"The Pajama-Iraqi Israeli Poet” Ronny Someck & His New Poetry Collection THE MILK UNNDERGROUND

Christal Cooper

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

Excerpts given copyright privilege by Ronny Someck, Robert Manaster, and White Pine Press.

http://www.ronnysomeck.com/

http://www.whitepine.org/

Ronny Someck:

The Milk Underground

       On September 15, 2015 White Pine Press published The Milk Underground by Ronny Someck and translated by Hana Inbar and Robert Manaster.    

       http://www.amazon.com/Underground-Cliff-Becker-Prize-Translation/dp/1935210726/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456782480&sr=8-1&keywords=The+milk+underground

        

       The Milk Underground is the winner of the 2015 Cliff Becker Translation Prize.

Translators Robert Manastar and Hana Inbar write in in their introduction of The Milk Underground, titled “The Pajama-Iraqi Israeli Poet”: 

“The poems throughout The Milk Underground give a cohesive voice to Ronny Someck’s oeuvre in Israeli poetry.  He is a bridge builder.  He is of the East as well as West.  In an interview he explains, “I’m not looking for roots.  I never lost them.  Baghdad is the East and it is planted in the garden of the mind next to the tree of the West.  Two trees that are two languages, which is the mixer of my mouth has turned into one language.”

A Patriotic Poem

I’m a Pajama-Iraqi, my wife’s Romaman

And our daughter the thief from Baghdad.

My mother’s always boiling the Euphrates and Tigris,

My sister learned to make Perushki from her Russia

Mother-in-law

Our friend, Morocco the Knife, stabs

Fish from the shores of Norway

With a fork of English steel.

We’re all fired workers taken off the tower

We were building in Babylon.

We’re all rusty spears Don Quixote thrust

At windmills.

We’re all still shooting at gleaming stars

A minute before they’re swallowed

By the Milky Way.

       Someck has published ten other volumes of poetry, which have been translated in over 41 languages:  Exile; Solo; Asphalt; Seven Lines on the Wonder of the Yarkon; Panther; Rice Paradise; Bloody Mary; The Revolution Drummer; Algeria; and Horse Power.

                                          Exile 

                                            Solo

                                  Asphalt 

                                                     Seven Lines

                                                         Panther 

                                                             Rice Paradise

                                                              Bloody Mary

 

The Revolution Drummer 

                                                 Algir

                                                  Horse Power

       Someck, 65, was born in Baghdad in 1951, and his family emigrated from Iraq to Israel in the early 1950s as second generation Mizrahim (Jews from Africa and Asian – the “East”).    Someck managed to succeed in Israeli society without sacrificing his Mizrahniess identity despite the domination of the Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent – the “West”). 

His first love was basketball, which he played competitively, but then something happened when he turned 16.

“I wrote my first poem by chance. It was a note I sent to a girl classmate. I was 16 at the time, and a second before sending the note, I tore it to pieces. Being a basketball player at one of the youth groups of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, it seemed to me strange that I would suddenly write a poem.  Back home I told myself: You’re an adolescent, and the poem you’ve written is just one of the symptoms. But on that very day I wrote another poem, and yet another one on the day after. It scared me. I hid the poems in an old shoebox and hoped this temporary “disease” would go away. One day, when the shoebox started overflowing, I decided to send two poems to two people I knew of. I sent the first envelope to a poet I already admired, David Avidan. He answered immediately with a very beautiful and moving letter. I sent the second envelope to the literary editor of a very popular newspaper in Israel. I wrote to him that I’m wearing shirt number 7 in a basketball team and that I write poems in secret. I asked him to read the poem and tell me whether or not it was good. I specified that the poem was meant for his eyes only.

       For two weeks I didn’t get any answer. I was sure my poem was bad and unworthy of a reply. But on the third week, to my astonishment, the poem was printed on the very top of the literary section. I was embarrassed (for I specifically asked not to have it printed). Yet I felt happy for receiving “confirmation” that the poem was good. I was very confused.  Then I raised my eyes and saw that instead of “Ronny Somech” which was my name at the time, they wrote “Ronny Someck”. Rather than being annoyed I felt the happiest person on earth. This way, I told myself, no one would know it was me.

Two days later, during the first basketball training session that followed, the coach pressed his shoulder against mine and said to me, “There’s someone with a similar name to yours who writes poems.” He said it in a “warning” tone, implying it was a good thing it was someone else. Evidently in his mind, as well as in mine, there was no connection between basketball and writing poems.

I went back to the shoebox, took out all the poems and sent them to all newspapers under my new name, and like the Cinderella story – all the poems were eventually printed.

When my tenth poem was printed, my coach said to me in the middle of the training, “You know, Ronny, the guy with the similar name to yours printed another poem this week.” And after a timeout he added, “A beautiful poem.” I then told everyone it was actually me, and from that moment my life on the basketball team got complicated. Every time I held the ball for more than a second my teammates used to call out at me: Pass the ball! What are you thinking of, a new line?”

