You will NOT want to miss this–4 H H O Presents: 11 Nosy Questions– Featuring Storyteller-Extraordinaire, Alicia Gifford. Go on and read this great interview!

Lisa Glatt’s A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That hit me unexpectedly close to home as I followed the lives of these girls and women–particularly, Rachel Spark and her mother–and was left utterly breathless.

Rachel, a college lecturer, moves back in with her mother, who is dying of breast cancer. And their relationship stands as a symbol for all the other mother/daughter relationships in the book (between Georgia and her mother, between Ella and Georgia, between Rachel and Ella, between Rachel and her friends, between Rachel’s mother and the leeches put on her reconstructed breast, and even, as mentioned tangentially, between Anne Sexton and her daughter). And in the end that is what this book is to me–the story of sacrifice–mother for daughter, daughter for mother.

I couldn’t help but think of my own mother’s struggles with cancer (first with the cancer that took her breast when I was a small child and then with the lung cancer that killed her four years ago) and how the thought of losing her had always been my biggest fear–she was the person I loved the most. It is the same for Rachel who, when she meets her mother’s dying boyfriend for the first time, has this encounter:

“Your mother is the love of my life,” he said to my back.
“Mine too,” I told him.
“She wishes that weren’t so.” His voice was serious.
“It is what it is,” I said, placing the wineglasses on the table.

Everything about this scene hit home for me–the love, the anger, the honesty. And that is where the heart of this book is–in that tenuous relationship that is mother and daughter. The push and the pull. The give and the take. More often than not, Rachel is angry at her mother and that, too, is so real because the anger though on the surface may be about something stupid, underneath is about abandonment–because underneath it all is Rachel’s knowledge that her mother was always ready to leave her:

Before she got sick, my mother was a woman who was always ready to leave me. When she visited my apartment, which was rare, she’d walk the halls with her purse on her arm, itching to go. She’d walk fast, the purse bouncing at her hip, talking and moving at once. It was impossible for her to sit and listen. After illness came, she moved more slowly. She put the purse down.

She’s pissed her mother is dying and leaving her alone. She is angry. She is bereft. But she also has the knowledge that sickness, this illness, is what brought her mother back to her. Allowed them to be mother and child again.

Some people will tell you this book is about single women having sex. I will tell you otherwise. What it is about is love and committment. About being alone and grieving for those who have not yet died. It’s a beautiful and risk-taking book. I hope you will read it. Even though I’m heartbroken over it, I’m ever so glad I did.

LOVE NOTE TO NEW ORLEANS, By Andrei Codrescu:

So here we are, sinking into the water around us, drowning in our own waste, poverty, incompetence, and the greed of those who came before us. This is the time for straight reporting, of heartbreaking stories, of heroic rescues and superhuman efforts by good-hearted individuals and the weary but always-ready charities. It’s not a time for anger, but I can’t help wondering: what is going to survive of our culture? We already know who’s going to pay for all this: the poor. They always do. The whole country’s garbage flows down the Mississippi to them. Until now, they turned all that waste into song, they took the sins of America unto themselves. But this blues now is just too big.

Do not tell me it is not time for blame. I’m so sick of politicians on the news saying that they are not blaming. It is fucking well time for blame. It is TIME. It is beyond time.

Tragedy, disaster, it will not wait.

If we do not start to say who fucked up and why and who did not do what he was supposed to do, now is the time. Now. If you don’t believe me, then read this fine rant by Ms. Lori to give you some ammunition about why. Or just watch some of the horrific images on CNN (because they are not cleaning up, they are not bowing down, they are not fucking cowering)–like the ones I just saw of mutilated corpses in the convention center in New Orleans.

Those people needed help and the United States Federal government did not help them. It is time for blame and those of you (the higher ups at FEMA, the Bush family) who deserve blame, know that YOU have done wrong. They’ve fucked up. Karl Rove. Dick Cheney (hey, Dick, where’ve you been lately? Oh, that’s right buying a two+ million dollar Haliburton mansion while people were dying in NOLA).

You are to blame. We blame you. We do blame you. And if we don’t, collectively blame you. I blame you.

