Emerging Writers Network

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Cooper Esteban

So, this gets us to page 186 out of 504 in this issue of Unsaid.  Or author 29 out of 64.  Have no fear though, David and I have the next 7 author posts (which will get us to page 220) in progress and plan to keep working through this issue until we get to discuss the novella by Peter Markus that wraps the whole thing up!  For those that may have missed earlier posts, check out the full series, to date, here.

Cooper Esteban - 1563, Casa Buonarotti

I like what Esteban has done in this poem, starting with what I'll call the narrator's point of view, then shifting to what appears to be something from a text, and then jumping back to the narrator's point of view.  I like how the two different points of view have similar aspects to them without being obvious about it.  Esteban has written something that appears on the surface to be quite simple, when I'd venture to guess it took a great, great deal of effort to have done so.

David McLendon

I agree completely, Dan. Esteban's lines are eloquent and brief, but the attention he conveys displays what must have been a lot of work. His poems are ranked high on my list. There is an odd conflation of antiquity and the modern that comes across from his pages. Anyone interested in such a lasting newness should seek out his collections, Jove Protected by Geese and Mosefolket. I would gladly pay the price of admission for both books just to have in my possession the title of the former. Jove Protected by Geese. Brilliant.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Emilia A. Phillips

Emilia A. Phillips - On Matter at Home

This poem jumped out at me as it was, and here comes the lack of understanding poetry, written in a straightforward manner.  That is, it seemed more realist to me, if that's the right term.  Or narrative?  There's a story being told within the three stanzas, one that even I was understanding upon my first read through.  This makes it sound like I found the poem might be simpler or less poetic than those we've previously discussed, but that's not my intention at all.  I thought Phillips did a great job of dropping little bits of information as the poem moved forward, hitting me with a surprise early in the third stanza that I believe was intended to be a surprise, but not one that comes so far out of left field that it makes no sense.  It fits in just fine.

As, to me at least, this poem seems to come from a different style set than many of those found earlier in this issue, I am curious as to what it was about it that had you finding it an Unsaid poem?

David McLendon

Being raised on rock albums of the 70's, I place a great deal of attention on the sequencing of the pieces that appear in Unsaid. I want each issue to be as close as possible to an orchestrated cycle of songs. It's by no coincidence that I placed the work of Phillips and Schorn side by side. There are perhaps no two writers in Unsaid who are more diametrically opposed. Yet they both present what I seek most for Unsaid: Difference.  The poem by Phillips emotes loss and longing, but with a great deal of authority.  There is nothing sentimental about her poem.  She sees her world clearly and places that clarity into words.  Hers is a plainspoken voice that demands to be heard.  She's a strong young poet, and I hope to hear more from her in the future.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Brian Schorn

  Brian Schorn - Three Poems

I'm going to admit up front to not fully understanding the poems, or what Schorn was hoping to get the reader to take out of them, and am interested in finding out what it was about them that grabbed your attention. 

I think there are some great phrases and lines that sound great when read aloud, but the question I really walked away with after reading all three of these a few times apiece was - what in the world do the titles have to do with the poems?  Searching a bit further I do see how they might tie in, but it led me to wondering, for you, someone to whom words are so very obviously important, that is, specific words, and their placement within each piece, how important is the title of a piece to you? 

David McLendon

I was first introduced to Schorn's work through his collection, Strabismus. What appeals to me most in his writing is its liveliness. The poems at first glance may come across as stream of consciousness writing, but Schorn places a lot of meaning behind the structure. Regardless, it's the sensation of language created by Schorn that draws me to his work. The words appear to be living organisms on the page. Like Kira Henehn, Schorn is both smart and playful. His titles fit this category as well, and I see each matched perfectly with the text appearing below it. When referencing John Cage and Heinrich Rudolph Hertz, Schorn builds a narrative that stylistically reflects their lives. Schorn appears to me as a scientist-musicologist-historian with the soul of a poet. Each of these disciplines has a place in his work. He is curious and always learning--and he turns his knowledge into curious art.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Richard St. Germain

Richard St. Germain - The Aim Was to Aim Lower

First off, this one surprised me in that it is written in second person.  How often do you receive submissions written in second person, and of those, what percentage do you think pull it off?  What do you personally look for in a story once you notice (usually as of word one) that it's been written in second person? Anything different than what you are looking for in a first or third person narrative?