This changed Someck’s life – he became a poet and an avid reader of poetry.  His poetic influences are Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Wisława Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Fernando Pessoa, John Berryman, Jacques Prevert, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Simic, Adonis, T.S. Eliot, Hayim Nachman Bialik, Yehuda Amichai, Amir Gilboa, David Avidan, Yona Volach, Lea Goldberg.

                                            

 http://allenginsberg.org/#!/

  

 

http://www.jackkerouac.com/

                                                             

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wislawa_szymborska

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/seamus-heaney

 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/fernando-pessoa

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/john-berryman

http://www.poemhunter.com/jacques-prevert/biography/

 

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-baudelaire-39436#final-years

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/charles-simic

 

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/22899/19866/Adoni

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/t-s-eliot

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/bialik.html

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/yehuda-amichai

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Gilboa

                                               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Avidan

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/3182

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldberg-lea

       He is also influenced by fiction writers Fiodor Dostoyevsky and Antonio Skarmeta.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Sk%C3%A1rmeta

       Romeck worked as a social guide for street gangs until 1976, when at the age of 23 his first book of poetry, Exile was published.

       He studied Hebrew literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and drawing at the Avni Academy of Art.

       He used both of his artistic abilities in poetry and drawing by collaborating with his daughter Shirly, 24, on two children’s books: The Laughter Button and Monkey Tough, Monkey Bluff.  

       Someck, who also writes music, does not write drafts of his poems, but rather lets the ideas cook in his brain until the final poem is finished and ready to appear on the page.

“I see my head as an oven of ideas. At a certain moment, when I feel the dish is ready and might burn if left for another extra minute, I transfer it from the metaphoric oven onto the page. But always during the writing something new comes in a word, a line, or a period. Something that takes even me by surprise.”

       The Milk Underground is divided into three parts:  The Introduction:  The Pajama-Iraqi Israeli Poet; a section consisting of 25 poems; Field Sentences: Nature Poems; Street Sentences: City Poems; and biographies on the translators and Ronny Someck. 

       The poem that was the most compelling for Someck to write is “Baghdad”. 

       “I was born there. A German doctor helped bring me into this world at a Jewish Hospital. My nanny was an Arab girl. My parents brought me to Israel when I was a baby and the “Black Box” of my memory is empty.

But there were my parent’s stories about the cafe by the Tigris, about the smell of the fruits at the Shugra Market and about singers like Farid El Atrash and Abd El Wabb . My parents spoke Hebrew, and only my Grandfather followed Baghdad’s lifestyle. He spoke broken Hebrew and he used to take me to a cafe where they played the music of the Egyptian singer UM KULTHUM and served black coffee just like in the cafe by the Tigris.

       As for me, Baghdad turned into a metaphor, into a place that existed only in my Grandfather’s heart.

I felt as if I threw Baghdad out of my life’s window, but during the Gulf war it came back knocking at my door.  I was sitting with a gas mask, watching TV footage from Baghdad. In every shot I tried to place my stroller, or put lipstick on my young mother’s lips, or see my father brushing his fingers through his hair. And a moment later I saw this place destroyed.

 

At that moment I felt I missed the place I was born in, I missed the eastern side of my life, and I very much wanted to mix it into my west side story.”

Baghdad

With the same chalk a policeman outlines a body in a crime scene

I outline the borders of the city my life was shot into.

I interrogate witnesses, extort out of their lips

Drops of attack and imitate with hesitation the dance moves

Of pita over a bowl of hummus.

When they capture me, they’ll take a third off for good behavior

And lock me up in the corridor of Salima Murad’s throat.

In the prison’s kitchen, my mother would fry the fish her mother

Pulled out of the river, and she’d tell about the word “fish”

Displayed on a huge sign over the new restaurant’s door.

Whoever dined there got a sliver of fish until

One of the customers asked the owner to reduce

The sign or enlarge the fish.

The fish will prick his bones, will drown

The hand that scrapes its scales.

Even boiling oil on the interrogation pan

Wouldn’t get an incriminating word out of its mouth.

The memory’s an empty plate, scarred with a knife’s scratches

On its skin

Language is very important to Someck – in The Milk Underground each poem is presented in Hebrew on the left page and English on the right.  

“I write in Hebrew, which expresses itself on many levels: The Bible on the one, army slang on the other. It also adopted words from the various cultures that immigrated to Israel during the last century, as well as from the Arabic language of our neighbors. Yet, if King David arrived this weekend to Jerusalem, he’d understand the language.  The poet's job is, perhaps, to be King David's travel guide.”

 Someck takes his job as poet very seriously and describes his job as poet in Israel to that of the American pianist we see in American western movies.

“He puts his piano at the corner of the saloon, which smells of gun-powder. He knows this saloon is not a concert hall but perhaps it's the real place. For his safety he says: "Don't shoot me, I'm only the pianist".”

