The Bitten Bullet and The Purple Dragon

If I happen to have any regular readers left out there and waiting for something new, don't get too excited; this is just an announcement.  As you know, I've been in law school for the past year and a half and hardly able simultaneously to keep up literary or "grammarly" commentary and my grades.  Obviously, I've sacrificed the blog.

Because I needed a project this winter break, and because I don't have the time or means to continue sending queries and making submissions (if, that is, they're not related to job applications), I bit the bullet and self-published.  As of today, I have made two sales.

Woo!

The book, originally intended for a Mormon audience, is plenty suitable for a "general" readership, though it's lack of horned or polygamous characters may stump the stereotypes.  Instead, it's about a kid preparing to serve his Mormon missionary service.  The church--both the institution and its people--put a tremendous amount of pressure on its youth to serve.  I did.  It was one of the best experiences of my life.  The pressure on Eugene is greater than anything I experienced, however, as his family has been stigmatized by some ugly family history, and he and his sister--the last remaining and cogent of the Cross family--are desperate to bring the name back into good repute.

Mormon missionary service, however, requires a towering degree of "worthiness," which Eugene is hardly able to claim.  He is a kleptomaniac, and despite his self-justifications (including the stealing exclusively of books), is racked with the guilt of it.  He convinces himself that he tells the truth to the religious leaders who interview him and vouch for his readiness, and he makes the trip to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.  Eugene, despite his stealing and despite what he is certain the membership of his local congregation surely will think of him, is a good kid.  He brings himself home and begins the devastatingly painful repentance process, which necessarily includes the returning of the thousands of books and other items that he's stolen over the years to their owners, including his friends and family.

The book is cheap: just $.99 at Barnes and Noble and $2.99 at Amazon, though only available in digital format.  (BN only provides for the Nook platform, from what I understand, while Amazon makes their ebooks available for Apple and other products.)  If you pick it up and read it, I'd love to hear you thoughts!

Sunday Poetry LI -- "An Arboreal Fairtytale," by UGn X

There are few pieces of writing—very few—that I’ve both produced myself and of which I’m particularly proud.  This is one of them, and I expect that no one will ever really get it.  And that’s just fine (and that’s no commentary on your certainly shrewd aptitude for poetry interpretation, but commentary on my own poetics).  There’s an awful lot of truth to the notion that poets (dare I qualify myself as one of them? —maybe “artist” is safer, less specific, right?) write as much for themselves as anyone else, if not entirely for themselves and no one else.  I can’t say that that’s entirely the case here, as this is one of many poems I wrote for a novel I’m featuring over on one of my other blogs (and, you may have already noticed, I’m leaving in place the attributive eponym for the “actual” angst-ridden composer, Eugene Cross (get it??)).  It’s also, like I said, one of my very favorite poems.  It was tremendously fun to write—to piece together, really—and, apart from acknowledging off some of my favorite artists and themes, plays to all the stuff I love best about my poetry—or, at least, about my favorite poems.  Is it successful?  Yeah.  Very.  After all, I wrote it for myself (well, and for Eugene Cross), and I love it!  Of course, that begs the question, then, Why am I bothering to put it here, particularly out of the context of its novel home?  Because I’ve got nothing else I want to share for Sunday Poetry today, and I’ve always wanted this one to be more out there than, well, you know, just being “out there.”

So here it is.  I welcome, as always, you thoughts, whatever they happen to be. 

An Arboreal Fairytale and Moral in Three and a Half Stanzas

On a Caravaggio plateau, under

               black and red skies: desolate and shadowed;

               naked, exposed, the stunted stem, naught but

               an arthritic claw, clutches dark feathers;

vibrant Rackham verdure—slight, sketchy, lush—

               unwittingly hosts the agonized stick:

               cowering ill-confidence, faithless and

               grasping, desperate in its green innocence;

Remedios Varo woods are sharp and

               thick and heavy under a sky swirling

               with physics.  Thin, difficult; stretch! just not

               sufficient in the great grand majestic;

               a Basho workbench

               supports the potted leaf tree:

elegant

for its crooks and folds.

—UGn X