Questions and Answers

        Last week I focused on my Q & A for Salgado Maranhão's translator, Alexis Levitin. Levitin has translated twenty five books (mainly from Portuguese). He received his P.h.d in English from Columbia University and currently teaches Creative Writing, Poetry, Shakespeare and World Literature at Plattsburg University. Most recently, he translated the poetry collection, Blood of the Sun by Salgado Maranhão, from Portuguese, for Milkweed. Once I finalized my questions, Ethan Rutherford, Milkweed's marketing manager, put me directly in touch with Alexis Levitin. We haven't officially chosen a time for the interview yet, but I'm infinitely excited to pick the brain of a renowned translator. Once the interview is completed it will be featured on the Milkweed website.
       Ethan asked me to revise my questions a bit after the first draft, focusing less on the poetry itself and more on the translation process. I asked about the contradictions and struggles that accompany literary translation, things I have often wondered about. I asked whether Levitin focused more often on translating verbatim or preserving the tone and style of the verse. I also asked what role he feels a translator should take; as an ambassador of someone's work or simply as an interpreter.
       These questions are not only pertitent to Milkweed's publishing, but to my own interests. If I pursue my potential career as a translator my role and influence on how audiences read a certain writer's work is something that I would want to constantly question and explore. I expect to learn much from speaking with an expert like Levitin and I can't wait!

Grown Down

 I wrote this in the summer after my sophomore year. I was living in a duplex in Saint Paul with three other girls from Macalester. For the first time I was paying rent and cooking purely for myself and despite the independence, I longed for a kind of lost innocence. As a young adult I feel like one often teeters on the brink of maturity and a nostalgia for an adolescence that isn't so far removed.

Grown Down

I want to be awkward with you
To read comics on the bus
To be twenty and laugh too loud
And bike into street signs
And never stare at my reflection
And think wine is sour and coffee too bitter
I want you to cough after each puff
And I’ll never inhale
And I want to laugh when you run your tongue
On the outside of my ear
I want us to sit on my stoop
Because I don’t need to invite you in
Even though my name is on the lease
I just want you to rest your hand furtively on my hip
I want us to keep our clothes on as you tell me the personality
That you ascribe to each number
I want you to laugh at me
Not with me
I want to blush
And sigh
I want to forget
The stories painfully etched on the undersides of my breasts
On the insides of my thighs
Even though they’re in a language you’ll never understand
I want to make innocence ageless
I want to smell hesitance
To taste sweet doubt
Our cynics can keep each other company all night
But I want you to remind me
Of what it felt like
I almost remember
When you stutter
When your bangs fall into your face and you blow them sideways
I almost remember when you kiss too eagerly
When your breath smells like the cigarettes you smoke to seem
 cool
But I can’t find it
I know it’s in basement boxes
years from here
Girls and girls from now
I just want to chase it with you
Even if we never find it

La Língua, La Lengua

    When I got back last Wednesday from Thanksgiving break I finished the reading guide questions for Salgado Maranhão's poetry collection, Blood of the Sun. I came up with ten questions in total. I really enjoyed creating them. I felt like a professor trying to incite a class discussion. I asked about the imagery within the poetry, the title and contextualized the poet himself. I am still waiting to discuss them with the Marketing manager who asked me to complete the project. But eventually the questions will be posted on the Milkweed website.
      It was virtually impossible to find any information or interviews on Maranhão, in anything other than Portuguese. I didn't even find anything in Spanish which was surprising, because he is well-renowned in much of Latin America. Due to my fluency in Spanish I was able to understand about eighty percent of the Portuguese entries that I read about him. However, when I listened to an interview of his I only understood at most, about twenty percent of what he was saying. I assume that this is because Portuguese is not as phonetically straightforward as Spanish. In Spanish essentially every syllable is pronounced and sounds exactly as it looks. But obviously not all languages function this way. Also, there are different regional accents that create large variations in how a language is spoken.
       I am going to be taking accelerated introduction to Portuguese next semester, after I complete my internship with Milkweed, which is very inopportune timing for this project. It would be fascinating to read Maranhão's poetry in its original form because , unfortunately, I feel that something is always lost in translation. Different languages often have very different sensibilities, which usually reflect the culture from which they originate. For example, in Spanish there are three different expressions for love and in English there are numerous words to describe currency. I feel that this is very indicative of the societies from which these languages spring. Idiomatic expressions are also almost always impossible to translate. If one translated 'It's raining cats and dogs' verbatim into Spanish, the speaker would sound deranged. The nuances of language have always enthralled me, I wish I could use those skills more at Milkweed. But I'm sure that they will be very relevant in future jobs that I may have.

Man v.s. Man

I wrote this piece as an exercise for my fiction class in the second semester of my sophomore year. The assignment was to use a magazine picture, that our professor handed out in class, as a prompt. My picture was of a metal or wire structure, that almost looked like a ferris wheel, located in what seemed to be the middle of a forest. It made me think about the juxtaposition between the artificial and the natural and how one day the artificial might seem just as natural to us.

