Louise Wareham Leonard

My parents send two poster sized photographs of me and my mother together,

me at age five, fifteen, twenty, thirty-five and so on, she twenty-three years older and always the focus of my father’s steady gaze and camera.

The photos are collaged, pastiched and matted, larger than any painting I own.

Where am I supposed to hang them?

Their insistence that we were, the two of us, knowable to each other,

that she was, of course, as they so insistently say, there for me,

that the truth of what happened when they were not looking was never for lack

of noticing me, the invisible one, the overlooked — who would ever know

in the beautiful glow, in the colors and horizons of great cities behind us.

Liars, I want to say, Liars. But instead there is the thank you note, the shudder, the posters turned

to the wall. How could they, I ask? But they did, they do. Surely I am reading this wrong.

They have only love for me.

Office Girl seems like a light book, but it is not a light book. It is about choosing a creative life instead of one devoted to making money. How intentional was this?

Office Girl is my sixth novel, my eighth book. After my last two novels, The Great Perhaps and The Boy Detective Fails, which were increasingly complex and ambitious, following multiple characters over lengthy amounts of time, I wanted to write a book that focused on two characters, their relationship, and a brief moment in their lives. In the end, the book ended up being about brevity, about impermanence, and my hope was that someone who picked up the book would be able to read it in one sitting, experiencing the same, brief moments of sound, light, and color that the characters do. I was pretty aware that the book itself was a small, quiet gesture, which is what I was interested in at the time.

Obviously, most readers would like Odile and Jack to stay together.  What are the odds of finding many like-minded people for characters such as yours?

In most narratives—books, films, plays—characters who fall in love, stay in love, and kiss at the end and, if you believe the final image—never stop kissing. But I’ve had these really interesting relationships with people—sometimes only lasting a few weeks—that affected me profoundly. I wanted to write a book about that, a brief relationship between two people that affected both of them deeply, a moment of connection between two people passing into adulthood. I had a feeling readers would want Odile and Jack to stay together and so I added the last chapter as a kind of parting image, trying to satisfy those people.

 From Office Girl:  “Listen, I’m going to give you some advice. Here it is: don’t hold onto things. It’s a problem the men in my family have. It’s taken me a long time to figure this out. Me, my father, my grandfather, we collect things. We collect miseries. It’s what we do. But sometimes the best thing to do is just to let things go. To let them pass.” When do you need to let things pass and when do you need to run out and claim them?

All along, Jack is unable to let go of things—his relationship with his wife, his sound project, his other artistic endeavors, and his feelings for Odile. Odile has the opposite problem; she never stops moving. Her artwork—graffiti and sketches mostly—are all done on the move. Her relationships lack any kind of commitment and even her mode of transportation—her bike—suggests forward movement. I think there is a kind of balance that’s really hard to find between the two: enjoying these brief small moments, valuing them for what they are, and then bravely moving onto the next ones. This is why, for that particular moment in time, Odile and Jack need each other.

Do your characters fail or succeed in this? What are you suggesting  –are they going to end up artists or the usual drones?

I think it’s clear Jack is going to end up a substitute teacher, at least for the present. He’s found something that’s interesting, that’s rewarding, and also pays the bills, which is essential for any artist. Odile, on the other hand, I don’t know if I should comment on. I’m kind of hoping the reader will imagine a future for her that seems fitting.

Can you tell us your most recent favorite novels, music? 

I really love the Handsome Furs last record, Sound Kapital. It perfectly captures the feeling of the book and I wish I had had it at the time to listen to. I always recommend a few bands, whose music did influence the mood of the novel: The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, No Age, and the Duchess and the Duke. These are all indie bands with a relationship to pop music, which is how I’d categorize the novel.

Bonus Question: What are you working on now?

I’m writing a musical with composer/lyricist Adam Gwon. We collaborated on The Boy Detective musical a few years ago. The new one’s about a fifteen year-old girl who is homeschooled and who is forced to play in band with her family. She meets another Christian kid, a boy, who’s been kicked out of Bible Camp at the public libary. Then they begin an awkward romance. So it’s a comedy/tragedy. We’re writing it for Signature Theatre in Washington, D.C.

In my last post, I listed the many and glorious lines on death in Mark Doty’s selection of poetry for Best American Poetry 2012.  Why, I asked Mark, the preponderance of such lines– or why not?  (It is well known that Mr. Doty’s partner died in 1994) Mark wrote:

I didn’t think of this in such a direct way — but I really do love poems where the stakes are very high, where the poet is wrestling with the hardest things, and that very often means confronting mortality. I am kind of startled when — as sometimes happens — readers think I’m death-haunted; I just think of that as the other half of life, inextricable from the living part.

From Reprieve, by Mark Doty

I woke in the night
and thought, It was a dream,

nothing has torn the future apart,
we have not lived years

in dread, it never happened,
I dreamed it all. And then

there was this sensation of terrific pressure
lifting, as if I were rising

in one of those old diving bells,
lightening, unburdening. I didn’t know

how heavy my life had become—so much fear,
so little knowledge. It was like

being young again, but I understood
how light I was, how without encumbrance,—

and so I felt both young and awake,
which I never felt

when I was young…..

While reading the most wonderful selection of poems by Mark Doty in the 2012 The Best American Poetry 2012 (Series Editor David Lehman)  I was amazed and shocked at the number of poems that directly or obliquely alluded to death.  Is Mr Doty aware of this?  Am I the only only one who discovered this thread. Poetry — the language of life and death — yet so many poems that allude to the subject? I would love to know if Mark Doty saw this pattern himself, and if he did, what he makes of it.  

