Sneak Peek at St. Louis Anthology

"Anthology" comes from Greek roots meaning "gathering of flowers." And here, just a bit too late to give to your mom for Mother's Day, is a glimpse of the coming An Anthology of St. Louis Verse from Walrus Publishing of St. Louis, gathering poems from 56 area poets. It's an advance copy so it's not finalized; the cover may be different, the interior tweaked, but what matters is that editor Matt Freeman, in a heroic effort, made sure it contains poetry of consistently good quality: two or three poems from most of the poets. You will find some familiar names (Castro, Finkel, Newman, Van Doren, Revard), and some very young and new. Freeman says, "There's only one bad poem" in it, so I've been trying to find it. No word yet on publication date or price. How did I get a hold of this? We have ways.

Chuckin' Books

Time to weed the bookshelves, always difficult because of course the book you toss today you will need tomorrow, but I'm parting with:

Griffith, Bill. From A to Zippy. Compedium of Zippy the Pinhead comix. Loved Zippy in the freaky '80s but I've read all the strips 50x now. The original Zip the Pinhead was a 19th-century Barnum sideshow freak, an African-American, so celebrated that he was photographed by Matthew Brady.

Jonas, M. Rose. Can I Lie on My Resume?: Strategies that Win the Career Game. In this economy, all bets are off. There are no strategies. It doesn't matter if you look hard or not. There is either job or no-job. By the way, welcome to Wal-Mart.

Sabin-Wilson, Lisa. WordPress for Dummies. Obviously I don't use WordPress; I use Blogger.
What possessed me to imagine I might have time to read 350 pages on how to migrate?

Lorelei, Mistress. The Mistress Manual: The Good Girl's Guide to Female Dominance. I will let you guess whether this one was a gift.

Murdoch, Tom. Streamkeeper's Field Guide: Watershed Inventory and Stream Monitoring Methods. I got this when I joined the volunteer Missouri Stream Teams to monitor the purity of Missouri streams, and became Team #1340, along with two friends who are now dead. Later I belonged to ad hoc Team #2701, Brush Creek Sewer District. Those days are gone.

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well, 5th edition. Celebrated text I found unreadable in every edition, but I managed to write well anyway.

Miller, Sue, ed. Best American Short Stories 2002. Not a book but a monument to who was who in 2002.

Grant, Beata. Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns. An example of faultless scholarship and faithful translation. But I now believe self-abnegation is morally wrong.

Campbell, Susan. The Couple's Journey: Intimacy as a Path to Wholeness. The kind of book that would help your husband so much if only you could persuade him to read it.

Talking With: Novelist Claire Applewhite

Like the photo? Read on. Claire Applewhite's second novel, just out, is Crazy for You, about obsessive love among St. Louis's wealthy elites; the first was murder mystery The Wrong Side of Memphis (2009), both published by L&L Dreamspell. She is also the new President of the Missouri Writers Guild, potentially a very powerful organization. She wrote novels for a decade before getting published, and has an MBA.

Your novels are fun to read. And they have a satirical edge. Did you have fun writing them? Whom do you picture as your readership? I hope that my novels take my readers to another world, and that there is a message waiting for them there. The challenge is to deliver the message couched in fun. I don't believe a writer's job is to judge, lecture or preach. I think it is to suggest, question and/or present--and allow the reader to form a conclusion based on individual experience and imagination. I hope that the "fun" in my novels encourages readers to read them. As far as my readership, anyone who enjoys a story with quirky characters, multiple dilemmas, and a Midwestern and/or Southern setting.

I know some people very much like Bunny, the spoiled St. Louis heiress in Crazy For You, and her parents and friends. Do you? I think everyone knows a "Bunny," don't you? For this reason, a lot of physical description almost wasn't necessary--again, the suggestion of her appearance and mannerisms are left to the readers to form their own conclusions based on individual experience. The challenge as a writer was to expose the part of the characters that was not stereotypical.

How were sales of your first book? Sales of The Wrong Side of Memphis were very competitive for a first book from a small press. However, I actively and aggressively promoted it, assisted by a publicist. I lectured at luncheons and book clubs, made multiple public appearances, scheduled many book signings and distributed complimentary copies. I asked for blurbs from other authors and journalists, and obtained reviews from book reviewers and Kirkus Reviews. Promotion was as integral as writing in launching the book.

You once said you got up at 5 a.m. to write. Do you still do that? Actually, I have become a night owl. I find that the writing is best between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. The world is quiet, and the characters' voices are clear.

What is your ultimate career goal? To become the best writer that I can be. I would like to pick up one of my own books someday and say to myself, "I couldn't have done any better," or, "Hey, I'm impressed."

Where'd you get those extra-foxy photos of yourself in evening wear? And why did you have them taken? Ah, the photos! I got those photos taken in response to my "readership" regarding the professional photos I had been using. To quote one younger reader, "You look like Meryl Streep in the Manchurian Candidate," or another well-meaning friend, "You look like a banker." I concluded that I did not look like a writer. I asked people in journalism for the name of a good photographer. We did a ten-hour photo shoot, with six outfits, and, well, these were the best ones.