Man Vs. Man

         They fastened the cables perfectly, wrapped the vines around the bars of the metal in decidedly wild patterns. They planted the bush just to the right of the tree to balance the composition. They were going for a long lost kind of feel, evoking the discovery of a relic in the woods. “An Existential Emptiness: Juxtaposing the Industrial with the Natural”, that was the title of the show. Once they took the photo they disassembled it all. It returned to the plot of land across the river where junkies and teenage lovers spent their afternoons, back to the broken bottles and Trojan wrappers. The camera crew covered their noses for most of the shoot, the place smelled like piss. She chose the location because it seemed deserted, there was no wilderness left. This was the closest thing.
          She had taken photos in various other locations. She constructed an steel crane on a beach, the waves lapping against it. Not a soul to be found on the sand. She had traveled to peaks and plains and rocky coasts. But they always had to erase buildings out of the background, fill in the naked patches of grass, and make the sky a bit bluer. They had to have a contrast after all. The show wasn’t called “A Spectrum of Industry”. Thank god for those computer programs.
          The final show would be held in an abandoned brick warehouse, on the edges of a fallen industrial area where most of the buildings were now occupied by specialty fedora shops and double shot espresso bars. She often thought about how amazingly defunct these buildings were now. How they had been replaced by glass and steel, that towered obnoxiously over everything. Weeds would spurt out of the cracks in the sidewalk, kids pointed at them, trying to pluck some of the feathery overgrown blossoms.    
             She vaguely remembered the parks. There used to be one not far from the apartment where she grew up. Her father would take her there to ride her bike. The hills were sculpted, rolling sweetly into an illusion of oblivion. The trees were strategically placed to block buildings. The little lakes were filled with ducks brought in from out of state and insects placed there to create an ecosystem.
          “When I was growing up we had a barn, and there were woods behind the house,” her father would tell her. He always had the most outlandish stories.
          When he died she spread his ashes over the ocean. Even though it was too chemically potent to swim in, at least from the surface it was pretty. The oil spills created beautiful iridescent blobs in vast swaths. She went back again and again to the place where he was from, looking for the woods. But she couldn’t find them. The shell of the barn was there. The red paint stripped off, initials and tags carved into the wood.
          The opening of the show was a relative success. People even came in from other boroughs to see her work. She received a fair number of nods, fingers cupping chins, viewers squinting and pointing at the pieces as they discussed them with their significant others, always a good sign.  But up against the wall with the lights shining on them, the shadows of the things that she erased were still visible. The hollowed out factories, the graffiti, shadows of them still lingered. She panicked, she thought of forcing everyone out into the street, ripping the photos off the wall and smashing them over her knees.
         The next day the reviews were published. She kept glancing at the stack of papers that arrived on her doorstep. She closed and opened the door a few times to make sure they were still there. The most common adjective used was “irrelevant”.

Flash Fiction

I wrote this little poem in the beginning of the second semester of my sophomore year. It has nothing to do with black Friday, gratitude, food or family. Instead, it's all about the pervasive lack of significant  emotional development in the males of our species, something I am far from thankful for. I think that Minnesota-passive-agression is rubbing off on me.

Flash Fiction

I tried to make you into a simile
But you’re too transparent, too flawed
With men like you
Every comparison has already been drawn

I could make us an into an allegory
And scrawl down our potential love
Imagine that you’ll say sorry
That you’re someone I can take hold of

You knew that we could have some poetry
We were ceasing to pretend
But you’re  a terrible writer
So before we could start
you wrote the end

I Give Thanks for Literature...Now Pass the Turkey

     The office environment remains relaxed as the best holiday, ever, nears. It's that time again. Snow is on the ground in the Twin Cities, temperatures have dropped to below freezing and people are preparing to gorge themselves on extremely fattening foods and fall asleep wherever they lay their heads. I am missing one day of work to fly back home to New York and I'm ecstatic.  I will probably end up working on a project for the website on Salgado Maranhão's poetry collection, Blood of the Sun, while I'm at home but that's preferable to writing a midterm paper on constructions of race in Othello.
      My parents and I are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time in my memory. Because of my slightly compulsive nature, I assigned us all different tasks months ago. I will be in charge of everything sweet, essentially dessert and cranberry sauce. I have tried out different pumpkin recipes, a vegan pumpkin cheesecake (no one guessed it lacked dairy) and vegan crustless pumpkin pie (a total fiasco), to name two. Thursday will be the moment of truth, can us amateurs pull this whole Thanksgiving thing off?
         Every year since my childhood we went to my aunt's house on Turkey day. She lived only about an hour outside of New York City. It was more than worth it to have her husband's chestnut stuffing and her famous (crusted) pumpkin pie. Last summer she and her family moved to Santa Fe. This was devastating for my parents and I, not just because of the absence of her Thanksgiving feast, of course. However, we have managed to procure her family recipes and hope to replicate them as closely as possible. I've found that Turkey day doesn't feel quite right if you're not eating the same kinds of foods that you have for years. Tradition is paramount.
        I don't usually think about giving thanks for anything other than the outstanding fact that a holiday centered purely around food exists, but this year I'm going to try a little harder. I want to give thanks for something slightly unconventional, but something that is an integral part of my life. I want to give thanks for writing. For the books I have read this year that have changed my life (I'm looking at you, Lolita, probably the best novel I've ever read), for the writing I have been inspired to do and for the hilariously bad manuscripts that have cheered me up when I'm having a rough day.
         Writing is something I can't fathom living without and it's something that in our westernized society we often take for granted. Just stop and think for a moment about what your life would be like if T.V. and movies were the only forms of entertainment, if there was nothing to read or worth reading, for that matter. Copy in magazines and newspapers is shrinking by the second and the most popular books are about teenage vampires. Let's take a moment to appreciate the exceptional literature, journalistic writing and poetry that adds depth, substance and beauty to our lives. And if you must read "Twighlight," at least also devote some time to a Nabokov novel . Alright, now can you pass the mashed potatoes, please?

