I've recently listened to episodes on ***three different podcasts*** I'd like to recommend to you.
1) New Letters on the Air host Angela Elam recently interviewed poet Rick Barot. Among the interesting things Barot said was that poets need to balance the principle of order with the principle of disorder in a contained chaos that makes a poem interesting and effective.
He stressed the importance of remembering that ordering some element or elements of a poem can kill the emotional vigor of the piece if not counterweighted with disorder, which can be achieved in an unexplained leaping between ideas, for example. On the flipside, all chaos without any ordering principle makes a piece disparate and risks excessive interiority or obscurity. It's the tension between the two that Rick Barot counsels poets to strive to find in every poem, not neglecting one principle in favor of the other.
Good advice, no matter which principle you naturally lean toward. Enjoy the whole episode.
2) Skylight Books Reading Series recently featured visual artist Danielle Krysa (the popular blogger of The Jealous Curator) talking about her new book Creative Block: Advice and Projects from 50 Successful Artists. Krysa discusses her own creative block and how she attempted to solve it by beginning her blog, thus discovering that studying others' art simultaneously inspired and discouraged her. So she contacted artists and asked them about their experiences with creative block, and it turns out at just about all of them have had periods of self-doubt and inability to work. So she put together this book, which is instructive for any creative type, visual or otherwise.
Krysa is charming; enjoy both the podcast episode and her blog, a place where I have lost countless hours.
3) NPR's Ask Me Another quiz show this week featured erudite musical group They Might Be Giants, singing (Don't Hate the Villain) Hate the Villanelle. The whole quiz show is, as usual, highly amusing and worth listening to, but if you just want the song, you can watch it on YouTube or on Vimeo. (The Vimeo sound is a bit better. Or listen on iTunes to the entire episode, for the best recording.) Enjoy!
Showing posts with label Skylight Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skylight Books. Show all posts
Friday, June 27, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
On A Metaphoric Bender
Aimee Bender on the Skylight Books podcast this week discussed exactly what I needed to hear.
First she read a story from her new collection The Color Master, and if you have time you really should listen to it.
But then she started answering questions and fielded one that led into a rumination of the use of metaphors (beginning at about 29:50 to the end). She said that a metaphor shouldn't have a one-to-one correspondence with the thing it is standing in for, or with the magical element. It needs to be more intuitive (from the unconscious, from a feeling of being drawn to use the items in the metaphor) to be infused with an emotional life. "The magic is a kind of access point into the emotional life of the story," she said.
Quoting Donald Barthelme, she said, "Art should both invite and repel interpretation." A one-to-one correspondence between symbol and meaning defies this mystery. Kills the mystery even. Bemder said where you are drawn to the meaning but don't completely understand the meaning, the emotion will be in there, as infused by the symbols you have been drawn to.
Later she said that once you (the writer) begin to see the symbol as a symbol, there are a few ways to fix this. One is to throw a random element in "to get the brain off its analytical mode." She doesn't believe that anything is chosen at random, but rather that everything is selected from the buried unconscious, and that "to kind of know what you are doing and kind of don't know what you are doing is a very productive space to be in."
Another fix she cites is one used by George Saunders and Haruki Murakami, one in which "as soon as you smell the meaning, you put it in the story." That is, you acknowledge to the reader that x is a symbol for y, yes, they saw it and you saw it too, and now the reader is ungrounded because they no longer know what will happen next, because you have to do something different next, having just acknowledged the symbol. "The story refreshes itself," she explains. The story is free to become bigger than that one symbol.
She says it better than I did, and with examples. Plus she's charming. So go and listen for yourself.
First she read a story from her new collection The Color Master, and if you have time you really should listen to it.
But then she started answering questions and fielded one that led into a rumination of the use of metaphors (beginning at about 29:50 to the end). She said that a metaphor shouldn't have a one-to-one correspondence with the thing it is standing in for, or with the magical element. It needs to be more intuitive (from the unconscious, from a feeling of being drawn to use the items in the metaphor) to be infused with an emotional life. "The magic is a kind of access point into the emotional life of the story," she said.