Someck lives in Israel with his wife Liora and their daughter Shirley where he teaches creative writing and literature and leads creative writing workshops. He can be reached at someck@netvision.net.il   

Photo 1

Ronny Someck

Photo 2

White Pine Press web logo

Photo 3

The Milk Underground

Photo 4

Cliff Becker

Photo 5

Robert Manaster

Photo 6

Hana Inbar

Photo 7

"Patriotic" Poem in Hebrew

Photo 8

Jacket covers of poetry books

Photo 9

1950s Family Photo
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck 

Photo 10

Ronny Someck at age 16
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck 

Photo 11a

Allen Ginsberg
Attributed to Duk, Hans vann/ Aefo
CCASA 3.0 Netherlands. 

Photo 11b

Jack Kerouac
Navy Reserve Reenlistment Photo 1943
Public Domain 

Photo 11c

Wisława Szymborska
GFDL 1.2 

Photo 11d

Ronny Someck and Seamus Heaney
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck

Photo 11e

Fernando Pessoa in 1928
Public Domain

Photo 11f

John Berryman
Attributed to Jerry Bauer
Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law

Photo 11g

Jacques Prevert
CCASA 1.0 Generic

Photo 11h

Charles Baudelaire
Woodburytype portrait attributed to Etienne Cavat in 1862
Public Domain 

Photo 11i

Charles Simic
GFDL 1.2

Photo 11j

Adonis and Ronny Someck
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck

Photo 11k 

T.S. Eliot inn 1934
Public Domain

Photo 11l

Hayim Nachman Bialik in 1923
Public Domain

Photo 11m

Yehuda Amichai
Public Domain

Photo 11n

Amir Gilboa
Public Domain

Photo 11o

David Avidan
Public Domain

Photo 11p 

Yona Volach
Public Domain

Photo 11q

Lea Goldberg in 1946
Public Domain

Photo 12a

Fiodor Dostoyevsky in 1872
Public Domain

Photo 12s

Antonio Skarmeta 

Photo 13

jacket cover of Exile

Photo 14

Ronny and daughter Shirley

Photo 15

The Laughing Button

Photo 16

The Monkey Tough, Monkey Bluff

Photo 17
Ronny Someck
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck

Photo 18

The Milk Underground 

 

Photo 19 

Ronny Someck baby photo 1954 
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck

Photo 20

Egyptian siger Um Kulthum in 1968
Public Domain

Photo 21

Photo of Grandfather Salah
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck

Photo 22

1955 Someck family, Ronny Someck in the middle. 

  

Photo 23a

"Baghdad" in Hebrew

Photo 23b
Ronny Someck giving a poetry reading.
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck 

Photo 24

King David playing the harp
Attributed to Domenico Zampieri
Public Domain

Photo 25

Painting Don't Shoot The Piano Player
Public Domain

Photo 26
Ronny Someck and wife Liora on their wedding day in 1985
Copyright granted by Ronnny Someck.

Photo 27 
Ronny and Liora Someck near Mezada in 2016
Copyright granted by Ronny Someck.

Short Story By Fiction Writer Tamara Linse . . .

Christal Cooper

caccoop@aol.com

https://www.facebook.com/christalann.ricecooper

“How To Be A Man” from How To Be A Man Stories by Tamara Linse. 

Copyright granted by Tamara Linse and Willow Words

tamaralinse.com.

http://www.willowwords.com/

Guest Blogger Tamara Linse

Short story:  How to Be a Man

                                   

Never acknowledge the fact that you’re a girl, and take pride when your guy friends say, “You’re one of the guys.” Tell yourself, “I am one of the guys,” even though, in the back of your mind, a little voice says, “But you’ve got girl parts.”

You are born on a ranch in central Colorado or southern Wyoming or northern Montana and grow up surrounded by cowboys. Or maybe not a ranch, maybe a farm, and you have five older brothers. Your first memory is of sitting on the back of Big Cheese, an old sorrel gelding with a sway back and—you find out later when you regularly ride bareback—a backbone like a ridge line. Later, you won’t know if this first memory is real or comes from one of the only photos of you as a baby. You study that photo a lot. It must be spring or late fall because you’re wearing a quilted yellow jacket with a blue-lined hood and your brother’s hands reach from the side of the frame and support you in the saddle. You look half asleep with your head tilted to the side against your shoulder, a little sack of potatoes.

Your dad is a kind man, a hard worker, who gives you respect when no one else will. When you’re four, if he asks, “Birdie, do you think the price of hogs is going up?” ponder this a while. Take into account how Rosie has just farrowed seven piglets and how you’re bottle-raising the runt and how you’ve heard your brothers complaining about pig shit on the boots they wear to town. Think about how much Jewel—that’s what you’ve decided to name the pig—means to you and say, “Yes, Daddy, pigs are worth a lot.” He’ll nod his head, but he won’t smile like other people when they think what you say was cute or precocious.