The Linquist and Vennum Poetry Prize

       Last Thursday, Milkweed announced a new prize. The Linquist and Vennum Poetry Prize is for poet's based out of five states: Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota and South Dakota. The winner will receive a hefty sum of ten thousand dollars and publication by Milkweed. The contest will be judged by Peter Campion. He has written two collections of poetry, Other People (2005) and The Lions (2009). He is a winner of the Pushcart Prize, The Larry Levis Reading Prize, The Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor in the M.F.A. program at the University of Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis.
        The Linquist and Vennum Poetry Prize is an exciting opportunity for poets to gain recognition for their work on a national scale. The submitted collection must be currently unpublished and all other queries at other publications must be withdrawn. Is seems that Milkweed is looking for a fresh regional voice to showcase, and in some sense to represent their taste in poetry to the public. I personally think it's a wonderful idea.
        Anyone interested should feel free to contact me. It must be a book-length manuscript. More requirements and stipulations can be found on the Milkweed website. Don't be shy, fellow college students! I know there are some great young poets out there and that's who we're looking for!

Atlantic Skin

         I wrote this poem in the Macalester library, when I was procrastinating about writing an academic paper (this is ironically how I produce some of my best creative work). It was the second semester of my sophomore year and I was enrolled in a Crafts of Fiction class, of which this poem had nothing to do with.
        I have always been inspired by the poetry of the ocean. Two large bodies of water have played a prominent role in my life, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. I grew up in Brooklyn, right on the Atlantic. I went to Coney Island frequently as a child, although New York is not known for it's wonderful beaches. My mother grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, along the Caribbean Sea. There was a very dominant beach culture there and she spent her adolescence watching surfers on the beach. I have been visiting my family in San Juan since I was three months old and although I have never been an exceptional swimmer I have always loved taking in the waves. My name also means "of the sea" in latin, and my mother's means "white wave." Perhaps our names were prophetic of our watery futures.


Atlantic Skin

She tattooed a quote about the sea
in the willowy space
Above her pubic bone
She explained it to her lovers
When they undressed her
tracing the letters with their tongues
She judged men based on their attention spans
If they listened they would stay
But if they removed their clothing too hurriedly
They only wanted to splash into her
leaving, once their fingers pruned from the water
She always let them
Hoping that the salt would seep into their pores
That they would always be drawn to
The jagged rocks of her shore
Her smoothed sea glass
But instead they collected pebbles
And shells
They took spotted crabs
Placing them in their heavy pockets
Putting them on mantles
Until no more algae grew
Till fish skeletons
Adorned the surface
“All life came from water”
she would tell them.
“Mother ocean
not Mother Earth”

De Tudo um Pouco

        There's no big news at Milkweed. We had an intern dinner a couple of week ago, which I forgot to mention. There ended up being only four out of the six of us, and non literary subjects were definitely breached. We went to a Japanese restaurant about two blocks away from Open Book. Sushi was had by all and it was a wonderful, if not short-lived, outing. I get along well with the majority of interns in the office. I am the only one still currently in college. Most of them are very recent graduates, with the exception of a twenty-seven year old.
         I managed to live "slush free" for weeks, but then the unsolicited manuscripts came in by the tens. Three of the manuscripts that I requested were also requested by the editor and sent back to me in their complete form, which is infinitely exciting for me.  I just finished proofreading a manuscript that we recently acquired.
       I was given another project for the Milkweed website. I have to create a Q & A on our poetry in translation to go with "Blood of the Sun,"a new book we are publishing by Brazilian writer Salgado Maranhão, translated from Portuguese, so that should be an interesting change of pace. It will also be a good opportunity for me to familiarize myself with literature in translation, which is certainly beneficial to my interest in becoming a translator.

Between Rivers

This is my first creative posting in a couple of weeks. This poem is similar to "Vale la Pena." The assignment was to write an autobiographical poem in my creative nonfiction class (about two years ago), similar to a poem we read in class. I forget exactly which poem it was, but I believe it was by a Native American poet and that she used natural elements to demarcate different points in her life. I tried to do this a bit with rivers.