As the new president of the Missouri Writers Guild, what is your vision for its future? I am excited to promote literary talent in Missouri--and there is a wealth of it. My vision is to encourage new writers with the accomplishments of those Missourians who have achieved success.

Loosely Identified Poetry Night, May 17

The women's poetry workshop "Loosely Identified" (LI), active now for more than 25 years, consists of about 40 poets, about 25 of them active members of the group, and at every monthly workshop, attendance totals about 15. Every two years, some of us read our best poetry in the River Styx at Duff's series. This year is remarkable for the quality of its poets, of course, but also for the publicity poster custom-designed by LI member gaye gambell-peterson. Trust me, each figure resembles the actual person.

I joined LI in '07, and we meet monthly. I value this workshop group in particular because of its warmth and humor, and the feedback my poems get from 15 very different minds. Because we're Loosely Identified, the group doesn't fall apart if anyone takes an extended leave to care for a family member, travel abroad, and so on. New members join, and if former "Looselies" come to town, they visit. The group published an anthology, Breathing Out (Cherry Pie Press) in 2002.

Any women poets who would like to join or visit a meeting, please ask me; you will need a member to introduce you. Or talk to one of us May 17 at Duff's!

Mom Gets My Book

Mom phoned from Arizona to tell me through her tears -- she lost a brother, 88, last week and a sister-in-law, 81, on Monday -- that she received my book in the mail, thought it was nice, and although it was not written for people like herself, she was reading it. How glad she was, too, I had sent her something she didn't already have.

This is the first book I have ever sent her. Mom is not a reader or a net surfer; it is unlikely that she knows previous books exist. Close relatives who received the earlier books responded, shall we say, frostily -- a response richly deserved because I sincerely don't care whether they like what I write. I don't write for family. This time, instead of bothering them with a new book, I sent them my new author photograph. Sounds awful, but we manage to get along only through denial and ignorance of what we each care about; there is so much more, like blood, that unites us.

Doris Lessing was once asked if her mother was not mortified by her novels, which include sex scenes and whatnot. Lessing replied, "Mothers die much less readily than they would have you think."

But why risk it?

Are You a Writer, or an Author? Part III

Webster's etymologies, as far back as they can be traced:

author: "to increase, produce"

writer: "to scratch; to tear"

I think writers do both. The difference seems to be that writing is composing, and authorial actions are quantifiable or measurable. As in:

Have you written the next chapter of your novel?
Have you authored your 1500 words today?

"Author" and books are related because published books can be counted. Most people have no other way to take the measure of a writer.

OK -- this question's settled. Now: Have you written the next chapter of your novel? Have you authored your 1500 words today?

Are You a Writer, or an Author? Part II

Literary theorist Roland Barthes said of the difference between an author and a writer, "The former performs a function; the latter an activity."

What is an author's "function"? To go on lecture tours, like Mark Twain? To be on Today? To appear at signings and banquets? To inspire writers who aren't at the touring/Today Show level yet? Twain , the most famous touring author, wrote (1896):

I got horribly tired of the platform toward the last -- tired of the slavery of it; tired of having to rest-up for it; diet myself for it; take everlasting care of my body and my mind for it; deny myself in a thousand ways in its interest.

Seems that without actively writing, an author is decorative -- they do call it "an appearance" -- or at best a pawn in his own money-making game.

And doesn't a writer have a function as well as an activity? Like, to stir people's minds? To entertain them? To educate? To stand for something?

Those literary theorists...I'm sure Barthes explains his statement well and in depth, but I read more than enough theory in the 1980s, before we all found out that literary theory ("literature means nothing") was the brainchild of a former Nazi collaborationist, Paul de Man, who in the rest of his lifetime neglected to mention that rather telling fact.

Are You a Writer, or an Author? Part I

Common sense says an author is a writer who's published a book. But according to the national Author's Guild (AG), "authors" are those who've published a book "by an established American publisher" who gave them an advance.

I know someone who joined AG because it excluded people like myself whose books were not "legitimate" but still somehow a threat. Mine were published by my choice and with my money -- that is, with courage and confidence. But with my fourth book I qualify for AG now, and if I needed to feel better about myself I could cough up $90 dues and join.

But I feel fine, and won't join a club whose point, apparently, is to exclude the riffraff: the vast majority of American writers. The AG makes further fine distinctions: Writers having a contract with an established American publisher but no book yet may apply for Associate-level Authors Guild membership. Freelancers qualify if they've published three works in periodicals commonly found at newsstands, receiving in return "significant" payment.

In my 35 years of writing, I have never received a "significant" payment. (I once won a "significant" prize, but it wasn't a publisher who gave it.) My guess is that you, like most writers, haven't received "significant" payment either. It's always been peanuts.

How about we forget all this hierarchy business -- it's too D.A.R. for me -- and respect and help each other, especially to get paid what we are worth.