Your mother is a mouse of a woman who takes long walks in the gray sagebrushed hills beyond the fields or lays in the cool back bedroom reading the Bible. When your brothers ask “Where’s Mom?” you won’t know. You don’t think it odd when at five you learn how to boil water in the big speckled enamelware pot and to shake in three boxes of macaroni, to watch as it turn from off-yellow plasticity to soft white noodles, to hold both handles with a towel and carefully pour it into the colander in the sink while avoiding the steam, to measure the butter and the milk—one of your brothers shows you how much—and then to mix in the powdered cheese. You learn to dig a dollop of bacon grease from the Kerr jar in the fridge into the hot cast iron skillet, wait for it to melt, and then lay in half-frozen steaks, the wonderful smell of the fat and the popping of ice crystals filling the kitchen. When your brothers come in from doing their chores, they talk and laugh instead of opening the cupboards and slamming them shut. And your dad doesn’t clench his jaw while washing his hands with Dawn dishwashing liquid at the kitchen sink and then toss big hunks of Wonder Bread into bowls filled with milk.

When you wear hand-me-downs from your brothers, be proud. Covet the red plaid shirt of your next older brother, and when you get it—a hot late summer afternoon when he tosses three shirts on your bed—wear it until the holes in the elbows decapitated the cuffs. If you go to town with your dad for parts, be proud of your shitty boots and muddy jeans and torn-up shirts. It shows that you know an honest day’s work. Work is more important than fancy things, and you are not one of those ninnies who wear girlie dresses and couldn’t change a tire if their lives depended on it.

Be prepared: when you go to school, you won’t know quite where you fit. All the other kids will seem to know something that you don’t, something they whisper to each other behind their hands. They won’t ever whisper it to you. But they won’t make fun of you either because—you’ll get this right away and take pride in it—you are tough and also you have five older brothers and the Gunderson family sticks together. Be proud of the fact that, in seventh grade social studies, you sit elbows-on-the-table next to a boy about your size, and he says with a note of admiration, “Look at them guns. You got arms bigger than me.” It’s winter, and you’ve been throwing hay bales every morning to feed the livestock.

Your friends will be boys. You understand boys. When you say something, they take it at face value. If they don’t understand, hit them, and they’ll understand that. For a couple of months—until your dad finds out about it—your second oldest brother will give you a dime every time you get into a fist fight. The look on your brother’s face as he hands you those dimes will make your insides puff to bursting. Use the dimes to buy lemons at the corner grocery during lunch time. Slice them up with your buck knife and hand them out to see which of the boys can bite into it without making a face.

Leave the girls alone, and they will leave you alone. When you have to be together, like in gym class, they’ll ignore you, which will be fine with you. Always take the locker by the door so you can jet in and out as fast as you can. You’ll be mortified that they’ll see your body, how gross and deformed it is. Be proud of the muscles, but the buds of breast and the peaking pubic hair will be beyond embarrassing. Still, you’ll be fascinated with their bodies, not in a sexual way, but in that they seem to be so comfortable with them, even—to your disgust—proud. They’ll compare boobs in the mirror, holding their arms up against their ribs so that their breasts push forward. One girl, Bobbie Joe Blanchard, won’t stand at the mirror though because she’ll get breasts early, big round ones. She’ll quickly go from a slip of a girl who never says anything to the most popular because the boys pay attention, and the attention of the boys is worth much more than any giggling camaraderie of the girls. You’ll agree with this, but you’ll also be mystified as to the boys’ motivations. Ask your best friend Jimmy Mockler, “What’s up with that?” He’ll just shrug and smile, sheepishly but with pride too.

In middle school, don’t be surprised if the guys who used to be your friends forget about you. They’ll still be nice, but they’ll spend their time playing rough games of basketball and daring each other to talk to this girl or that. You won’t be good at basketball—you’re tough, but you don’t have the height or the competitiveness. Plus, they don’t really want you to play—you can tell. Think about this a lot, how to regain their respect. Go so far as to ask the coach about trying out for football. He’ll look at you like you’re a two-headed calf and say, “Darlin’, girls don’t play football.” You’ll want to scream, “I’m not a girl!” but you won’t. Instead, never tell anyone, especially the boys, and hope to God that the coach never mentions it in gym class, which he teaches. He won’t. He’ll agree with you that it’s embarrassing.

One day at lunch time, Jimmy Mockler will tell a story to the other guys about Bobbie Joe Blanchard and how he’s asked her to meet him under the bleachers in the gym during fifth period study hall. There is no gym during fifth period. He and Bobbie Joe are going to get passes to go to the bathroom and sneak in when no one’s looking. “I bet she lets me kiss her!” he says and laughs and the other boys laugh. Then he says, “Maybe she’ll even give me a hand job.” He’ll glance at you and this look of horror will come over his face. They’ll all look at you. Right then you’ll know you’ve lost them. At home that night, cry in your room without making a sound in case your brothers walk by.