Quoting Donald Barthelme, she said, "Art should both invite and repel interpretation." A one-to-one correspondence between symbol and meaning defies this mystery. Kills the mystery even. Bemder said where you are drawn to the meaning but don't completely understand the meaning, the emotion will be in there, as infused by the symbols you have been drawn to.
Later she said that once you (the writer) begin to see the symbol as a symbol, there are a few ways to fix this. One is to throw a random element in "to get the brain off its analytical mode." She doesn't believe that anything is chosen at random, but rather that everything is selected from the buried unconscious, and that "to kind of know what you are doing and kind of don't know what you are doing is a very productive space to be in."
Another fix she cites is one used by George Saunders and Haruki Murakami, one in which "as soon as you smell the meaning, you put it in the story." That is, you acknowledge to the reader that x is a symbol for y, yes, they saw it and you saw it too, and now the reader is ungrounded because they no longer know what will happen next, because you have to do something different next, having just acknowledged the symbol. "The story refreshes itself," she explains. The story is free to become bigger than that one symbol.
She says it better than I did, and with examples. Plus she's charming. So go and listen for yourself.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Oblique Strategies Online
I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I didn't know about the Oblique Strategies cards (made by musicians Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt) until I heard author Tupelo Hassman mention them on this podcast from Skylight Books, which you should listen to to enjoy a reading from Hassman's award-winning stylistically innovative book Girl Child, and to hear an interview with Hassman herself.
Basically Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards with suggestions for thinking in new directions during a creative crisis or block. You just randomly draw a card from the deck, and have it take you where it may. Example cards include: "Emphasize the flaws" and "Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor" and "Go slowly all the way round the outside" and "Convert a melodic element into a rhythic element" and (a favorite for me!) "Repetition is a form of change."
Decks of cards (older editions) can be pricey and hard to come by. New editions are apparently available. To see if you think you need a deck, try these online card generators (they seem to emphasize different cards, so try them all):
Minimal Design's Oblique Strategies Generator
EnoWeb's Oblique Strategies Random Card
Stoney's Website Oblique Card Generator
Josh Harrison's Oblique Strategies Generator
4/12 Addendum: Someone named Matt Gillooly has a Twitter feed called Oblique Strategies, @oblique. It seems to post cards to Twitter on an hourly basis.
Basically Oblique Strategies is a deck of cards with suggestions for thinking in new directions during a creative crisis or block. You just randomly draw a card from the deck, and have it take you where it may. Example cards include: "Emphasize the flaws" and "Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor" and "Go slowly all the way round the outside" and "Convert a melodic element into a rhythic element" and (a favorite for me!) "Repetition is a form of change."
Decks of cards (older editions) can be pricey and hard to come by. New editions are apparently available. To see if you think you need a deck, try these online card generators (they seem to emphasize different cards, so try them all):
Minimal Design's Oblique Strategies Generator
EnoWeb's Oblique Strategies Random Card
Stoney's Website Oblique Card Generator
Josh Harrison's Oblique Strategies Generator
4/12 Addendum: Someone named Matt Gillooly has a Twitter feed called Oblique Strategies, @oblique. It seems to post cards to Twitter on an hourly basis.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Skylight Books Podcast
Here's a good podcast series I recently discovered. It's authors talking about their works and their craft, and giving readings at the bookstore Skylight Books in Los Angeles. I've listened to and have downloaded (to listen) authors such as Mark L. Danielewski, Panio Gianopolous, Susan Straight, Ben Marcus, TC Boyle, Kate Zambreno, and Charles Yu, and poets Amanda Auchter, Nathalie Handal, Eileen Myles, and Carol Moldaw. And more.
Here's their website. The podcast is also available on iTunes.
Here's their website. The podcast is also available on iTunes.
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