Between Rivers

“Why did you have me across the river, mami? I want to say I was born and raised in Brooklyn.”
“Just say you’re from New York City, mija”
I didn’t know then that the hospitals were better
In Manhattan

We lived on the brick side of the building
I grew encased by ivy and mami’s freckled arms
Sleeping in the same pink carpeted room
Daddy would visit
I’d run up the block to greet him
As if the moment was too slow
All night they’d steal furtive glances
He gave me a wooden dollhouse so I would always love him

At five my best friend called from her house across the street
We dreamt of Krishna’s skin
In saris that dragged below our feet
Her mother fed me curry and chai
Her Daddy would visit sometimes
He gave her a fake yellow jeep
So she would always love him

“Is this what you wore when you married daddy?”
“Daddy and I were never married, I was someone else’s wife
before we met”
I didn’t know that my mother had a life before me yet

At six I wrote my first poem
And when I showed it to the teacher she hugged me
And my pen never stopped

At 8 daddy wasn’t allowed to come over anymore
But neither of them understood that when they held
My hands and swung me in between them
I flew

At 12 mami was sick
They lopped off one of her breasts
The one’s that had been like pillows, like cradles
She vomited her love into the toilet bowl
Leaving locks of hair stranded on the seat
Daddy didn’t come to take care of me
And I wrote because I was afraid
That I had forgotten what her arms felt like

“Mami, you had a stepdaughter?”
“ I had two, corazon.”
I had always thought I was her only girl

Last week I wrote a story
About a woman
Her hair flowing like algae
Her hips undulating currents
Her torso meandering, flowing through the city
But I didn’t read it to anyone

At thirteen Daddy introduced me to her
There had been others that would stroke his hair quietly
But this one stuck around for longer
She moved in with him
When I told mami she hugged me with wet eyes

“Why did you decide to have me?”
“Mija, I had had three abortions and by 41 I needed some company”
 I had never understood that kind of loneliness

At 18 I found myself in an icy city
Taking refuge in poetry and cinderblock
And stranger’s love
Running to the Mississippi
just so I could cross another river

Launch Meeting and Halloween

        Last Tuesday all of the interns got to sit in on Milkweed's first book launch meeting. I thought it would be boring and logistical, focusing on dates and figures, but it was actually really fascinating. The meeting began by discussing a book of poetry in translation by a well-renowned Afro-Brazilian author. I have noticed the lack of authors of color represented on Milkweed's shelves and I think this would be a good addition, not just  for that reason. The poet Salgado Maranhão has published around nine collections of poetry in his home country, but he has never been published in the United States. This is a great opportunity for Milkweed to introduce a new and talented voice into the American poetry scene.
       Among topics discussed were the book cover, making a branded series of Milkweed poetry books and translating from Portuguese. All the talk of translation made me realize that I would be suited for that kind of job. I am a creative writing major and a Hispanic studies minor. I am fluent in Spanish. It would be amazing to be able to translate literary works into Spanish. I'm always translating songs just for fun. I have a facility with language and tend to learn them easily. I took only a year of French and I am pretty functional in the language. I would love to better learn French and Portuguese so that I could translate in those languages as well. I know that I am often disappointed by Spanish translations. They often sacrifice literary integrity for clarity.
        Being in the meeting not only made me want to pursue a career in translation but in publishing. Up until now, although I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience at Milkweed, I have assumed that I should become a creative writing professor if I want my own writing to be a priority. But the launch meeting was so engaging that it made me realize that  I would be happy in the publishing world. I would prefer to  work at a small press like Milkweed because they focus on the quality of the writing as opposed to profit. Large publishing houses print what they think they can sell and Milkweed prints what they believe is relevant, interesting and -above all- well-written. Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the second half because I had a class, but I hope I get to sit in on another one!
        Yesterday was the senior editor's birthday. Someone brought in coffee and breakfast treats and we all sat around and shared our Halloween weekend shenanigans. The senior editor is only forty five years old. I was impressed that he had secured such a prominent position by a relatively young age. Then again my supervisor is only three years my senior and she is three years younger than our oldest intern. There's definitely a feeling of comraderie among the staff.
        The other interns and I agreed to wear orange today, but I only have a necklace with a few orange beads and the other intern resorted to purple. At least we are trying to be festive. Last night I had the inspired idea of having a literary themed costume party where everyone is required to be their favorite author, a character from a book or a representation of a book. I think it would be amazing! I hope I'll know enough people next year to actually pull it off. Oh how I love Halloween.

Literary Gratification

        I recently finished all of my forwarded submissions! It was so gratifying to watch the thirty or so that I had in my inbox gradually dwindle. One of the editors took interest in two manuscripts that I put through, also a very gratifying feeling. I have to read them in their entirety and write a slightly more extensive reader's report on them. It's liberating to not read submission after submission, many with absurd plots and heinously bad grammar. It baffles me as to why anyone submitting a manuscript wouldn't edit their piece repeatedly. If they want us to care, they should care too. When I read a manuscript with abundant, careless errors, I almost immediately reject it.
        I'm also still proofreading a manuscript, which is proving to be a long and tedious process. I enjoy finding errors, writing the changes in red and then putting a post-it on the page. The text itself is not something I would read on my own. It's a book of essays about the nature of poetry. There are a plethora of references to Greek Mythology and to Walden- one of my least favorite books in history. Thoreau can go on for pages about the nature of an apple and I find this insufferably boring.
        Luckily I'm reading an interesting book recently published by Milkweed. I'm reading The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa. I've only about forty pages in but so far much has happened. The protagonist's family has all died from smallpox except for him and after his family is gone, he manages to rescue a little girl who reminds him of his late daughter. I recently realized that my  entire life centers around reading fiction. I read fiction eight hours in a row for my internship, I read fiction for my two academic classes and I read fiction for my own personal enrichment. Basically I have the perfect life. For a writer, anyway.

