Today, at the Rutgers-Camden Summer Writer's Conference, I'll be asking the students to reflect on the color of life, a prompt inspired by the wholly moving Gerald Stern poem, "Eggshell."
Among the readings will be a brief passage excerpted from the Rebecca Solnit essay, "The Blue of Distance." Solnit writes from a place of knowing toward a place of wonder. An excerpt here:
The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light,the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.
It is a pleasure peculiar to the teacher that, even after classes end and the students go on their way, so many find their way back to your own soul-er home. They report on their journeys. They change the tenor of the conversation you were having with yourself. They make you believe, above all else, that the intensity of what was then matters still, right now.
You students know who you are, and you know that I am grateful.
In other news, I prepare today to meet with the 14-year-old San Francisco-based book club that travels once each year to meet an author who has written of his/her city. We'll be gathering at
Chanticleer garden, where two of my books (
Ghosts in the Garden and
Nothing but Ghosts take place); we'll talk as well about
Dangerous Neighbors. My thanks to Kathye Fetsko Petrie, a writer and writer advocate, who suggested my name to the group, and a warm welcome to Kyle Taylor and her band of reader/travelers.
I prepare as well to meet, on Monday, with the students of the
25th Annual Rutgers-Camden Summer Writers' Conference, which Lisa Zeidner so brilliantly concocts each year. I'm joining (quite late in the game) a cast that includes the likes of Jane Bernstein, Ken Kalfus, Lise Funderburg, J.T. Barbarese, and Peter Trachtenberg. I'm offering my thoughts on creative nonfiction. I'm banking on some time alone with Lisa, whose friendship I have grown to cherish.
Early in the Rutgers-Camden workshop we reflected on the auguring power of literary lists—what they can tell us about a story not-yet-unfolded, what they teach us about voice. We used, as our exemplars, the opening pages of Colum McCann's
Dancer, the extraordinary yield in Tim O'Brien's
The Things They Carried, and the evocative early pages of Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's
Hiroshima in the Morning. We heard:
What was flung onstage during his first season in Paris:
ten one-hundred-franc bills held together in a plastic band;
a packet of Russian tea;
... daffodils stolen from the gardens in the Louvre causing the gardeners to work overtime from five until seven in the evening to make sure the beds weren't further plundered;
... death threats;
hotel keys;
love letters;
and on the fifteenth night, a single long-stemmed gold-plated rose.
(McCann, extracted from a much longer list)
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.
(O'Brien, and this is merely the beginning of his brilliant catalog)
These are the things I packed:
— Twelve blank notebooks (paper is more expensive in Japan, or so I'm told);
— Three hundred tablets of Motrin IB and a bottle of 240 of the world's heaviest multivitamins;
— Forty-eight AA batteries in case my tape recorder dies mid-interview once a week, every week, for the six months I'll be away from home;
— Twenty-four copies of my first novel to give as omiyage;
— Two never-opened textbooks on how to read kanji.
(Rizzuto, a list then answered by a second titled: These are the things I know:)
All three lists featured here sit toward or at the very start of books—before we know plot or meaning, before w
In preparing to teach at the Rutgers-Camden conference tomorrow, I think about voice. What makes for music, and why it matters. What yields momentum, and what strips it. We'll be looking, among other things, at authors whose work spans nonfiction, fiction, and perhaps poetry. What do they carry forward, in each genre? What do they own? How have they left their tonal mark?
We must, as Robert Pinsky, says, learn "to hear language in a more conscious way."
If we can't, we are not writers. We tell stories, only.
Oh, you are so welcome, Beth. My pleasure. Thanks for the mention. And for giving me a term for what I do: "writer advocate." I like that.
I'm sure it'll all be wonderful.