Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed

Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed
By Andrei Guruianu

Last night I had the pleasure of hosting the poets Susan Deer Cloud and Michael Czarnecki at our library for a discussion and reading.  The moderately sized group was split down the middle age-wise, eight teens and eight adults.  I was incredibly impressed by what the teens had already been through in their lives and how they had used poetry to give themselves a voice.  It was an inspirational evening and made me think I’d like to talk about a poetry book this morning. 

I don’t have anything in the library collection by Susan Deer Cloud yet but she mentioned another poet who she worked with at Binghamton University, Andrei Guruianu.  He has read and conducted workshops here in the past so I knew I had his books on the shelf.  I selected a book which was published by Michael Czarnecki’s Foothills Publishing, called Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed.

Andrei Guruianu came to America from Romania as a young man which makes the themes of tradition, family, immigration and relationships at home in his writing. 

The ties to the old country come through in Days When I Saw the Horizon Bleed as he walks with his grandfather through a melon patch while The Romania I Remember summons forth people singing “songs of pain and songs of joy.”  The pain of leaving family behind in less than ideal conditions echoes in Abandoned.

A wry humor speaks in Yes, it’s true.  A little bit bitter as well? He responds to people who bring up Dracula when they hear he is Romanian. 

as you’ve probably suspected,

at night I secretly file my canines

into sharp points

before crawling into the coffin

I keep hidden in the bedroom closet. 

Grandfather reminded me of my sister, hearing her own name at our Grandmother’s funeral. I was only eight at the time but I’ve never forgotten her reaction.

They speak of you, Andrei

the one I’ve never met

whose name I carry. 

I have always preferred family names, names carried on by the next generation.  Though my daughter’s first name is her own, her middle name is one she shares with my grandmother, my mother and myself.

Reasons for Sleeping 

I’ve realized that I no longer

look forward to falling asleep at night

just to get some rest.

I sleep to stop thinking,

Being the mother of a small child, I fall asleep quickly and hope it will last, that I won’t be woken in the night by the siren of a wail, but I still identified strongly with this poem.  I was thinking the other day how I more fully understand these days what it means to be an adult, to feel the weight of the world pressing down because I worry how it might all affect my child at some point.  I never worried so much until I became a mother.

The author probably would have preferred that I write about more recent books, such as his most recent, Postmodern Dogma.  Hopefully he isn’t too chagrined that I went back to his first.  I think if you start at the beginning, with this book, you’ll continue reading.  You know where to find them.  If they are all checked out, you can find him online at http://www.andreiguruianu.com/ 

Big Fish ~ Daniel Wallace

Big Fish
By Daniel Wallace

“I thought of him suddenly, and simply, as a boy, a child, a youth, with his whole life ahead of him, much as mine was ahead of me. I’d never done that before. And these images – the now and then of my father – converged, and at that moment he turned into a weird creature, wild, concurrently young and old, dying and newborn. My father became a myth.”

When we’re young we see our fathers as larger than life. They pick us up and fling us around. They have an answer for everything we want to know. Then, one day, we realize that they are simply human, with all the inadequacies of the human race, and not everyone can forgive them for that, for being human.

In Big Fish, Daniel Wallace writes a novel that returns a father to those mythic proportions while encompassing the frailties of humanity, embodied in having an affair and dying of a disease.

Edward Bloom was an absentee father. William Bloom has learned who his father is in jokes and tall tales his father told while he was home. Among the tall tales and stories of Edward Bloom’s life, four different versions of his death are related. In the beginning, Edward is cracking jokes and telling tall tales while William rejects the humor and begs for something real, to finally know his father before he dies. In the end, William accepts that the tall tales and jokes are how he will know and remember his father.

A work of Magic Realism, Big Fish takes reality and infuses it with elements of the myth or legend. Things happen in a way that could never happen in real life, but in doing so make the story more true than if it had happened realistically because, the truth is, impossible things happen in real life all the time. When that happens, we say, “Huh. What’s the chance of that?” and put it down to coincidence. It’s up to you whether you believe in coincidence or not.

My father always told stories of his life as a boy. They were realistic and I accepted them as fact. It took some time before I realized they could change a little bit with every telling. Did that make them not true? I like facts, that’s how my mind works, but stories offer truth in a slightly different way where the truth of the situation doesn’t always reside in the facts, but in the spirit of the telling.

This little book resounds with truth.

Books to Help Hone Your Writing Skills

Books to Help Hone Your Writing Skills

Someone recently asked me for advice in improving their writing skills – grammar, word choice and creativity, etcetera. Obviously, the best way to improve your writing is simply to read as much as you can and write regularly.

First off, we’ll take it as a given that you like to read. Otherwise, why would you be here? I have always believed that there is a book for every reader. Some people enjoy horror writers like Stephen King while some like romance writers such as Jayne Ann Krentz , and some prefer fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett. Some people don’t like books at all and instead prefer newspapers, magazines or blogs. To each his own, just read.

That takes us to writing regularly. It doesn’t have to be fiction. You could pick a different relative every few days and write a real, old-fashioned letter, or even a chatty e-mail. Older relatives who might not get out much would be particularly grateful to receive your letters. Write letters to people in the military service overseas. Start a journal, write down your memories from childhood or try your hand at essays about things in life that you are passionate about. Start a blog about something like that and you may have the chance to meet people who are like minded.

The point is to write. Writing regularly exercises your knowledge of the language. Look up words when you’re not sure of the spelling, check the grammar when you’re unsure of that. A wonderful little book to help you with all points of grammar usage, as it comes up, is A Writer’s Reference by Diana Hacker. I have had one of these little spiral bound reference books since the early nineties and have found it indispensible for every type of writing.

If you want to learn to write easily on any topic, try prompts. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and The Pocket Muse 2: Endless Inspiration for Writers by Monica Wood offer a wealth of prompts to get you writing. Pick one every day and set yourself a time limit – 10, 20 or 30 minutes, and just write. In the same vein, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron has been used by people in many disciplines to free up their creativity. I used it one year as a twelve week course, reading a chapter each Sunday night, doing the assignments each week and writing the 3 pages of longhand “morning pages” every day. I believe the morning pages did me the most good, simply allowing me to write three pages every morning that had no rules. It taught me Anne Lamott’s concept of “shitty first drafts” before I ever read Bird by Bird, which was my first review on this blog.

One of the most widely read and praised basic, but indispensible, books on writing is the slim volume, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. Only 92 pages long, including the index, the authors cover elementary rules of usage and principles of composition as well as words and expressions commonly misused, and also make simple recommendations on style.

Those books will pretty much cover improving your grammar, word choice and creativity. If you’re already a writer and want to delve into books on honing your craft, or are just curious about what it takes to make a living at writing, there are two books have stood out for me so far. Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing by David Morrell was one of the first books on writing that I read. I understand this is now published as The Successful Novelist but I think the original title is more inviting to someone who really loves to write. It is not only instructive, but entertaining. On Writing by Stephen King is definitely more entertaining than instructive. It is subtitled “A Memoir of the Craft” and rightfully so.

Read and write, that's the long and short of it, but also the pleasure.