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Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:34:39 -0800

The new chapbook from MiPo featuring science-themed poems by Cheryl Snell accompanied by her sister Janet's painting can be found here--
http://issuu.com/cherylsnell3/docs/multiverse

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27579107/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:18:04 -0800

Pico Iyer once said something resonant about the value of being an outsider, and how an unfamiliar culture, in this case Japan, transformed his writing. He said that Japan's "genius for silence and for thinking about others, its habit of self-erasure" caused his sentences to grow " shorter and shorter, and more and more empty, till they looked a bit like that room where I'd slept in the temple. My pages became so quiet you had to lean in to hear them, and, as with any good Japanese, completely unstriking, and neutral on the surface...Image had taken the place of idea."

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27579033/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:15:18 -0800

Syzygy

This is one of my favorite words, although I've only used it twice in my poetry, once in a baseball poem and one about lurve.

Wiki says--In poetry, syzygy is the combination of two metrical feet into a single unit, similar to an elision. Consonantal or phonetic syzygy is also similar to the effect of alliteration, where one consonant is used repeatedly throughout a passage, but not necessarily at the beginning of each word.

Mathematician James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897) employed "the apt juncture of syllables" in his poetry, a serious avocation and the subject of an article in the current Bulletin of the AMS. The author speculates "about which of the nine muses would most likely have been given the assignment of overseeing [Sylvester's] monochromatic verse.. "'The deaf one,'" some wag volunteered.

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27578988/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:13:38 -0800

like lists. Like Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake, right?

This afternoon, as I sipped a mango lassi (blend ice, plain yogurt and mango slices; add sugar to taste) I thought about how much ink has been spilled on the importance of first lines in a novel. There must be a list for that, I thought--and several appeared at a quick click.

From the haunting (Rebecca), to the stately (Anna Karenina), to the breezy (Howards End) to the detached (Jane Eyre), first lines "are more or less context free, whereas final lines carry the contextual burden of the entire novel and, for maximum effectiveness, often need several sentences to do their work." says Charlie Harris.

So where's the list for last lines? American Book Review promises to publish a list of best last lines next year. Lance Olson, on his blog, observes that "last lines often carry what I think of as a sort of rhythmic burden, a sort of aural crescendo that depends on the lines just before them to establish the right rise and fall, or rise and rise and rise, or ironic brake or trap door."Endings are loaded, and contain the whole story in a few words.

Here are a few examples.

"The others listened with interest, their naked genitals staring dully, sadly, listlessly at the yellow sand. --Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

"Tomorrow." Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things.

"He planned to call it 'The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger Delta.'" Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Of course, sometimes an ending loses the reader. Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters ends with an image--well, I don't want to go there.

For my own first novel, I called on an image I had used as a symbol and refrain throughout. When a reader said, "I just finished the book, and I'm sitting here crying," I was at least as moved as she.

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27578942/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:12:12 -0800

Sometimes my husband reads to me from the Bhagavad Gita. The translation we use is by Juan Mascaro, who conveys the textual meaning with clarity and poetry. The fact that he translates from and to languages not his own is a unique feat, I think.
This verse is among my favorites: " A leaf, a flower, a fruit, some water, whoever dedicates it with love, I accept with the devotion of his soul." Andre Weil wrote about it during his time in the slammer. In a letter to his wife he said, "If I get started on this topic, I won't finish for a year--but I can hardly amuse you by describing the walls of my cell, which are the only landscape before me now...all I have to offer Krishna is water, or now and then an orange or banana that they give me for desert; sometimes, these last few days, a young leaf, all crinkled up still, that the wind has blown onto the walk--but no flowers." (from The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician-Autobiography of Andre Weil, translated by Jennifer Gage Birkhauser.

About the Gita, Mascaro has said, "The Bhagavad Gita is a book of Light and Love, but it is above all a book of Life ... Karma is work and work is Life."

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27578894/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:10:31 -0800

Poetry:Read It When You're Drunk

For your downtime pleasure: excerpts from "Quote Poet Unquote" by Dennis O'Driscoll, as found on the PaperCuts blog.

"I like reading poetry at night -- a doctor I know claims that this is because `poetry is the only thing you can read when you're drunk.'"
-- John Lanchester

"My self-esteem is so low that getting the Pulitzer Prize just made me break even."
-- Franz Wright

"There's nothing like a punch in the mouth to remind you that that poem about your next-door neighbor was not as clever as you thought."
-- Simon Armitage

"The poem that says `I love you' is the little black cocktail dress, the classic thing that everyone would like to have written one of."
-- James Fenton

"I started a PhD in English at the University of Chicago because I loved poetry-which I now realize is like saying I studied vivisection because I loved dogs."
-Michael Donaghy, Verse

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27206994/

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:01:00 -0800

I'm looking out my office window, trying to write answers to an email interview, but mostly I'm watching a low-slung fox hunt a squirrel. The fox makes me think of a coat I once had, its plush, silky collar. That, in turn, reminds me of my mother, sitting in the Chinese chair, swaddled in the old mink stole she uses as a sweater.

I'm not concentrating. I put myself in my readers' shoes:
Would the reader like to know that when I had the idea to write Shiva's Arms I did not think ahead to how I would have to immerse myself in the culture that had rejected me as an unsuitable bride? Would the reader smile, knowing that it dawned on me days later that I would have to break barriers of time and distance, break down and mend fences, and leave myself vulnerable to the very people I was trying to avoid? Would the reader like to know how I squared my shoulders and took the bull by the horns, and yes, wrote the letters, made the calls, parsed the accents?

