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[discoetry]

How the miracle of our meeting shone there and sang, I didn’t want to return from there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, demanding answers, we, my dear, are only souls at the edge of the world.

-akhmatova

[epennypress]

Anna Akhmatova

[discoetry]

Nailed against the shameful stake

Nailed against the shameful stake of the inveterate Slavic conscience, My forehead marked, at my heart a snake, I testify I am guiltless. I testify that in me is the calm Communicants know before communion, that it’s not my fault if with palm Outstretched on squares I stand - for fortune! Examine all my earthly goods and say - Are my eyes stricken with blindness? -  Where is my gold? The silver that’s for me? In my palm is a fistful of ashes. This is all that with flattery and prayer I have coaxed from those whom fortune blesses. And this is all that I’ll take with me there, Into the land of silent embraces.

-Marina Tsvetaeva, 1920.

[epennypress]

The Big Loser, by Max Ritvo

The guardian angel sits in the tree above the black lip of street the man walks down. He calls the man Cargo.

The angel sees a pinewood box in place of the man, and the street he walks is a boat, the hull like a coal crater. Somewhere in the real world there is such a boat and box.

The angels call these overlays dreams, and believe they crop up because angels can’t sleep but want to —  space falls apart when you have unlimited time.

•

The cargo is rattling in the boat. Maybe it’s just the waves, maybe it’s rats. What’s the difference? Either way: it’s the box.

The angel sends the man a happy vision from his past — the time he fed birthday cake to his goldfish after an unsuccessful party.

The angel thinks he’s applying lemon oil to the creaky, wounded wood of the box. He knows it’s palliative, but it’s beautiful.

•

The man reaches the end of the street. He’s a sick man and he starts to ponder death as he often does these days: All of death is right here — the gods, the dark, a moon.

Where was I expecting death to take me if everywhere it is is on earth?

At life’s close, you’re like the child whose parents step out for a drive —  everyone else out on a trip, but the child remains in the familiar bed, feeling old lumps like new in the mattress — the lights off —  not sleeping, for who can sleep with the promise of a world beyond the door?

•

That night the child dreams he’s inside the box. It’s burning hot, the heat coming from bugs and worms raping and devouring one another.

He starts the hard work of the imagination, learning to minister to the new dream.

Perhaps all that’s needed is a little rain —  for everyone to drink and have a bath.

Outside: a car humming, somewhere, his mother’s singing.

This poem is from Four Reincarnations by Max Ritvo (Milkweed Editions, 2016).

[epennypress]

To a Poet

No poet should set store by public acclamation. Ecstatic praise will pass, an instant in the ear; the empty crowd will laugh, the fool have his oration, but you must stay quite calm, unbending, and austere.

A king, then, live alone. You choose your destination, go where your questing mind shall now elect to steer to bring perfection to the thoughts you hold most dear, requiring no rewards, achieving consummation

they lie within yourself. As judge you are the best; in valuing your works, severer than the rest, do they bring you delight, O artist most exacting?

They please you? Well, then, let the crowd protest and spit upon the shrine where burns your fire- blessed, and rock your tripod in their childish, rough play- acting.

by Alexander Pushkin

[epennypress]

On Akhmatova

Oh sorrow - she half turned around and eyed the indifferent throng. Her shawl, almost classical, hung from her shoulders and turned to stone.

Drunk with pain - voice foreboding to say things that burst from her deepest soul: acting angry Phedre’s role Rachel used to stand that way.

by Osip Mandelstam, Translation by R. Tracy

[epennypress]

We of the craft are all crazy... some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.

Lord Byron, on poets.

[epennypress]

String Theory, Alvin Pang.