The other thing that hit me while reading this one was that in a mere seven pages I felt like I was in the midst of a novel.  It didn't seem like a typical short story with a conflict somewhere within, but felt larger than that. 

David McLendon

Ultimately, the narrative point of view in itself matters very little to me. What matters most is how the writer proceeds once he or she has established a narrative point of view. The tools and methods one chooses from the narrative mode are crucial, of course, as each creates an intrinsically notable effect once implemented on the page. But writing from one point of view or another is not the deciding element that makes a story weak or strong. While it’s true that the elevated sense of cold distance conveyed by McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is strengthened by McCarthy’s use of the third-person omniscient, his use of parataxis is perhaps more important, as it increases this needed distance and gives the book a tone that is somewhat biblical. One must also consider the strange archaic terms that are part of McCarthy’s diction, as well as the antiquated syntax of his dialogue. The narrative point of view is but one of many tools.  

Not unlike McCarthy, St. Germain knows his tools. He uses the rarely used second-person point of view to his advantage. He finds authority in this stance and moves forward with declarative sentences that are deceptively simple:  

“It was huge. You were scared. Here it came. Here you were. You were little. You were scared. You were flesh. You were bones.”  

Sentences such as these gather and build inside the reader out from a kind of understated hypnotic cadence. St. Germain easily could have chosen to compose the entire piece in this manner. Had he done so, the story would have been strong. Instead, he insists on making it stronger. He insists on raising the stakes. He accommodates his pages with risk and danger by braiding such deceptively simple sentences with others that are lengthier and somewhat lyrical:  

“It was a view within a view arranged for the sake of familiarity, so that by their feel you gained it, by their feel you lost it again, retrievable and irretrievable at the same time.”  

“Things you touched sank in the way widened by you trying to get at them.”  

“There would always be room for a person who let it be known that the thing he was talking about could be used to get whatever you wanted, to convince someone you were serious, to sleep on (under a cushion or something) or beside (covered with a blanket or something) or even holding (away from the body, obviously, hopefully) as a precaution against intruders coming.”  

This braiding of rhythmically opposed sentences creates a sort of harmonious tension throughout the composition. One rhythm is broken by the other, and the overall effect is one of lingual dips and swells. What bonds each braid to the other is the fullness of confidence that exudes from St. Germain’s spareness of language. In both his shorter and lengthier sentences, he emotes a lot by saying very little. His work is less about information than sensation.  

It’s a wonderfully strange piece, beautiful in its musicality, and you are correct in assuming it’s from a larger work. In addition to these pages, parts of the larger work appear in Unsaid’s second and third issues. St. Germain recently allowed me the fine pleasure of reading the completed work. He has chopped it considerably and shaped it into one of the more exacting pieces of writing I have ever read. Let me be the first to say that this novella, Archipelago, is lasting in its difference and needed by the world. Any publisher who truly cares for literature will not tarry another moment against the opportunity to bring it into print.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - M.T. Fallon

M.T. Fallon - Two flash fictions

 

Fallon writes of contradictions, but does so with such beautifully constructed sentences that the reader may not notice that points are being contradicted, really from the very beginning of each piece, until they are well into the paragraphs.  I really enjoyed both of these but thought the construct of "Trial of Anton" was brilliant.  An extremely short and to the point first sentence:

"The first sentence is death."

This is followed by a page and a half long second (and final) sentence that begins:

"The second sentence is irrelevant coming as it does after the first but they insist on reading it, and I'm not listening to it, although they continue to read it as if they think I am listening to it, this second sentence, in fact everyone seems to be listening to this second sentence as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to do, ..." and it goes on, in this beautiful manner until the narrator finally begs them to continue reading the second sentence forever.

What are your thoughts on how Fallon uses contradiction to move a story forward, and more importantly, what was it about these two flashes that made you accept them?

 

David McLendon:

Fallon listens. Fallon listens to the contradictions of language. He listens and hears the positing. He listens and hears the negating. Fallon understands these contradictions. He understands that these contradictions are natural in our daily speech. What Fallon understands is this: such contradictions are simply one of the many ways that we manage our lives. We appropriate language daily to justify the insult of our mortality.

In other words, go to a diner. Go to a diner and listen. You'll hear it immediately:

"He had a stroke. No, it was a heart attack. He smoked, but he quit. They say the smoke killed him. The smoke didn't kill him. I'll tell you what killed him. Work is what killed him. Listen. Let me tell you. What killed him was his wife."

