Peter Levine’s story “How Does Your Garden Grow” was recognized as a notable story in the University of Texas Press’ 2009 volume of Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri. The story first appeared in TMR issue 31.3.

Frannie Lindsay, The Missouri Review’s 2009 Editors’ Prize winner in Poetry recently published a new collection of poetry, Mayweed (The Word Works, 2009). A number of poems in Lindsay’s collection have appeared in TMR issue 31.1.

Camille T. Dungy edited an anthology of African American nature poetry, Black Nature (University of Georgia Press, 2009). Dungy’s poetry has appeared twice in The Missouri Review. Her latest feature can be found in TMR issue 27.2.

Peter Gordon, author of “Fish” from The Missouri Review 28.2, has recently published a book of short stories, Man Receives a Letter (Red Hen Press, 2009).

The sensation of a shared small-town coming of age is the connection that leaves Strayed feeling powerfully linked to Alice Munro. Follow along as Strayed learns the balance between embracing this link to her past and following her own path to the future.

This is why I love audio, why audio recordings of literature matter: it’s about storytelling. I love having stories read to me, where it’s just me and the voice of the reader, as if we were sitting together in a corner, away from the rest of the world and its worries.

My world, like yours I’m sure, has lots of worries. So, as a small remedy, I offer one of my favorite recordings–Brian Swann’s poetry feature from 32.3, our recent issue on Demons.

Poetry Feature by Brian Swann

2009 Contest Winners:

Fiction

Winner:

Fiona McFarlane
“Exotic Animal Medicine”
Austin, TX

Finalists:

Diane Simmons
“Yukon River”

Mai-Lee Chai
“Tomorrow in Shanghai”
San Francisco, CA

Siobhan Fallon
“Remission”
Monterey, CA

Poetry

Winner:

Christina Hutchins
Albany, CA

Finalists:

Sarah Blackman
Greenville, SC

Joseph Fasano
Middletown, NY

Brian Brodeur
Fairfax, VA

Essay

Winner:

Joseph Murtagh
“A Hive of Mysterious Danger”
Trumansburg, NY

Finalists:

Jonathan Starke
“What Happens to Heroes”
Fort Collins, CO

Rachel Riederer
“Patient”
Brooklyn, NY

David Bahr
“Bootstrapped”
New York, NY

Best of luck, and happy recording!

I was reminded of Esther’s self-questioning a few evenings ago when I got together with several of our interns and poetry editor to review Editors’ Prize contest submissions.

One of the poetry interns was graduating in December to return home to an uncertain future. He wanted to go to law school but didn’t have the money. He thought he might enlist in the military. The other two had sent out graduate school applications and were waiting to hear if they were admitted for fall.

All three had what you might call “buyer’s remorse.” They openly wondered where an English degree from a state university would get them. The figured, at worst Mom and Dad’s basement and a counter-culture career, at best more school and, if they were lucky, a teaching job.
One regretted not going to J-school. Another thought he should’ve gotten a teaching certificate. All of them knew how to write decent papers for class, but wondered what explicating a text had to do with the “real world.”

I told them if they knew how to write they were already ahead of the competition on the job market. I said, “Writing and editing is a valuable commodity. Employers are desperate for workers who can put together a sentence.”

One of them admitted that he wasn’t even sure he was such a great writer.

We passed the bottle of wine and refilled our glasses.

Twenty years earlier, I was one of five who graduated from my small liberal arts college with a BA in English. Most of my classmates had BS’s in business management and computer science and were going onto jobs as soon as they turned in their caps and gowns. My career trajectory was slow and roundabout, but somehow I had ended up with the work that I wanted: writing, teaching and editing. Looking back, I made my way by accepting little bits of work that became increasingly steady and higher paying. Rather than talent, I’ve always had a simple willingness to work.

I know our three poetry interns will be fine. It will simply take them awhile to find their ways. In the meantime, I know where you can find three bright, funny, and energetic English majors for hire. Will work cheap.

It’s all quite nice and cheery. Except for me. As a kid on the day after Christmas, I felt much like Esther does in The Bell Jar: dull, stuffed and disappointed. As I got older, I began to feel this way well before and long after the holiday.

Fortunately I have a husband who feels the same way about most major holidays. For Thanksgiving break we went to Palm Springs. On turkey day we took a tram into the mountains to hike and picnic. For Christmas we are planning a similar escape, first to Arizona and then to Mexico.

Around the office I made the mistake of announcing that I don’t like Christmas. My co-workers looked at me as if I had sprouted horns on my head and warts on my nose. I know better. There are certain likes and dislikes that you share only with your intimates. For example, you should only divulge how you feel about babies, holidays, religion, drugs, nude beaches, and your childhood to those who know and like you. None of these topics works in polite conversation.

So I’ve outted myself. I don’t like Christmas. But unlike Scrooge, I can do without visitations from ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. In fact, because I dislike the holidays so much, I practice the old axiom that it’s better to give than receive. My husband and I write Christmas checks and send gifts to our family and friends before we put out a “gone fishin’” sign and fly off to warmer climes.

Last year, Christmas dinner was sushi at Nik Sans, and we spent the next day sunning on a beach on the Sea of Cortez. Sitting in the shade of an umbrella sipping a daiquiri, I had forgotten what day it was until two young girls in bikinis walked passed me carrying brightly wrapped packages with floppy red ribbons. The juxtaposition of sea, sand, and Christmas presents made me smile as I ordered another drink to toast the holidays.

