None of my own, poem by Patrick T. Reardon (WHEN I MOVED Poetry and Prose Series)

None of my own
by Patrick T. Reardon

I packed books in boxes
and notes in boxes
and pens and rulers
and pads of paper
and photos in frames
and maps and small things
without any category
that reminded me of a
person I’d met or a
story I’d written or a
place I’d been on the
job.

I said good-
bye, hugged and
was hugged,
saw tears in
other eyes but
shed none of my own,
and walked out the door,
laid off.

PHOTO: The author at the Chicago Tribune in 1987.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The challenge here was to compress into a few words a moment in my life that was filled with myriad strong emotions. My aim was to use short lines of discrete facts, piled one on top of the other, to give a sense of how everything that had gone before and everything that was to come had been telescoped into the action of packing and leaving. My hope is that the reader feels this compression and intensity before getting to the final two words that explain it all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick T. Reardon, who has written five books and published essays and poetry widely, worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune until April 2009, when he was laid off.

The K-Mart in West Orange, poem by David Tucker

THE K-MART IN WEST ORANGE
by David Tucker

I walked into the K-mart in West Orange, New Jersey
to waste some time, avoiding my work at the paper,
letting lunch hour go another hour on a Friday afternoon,
and found the place almost empty, slow as weather,
a museum of itself. Three or four customers
wandered the aisles unhurried considering
the ninety-nine dollar suits and the death of god
or lifting the arms of fall jackets hung in rows
of moody browns and blues, thinking
what good is the death penalty. Clerks read newspapers
and talked in a listless hum, offering solutions
to the gas crisis while leaning across counters,
bright shirts labeled Clearance, whispered
when I walked through them, the jewelry bins
shined in late afternoon sun, calling there is still
time to buy something that will change your life.
At the concession stand a ragged customer
in a dirt-shined suit chewed on a chocolate donut
and sipped black coffee, looking past the parking lot,
carefully considering his choice for secretary of state.
A few more shoppers were getting out of their cars,
a child straggled along from a hand
And the heavy grandmother who ran that little
dining section stared at a wheel of hotdogs
that turned under yellow baking light sweating
beads of fat and Elvis sang his heart out
on the muzak spool to the people in the hour
that seemed it might never end.

Photo: Interior of a 1970s Kmart, from The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America’s Great Department Stores by Robert Hendrickson (available at Amazon.com)

(Photo of David Tucker in the newsroom of the Newark Star-Ledger byKeith Meyers for the New York Times, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Read an article about the author at nytimes.com.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Journalist and poet David Tucker grew up in Tennessee. He earned a BA at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he studied with poet Donald Hall. Booklist critic Donna Seamanhas described his poems as “deceptive in their sturdy plainness . . . inlaid with patterns as elegant as the swoop of swallows, and images as startling and right as a cat’s bowl of milk shimmering as its ‘moon god.’” His debut collection, Late for Work (2006), was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize by judge Philip Levine. Donald Hall, a former US poet laureate, appointed Tucker a Witter Bynner Foundation Fellow in 2007. A newspaper editor for more than 25 years, Tucker is an editor for the Metro section of the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper, where he was part of the team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. (Source: poetryfoundation.org)

The White Album, essay by Joan Didion

THE WHITE ALBUM (Excerpt)
by Joan Didion

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea…We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Or at least we do for a while.…
***
The White Album (1979), a book of essays by Joan Didion, is available at Amazon.com.

I constantly retype my own sentences, quote by Joan Didion

“When I’m working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day, I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.” JOAN DIDION

Graphic: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live” is the opening line of Joan Didion‘s essay “The White Album,” featured in her collection of the same name.

Find The White Album (1979), a book of 20 essays by Joan Didion  at Amazon.com.

