wondered what Andy Warhol was doing on the Writer’s Almanac, but as the quotes wedged their way in again and again, I realized how pithy and quotable the man was. While quotes may not be exactly writing, they require thought, editing, and precise wording. Sounds a lot like writing to me.

Back to Andy and Garrison: there’s a pleasing converse, parallel effect between them. Andy was the very epitome of cool and — despite what he said — for a lot longer than fifteen minutes. He took the popular and ordinary and lifted it from its day to day to make it extraordinary and even more popular. (Are you gonna tell me you don’t think he sold soup?)

Garrison, on the other hand, is the very epitome of uncool. He’s midwestern, nerdy, and old fashioned. He takes the bizarre and unpopular and makes it extraordinary and at least a little popular.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I suspect they’d be friends, were Andy still around.

Be well, do good work, and always leave them wanting less.

And I guess I did, too, though only until about age six, by which time I was entirely too worldly and jaded to buy in anymore. But my mother could be found watching his show, even in adulthood. I know, strange, but he still makes me cry.

Apparently, Mr. Rogers wrote all his own songs, including “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the subject of this lovely anecdote:

Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn’t be noticed.

But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.” The result made Rogers smile wide.

Read all of the 15 Reasons Mr. Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever at CNN.

Mom, Mr. Rogers, I miss you both.

As a writer, when I call myself an artist, it is always with the suspicion that someone behind me might tap me on the shoulder to remind me, “Um, no, you’re not an artist. You’re just a writer.”

Perhaps visual artists — maybe painters in particular — feel ordinary, old school, unoriginal. They are not bursting from a canvas wearing a bloody apron and a half-burned tutu. Nor are they installing six-foot View Masters that revolve with the pull of a slot machine arm. Flat, bulky, tangible things they create to hang on walls, so much decor.

But to me, visual artists — maybe painters in particular — are the quintessential artists. So when they take their medium and blend it with my own, I’m enthralled. I noticed recently that, coincidentally or not, most of the original paintings in my home have words somewhere in the picture. That I didn’t buy it all myself makes it an even more compelling fact.

Today I visited my friend, Kathryn Daily’s studio in the International District for an open studio event. I love Kathryn’s work, so it was a joy to see what she’s doing. There were many other terrific artists there, with all their wine and cheese and equipment — including a letterpress that I got to work myself!

I was most taken by the work of Edward Ancher Nelson, particularly his watercolors of groups of people. The image is an example of the many on display in his studio and in the hallways of the building. One slim painting traversed the length of the staircase, with myriad portraits of people and their characteristics, fading into the horizon line at the bottom of the stairs. “Scatalogical.” “Cat-like.” “Self-Involved.”

Nothing puts me at a loss for words like a painting. I blame my inadequate art history education for not being able to describe what I like about a work of art. Sure, as I said, I love words in art, but that isn’t all that appeals to me about his work. There’s a feeling of both individual importance and anonymity that Nelson’s paintings create. We are only one character, one trait, one moment, and we are together, standing out and blending in all at once. Next to each other one trait shines brightly, while anything else we may be is eclipsed.

And maybe that’s not it at all.

I talked to one artist in her studio about how difficult it is to know where to begin with visual art. For me, that’s usually not the case with writing. Yet I wouldn’t say writing comes easily, either. It comes slowly, not without pain, and with a tremendous deliberation, analysis, and unending correction. I imagine the painter throwing his or her soul against the canvas, using technique only as a lens. The creation is already there in the mind. Perhaps that’s not how it is.

But for my writing, every moment feels precarious, uncharted. Every word, as it appears on the page, means crap. Crap, crapping crappiest crapness. And later, when I look it over again, sometimes it means more. Sometimes not.

How pedestrian, how droll to trade in meanings, line my ideas up and assassinate them with periods at the end of every sentence. How boring to explain. Quick, someone give me a canvas, and a clue where to begin. There’s a soul here in need of throwing.

I bought business cards the other day. They identify me as a writer.

There are many opinions about when you get to call yourself a writer [Ed: see comments]. I like to think that like other parts of one’s own identity, it arises from within — only you know whether you’re a writer or not.

Doubts I have, though this identity has been with me as long as my oldest friends. It’s been a secret. It’s been a title. It’s been a lie. It’s been the only thing that keeps me alive. I have rolled around in the mud with writer, wrestled it and conquered it, only to lose on rematch.

And even when you get over coming out as a writer and you claim the identity, there are other people in the world to think about. Will they call you a writer?

Apparently the late, great George Carlin struggled with this side of the dilemma. He was not just a comedian, but a writer. From his last interview, with Psychology Today:

It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?

It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.

This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.

Last year a group of us from the little writing school that could, Bent, went to Saints and Sinners, a queer literary festival in New Orleans. Traversing one of those cobblestone streets en masse, we talked about the fear of calling yourself a writer. And we practiced. In turn, we said it, out loud, so that everyone with us could hear. “I am a writer.”

I am a writer.

Those of us who have come out in other ways know how scary – and ultimately liberating – coming out can be. But when I came out as queer, it was just done. From then on I could be. Could love. Could  breathe and smile and curl up in the arms of the person I loved and who loved me, freely.

Calling yourself a writer means that now you must work. Because if you don’t have “something to show for it,” sadly, nobody will believe you.

You may as well tuck that journal back under your mattress and go back to keeping secrets.