In Joan Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” she combs through various notebooks that she’s compiled over the years and remembers what inspired her to jot down fragments of overheard dialogue, odd facts, and place details. Unlike Tharp, the material in Didion’s notebooks seldom feeds her art. Rather it provides insight into her former selves. She writes, “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive or not.”

With these artists’ habits in mind, this semester I asked my nonfiction students to fill their own scratching boxes or notebooks with mementoes that pertain to both the essays they’ve been working on and their writing process. Over the years, I’ve learned that simple assignments like this one are often the most successful.

Last week they brought their baroquely decorated boxes and notebooks to class and like kindergarteners squirmed in their seats until it was their turn to share. They passed around pictures of themselves, boyfriends, best friends, family. They read poems and quotes from their favorite books, burned their favorite candles, played their favorite mood music and passed around their favorite pens. Many held up T-shirts and concert tickets and fake IDs and peacock feathers. By the end of show and tell, the classroom looked like a small bazaar, exotic stuff scattered everywhere. The students continued passing around pictures as they walked out the door, leaving me envious that I had not put together a scratching box of my own.

Often called Generation Me for their attachment to Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they enjoyed talking about themselves. Yet, they had an openness and innocence as they explained their inventories that that nixed any air of narcissism. The exercise tapped into the primitive desire we all have to say “look at me; this is who I am.”

I find this time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, almost surreal. It seems to me that it is never remembered for long. Characterized by grinding out to finish the projects and finding time for holiday shopping, it seems like if you blink you might miss it.

Here in Missouri it is getting cold and the hours of sunlight are shrinking. I spent Thanksgiving in Iowa and up there people are already having to scrap off morning frost from their windshield. I think this time of year is odd because when I have a moment of time, I look at to what’s coming and think about how this year has gone. It’s getting to be the time when movie and book critics have started to make their top 10’s of the year and decade. I think it’s not a bad idea, what’s a better way to remember the past than to rank it?

So here are a few of my tops that I read, watched, or just experienced for the first time:

Best thing I read: Grendel, by John Gardner

Between Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Illych and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment I needed a humorous intermission. Gardner’s book satisfied my humor, philosophical and literary needs. I’ve noticed that in the world of literary greats, Gardner is over looked, despite writing The Art of Fiction. Though he is more contemporary (Grendel came out in ‘71), I hope he will be recognized more.

Notable runner up: The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemmingway

Best thing I watched:  “Up”

Okay, I will admit, I have not gone out and seen a lot of movies in theater this year. “Up” was one of the few, but it was possibly one of the best movies I have ever seen. “Up” managed to established a emotionally heavy story, within the first fifteen minutes, without any feeling of melodrama. And with the magical realism a house of floating away by balloons- some writer out did himself.

Notable runner up: “Watchmen” (that came out this year… right?)

Best thing I just plain experienced: Thanksgiving diner

Maybe it is a little rash to say I had one best thing that I experienced, but Thanksgiving is up there. I still feel full just at the thought of all the food I ate.

Notable runner up: TMR internship (thankfully, there are a lot of runner ups in this category, but TMR has been a incredibly beneficial experience).

As model essays I use several examples from TMR’s archives. Both “Ingo Prefers Not To” and “Renee” are written by mothers who find their daughters’ choices inexplicable. One daughter becomes a heroin addict while the other simply prefers not to finish high school. Tracey Crow’s “The Facelift” tells of her husband’s nip and tuck and his resulting popularity. “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” by Catherine Rankovic is a lesson in how to describe the nearly impossible—Elvis’ phrasing and singing voice.

I also teach John LeCarre’s terrific portrait his five-star conman father “In Ronnie’s Court” published in The New Yorker and Annie Dillard’s memorable, much anthologized piece “The Stunt Pilot.”

The point is that these essays illustrate a range of subject choices and approaches to the assignment. So what did my students do? They either wrote about their mother or their father. For weeks we’ve been reading about parents who by their children’s accounts have committed grave sins; everything from abuse, drugs, alcohol and neglect to dirty houses and bad cooking.

One student’s essay was a cut above the rest. Rather than enumerating her father’s failings; she tried to understand her “absent daddy.” To get closer to him, she tagged along on his hunting and fishing trips, even though they weren’t past-times she enjoyed. She learned that he never had the opportunity to go to college. At nineteen he went to work for the railroad, an industry that she depicts as exploitive. To advance, he made himself indispensible, which kept him away from home for long stretches. She recognized that he worked hard to give her a life better than his own and thus far had succeeded.

After the eighth essay in this series, we joked that we should put together an anthology. I asked them what they wanted to call it.

“How about ‘Fined: Violations in Parenting’,” one student suggested. Her mother had spent three years in prison for dealing drugs.

A few students nodded. All right, but not great.

“What about something like ‘Broken Ashtrays and Double-wides: Pieces on Terrible Parenting.”

The students agreed that we were getting closer. The title we eventually decided on was ‘Hello, Child Services? Tales of Terrible Parents,’”

When I asked them what we could learn from the essays we’d spent more than a month work shopping, they had many answers. No one’s childhood is perfect. Parents don’t know crap. And the phenomenon of super parenting is more media hype than reality.
Children and parents have always struggled to get along. I recently re-watched the film adaptation of Tobias Wolfe’s memoir This Boy’s Life. Wolfe’s stepfather reminded me so much of my own that I could barely watch it. But more surprising was that I’ve never much considered writing about my parents. And now it seems to me that I’m too old to carry on about their failings.