Scientists are still trying to find out what makes the cosmos tick. I don’t even know what makes my dad work, bright thwarted man that he is, would have outdone us all, had he the funds at eighteen, not been sucked instead into the singularity of the rest of his life, all that space and nothing to fill it with, no choice but to walk from here to there, the long way round. One theory suggests there are several secret dimensions curled up in every particle of nature, these incredible long vibrating strings at the heart of everything. Everything: an endless, restless riff, a violent concerto in a minor key beyond the range of hearing, a song that pulls at the world, is gravity. Staying still was never an option for beings of such manic stuff. I read this in a paper, but dad doesn’t, he falls into orbit between the TV and the fridge, a satellite relaying any kind of noise but hope. Give or take a few decades, he’ll fall back into the quantum soup lab coats go on about, the kind without any memory of what it once might have been. I think of what’s wound in him, in us, tighter than DNA, less understood than that which impels us one slow day forward at a time. The old yarn about sons worshiping fathers, the way folks thought the sun revolved around the earth, not vice versa? Well it ended the day he wrote Do what I couldn’t on my birthday card. I was in college. Outside my bay window the world was a wide unstudied sky, not these small coiled realities we now think is all we have. I’d not even grasped the dynamics of colliding lives, fissive trails I wander blindly down. Dark matter clouds the universe and uncertainty rules it? Could’ve said that years ago. I have a theory we become our fathers, however hard we try, as if this would explain everything. It’ll be awhile yet before I arrive at the way he’s letting himself loose now, though not quite the same way time unspools from the reel of physics, more like a shedding of paths, all possible futures fusing into a grand unified inevitability. I couldn’t either, I’d tell him, when I catch up finally, out of breath, as we stand laughing, wonder why we ever bothered, on some long and distant shore on the other side of nowhere else to go.

[epennypress]

Rain and Storm, by Buddhadeva Bose

Rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day. The day gray, barren, dark. No light, no shadows either. Just rain’s haze, the obscurity of clouds, and the groan of trams, the rumble of traffic.

In the sky - a muted crying. In the wind - long-drawn sighs. Long, long day. How much longer to night? The hour weary, the moment sluggish. The rattling of time’s chains unending, unwearied.

Night. Emptiness within doors, darkness without. Rain and storm, rain and storm. Empty, empty heart. Failed failed night. Just the furious city’s sleepless snarl.

Emptiness in the heart, moans in the city, darkness in the sky. Shadows, gusts of wind, voices, murmurs, angry choked voices, elongated sighs in the city, in the empty room, in the rain-dripping darkness, in the clanking of time’s chains - all night, all day.

The day empty, quiet as a stagnant pool. The night mute too. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Creation’s face is covered with rain’s gray sheet, with the windy city’s tormented voice. There’s nothing. I am alone. All alone.

Captive like a blind fly on time’s enormous wheel. The window to the universe closed. The day like a stagnant pool, dark, stifled. The night like the bottom of an old forgotten well. And loneliness, interminable. In the streets - crowds, bustle, madness. In offices, parks, restaurants - work, play, getting drunk; gambling, gin, siestas after a bone-breaking week: all indistinct, cramped.

The city numb. Rain, rain. In the streets the jostling of shadows, the boneless procession of nightmares. Shadowy Calcutta, without a body, without a skeleton: irresponsible, wayward like a dream. Myself a shadow too, trembling at the touch of a breeze upon the wall, behind the curtain. Within my breast swing rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day.

Translated from the Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson.

[epennypress]

The Terence Rattigan Society Award: is one of the few given for a new play for the theatre. The award winner will receive £2,500 and the play will be guaranteed a professional production of no less…

[epennypress]

Review: Fishbowl - Bradley Somer

Even a goldfish can dream of adventure...

I don’t often get the opportunity to spend a lot of time with novels nowadays – short stories are much easier to digest around a busy schedule – so when I do find some time with something longer than 100 pages I want something that grips me with a simple idea I can get behind. That’s why I’m a bit wary of contemporary fiction – you can’t tend to pinned them down to any particular genre (perhaps they are a genre of itself?) and some that I’ve read in the past open with lofty philosophical observations that I personally find sluggish if it doesn’t grip me early on.

Fishbowl opens with lofty philosophical observations, breaking down the concepts of space, time and life. But here’s the hook: these observations come from Ian, a goldfish, who is plummeting from the 27th floor of an apartment building and catching fleeting glimpses of the lives inside.