Realize at this point that you have two choices: either you have to win back the boys or you have to throw in with the girls. But you don’t understand the girls at all. You wouldn’t know the first thing about it. How do you talk to girls, anyway? Don’t lose heart. Maybe there is a way to make it through to the boys. If pretty girls are what gets their attention, maybe you’ll have to learn to look like a girl, even if you aren’t really one. You can learn. Didn’t you teach yourself how to make peach pies from scratch? How to braid horsehair into hat bands? How to pick the lock on the second oldest brother’s bottom drawer, only to be disgusted with the magazines you found there? You can do this.

Imagine the looks on the boys’ faces. The admiration filling their eyes. Respect, even. And the jealousy in the girls’ eyes. Jimmy will walk up to you and put his arm around you and say, “Where you been?” There’ll be no more awkward silences, no more conversations that switch when you walk up. It’ll be the same as before, once they notice you. All you have to do is get their attention.

Raid your mom’s closet for a dress. Smuggle it into your room. It’s the one you’ve seen her wear to church—knee-length, sky blue with a white scalloped collar. You are her height now, and it’ll fit you. To your surprise, you’ll even fill it out in the bust. Surreptitiously steal a copy of a girls’ magazine from the library and study it—the way the girls’ hair is curled, the way their lips shine, how clean their hands are. Decide to try it the following Monday. Sunday night, take a long bath and try to soak off all the dirt and scrub the elephant hide off your feet. The leg bruises from working in the barn won’t come off, but sacrifice your toothbrush to scrub your fingernails. Tie up your wet hair in rags like you’ve seen your mother do on Saturday nights before Sunday church services. The next morning, get ready in your room so no one will see you. Climb into the dress. You will feel naked and drafty around the legs. This is normal. Brush out your hair. Instead of nice wavy curls, it will stuck out all over the place. Wet it down just a little, which will help, but it will still look like an alfalfa windrow. You don’t have any lip gloss, so use bag balm, the sticky yellow substance you put on cow teats when they chap. This won’t really be new because when your lips crack from sun or wind burn, that’s what you use. It will feel different though.

Look at yourself in the mirror. You won’t recognize yourself. It will be a weird double consciousness—this person in the mirror is you, you’ll know it, but you’ll have to glance down anyway just to match the image in the mirror with the one attached to your body. Beware. It will creep you out. It looks like a girl in the mirror, but it can’t be because you aren’t one of them.

Whatever happens, keep telling yourself: it’ll be worth it if it works.

Don’t go downstairs until just before your brothers are ready to drive to school. When you come down, your brothers will stop talking. The brother just older than you will laugh, but then your dad will whistle and say, “My, don’t you look pretty today.” This will make you feel a little better and stop the boys’ wolf whistles, though they’ll keep glancing sideways at you in the car. If the brother just older than you whispers, “Look who’s a ger-rel,” the oldest one will tap him upside the head to shut him up.

Make your oldest brother drop you off two blocks from school and hide behind a tree until you’re sure school has started. You won’t want anyone to see you ahead of time. In fact, you’ll be having second thoughts about the whole project. Be brave. You’ll think of Jimmy Mockler and the embarrassed way he looks at you, maybe even avoids you when you come down the hall, and that’ll help. Creep in a side door, scoot to your locker, get your books, and go to homeroom. If you feel like you might let loose in your pants as you peek into the classroom through the wire-latticed window, wait—this will pass. Mrs. Garcia will probably have everyone working in groups, and desks will be pushed together in four messy circles. The guys in the back will be in one group, including Jimmy. Rest your hand on the door knob for a long time, take a deep breath, and then push through the door.

The noise of everyone talking at once will hit you as the door opens. That and the smell of the fish tank and Mrs. Garcia’s sickeningly sweet perfume. Stutter-breathe and make a beeline toward the boy’s circle. Talking will begin to peter out as you enter the room, and you’ll make it halfway along the wall toward the back before there’s dead silence. Everyone will be looking at you, but keep your eyes on the boys’ circle. The looks on the boys’ faces will be wonderful. All their eyes fastened on you, looking admiringly, small smiles in the corners of their mouths. They will be looking at you, noticing you. Jimmy, particularly, will have a wide-eyed slack-jawed grin on his face.

Celebrate. You’ve done it. You’ve regained their attention. You are once more an honorary boy, respected and included.

But then it’ll be like a slow-motion horror movie. From behind you, Mrs. Garcia will say, “Why, Birdie Gunderson, I almost didn’t recognize you.” Watch these words register on the boys’ faces. Some of them will give a little shrug and turn back toward the others, but it’s Jimmy’s reaction that will bruise you to the core. You’ll see the time delay of the words entering his ears and then his brain and then the look on his face fix as his brain processes the words and then his eyes widen as he finally understands. Then, it’ll be as if someone grabs the center of his face and twists. The look will be so awful your body will wander to a stop, and you’ll stand, unbelieving, still caught in the adrenalin of the moment before. You’re going to cry, so flip around and push back out through the door and run down the hall and out the big double doors by the principal’s office. Run until you can’t breathe and then walk, taking in big hiccupping breaths of air, all the way to the high school. Make your oldest brother take you home.