I heard this just today while sitting in a diner over coffee. The key difference between Fallon and the speaker at the diner is that Fallon is not simply putting out sounds into the air to compensate for idle time. 

Fallon cares.

Fallon is aware of his mortality. He desires nothing more than to state something that is new and lasting in the presence of his absence. He will attempt this even when knowing that the very notion of anything “mattering” provides it’s own set of valid complications.

I do not know Fallon personally, but let me imagine that he lives inside a bunker. The bunker is shelved with staples to outlast the inevitable demise of our species. I imagine the sustenance Fallon requires has little to do with procreation or some moral obligation to push our species onward.

In other words, Fallon writes. When I imagine Fallon in his bunker, I imagine him writing. Sometimes I imagine him reading. Say Kafka, or Poe. But Fallon is not Kafka. Fallon is not Poe. Fallon is Fallon. And because Fallon is Fallon, his work is always welcomed among the pages of Unsaid.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - David Ohle

David Ohle - Ruthie

 

So, this is an excerpt from one of the novellas that I just ordered from Calamari Press, which makes me even more excited that I've ordered them.  I also read Motorman by David earlier this year and he amazes me in how he creates these worlds that are seemingly very similar to our own, yet have their own vocabularies, their own quirks, but in a manner that still allows me as a reader to believe I'm right there with his characters.

 

This particular piece is broken into lists, cantos, some straightforward (or close to it) narrative, etc.  What drew you to this particular piece and in a case like this, an excerpt from a novella, is it similar to the Sam Michel excerpt, had you read the entire piece?  Are you an active participant with the author in finding the right excerpt for Unsaid, or are you publishing what David submitted to you?

 

David McLendon:

First, let me applaud all that Derek White is doing at Calamari. His tireless enthusiasm is a great example for anyone to follow. I picked up a copy of Motorman fifteen or so years ago. For years I kept looking for new work by Ohle. He is such a great and fearless writer. I found his contact information and began corresponding with him. He was still writing strong work, and eventually those pages became two books that completed the trilogy he began with Motorman. The forthcoming work that Ohle is publishing with Calamari is perhaps his strongest. The excerpt in Unsaid affirms this. To answer your question, yes, I read an early draft of the book. He had published excerpts elsewhere, and offered me what was available. Ohle is very generous and easy to work with. He is affable and modest and a true artist who has remained untainted by the marketplace.  The excerpt I chose for Unsaid is Ohle at his best. He creates a strange world that is very convincing. His details are some of the best imagined in the language, and each detail is a multiplicity unto itself. He carries that great rare ability to balance content against structure. He is an experimentalist, but a great storyteller as well. His forthcoming titles from Calamari constitute nothing less than a great event in American literature.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Tom Laverty

Tom Laverty - Six Poems

Subtle.  That's the first thing that comes to mind as there is a subtle masculinity to Laverty's work - nothing over the top, but it's there.  There's also a nice subtle use of repetition.  It's not as overt as some of the other material I've read here so far, but it's there.

There also seems to be a nice variance of style from poem to poem within these six.  Is that something that you hope to find when publishing more than one or two poems from a single poet in a single issue? 

David McLendon

I agree with you that Laverty's work carries with it a kind of subtle masculinity, but what I hear stylistically from his pages varies little from one poem to the next. Laverty is stylistically consistent, implementing a sort of plainspoken meter with each of his poems. This suits the content of his work, as Laverty is less concerned with formal diversity than presenting the reader with deeply felt personal histories. He is a keen observer of his surroundings. He allows no distance between what he sees and what he says. There is no peripheral safety in Laverty's poems, and he is one of the stronger emerging poets I have read. He insists we see his world for what it is, and he shows us that world with a clarity built from language. There is magic in Laverty's work, but no tricks. As he writes in one of his poems:

"Putting this in a sonnet would have been wrong,
you are closer to me than that."

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Bjorn Verenson

Bjorn Verenson - The Basis of My Gospel

Short and to the point and maybe with a little more straightforward humor than the writer whose alias this is (not that I don't find said author funny, but many worry about me when they find out that I do).

This is one of at least two cases of your inclusion of authors publishing work under an alias.  What are your overall thoughts of this process?  The writing of work under a different pen name?  In the other case, it may seem to be more clear as to why, as the writing is really quite different than that being published under the original pen name.  I've not read enough Verenson to know yet just where he falls in comparison with his counterpart.