I officially blame you. And I hope you feel shame, but I suspect that you don’t give a shit because you don’t really care about anyone outside of your priveleged life–that is abundantly clear.

One of three siblings, all girls, my friend Holly took over the family dairy farm. She had always worked on the farm, side-by-side with her dad and so when the time came, she did what she had to do. She ran the farm by herself for many years before she eventually sold it.

You might think, “So what?” Well, farming, along with fishing, is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. It is also physically demanding and emotionally draining (as family farms are no longer cherished in favor of the corporate farm). In addition, farming, like fishing, is one of the industries which made the United States what it is. It is a noble profession. It’s also lonely and difficult to do alone.

I thought of Holly the whole time I read Linda Greenlaw’s memoir The Lobster Chronicles, and not just because Linda as a one time swordfish boat captain and then lobster fisherman also made her way successfully through a male-dominated, dangerous job, but because the two of them–Holly and Linda–share some similar characteristics: independence, sense of humor, and an ability to tell a wicked good story.

I loved reading The Lobster Chronicles, which depict a lobstering season on Isle au Haut, Maine, where Greenlaw and her family have lived for generations. This book held my interest from start to finish and with her wry sense of humor and self-deprecation, Linda Greenlaw totally won me over. She’s a damn good storyteller and also a fine writer.

On a side note: as I was finishing this book yesterday, Allen showed me a piece in The Boston Globe about the new cookbook Greenlaw and her mother have our, Recipes from a Very Small Island.

REMINDER: September 7th–Word by Word, Conversations with Writers features NEA Chairman and Sonoma County Poet, Dana Gioia, and Lynn Freed (who will be at the Sonoma County Book Festival). That’s 7 pm (pacific). To listen in streaming, simply visit www.krcb.org and click listen or wait a week for the show to be archived at: http://www.pcmg.tv/krcb/wbw/wbw.htm

Swivel #3 featuring Meghan Daum, Melissa Bank, Lisa Glatt, Lauren Weedman, and many others (including me!!! Can’t believe I’m in a journal with this lineup! How fucking cool is that?!?!?!) is now available for purchase.

Go, Hillary, go!! Clinton Unveils Legislation to Restore FEMA to Independent, Cabinet-Level Status & Launch Katrina Commission to Investigate Hurricane Recovery Efforts :

“It’s difficult to have visited with those whose lives have been shattered by Hurricane Katrina and feel that they were well served. At every turn, I encountered our fellow citizens with desperate questions and few answers. The bureaucracy created by moving FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security is clearly not working. That’s why I am introducing legislation to make FEMA an independent agency again so that our nation is truly prepared to respond when our citizens need our help,” said Senator Clinton.

Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived is an absolutely kick-ass beautiful collection of stories by Lily Tuck.

You read these stories set all over the world and even though you may not have visited the locales, you feel as though you have been there because the sense of alienation and exasperation the characters feel is so genuine, so real. They are all so good that it is hard for me to pick out a favorite. If pressed, though, I would have to say the title story, “Limbo,” sticks with me–that and its narrator who reflects back on her life in Peru as a child:

What I remember about Peru is: flying in a plane over the Andes and fainting; stealing a statue of the baby Jesus; and threatening to eat a dog turd.

What everyone else remembers about Peru is why we went there in the first place.

Here we have the crux of this collection: memory and how based on our circumstance we find the importance of the situation. And what we are left with are many places we have lived, but none that we call home.

New lit journal reviews are up at newpages, including excellent reviews of Night Train and The Santa Monica Review.

My pal Eve has a radio piece live at PRX: Back to School (and after you listen, be sure to leave her a review!).

A couple of months ago, Dave Clapper asked me if I would act as Guest Editor at Smokelong Quarterly for the March 2006 issue. Thrilled, I said, “YES!” without hesitation.

Well, it seems that things have speeded up a bit and so I am guest editor as of now for the December 2005 issue. What that means is that we’re reading right now for that issue and I hope you will consider submitting some of your favorite pieces of flash fiction (1,000 words or less) so that I can have the pleasure of reading them. Also, you should know that all submissions are read blind.

If you’re not sure what types of writing the editors of Smokelong enjoy, take a read through their current issue.