The reader might like to know that in order to get close enough to convince readers, I had to do research. Would the reader want to know how many books I read, South Indian recipes I tried, how often I spoke to immigrants "this side"? Would the reader like to know that what I did not include in this book would fill another?

The reader might be interested that the family scandal I manufactured was almost true. Would the reader like to hear about the negotiations for using that information? Fiction should afford privacy, but in a culture convinced that everyone is looking, that was an unreliable concept. The reader might be surprised as I was when the chorus went from "Don't tell that story!" to "This is the way it really happened." The reader might like to know that what I did not include in the first book will fill another.

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27206935/

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:58:34 -0800

Katru vanga ponen oru kavithai vangi vandhen!
(I went out for air and came back with a poem)

Koyakkatai

She spoons jaggery and coconut
on rounds of rice-and-dal dough,
brings the edges up and crimps them
into drawstring purses. She sets each
dumpling in hot water, and the steam
fogs her features. She becomes young
again, wearing the yellow sari.

All night, I dreamed of koyakkatai.
She pinches my cheek as if it's another kind
of pastry, and I can see her as she was: sandals
flapping all the way to temple, her offering
of one hundred and one sweets in her arms,
her children clamoring for their share, galled
to think she would give away their bounty.

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27206910/

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:57:51 -0800

I've just been introduced to Sivasankari, a popular Tamil writer and activist who wrote a novel called Oru Manithanin Kathai, about a drunk. It was a huge success in India, and subsequently made into a tele-serial. The writer says about the book, "I purposely made Thyagu, the protagonist, a very lovable person. So many readers asked me: Why do you want to make him such a nice person? I did that purposely; I wanted those of my readers who were alcoholics to identify with him. When the identification was complete, I made his life deteriorate. I wanted them to sit up and contemplate their own lives...

Thyagu used to hide quarter bottles of Scotch in the cistern. This was something his wife did not know. One day, I got a very angry letter from the managing director of a company. 'I cannot hide the bottle there anymore,' he wrote angrily. 'You told my wife about it. I have been hiding it there for the last 15 years.' He called me names and said I didn't understand his pain!

The same person wrote to me after the serialisation was over. This time, he was sober. He said I understood the feelings of alcoholics and that he would go to a de-addiction centre. He wrote to me again after he was cured of the disease."

http://cherylsnell.stumbleupon.com/review/27206881/

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:56:41 -0800

I'm taking my cue today from our friend Jennifer, who has a podcast on arranged marriage at alaivani.com. Like so many westerners, I'm fascinated by this subject. This is how I portrayed marriage negotiations in a draft of Shiva's Arms:

"Hush," said Varun. "Amma is trying to marry you off to someone in the parlor." There was a rumor that child-marriage was about to be outlawed, the legal age raised to thirteen. He twitched his new mustache, a growth Shiva had nicknamed Bandicoot after a legendary rat that lived on the property and could not be caught...

Shiva nodded; she didn't give the matchmaking in the parlor another thought.
It was only when the defeated look on her parents' faces began to seem permanent did Shiva fear for her freedom. A suitable match would provide the parents with momentary happiness, but after the wedding they would only see their daughter when her husband's family allowed it. "Taking pains with a daughter is like watering another family's garden," she overheard one family's representative say as she was ushered out of the house.

Some minor disgrace might render Shiva unmarriageable and put an end to this parade of grasping, fortune-hunting crones. She had to come up with a plan to save herself...

Wizened female relatives of possible suitors finagled their way into the parlor of the old stone house. With cunning eyes, they calculated the immense wealth all around them. Each one imagined that Shiva's mother would drop to her knees in gratitude that her ruffian daughter could have a future with a respectable family. But Shiva's mother was a good negotiator and would not be swayed by the trickery of some old abacus- counter. "Your nephew is quite dark, quite rugged-looking, I see," she might say, holding the suitor's photograph in her fingers as if it offended her.

"It was taken on a cloudy day only," the marriage-brokering aunt would sniff, clattering her bone china cup on the saucer. "The boy is quite fair under sunlight, perhaps fairer than your daughter. Her skin must be toughened from her times on horseback, isn't it?"

Shiva's mother kept her voice low, so that the old woman had to bend forward to catch all the words. "It is so surprising what some people will criticize! Some people have nothing better to do than limit a child's abilities, and measure her value in gold and jewels only. My Shiva has great wealth beyond beauty, and I must be careful who I give her to! On the occasion of her baby-naming ceremony, the priest saw that she loved all the objects set before her to determine her future. He pronounced her capable in all areas."

Peeking out from her hiding place behind the damask curtain, Shiva silently cheered her mother on as she exposed one old woman after another for the greedy viper she was.

But as time wore on, Shiva's mother became more anxious, more fretful, not so indulgent of Shiva's childishness. She became less critical of the women, more eager to establish a fruitful rapport. Shiva, standing behind the heavy curtain, hand over mouth, was terrorized by the thought of a new life in which she would be captive. What would she hide behind, which curtain, whose family? Her throat seized up. I can't breathe! Throwing off the damask, she'd hurl herself into her mother's arms, sure she was about to die...

All the coughing fits in the universe could not have changed Shiva's fate, and deep down she knew it. At each unveiling, she would do her best to discourage the bride-seeker. Her rude answers to prying questions, inexplicable memory lapses in the middle of her singing performances, the sudden physical awkwardness in her dance movements did not change the fact that she was the daughter of a wealthy man with a large dowry to give. Her parents became stricter and more unyielding to her resistance, which came to nothing in the end. Her parents didn't really want her, it was clear, so Shiva consented to be married to a stranger called Trichur Venatesan Sambashivan, Iyer. She was 15.