However, Ian is merely the anchor the novel revolves around, and before the concept gets old it changes gears and closely follows the personal lives of the apartments inhabitants. We spend the majority of time – well, half an hour – following the lives of a diverse cast of characters, each with their own hopes, dreams, struggles and obstacles to overcome, big and small. There’s a young student, his girlfriend and his mistress; Claire the agoraphobic sex worker; Jimenez the superintendant who goes unnoticed despite his hard work... The characters are memorable and relatable, and how they each break free from their own personal “box” – coming to terms with a failing relationship, letting others into your safe space or escaping from a fishbowl – is structured in a way that all the narratives are easy to follow, even when they intertwine with each other.

If I had to criticise it – which is tough, because I really enjoyed this book – then I would say that the main story (at least, the one we are introduced to early on) with Katie preparing to confront her adulterous boyfriend Connor, one which directly results in Ian the Goldfish’s freefall, ends a little anticlimactically... But on the flip side, that may have been due to how much I became invested in the other characters. Especially Garth, the builder who is hiding a pretty big secret, which was actually had a well worked misdirection and twist with it.

I would recommend Fishbowl for just about anyone. It’s light hearted tone and uncomplicated plot makes it a pretty accessible read. The author, Bradley Somer, is obviously a talented writer with a quirky, sparkling wit. He portrays these small-scale personal experiences sin a way that gives them real impact, without being pretentious about it all. It’s a perfect palette cleanser if you’re a bit bored with genre fiction, so if you see Fishbowl in your local book shop or library, give it a go!

[epennypress]

Poetry Focus: Language For a New Century, continued.

Last week we took a look at some pieces from a very lofty tome of almost 600 poems, written by just as many authors in dozens of languages, and covering nearly all alleyways of emotion and feeling.

The everyday is what entices me most, little details here and there; clues and snapshots of the poet’s life, snuck in through an image or turn of phrase. It is with this in mind that I bring this week’s poems to light.

Exile House, by Tenzin Tsundue

Our tiled roof dripped and the four walls threatened to fall apart but we were to go home soon,

we grew papayas in front of the house chilies in the garden and changmas for our fences, then pumpkins rolled down the cowshed thatch calves trotted out of the manger,

grass on the roof, beans sprouted and  climbed down the vines, money plants crept in through the windows, our house seemed to have grown roots.

The fences have grown into a jungle now how can I tell my children where we came from?

Sadly, displacement has become a very common theme in poetry over the past few decades, and will undoubtedly continue to reign long as people are forced to flee.

String Theory,  by Alvin Pang

Scientists are still trying to find out what makes the cosmos tick. I don’t even know what makes my dad work, bright thwarted man that he is, would have outdone us all, had he the funds at eighteen, not been sucked instead into the singularity of the rest of his life, all that space and nothing to fill it with, no choice but to walk from here to there, the long way round. One theory suggests there are several secret dimensions curled up in every particle of nature, these incredible long vibrating strings at the heart of everything. Everything: an endless, restless riff, a violent concerto in a minor key beyond the range of hearing, a song that pulls at the world, is gravity. Staying still was never an option for beings of such manic stuff. I read this in a paper, but dad doesn’t, he falls into orbit between the TV and the fridge, a satellite relaying any kind of noise but hope. Give or take a few decades, he’ll fall back into the quantum soup lab coats go on about, the kind without any memory of what it once might have been. I think of what’s wound in him, in us, tighter than DNA, less understood than that which impels us one slow day forward at a time. The old yarn about sons worshiping fathers, the way folks thought the sun revolved around the earth, not vice versa? Well it ended the day he wrote Do what I couldn’t on my birthday card. I was in college. Outside my bay window the world was a wide unstudied sky, not these small coiled realities we now think is all we have. I’d not even grasped the dynamics of colliding lives, fissive trails I wander blindly down. Dark matter clouds the universe and uncertainty rules it? Could’ve said that years ago. I have a theory we become our fathers, however hard we try, as if this would explain everything. It’ll be awhile yet before I arrive at the way he’s letting himself loose now, though not quite the same way time unspools from the reel of physics, more like a shedding of paths, all possible futures fusing into a grand unified inevitability. I couldn’t either, I’d tell him, when I catch up finally, out of breath, as we stand laughing, wonder why we ever bothered, on some long and distant shore on the other side of nowhere else to go.