Accept your fate. You’ll never regain that special place with the boys, and you become a second-hand friend. Every once in a while your brothers will say, “Remember the time Birdie tried to be a girl?” and they’ll laugh. Laugh with them. You know how ridiculous it was.

High school will be a long lonely blur, but take it like a man. Never go on a date, never kiss a boy. Instead, watch football and memorize the stats and, if anyone tries to strike up a conversation, bring up the Dallas Cowboys. Take your one stab at getting outside your life—after high school, go to community college for a semester, but when your mom dies of some unnamable female ailment, your dad will need you on the farm. You’ll tell yourself that you can always go back and get that degree, but you won’t. Fill your days with the routine of agriculture. The animals won’t care if you’re a boy or a girl—they just need to be fed and watered. Same with your dad and brothers. Don’t think about being a man. Or being a woman. You are an efficient cog in the machinery of the farm.

“Sis, you’re the best,” they’ll all say. “Birdie is as faithful as a hound dog.”

You are, you know? You’re a good cook, you know a lot about football, and you work hard. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have any friends, men or women. It doesn’t matter that you don’t get out much and you’ll never be kissed, much less married. When you have needs, take care of them yourself. Don’t think about becoming a skinny whiskery-chinned old batty with too many dogs. You’re happy. Or at least you’re not sad. You’re comfortable. You have a full life taking care of your dad and your brothers. You do. You really do.

Or, maybe this isn’t the way it goes.

Maybe, when you’re in your early thirties, your fourth oldest brother will bring home an old college buddy for two weeks one summer. Conrad Patel. You’ll resent the hell out of it, this change in routine. This guy will make you uncomfortable. At first you’ll think he’s gay because he’s thin and has a loose-limbed way of walking. This will make you wonder about your brother. Then you’ll understand by the way they talk about women that they’re just comfortable with each other. They understand each other. It’ll remind you of how it used to be with you and Jimmy Mockler—you’ll be sad at first and then angry. Go out of your way to avoid this Conrad Patel. You might even do little things to make yourself feel better, like flushing the downstairs toilet when he’s in the upstairs shower. Every time you get the chance.

A lot of your energy during the summer goes into growing the garden, and after your dad and the boys leave for the fields, spend your mornings watering and weeding. In the evening after the supper dishes are done, walk through the garden and inspect things—pollinate the tomatoes, check for potato bugs, and shut the hothouse boxes. You will love this time of cool breeze and setting sun. But it will annoy the hell out of you when Conrad Patel breaks away from the card game or the sitcom TV to follow you out the back door and down the porch steps. He won’t seem to understand the very strong hints you drop. Start sneaking out the front door, but don’t be surprised if you find him already there in the garden.

“But you don’t grow coriander?” Conrad Patel will say. “You don’t grow fennel? Not even tarragon?” He will say this with wonder, as if these things are essential to life.

Say, “If you don’t like what I cook, don’t eat it,” and turn your back.

If he says, “Oh no—your cooking is a marvel. So very different from my mother’s,” you won’t be sure how to take this, just like you’re never quite sure how to take anything he says. Say, “You’re comparing me to your mother?” It will irritate you. Really irritate you. You’ll wish you were ten again so you could sock him.

“Yes, of course,” he’ll say, once again as if this were a given.

Realize that he doesn’t understand you any more than you understand him. You won’t know what to say so don’t say anything and hope that’s the end of it.

But it won’t be. He’ll say, “You would drive across this country to eat her mashed potatoes. The key is browning the mustard seeds, with just enough chilies to make your lips burn. This makes me want to drop everything and go for a visit.” His voice will be both intense and wistful.

As you finish up in the garden, he’ll talk about cooking but then about his family. He’ll tell you about his mother and his aunts and grandmother. Also about his brothers and his dad, who has passed away. It’s not what he says so much as how he says it. Women to him are a mystery, much like they are to you, but not in a contemptuous way. He talks about them with such respect and such admiration, like they are men and men are women. To him, women are the source of all goodness and men are the source of all evil. Women are the ones who get things done, the practical ones, and men spend their time being frivolous with money.

It will all be so foreign to you that when he stops talking it’ll be as if you walked out of a movie theater. Remind yourself of where you are. And who you are. Your body and your approach to the world will have traveled to another place where what you were supposed to be doesn’t seem so far from what you are. You’ll want to reject it whole cloth, but there’s a part of you that will want to break into tears.

Shut the last hothouse lid and turn to leave.