Seedlip and Sweet Apple by Arra Lynn Ross

      Lynn Ross is a Minnesota native who grew up on a communal farm. She is a Macalester College alumnus, which I found out after beginning her first book of poetry; Seedlip and Sweet Apple. Her collection has a very specific focus. All of the poems concern Mother Ann Lee one of the most preeminent leaders of the Shaker  movement. This would have been helpful to know going into the text. She doesn't reveal this outright. I suggest doing some research before delving in. At first I wondered why there was so much religious imagery. Although most of it was rather beautiful, "When night is folded tight like a prayer," it irked me. It seemed as if Lynn Ross was trying to beat the reader over the head with a bible. But when I discovered the origin of the subject matter, this made much more sense.
       All of the poems are set in Manchester, England in the eighteenth century. Most are concerning religion. But some of them tie in the domestic. The last poem in the collection, "Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock", is essentially a long list of different foods. Some poems only have the murmurings of religion while others directly quote the bible. Although all of them are tied together, each could easily stand on its own.
        I liked this collection, although, with some reservation. One has to be accustomed to more archaic language and have a sense of Shaker history to fully appreciate it. As a writer I found many of the lines very inspiring, "our hands holding  you up like wings." However if you are not interested in religion, at least conceptually then this is not the collection for you.

The Book Lover's Ball

     This Saturday I donned a velvet, caramel-colored dress and headed to work. The big day had finally arrived. The silent auction room was set-up with items and descriptions, there was everything from Milkweed galleys, to a private dinner for six cooked by a local chef. Christmas lights were wrapped around the beautiful Open Book staircase. The cafe was cleared of all tables and chairs. Paper butterflies were hung from the ceiling. All of the interns came early to set up.

     In typical Midwestern fashion our first guests arrived thirty minutes before the event actually started. As a native New Yorker, this kind of behavior baffles me. I was on coat check duty. It was an older crowd, generally speaking. No kids allowed. My fellow interns and I watched longingly as fancy hors d'oeuvres were taken upstairs. The other interns were in charge of registering people's silent auction devices. Milkweed hired a company called "Bidpal" to be in charge of their auction. Participants essentially bid on ipod touches and could search the items this way as well. Two Nook ebooks were also being raffled off. 

      The event was catered by D'amico & Sons and the food was spectacular. After standing for eight hours I really wanted a glass of red wine, but the open bar was off limits to us volunteers. I was disappointed to miss author David Gessner's speech, but excited to see the unveiling of the new website. It was very sleek and stylish. Everyone left with handmade Milkweed broadsides (even the volunteers). Overall I'd say it was a success. Although I overheard one of the event planners say that it didn't bring in quite as much funding as they had hoped for. 

        In office news I finally got my first copyediting and proofreading project! It's going to be a bit laborious, I have to proofread for grammar, formatting and pagination. I have two weeks to finish. Let's hope it's everything I've dreamt it would be!

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

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Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

             Larry Watson was born the year before that in the the title of his book, in Ruby, North Dakota. He received his Bachelor's and Master's degree from the University of North Dakota and his PHD from the University of Utah. Watson has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Watson has published eight books, three of which were with Milkweed Editions. Montana 1984 was published in 1993 and was a fast success. The novel helped Milkweed establish itself as a premier press.
            The setting of Montana 1948 is self-explanatory. However the plot is not so obvious. The novel is kind of a historical, mystery, drama set in the iconic western landscape. The narrative is in the perspective of David a young boy without any siblings. His uncle Frank is beloved by all townsfolk as the handsome, veteran doctor. David's family calls him when their maid is sick. From her they hear that the seemingly perfect Frank, has molested numerous Native American women during doctor's visits. Soon after revealing this, she dies. David's father has no choice but to arrest his brother, not only for sexual harassment, but possibly for murder.
            Watson is deft at exploring this family's dynamic under a crisis. The reader learns much about David's parents and David himself from how he perceives them. Montana 1948 poses an essential question; is one's family above the law? This is a question that David's father , the town sheriff , must grapple with. He is the true hero of the story. A man who against his father's wishes arrests his own brother because he knows that it's the right thing to do. The novel also explores racism against the Native American community, something very foreign to me because there are few reservations on the east coast (where I'm from). But in the prairie states and especially in decades past Native American culture has been  more pervasive. I also know very little about Montana, but the text beautifully describes the grassy plains and small town nuances of the state. It was a fast and engaging read. I highly recommend it

Zombies, Fact Checking and Balls. Oh my!