Speechless. 

Rum and Snow, by Yukio Tsuji 

I used to run barefoot on the deck, sit on the mast all day behind a tattered flag and follow the flight of the albatross. I once crossed the straits where sharks were laughing, terrified by the raging black-bearded Edward Teach. The fifteen of us aboard sang “To the Coffin Islands.” However, Alexander Sergeevich, I can’t recall how I drank my rum. Did I cut it with water? With ice?

Wouldn’t snow do just as well? As I leave this raucous old joint cold snowflakes catch in my lashes and I quickly sober up. I can’t remember where, but long ago I was astride a horse and thinking of a song when I was suddenly lost in darkness/ Who was I then? -  Tell me, rum and snow, bring back the names of people I was and was not.

Genesis, by Wadih Sa’Adeh

With what meager space  remaining between his hands he tried to reconstruct a universe: with a tear, he drew a star, a moon with a glance, and with a single touch, a sun. When he closed his eyes, people commuted to their work on the sidewalk of his eyelids.

I hope at least one of these has been of some interest. Until next time, write, read, and write-on!

[epennypress]

Poetry Focus: Language for a New Century; Contemporary poetry from The Middle East, Asia, and Beyond; Edited by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar.

Rather than comment extensively on each piece, I’ve decided to cut out a lot of the legwork (my notes, comments, criticisms, etc) and provide you with more frequent updates of poetry I think is neat and worth sharing. This should take away a lot of the anxiety surrounding making updates, along with providing you with a lot more to read! 

There are far too many excellent poems in this (thankfully extensive) tome to fit even a twentieth of the best ones into a Poetry Focus, so here’s just a few I’d left crinkled pieces of paper, chewing gum wrappers, and bus tickets sticking out of for further reading, while marching through it on my bus journeys into and out of work over the past few weeks. The next several Poetry Focuses may well draw their sources from this very same book - as there are a vast array of poets and poems to cover, and as I can’t reach them all, I highly recommend that you please go and buy the book if it piques your interest :)!

The Sentry at Mutianyu Speaks to the Astronaut, by Paul Tan

I watch strange creatures unfurl with each labored breath and think of your dragon's flight, launched to such fanfare.

At the edge of the kingdom, language is pointless, even if our lips were not blistered, our tongues frost-dead.

These vats of oil dispatch flames to the sky. In blazing sequences, we send stories to the capital.

What cosmic language do you see? Can you see me, nameless sentinel on this endless line of stones?

Are there marauding barbarians in cold outer space?

You and I have linked destinies - we puncture small holes in the wintry darkness against strange winds and shifting stars.

We obey the emperor's bidding, do not think of earthly rewards; the festooned laurels we will save for another life.

Author's Note: Mutianyu is a stretch of China's Great Wall, seventy kilometres north-east of Beijing. China launched its second manned space mission into orbit in October 2005.

(apologies, this was the only picture I could find of him online)

Rain and Storm, by Buddhadeva Bose

Rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day. The day gray, barren, dark. No light, no shadows either. Just rain's haze, the obscurity of clouds, and the groan of trams, the rumble of traffic.

In the sky - a muted crying. In the wind - long-drawn sighs. Long, long day. How much longer to night? The hour weary, the moment sluggish. The rattling of time's chains unending, unwearied.

Night. Emptiness within doors, darkness without. Rain and storm, rain and storm. Empty, empty heart. Failed failed night. Just the furious city's sleepless snarl.