Conrad Patel will say, “I have said something wrong.” He will step in front of you. “What I meant was that your potatoes are the same. Not the same—they don’t contain mustard seeds. But the same in that they are wonderful. And your beef stew is wonderful. You are a wonderful woman.”

Are you? Do those words go together?

It’s dark enough that you won’t be able to see his face, but if he steps closer to you, don’t step away. He’ll stand in front of you and you’ll feel the heat of his body through the cool of the evening. You’ll like this feeling. You might wonder what’s coming, if he’s leaning toward you ever so slightly—it will be hard to tell in the fading light. Don’t let this frighten you. Don’t run away. Face your fears. Be a man.

Tamara Linse On “How To Be A Man”

       “How to Be a Man” is a second-person story. I was never going to write one of those because they are what every first-year MFA student does, thinking themselves edgy and clever.  But then I was reading Junot Dias’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” http://genius.com/Junot-diaz-how-to-date-a-brown-girl-black-girl-white-girl-or-halfie-annotated —a second-person story—for the umpteenth time, and I couldn’t help it.  I wondered how I would write a similar story, and the idea grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go.  I started writing it in my head in the shower one morning—where I do some of my best thinking. And then I got to the point in the story where she’s a whiskery-chinned old batty, and that felt like the end.  But I didn’t want it to end there—she needed to have a happy ending! After stewing for a while, I said, it’s my story, I’m the writer, I can write a second ending if I want to, and that’s where the other happy ending came about. I’m so glad I was able to bring her around.

Biography on Tamara Linse

       The author Tamara Linse—writer, cogitator, recovering ranch girl—broke her collarbone when she was three, her leg when she was four, a horse when she was twelve, and her heart ever since. Raised on a ranch in northern Wyoming, she earned her master’s in English from the University of Wyoming, where she taught writing. She is the author of the short story collection How to Be a Man and the novels Deep Down Things and Earth's Imagined Corners. Her work appears in the Georgetown Review, South Dakota Review, and Talking River, among others, and she was a finalist for an Arts & Letters and Glimmer Train contests, as well as the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for a book of short stories. She works as an editor for a foundation and a freelancer. Find her online at

Author Email: tamara@tamaralinse.com
Author Website: www.tamaralinse.com
Author Blog: tamara-linse.blogspot.com
Author Facebook: fb.com/tlinse
Author Twitter: tw.com/tamaralinse

 

Guest Blogger Kelly Sundberg: Can Confessional Writing Be Literary?

Christal Cooper

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Guest Blogger Kelly Sundberg
Can Confessional Writing be Literary?

When I defended my MFA thesis—a collection of linked personal essays—one of my committee members, the only woman on my committee, said to me, “So many women have been traumatized on these pages. I don’t know women to whom things like this have happened. It seems a bit melodramatic.” I don’t remember how I responded. I remember how I wanted to respond. I wanted to say, “Is it melodramatic if it’s true?”

After the defense, on the way to my car, I called my best friend and told her about the comment, and about how much it had confused me. My friend’s response was that maybe that committee member was not the type of woman whose friends would trust her with their stories of trauma, and therefore, that was why the committee member didn’t think the stories existed. It never occurred to either of us that the committee member’s friends hadn’t suffered acts of gender violence. Based on our own (admittedly limited) subset of friends, but also on the statistics that show one in three women will be subjected to gender violence in their lifetime, the committee member’s friends having escaped gender violence simply didn’t seem possible.

At the time of my thesis defense, I hadn’t yet acknowledged that I was being physically battered by my then-spouse. That acknowledgment came later, in the form of an essay that was later anthologized in Best American Essays 2015. If this committee member read that essay, I wonder if she thought it, too, was melodramatic? All I know is that everything I described in that essay really happened. If it was melodramatic, it was still truth.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Essays-2015/dp/0544569628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462749986&sr=8-1&keywords=Best+America+Essays+2015
 
In her Boston Review essay, “Wounded Women,” Jessa Crispin writes, “I am worried about the implications of throwing the label ‘women’s pain’ around individual experiences of suffering, and I am even more uncomfortable with women who feel free to speak for all women. I worry about making pain a ticket to gain entry into the women’s club.”


http://www.jessacrispin.com/
 
I don’t know that pain is a ticket to any “club” that I would want to be a part of, but personally, I am worried about having to constantly assert my legitimacy as a literary writer, simply because I often write about my experience of trauma. I am worried about the notion that writing about trauma is somehow easier (or less than) other writing.

In all honesty, many of us have traumatic stories, and perhaps this is where the stigma originates—the easy access we have to our own experiences—but simply having the story doesn’t mean that we can write it well. As literary writers, when writing about our individual traumas, we’re still called upon to use the elements of our craft in a way that strives to move beyond the individual story, and instead, capture something universal, or offer something educational. When I wrote my anthologized essay, “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” my goal was not to exploit my own trauma for personal gain. My goal was to show readers why I stayed for so long in a relationship that had become dangerous.
 