                I missed Friday's post but expect a piece of creative writing this Friday. Just as a bit of Twin Cities news The Zombie Pub Crawl was last weekend. It's exactly what you think it is, people dress up as zombies and drunkenly stumble from bar to bar looking for fresh brains to eat. Most participants don't dress up as your typical undead corpse, but assume a new identity. In my group we had a zombie beauty queen, a zombie hipster and a zombie cowgirl complete with fake intestines. I didn't get the memo. I wore a black and white striped dress and cagey shoes, so I pretended to be an inmate zombie last minute. We spent a few hours on our make up and we looked pretty frightening, if I do say so myself. The highlights of the evening were brain shots (tequila, orange juice and grenadine) and dancing in a dive bar. It is a Twin Cities tradition I plan to partake in for years to come.
             Another event that I will be participating in is The Book Lover's Ball this Saturday and most of the interns are helping to prepare for it. One is creating labels for the auction and we're all processing mailed in donations.This morning was a close call for me. I recovered a lost check that I processed. It was a hefty sum and it fell behind the mailbox slots. I was relieved to find it. All funds raised at the BLB are going to Milkweed. From the sense I get, a small press like us can use all the support it can get.
              I finally got a special project! I had to fact check part of a manuscript that is set for publication this winter. It just entailed a lot of googling  and dictionary searches, but it was a nice break from reading manuscripts all day. I assume that as The BLB draws closer we will be intensifying our efforts. I will let you know how the affair transpires.

To Edit, or not to Edit, that is the Question

            I am currently taking a Shakespeare class at Macalester. Shakespeare has always been very challenging for me. I really enjoy seeing his plays performed, but reading them can be quite a chore. Yesterday my class went to see The Jungle Theater's production of "Hamlet" in the trendy UptowN neighborhood of Minneapolis. The performance was set in modern times, it featured photo slideshows, iphones and ipads. I personally enjoy when Shakespearean actors dress in Elizabethan garb, I find it more transporting. Overall it was a successful production. All my classmates thought that the man who played Hamlet was an excellent actor, but I couldn't really see it.   
           The play was three and a half hours long. Both I and the young man that I was sitting next to dozed off involuntarily multiple times. Unfortunately he banged his head against the wall when he was startled awake. Thankfully there were two intermissions.
There is nothing new at Milkweed. I unknowingly spoiled my supervisor's birthday surprise on Friday, which I still feel very guilty about. Our poetry reader came in with a cake and pressed her index finger to lips. Then later I asked my supervisor who the cake was for.
"Probably me cause today is my birthday,"she replied.
This type of thing always happens to me. It was a delicious carrot cake. My mom had one for her wedding (she was a hippie).
I and all of the interns have been doing more grunt work lately to prepare for various Milkweed events. I've been mailing packages, folding pamphlets and answering phones. I'm still reading manuscripts but haven't come across anything lately that has really struck me. I'm still waiting on any editing jobs.

Resemblance

This is a personal essay that I had to write for my freshman class. It's about my deceased grandfather. If you've read my other blog you might notice some overlapping themes or even descriptions.

Resemblance

My mother always told me that I came out like a ballerina, gracefully, yet with purpose. No one else could verify this information except for the doctor who birthed me, so I was always skeptical. She was alone when I danced into this world.  My father was in Florida, probably reporting. By then he had already moved out. My grandfather, the other man in her life, had died four months before. My mother always reminded me that I was his legacy, ending each rollicking story with,

“Ai, Marisita he would have loved you so much”.

            We visited her family in Puerto Rico twice a year since I was three months old. I was the only grandchild who had never met him, the only grandchild with a gringo father, the only one who was born out of wedlock, my cousins wouldn’t let me forget everything that separated us. My mother would stroke my hair as I cried and tell me another story about abuelito. That he was in my blood and it didn’t matter what they said. 

            Next to them in my family portrait, I looked frail and translucent. I envied the rich copper color of their skin. I longed to be darker, to look like them so that perhaps they would accept me. Yet at the same time, in San Juan, I always received extra attention from store clerks and fruit sellers because of my lightness.

            “ Que preciosa” they would say to my mother “ que cosa blancita, linda”, such a pretty little white thing.

            The older generation of my family seemed to prize my skin as well.

            “Don’t stay out in the sun” my great aunts would warn every time I walked outside “you don’t want to get too dark”.

            They would show me off to friends and acquaintances, as if I was some kind of trophy.            I was thrust in the middle of the island’s racial double standards every time I would visit. One could imagine that this would be confusing for a child. So when I was there I retreated into my own world. I found solace in the fact that my grandfather couldn’t judge me, he couldn’t exclude or idolize me because of my coloring.  When I went to my grandmother’s house I would creep into his study, the leather-bound books and Napoleonic busts sheathed in a layer of dust. I would sit in his imposing leather chair and soak in the must of the room.

             I found him everywhere, in the kitchen behind my grandmother’s pans and cazuela’s, in the ashes of the backyard barbeque. I would spin and twirl for him, I was sure he was proud of my pirouettes.  I couldn’t climb the stairs without stopping to look at his black and white portrait. I would stand on my toes, our eyes level, searching for bits of myself in the frame.

            The first time I saw a picture of him in color, I thought we looked nothing alike. His hair was black and curly in his youth. It glistened with the kind of grease men used to wear. His eyebrows were thick and masculine. I realized that all this time my mother had been lying. I was nothing like him. When I confronted her with his photo she brought me to her bosom like she always did.

            “Marisita, how many times do I have to tell you, it doesn’t matter whether you look like him, or me, or anyone else, he is inside of you, just like this place.”