Emptiness in the heart, moans in the city, darkness in the sky. Shadows, gusts of wind, voices, murmurs, angry choked voices, elongated sighs in the city, in the empty room, in the rain-dripping darkness, in the clanking of time's chains - all night, all day.

The day empty, quiet as a stagnant pool. The night mute too. There's nothing. Absolutely nothing. Creation's face is covered with rain's gray sheet, with the windy city's tormented voice. There's nothing. I am alone. All alone.

Captive like a blind fly on time's enormous wheel. The window to the universe closed. The day like a stagnant pool, dark, stifled. The night like the bottom of an old forgotten well. And loneliness, interminable. In the streets - crowds, bustle, madness. In offices, parks, restaurants - work, play, getting drunk; gambling, gin, siestas after a bone-breaking week: all indistinct, cramped.

The city numb. Rain, rain. In the streets the jostling of shadows, the boneless procession of nightmares. Shadowy Calcutta, without a body, without a skeleton: irresponsible, wayward like a dream. Myself a shadow too, trembling at the touch of a breeze upon the wall, behind the curtain. Within my breast swing rain and storm, rain and storm, night and day.

Translated from the Bengali by Ketaki Kushari Dyson.

The Wolves are Roaring, by Chuan Sha

The wolves are roaring, beyond the deep sea and the end of wilderness, craving the juices of fish, of beasts, and drops of human blood. The wolves are roaring, beyond the depths of the heart, on the tips of their sharp teeth, savoring the bones of fish, of beasts, and dreaming a thousand-year dream of licking a human heart.

Translated from the Chinese by Liu Hong.

Deathsleep, by Al Mahmud

So far no one had any worries at all for me. Where and how a mypoic member of the family lives - this never bothered anyone.

The sons and daughters assumed in whichever room Dad was present he was surely with his books. Watchful.

Only at times of dinner and outing the wife gives a little reminder and says, rise you . . . as if the lady was nudging a stone to roll on and to give it a bath.

Once I had finished my meal everybody in the house would flock together bend over the dining table as if flocks of hungry wild geese had descended on Medi haaor making their own calls.

The sounds of their indiscriminate devouring I could hear from the adjacent room while smoking my cigarette.

Everybody reckoned I was not in their party. How easily they have arrived at the real truth about me.

A person who has. No party              no power                              no movements lives in our family.

My wife though, didn't want to reach any decisions about me the reliance that grows out of living together fifty years she does not have it.

Who knows - she perhaps thinks I have hidden under my pillow disasters that destroy relationships.

Hence I have no sleeping malaise. There is no end to my wife's complaint - I get to sleep as soon as my head rests on the pillow that it could be a matter of complaint, I never knew.

She used to say - I slept like a beast and dreamt while awake, all day long.

My married wife  has no doubt that I am not a real human.

She though has not much complaint. Of late she is scared for me she reckons - I keep on sleeping day and night I sink deeper into slumber even when my eyes are wide open.

I wouldn't respond to treatment she knows that too. She wants to wake me up. I ponder should I rise from this deadsleep by any heavenly reason shall I find my family and relatives my wife in their former locations?

Translated from the Bengali by Quader Mahmud. Author's Note: Haaor is a natural lake.

[epennypress]

Debut Magazine - Coming Soon!

Watch this space.

[epennypress]

Fiction Friday - First Impressions

Never start a story with a description of the weather. Nobody cares.

The first few lines of a story are the best opportunity to draw your reader in and give them an impression of what they’ll get. They can convey the main character’s personality and motivations, establish the story’s themes or set the tone. If a story starts off strong, your reader will be hooked and intrigued as to where the story will be going. 

One of the most efficient openings to a story I have ever read is Heinrich von Kleist’s novella The Marquise of O—, where every word has a purpose to set the scene without beating the reader over the head with boring, clunky exposition.

In M— , a large town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O—, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-bred children, published the following notice in the newspapers: that, without her knowing how, she was in the family way; that she would like the father of the child she was going to bear to report himself; and that her mind was made up, out of consideration for her people, to marry him. 