David McLendon

It's the writing that matters to me, not the source of the writing or the masking of the source. The way I see it, Verenson is as "real" as his "counterpart". Beyond the writing of fiction, we create fictions daily as a way to manage the insult of nature and the inevitability of death. We follow cultural trends or worship a deity or shoot up heroin as a way to sidestep the unavoidable fact of our own mortality. At least with the writing of fiction the writer is attempting a kind of immortality through art. He or she is busy with the task of making an artifact that will hopefully outlast each generation that perpetuates its readership in the world.

Regardless, it's nobler to create a fiction for yourself than accept those fictions the world hands you at birth. Art cannot save you. Nothing can save you. But through art you may be able to face with dignity what so many others are hellbent on avoiding. More often than not, Verenson and his doppelgänger force their pages beyond the act of facing mortality. They force their pages to embrace it.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Patrick Ehlen

And we are back!  After a busy period for myself, David was involved in taking Unsaid 4 on the road to New York, but we're back in business with going through the current issue author by author.  Those of you keeping track may notice that we've skipped past one author - this is due to an email snafu, but do not worry, the comments on his work are coming soon.

Patrick Ehlen - November

Man, that opening sentence is a humdinger.  Ehlen moves nicely back and forth between long and winding sentences and those that are quick and to the point, and does so with a nice use of language that I'm obviously coming to expect within these pages.  He also creates some phonetic words:  wantida, whadja, thrower, and more.  What are your thoughts on this type of technique? 

David McLendon

I am the strongest advocate you will find of taking liberties on the page. It's tricky, though, because all too often these liberties are odd for the sake of being odd, and as a reader nothing collapses my attention more. Ehlen is a strong writer. His choices on the page are thoughtful and thoughtfully felt. His sentences are quite different from those of Alexis Almeida, but they share with hers a kind of durable eloquence that is essential for sentences of such lengthy transport. Can you imagine a novel that follows through with this stance? It's my guess that Ehlen locked himself away from the distractions of the world while composing these pages. Both he and Almeida know how to stick to their respective objects. They let their objects move the pages forward. I look forward to hearing more from Ehlen, as he is a writer who listens before he speaks.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Megan Layton

Megan Layton - Two Pieces

"'A space,' Mol sys, 'that's lovely but savage to itself.'"

This line near the end of the first story, "Hollowed Eyes and How to Fill Them," seemed a perfect description of Layton's writing.  Lovely, on a sentence and structure level. Savage as there's a good deal of pain, and death throughout the two stories. 

Layton also employs a nice subtlety to her writing, especially in regard to the pretty heavy inclusion of blood - be it pulsing in the vein, or dripping from a wound, or worse.  One never goes much more than a couple of pages without being reminded of blood, but never in a splatter-filled way that would jump out at the reader - Hey, Blood is Important!

What is it about Layton's writing that jumps out at you when you first begin reading a piece?

David:

What hits me first about Layton's pages is the authority they maintain from start to finish. I knew when reading both her stories--especially "Hollowed Eyes and How to Fill Them"--that Layton was a seasoned writer, a veteran. It was only later that I learned she wrote these stories when she was little more than twenty-one years old. This truly astounds me. She is as serious a writer as any who have appeared in Unsaid.

She, like Alexis Almeida, studied with Joanna Howard up at Brown. One wonders what Howard is teaching up there. It's my guess that she is teaching her students less about writing than how to open out something they already possess. I admire Howard for this, and I thank her for sending Layton my way.

Layton has a great strength of scope that she delivers with mystery and eloquence. She knows every aspect of the world she creates, and she understands both the spaces that need to be filled and those that are better left alone. She is one of the least sentimental writers I have ever encountered. She knows how to emote feelings from a distance, and this is no easy feat.

"Hollowed Eyes and How to Fill Them" is a beautiful story. Layton is a wunderkind of sorts, and there is always a fear that such a young and gifted writer will be robbed by the world and its distractions. However, it's my feeling that Layton is in this for the long haul. The strength she possesses she possesses by nature. I can see her extending "Hollowed Eyes and How to Fill Them" into a novel, and if she continues with the seriousness she has set forth thus far, it will be a very amazing book. Regardless, I am very excited to read whatever she writes next. Her caliber of work is always welcome in Unsaid.