            As I grew older I would practice Spanish with her at home in New York. My mother would gently correct me when I used the wrong tense or muddled a word. I danced twice a week. My posture growing straighter, each step becoming more deliberate and refined. My mother fed me rice and beans, pastelon and picadillo. I always asked for them when I felt sick or lonely.  Every time I returned to Puerto Rico I saw myself more and more in the roughness of the sand, the fluidity of the music. I waited for the coquis to sing me to sleep and the mourning doves to wake me. Slowly I started speaking Spanish with my cousins. At first I just quietly retorted their insults and teasing. They were surprised, thrown off guard not only by the fact that I was standing up for myself but that I understood what they were saying.

             In the second family portrait, thirteen years later, although my skin was just as pale as it had always been, I noticed that my aunt and I had the same lips, that my cousin and I both had round cheeks, that we all had similar dark arching brows. When my mother saw the photo she gasped

“Marisita, your smile here looks just like your grandfather’s,”

This time I believed her. 

Do Judge a Book by it's Cover

       There isn't much news to report here at Milkweed. I managed to mess up one of my only projects. Which was just folding pamphlets. But at least it wasn't an editing job! There seems to be a flu of sorts spreading through the office so everyone is putting up their own set of defenses.
       Larry Watson, the author of the book that I'm currently reading came to Milkweed to sign his new book American Boy. It has a really beautiful cover of an old car from the forties with a sepia toned, vintage look. Unfortunately I'm the kind of person who judges a book by it's cover- and I mean that literally not figuratively. I think it's a tendency left over from childhood, being drawn to the most colorful eye-catching books. This technique has served me surprisingly well. I figure if you read a book you're going to have to look at it all the time so, you might as well like what you see.
       You can really tell a lot about the contents of a book based on it's appearance. For example, if the author's name on the cover is larger than the title, you know that it's probably not a piece of distinguished literature. Whether it has an illustration or a photograph can sometimes demonstrate whether or not it's historical. The best covers are subtle. Like one edition of Nabokov's Lolita that I saw. It shows just a girl's gangly legs from the knee down, wearing knee highs and saddle shoes. This evoked innocence, youth and subdued sexuality all at the same time. A bad cover is one that's either too explicit or too vague. You wouldn't want a depiction of a scene from a book because it's not a movie poster at the same time you don't want a single piece of bread. It has to be telling, but not give too much away at the same time.
        It's really a shame when a cover misrepresents the quality of it's text. It should be a vehicle for the writing, something to help the story leap off of the page. The cover is just as important, if not more important than the first line of the text itself. It's the face one's book shows to the world. It's the first thing the reader sees, and for me it's absolutely crucial.

Gradation

This started as a free write during my freshman class. I was inspired by looking down at my burgundy nail polish. I've always loved the names that nail polish and crayon companies give to colors. Once my friend and I took a box of sixty four crayons and renamed them based on the first thing we thought when we saw them. I created a character who shared this interest. 

Gradation

Her nails looked black against notebook paper. But she knew they were a very dark red. Darker than blood. She relished looking at the names of the colors on the bottoms of nail polish bottles. She always searched for one that matched her present mood. The one she chose was named simply “wine”. It seemed to embody the heaviness she felt. She would have renamed it with countless other more fitting words to describe such layers of color.

Naming hues had always been her favorite pastime. In elementary school while her teacher blathered on at the front of the room, she would take out her box of sixty four crayons, organize them by shade and proceed to write down her own name for each one. She struggled to remember the conventional names that she learned in kindergarten. To her brown had always been “daddy’s beer bottle”. And purple in her mind would always be “Bruised”. But certain colors changed as she grew older, yellow was “dandelions” until rather abruptly it turned into “jaundice”. “Cloudy day” just as suddenly became “tombstone”.

            She had to leave extra time to arrive at any destination because she would always encounter a new color in her surroundings that she had to write down. She carried a small notebook filled with seemingly incoherent lists.  “Lemongrass, empty bed, pewter kettle, morning bus ride, I can still picture your face, trampled path”. She had more color journals than books on the shelves of her small apartment. She was only renting, so she was forbidden to paint the walls. But she had devised a way to bring brightness into her home. She took swaths of fabric, cutouts from magazines, paint swatches and pasted them on, till the blankness was completely masked by a collage of different tints.

            She worked as an office assistant in a sterile room. Her boss always wore a scratchy charcoal colored tie; his face was drained and pale. He was the only person she interacted with there, at most they exchanged incomplete sentences and single purposeful words. Her job was to write down messages, make copies and file endless stacks of paper. But she found solace in the fact that, while working, she had discovered hundreds of different shades of white.