In just one sentence - granted, it’s a very long sentence - we know everything we need to about the Marquise and her dilemma, the attitudes of the people and how they are likely to react to such news, and makes us ask the question: How doesn't the Marquise know who the father is? The introduction gives us the necessary information, piques our interest and draws us in.

That’s not to say that an introduction has to include details about the plot. Let’s take a look at how Montag is first introduced in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

Just that first sentence “It was a pleasure to burn” is gripping enough, but then we get an insight into Montag’s character. The metaphors of a great python spitting kerosene and conducting blazing symphonies shows us the power Montag feels as he sets everything aflame while establishing the main theme for this classic. 

It’s truly difficult to write the beginning to a story - you shouldn’t let it get in the way of writing the rest of your story! - but it is definitely worth taking the time to craft something memorable for readers right off the bat. Keep an eye out for more brilliant first lines/paragraphs, it might help spark a story of your own.

All the best from ePennyPress Write On!

[epennypress]

POETRY FOCUS, EPISODE 6

Frank O’Hara was born Francis Russell O’Hara in Baltimore in 1926, and died 40 years later in 1966 on Fire Island, a sort of ‘gay enclave’ in New York, where homosexuals (not yet accepted by mainstream society) could meet, drink, and enjoy the beach in relative safety from outside prejudices.

Mayakovsky

1. My heart’s aflutter! I am standing in the bath tub crying. Mother, mother who am I? If he will just come back once and kiss me on the face his coarse hair brush my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes I guess, and walk the streets.

2. I love you. I love you, but I’m turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist.

Words! be sick as I am sick, swoon, roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I’ll stare down at my wounded beauty which at best is only a talent for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win what a poet! and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head. I embrace a cloud, but when I soared it rained.

3. That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks what a funny place to rupture! and now it is raining on the ailanthus as I step out onto the window ledge the tracks below me are smoky and glistening with a passion for running I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4. Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.

Wonderful, simply wonderful. So many lines are instantly quotable, so much of the poet’s inner monologue and private moments are revealed shamelessly. “My wounded beauty, which is only a talent for poetry” - “I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to become beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.” 

Ode

I don’t eat wheat and I wear my violin strings around my neck in case I need them

Snow is being sent from the mountains I lie down like the flowers it is an elevator shaft, this island

Sweet nursery rhyme describing manna and how far away all that is good is and music, too

when I am absent weeps as if the children overburdened by my incessant playing

Oh heart described you are being pushed out of existence by a mysterious swelling

Men are angels

The highly personal style of poetry he creates is often likened to entries in a diary. He shamelessly talks about his ups, his downs - his movements from A to B, his reactions to loved ones, incidents with them, the general goings on of the day to day. Many of his poems are written for - or at least about - his friends and lovers, as just flipping through his collection you see a great many titled with the first names of these people who influenced his life so much - well, enough for him to immortalize them in print, at least.

Prior to his death, which occurred prematurely at the age of 40, following a beach buggy accident which left him dehydrating and severely injured with a ruptured liver, Frank wrote a poem called ‘A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island.’ And in this poem he unwittingly talks about his coming death, describing it quite accurately. As the poem is somewhat longer than this post will allow, but do think it worth your reading, I’ll link to it HERE.

Lines Across the United States

The night’s getting black The train is cold My back aches already

I don’t want to smoke We’re going too fast Our windows hurt the air

Last night I was sick And this morning worse I threw my self into this coach

The wheels slice quickly The rails do struggle The mirrors shake like puddles

I’m sitting all night I didn’t buy a pillow My watch got broken last week

I’ve not done much I’ve loved too little And I’m tired of running

The momentum of this is what touches me most, you can feel the rhythm of the train in the lines, interwoven seamlessly with his own self-discovery and highly personal semantics. For this post, I used Frank O’Hara, Poems Retrieved by Grey Fox Press, which is available online and in many bookstores worldwide. To read more on Frank O’Hara, simply type his name into your search bar. An active spirit in many social circles, an art curator in New York, and a lover of hundreds, truly, Frank lived only for a short time, but in that short time, he truly lived.