The K-Mart in West Orange, poem by David Tucker

THE K-MART IN WEST ORANGE
by David Tucker

I walked into the K-mart in West Orange, New Jersey
to waste some time, avoiding my work at the paper,
letting lunch hour go another hour on a Friday afternoon,
and found the place almost empty, slow as weather,
a museum of itself. Three or four customers
wandered the aisles unhurried considering
the ninety-nine dollar suits and the death of god
or lifting the arms of fall jackets hung in rows
of moody browns and blues, thinking
what good is the death penalty. Clerks read newspapers
and talked in a listless hum, offering solutions
to the gas crisis while leaning across counters,
bright shirts labeled Clearance, whispered
when I walked through them, the jewelry bins
shined in late afternoon sun, calling there is still
time to buy something that will change your life.
At the concession stand a ragged customer
in a dirt-shined suit chewed on a chocolate donut
and sipped black coffee, looking past the parking lot,
carefully considering his choice for secretary of state.
A few more shoppers were getting out of their cars,
a child straggled along from a hand
And the heavy grandmother who ran that little
dining section stared at a wheel of hotdogs
that turned under yellow baking light sweating
beads of fat and Elvis sang his heart out
on the muzak spool to the people in the hour
that seemed it might never end.

(Photo of David Tucker in the newsroom of the Newark Star-Ledger by Keith Meyers for the New York Times, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Read an article about the author at nytimes.com.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Journalist and poet David Tucker grew up in Tennessee. He earned a BA at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he studied with poet Donald Hall. Booklist critic Donna Seaman has described his poems as “deceptive in their sturdy plainness . . . inlaid with patterns as elegant as the swoop of swallows, and images as startling and right as a cat’s bowl of milk shimmering as its ‘moon god.’” His debut collection, Late for Work (2006), was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize by judge Philip Levine. Donald Hall, a former US poet laureate, appointed Tucker a Witter Bynner Foundation Fellow in 2007. A newspaper editor for more than 25 years, Tucker is an editor for the Metro section of the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper, where he was part of the team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. (Source: poetryfoundation.org)

Happy Birthday, Hunter S. Thompson

“I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively . . . For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don’t lie to yourself and use the wrong words.” HUNTER S. THOMPSON

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hunter S. Thompson has been called many things — he has avid fans (Tom Wolfe called him “the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century”) and rabid detractors (Flavorwire.com recently lumped him in with its “most irrationally hated writers”). But whether you love him or hate him, today marks Hunter S. Thompson’s 76th birthday. Cheers!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hunter Stockton Thompson (1937- 2005) was an American journalist and author who rose to prominence with the publication of Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967).  He became a counterculture figure with his own brand of New Journalism he termed “Gonzo,” an experimental style of journalism where reporters involve themselves in the action and become central figures in their stories. Thompson remains best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1972), a rumination on the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement, first serialized in Rolling Stone, and in 1998 released as a film starring Johnny Depp. (Read more at Wikipedia.org)

Portrait of Hunter S. Thompson by Jeff Morgan, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, Used by Permission

Tennessee Williams and the State of Tennessee

The ever-vigilant, erudite ace journalist Eddie Woods pointed out a significant error in our post yesterday that marked the birthday of Tennessee Williams. I incorrectly stated that Williams — born in Mississippi and raised in Missouri — had “no connection to Tennessee.” As Eddie pointed out in his email, “…his [Williams’] father attended the University of Tennessee…and was directly descended from Tennessee’s first senator, John Williams.”

Eddie also forwarded a page from TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: MEMOIRS, where Williams states, “The question I’m asked with most tedious frequency by interviewers and talk-show hosts is ‘How did you get the name Tennessee when you were born in Mississippi?’ So that’s the justification for my professional monicker — and I’ve also just indulged myself in the Southern weakness for climbing a family tree.” Find the book at Amazon.com.

Thank you, Eddie Woods, journalist and researcher extraordinaire!

Photo: Tennessee Williams, New York City, 1948

Happy Birthday, Joan Didion

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”  JOAN DIDION

Many years ago, after reading Joan Didion‘s account of her migraine headaches, I wrote her a letter in care of her publisher, offering some remedies for the affliction. (For decades, I, too, was a sufferer). She wrote back on beautiful “Joan Dunne” stationery thanking me for my letter and wishing me a Happy New Year.

I’m thrilled to see that Ms. Didion is still writing (at age 78) — and, as always, writing clear, beautiful prose.  She reads from her most recent book, Blue Nights (2011), at this link.

Happy birthday!

The White Album by Joan Didion

THE WHITE ALBUM (Excerpt)

Essay by Joan Didion

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea…We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself…this period began around 1966 and continued until 1971…

***

Find The White Album (1979), a book of 20 essays by Joan Didion  at Amazon.com.