Reading, Reading, Reading

            At my internship. I have been immersed in manuscripts for the past two weeks. I've developed a more efficient way of reading them. I basically give them less leeway and decide faster whether to request more or just flat out reject them. Lately  I've been reading a lot of rejections. I realized that I need to be more selective. I've read some prose and a little bit of poetry. I got to check the translation on some Spanish poems which is really fun and coincidentally combines my major and minor (Hispanic Studies).I also started reading one of Milkweed's bestselling novels Montana 1948 by Larry Watson, which is proving to be a rather enjoyable experience.
            I've been taking advantage of the cafe downstairs and have discovered that they have delicious sandwiches. I've also been exploring the area around Milkweed. There's a really great semi-fancy restaurant across the street  called "Spill the Wine." They had an excellent black bean and beet burger.
Anyway back to Milkweed, we have a Book Lover's Ball coming up in October, which everyone in the office is anxiously awaiting. It's a chance to dress up, eat and auction. I will be volunteering at the event for a grueling five hours, but I doubt that I will be the only intern there. I've been kind of disappointed to not receive any editing jobs. I love editing (yes I am an English dork). So we'll see what this week brings. The marketing manager, published author Ethan Rutherford, and I have been exchanging novels to read mainly by Macalester Professors (Ethan was one briefly). But I don't know if I have time to add another novel to my list of two books for pleasure and then countless for school. I  just can't get enough apparently. Speaking of which, I'm off to read more manuscripts!

Vale la Pena (It's Worth it)

I wrote this prose poem for my introduction to creative writing course in freshman year. The assignment was to write an autobiographical piece, so I tried to sum up my life in a few words. Enjoy!

P.S. I will be posting a piece of my creative writing every Friday.

Vale la Pena

Holding my hand, passing the hijabs, plum pantsuits, maybe daddy will buy me a baklava, pink carpet , Mami brought home Cinderella but I wanted snow white, dancing to Selena on the couch, waking up with orange kitten wrapped around my head. I found her wedding dress in the closet, the one she didn’t wear when she didn’t marry daddy. Spanish hymns, polished Park Slope pews. Strawberry tarts in summer , I ate all the red off first, then the custard. They told me to draw my family. When everyone was done I still didn’t know who to draw. I read her my first poem, she hugged me in the classroom. “Daddy can’t come over anymore” I didn’t understand. When they held each hand and swung my little body in between them, I was whole.  San Juan coquis in abuelita’s backyard, arroz y habichuelas on the stove. pursed lips touch my cheek, bright lipstick “Ai, que preciosa!” Too shy to speak , but I understood what “gringa” meant. They say that certain things will be explained as you grow older. There was a woman with dark hair at daddy’s house, not my mother. She came to the movies, to eat, to bookstores. Replacing me. Mami had a lump, then she only had one breast. I cried and Daddy didn’t comfort. He’s scared of tears. Parishioners  brought  Tupperware dinners,  her frame arched over the toilet, hair thinning. Pill bottles. We tried to take care of her but couldn’t. Abuelita told them that I spoke Spanish and there was no need to translate. Hobo in the  subway car, holding branches and beer bottles. Morning commutes. “Make sure you call me when you get off of the train”. Whiteboards, intoxicating markers. I didn’t know we were friends until you told me. I watched them snort coke in the classroom, they gave blowjobs in the bathroom. Lips touch, snack aisle romance. You loved me even with braces. Brooklyn bonfires. Friends are one’s comfort. We clutched our stomachs, laughing on wooden floorboards. I fell asleep on her shoulder, eating three bars of chocolate in a row. Mami’s incessant questions. She still wiped my cheek with her own spit.  “Why are you going so far away?” “How could you leave me alone?” As if college was something I was doing to her. I waved to them in front of the dorm. Daddy’s splotched tears.  Maybe he already knew what I had yet to learn.

My First Day at Milkweed

          Milkweed Editions is located in a beautiful converted warehouse in a newly gentrified area of Minneapolis. It shares it's building with  the Loft Literary Center, a comprehensive writing center hosting events and creative workshops, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, a small bookmaker that creates books by hand, two for profit tenants and a lovely coffee gallery. Milkweed's office is very simple. It welcomes it's guests with shelves lined with it's newest books. I was impressed by how professional they looked. They were glossy and pleasantly colorful. The office itself is small, with only about eight full time staff and five interns. Most of my first day was spent in training. 

          We were given a very brief tutorial on how non-profit publishing functions (which I didn't totally understand to be honest). There are many different steps involved. I was surprised by how wasteful large publishing houses could be. One intern told us that a publishing company shipped quite a few copies of the wrong book to her yoga studio and when she notified the publishing house they told her to throw the books out. As an aspiring author and book lover this idea is simply horrific to me. But, none the less it is more cost effective for the company for the books to be destroyed than to be sent back. I think Milkweed shares my sentiment. Each copy of a book is a precious artifact, not only of writing but of our contemporary culture. With the advent of e-books, paper books are losing their value by the minute, but Milkweed seems to continue to appreciate the written word in it's original form, as do I. 

         After training I was given a full length manuscript, which I was absolutely thrilled to read it. Interns and new employees in the publishing world are infamously assigned to read 'slush' or unsolicited manuscripts. I rather enjoyed my slush and thought with some reservation that Milkweed should get behind it. Milkweed publishes texts in a more traditional style. This manuscript was about an incestuous relationship between a mother and son and there were many neologisms (made up words) throughout. The nontraditional subject matter and style might not make it the best fit for Milkweed but I found it quite well written and entertaining. For those of you looking for a similar read, look up Nike by Nicholas Flokos. 

        I also read a poetry book which I thought Milkweed should reject. I am a bit biased being more of a fan of prose but I found the style of poetry to be too uncreative and unoriginal. Overall it was a very stimulating first day and I'm looking forward to going back!