I had always been a literary essayist with an interest in complex structures, and I used the fragmented structure of this particular essay to represent the see/saw of love and violence that is symptomatic of domestic abuse. The essay went through many revisions and had multiple readers; It was hard work to try and write about a traumatic subject, while also maintaining a high level of craft.

http://www.roxanegay.com/

 
In her essay, Crispin also wrote, “Suddenly women writers were being valued for their stories of surviving violence and trauma.”  This seems dismissive to me of the literary merit of these writers. The writers she describes—such as Roxane Gay and Leslie Jamison—are valued because they are excellent writers. They may have stories of surviving violence and trauma, but it is the ways in which they tell these stories that distinguishes them from other writers in the field.

                                  http://www.lesliejamison.com/

 
When I sit down to write literary writing about my trauma, I am a writer first, and a trauma survivor second, but I am not ever not a trauma survivor, and as such, I am often interested in examining the roots and effects of my own trauma. Sometimes, I am interested in examining these effects in ways that might be considered therapeutic—that dastardly term that literary nonfiction writers hate. As a result, I have created a separate writing space—my blog—where the writing is not about my craft, but rather, about my story. The blog is where I talk about my journey of recovery, and the blog frees up my emotional space and intellect, so that I can approach my literary writing with more remove and thoughtfulness. Like most literary writers, I do not believe that literary writing should be therapeutic. When I teach creative nonfiction workshops, I tell my students that the therapy needs to come before the writing.

 https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/kelly-sundberg-writing-survival-and-empowerment/

 
In her essay, “The Memoir of Recovery (Not Discovery),” in Kirkus Reviews, Debra Monroe laments the current state of memoir, where she posits that “The memoir became therapeutic: a narrative offshoot of self-help.” On many levels, I agree with Monroe. In one instance, she describes an editor who responded to her manuscript with “I just wish her childhood had been worse!” I can imagine how frustrated Monroe must have felt by that response, but when my own memoir proposal went out on submission, I received a somewhat different response.

                                    http://debramonroe.net/

 
One editor, after having read my blog (which very openly addresses the lingering effects of my domestic abuse) said that she didn’t feel the ending of my story was happy enough (I’m paraphrasing here). Another editor, with whom I spoke on the phone, asked me if I thought my memoir would have a “redemptive ending.” I answered that, of course I did. After all, I got out of the marriage. What could be more redemptive than that? But I added that, if someone is looking for a Lifetime Movie-esque redemptive ending, they won’t find that in my story.

In the end I was able to place my book with an editor who seemed to respect my work and my aesthetic, and who I trust will not pressure me to change my actual, lived experience in an effort to get more readers.

Truthfully, with the editorial feedback we received, Monroe and I were both victims of the same problem—that of memoirs being posited as “recovery” and “redemptive.” In this way, even though, like Crispin, Monroe laments our culture’s infatuation with traumatic experiences, she also differs from Crispin. Monroe thinks the problem is with the focus on recovery. Crispin thinks the problem is that women are valued for their wounds. To Crispin, I would say that I am not grateful for my wounds. To Monroe, I would say that I am also not redeemed by them. My wounds are simply a part of my existence. Still, because I am interested in an examination of the self, my wounds have, naturally, become a subject of my writing.

Part of what I appreciate about the writing of Leslie Jamison and Roxane Gay’s writing is the way they both actively resist portraying their wounds as redemptive. Instead, they address the wounds honestly, sometimes brutally, and with all of the tools in their arsenal that true literary giants possess—beautiful language, interesting structures, nuanced examinations of culture, and novel forms of presentation.

With my own writing, I seek to approach trauma in the same way. The story is important, but it must also be written with craft, and with nuance. I have no desire to always write about trauma, nor have I always written about trauma, but I am fatigued by the notion that narratives of trauma are rewarded simply on the merits of the struggle that one has endured. I had a traumatic experience, and perhaps that did gain me entrance into a club—a club of women’s pain—but that traumatic experience did not make me a literary writer. My hard work and my craft are what have, hopefully, made me into a literary writer.

Kelly Sundberg is Brevity’s Managing Editor. Her essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and been listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2013. Her essay, “It Will Look Like a Sunset” was anthologized in Best American Essays 2015, and a memoir inspired by that essay, Goodbye Sweet Girl, is forthcoming from HarperCollins Publishers in 2017.

http://brevitymag.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Essays-2013/dp/0544103882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462751536&sr=8-1&keywords=Best+American+Essays+2013

http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Essays-2015/dp/0544569628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462751617&sr=8-1&keywords=american+best+essays+2015

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Kelly Sundberg

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Jessa Crispi

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Roxanne Gay in 2014

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Lesley Jamison inn 2014 at the Texas Book Festival in Austin.

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Debra Monroe at the 2015 Texas Book Festival

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Kelly Sundberg at Ghostranch
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Kelly Sundberg introducing Dorothy Allison at Ohio State University.

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