Thanks for reading, and we’re wishing you all the best, from ePennyPress, write on!

[epennypress]

POETRY FOCUS, EPISODE 5

Günter Grass was born in Danzig in 1927, and fought on the Germans’ side until his capture by the Americans near the end of the second world war. He lived for a time in Paris, and then Berlin - which he thought held all the finer points required to make an exquisite city.

Happiness

An empty bus hurtles through the starry night. Perhaps the driver is singing and happy because he sings.

The simplicity is what makes it for me, a single moment of innocent happiness - the singing driver of an empty bus - captured perfectly in a poem as simple in the design of its beauty as its source’s inspiration.

Saturn

In this big house- from the rats who know about the drains, to the pigeons who know nothing - I live and suppose much.

Came home late, opened the house with my key and noticed as I hunted for my key that I needed a key to enter my own home.

Was quite hungry ate a chicken  with my hands and noticed as I ate the chicken that I was eating a chicken  which was cold and dead.

Then stooped, took off both shoes and noticed as I took off my shoes that we have to stoop if we want to take shoes off.

I lay horizontal, smoked the cigarette, and in the darkness was certain that someone held out his open hand when I knocked the ashes from my cigarette,

At night Saturn comes and holds out his hand. With my ashes, he cleans his teeth, Saturn. We shall climb into his jaws.

Poetry is often what happens when you spend more attention than usual on the everyday, as with the narrator of Gunter Grass’ poem Saturn does, there’s a hidden truth behind objects and actions, deeper meanings carrying a range of emotion and feeling just waiting to be explored by the poet and the reader. Analyze your own actions, what you’re doing, actually doing, right now - jot down a few words in relation to something physical, the first to come to mind. Come back to them later for inspiration, or expand them into a poem, or even an extra passage or two in the short story you’re writing for our contest. 

Love

That’s it: the cashless commerce. The blanket always too short. The loose connection.

To search behind the horizon. To brush fallen leaves with four shoes and in one’s mind to rub bare feet. To let and rent hearts; or in a room with shower and mirror, in a hired car, bonnet facing the moon, wherever innocence stops and burns its programme, the word in falsetto sounds different and new each time.

Today, in front of a box office not yet open, hand in hand crackled the hangdog old man and the dainty old woman. The film promised love. 

I took these poems from the Penguin Modern European Poets edition, Poems of Günter Grass, and highly recommend it for anyone interested in an introduction to his work.

As always, all the best from ePennyPress, write-on!

[epennypress]

Fiction Friday: Donald Barthelme

There are rules every writer must know when writing prose. It’s important that, for your writing to be effective, you know how to use an active voice, avoid double negatives and include verbs in every sentence. However, once you know these rules, there’s nothing to say you can’t break them. 

Donald Barthelme’s fiction often has a playful, post-modern style that fits the story he is trying to tell.  His stories are more of a snapshot into a character’s life and mind rather than following a typical narrative, so he experiments with sentence structure and pacing to effectively portray them. 

You can read The School for free here, but don’t forget to read the second page like I almost did!

Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don’t know why they died, they just died.

Microsoft Word might not like it, but a lot of his stories are brimming with sentence fragments. The meandering, conversational style makes it feel like the narrator is actually talking to you. The narrator, a teacher at a primary school, genuinely brings out slivers of joy from the class that is consistently haunted by death - trees, pet fish, puppies, several parents, classmates... 

One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of – I said, yes, maybe.

Although there are no paragraph breaks or quotation marks, the back and forth dialogue still flows smoothly. The characters give context to the writing style and work well together in the narration. The morbid tone is offset by the children’s sudden existentialism and the narrator’s resignation and familiar tone, creating a bizarre and interesting story.

If you enjoyed this story, check out Donald Barthelme’s collection Sixty Stories for fifty-nine more. We’d love to read some more experimental styles of writing in our writing competition - the current contest closes 31st January 2016, so get writing!

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All the best from ePennyPress write-on!