Quotes, with page numbers from various authors

the creature smothered in death clothes.  p14

…the night I know in my sudden blood/I am going to kill myself.  p44

Death is Something Else Entirely, I can’t speak/ or even blink/ p68

With deepest reverence,/I shop for bones  p72

Death, in the orderly procession/of random event on this gradually/expiring planet crooked in a negligible/ arm of a minor galaxy adrift among/ millions of others bursting apart in/ the amnion of space, will, said Socrates,  p 74

To see such brightness fallen broke my heart,/and then, of course, I learned that he had drowned. p 80

We Leo died we couldn’t believe he wasn’t hiding… p86

Death taps his black wand and something vanishes. Summer, winter, the thickest branch of an oak tree for which I have a special love…p91

Where Do We Go After We Die? They’re at their old favorite bar. The funeral’s over.  The question/ Commands and divides them. P92

I prepare for death when I should prepare/ for tomorrow and the day after/and the day after that/ A clinker of grief where once hung my heart… p 95

(please scatter my ashes under a maple)  p98

Durell was dead, I said, and I needed to make sense of things.  P103

In the painting,/ death comes in the form of a slight slit/ delicately emblazoned on the right p115

The principal himself once jumped off the roof/ at noon, to show us school spirit. P127

Something inside says/ there will be a curtain,/ maybe or maybe not/ some bowing, probably/ no roses, but certainly/ a chance to unverse or dehearse, after all/these acts…. What could it/ be for but passage out? p 130

I dreamed I was in the afterlife, it was so crowded/ hordes of people, everyone seeking someone, staggering/ every which way… p134

Buried/by the barn, you vanished. p144

The handwriting was my father’s but he had been dead for forty years. p146

The mutinous dust/ of the dead yellow field/ says better not listen. p147

Bye, kid in first grade on your paddle cart… Bye Dad, ‘bye Mom./ I know you all in his absence tonight.  P152

1. Are you writing now? If so, what are you writing now?

Yes, I write in my journal daily. I’m getting pretty good at faking high school girl diary entries. Every now and then a poem appears, a song lyric, a movie idea, a religious manifesto, but most of the time it’s just me being a horny/ornery old goat with the mind of an 11th grader in the midst of a nervous breakdown caused by a bad case of acne.

2. If you had to pick one prose poem, out of your 52, for a person or God to read, which would it be? Why?

If there actually was some supreme burrito out there in the universe and it read my book, I would be condemned to sour cream, or at the very least – washing dishes in the soup kitchen, so let’s stick with the person, ok? It’s more humane. I’m no good at pickin’ winners, but if I had to choose one today it would be number 51. You can never go wrong with sex, drugs, music, death, guns, psychology, the internet, art, candy, Morrissey, Dylan Thomas and Buddhism all packed into one idiosyncratic message. Ok, maybe you can. But it’s a good example of the writing in this book.

3. What is the most beautiful person, place or thing you have ever seen? 

Most beautiful person is the 2 year old granddaughter (my “niece”) of my karmic/comedic Japanese family. She’s got the most amazing head of hair, a big round face with pouty lips, a cute smile and killer laugh. She can eat and drink me under the table any day. Her joie de vivre is such a pleasure to be around, now that I’m an old fart.

Most beautiful place would be where I am right now – a Buddhist temple at the foot of snowcapped Mt. Fuji. The constant sound of flowing water, clean mountain air, evergreen trees, autumn colors, farmlands, stone walkways and temple buildings never fail to nourish my soul. And when you live in LA, the soul needs much nourishment y’know.

Most beautiful thing is life itself. There’s nothing more magnificent that being able to appreciate your life and enjoy just being. Life is the most precious of treasures. Ok, go ahead and say it, I know, I’m the Cheese Wiz.

4. In your acknowledgements you thank a multitude of people, including entities such as MOMA, Wikipedia, The Federal Reserve, NPR and Fannie Mae. Is there anyone/thing else you would add now? 

I did a fairly good job at overdoing my thank you list, thank you very much. Can’t think of anyone/thing I missed at the moment, though I can think of a few I’d like to remove. But I do prefer sincere gratitude over fickle emotion.

 5. Can you recommend a book to read?

“I’m Your Man”, the new Leonard Cohen biography by Motley Crue fan, Sylvie Simmons. Love the dirt and the man and the uke playing author.

Also, the entry on Letters to Kurtso far:http://louisewarehamleonard.com/

And a photograph from where Eric wrote this:

One thing that seemed really odd to me in this book (I only read the first) is that from the get go Christian Gray is one hundred percent smothering and suffocating Anastasia. She goes to see her mother to get away — and he flies uninvited to see her. She emails him that she doesn’t want to see him again and he shows up at her bedroom with champagne. That kind of behavior was romantic to me — maybe — at 16. But as a grownup, just no. He emails her, texts her, sends her things, harasses her about signing this contract — and because he is “hot” and beautiful and a Billionaire (always such nice guys) she repeatedly gives in and then often has a cry. I understand she will tame his ‘brokenness’ in the end…. that’s why its the old fantasy of taming the rich rude/unavailable Darcy. But no, according to  standards of acceptable behavior not “fair.” Also her losing her virginity that way was laughable — who has ever had such a pleasurable experience being solidy F*d as she puts it, her first time. Anyway, it had me turning the pages, but I didn’t actually find it sexy. That was odd, too. No feelings of arousal for me here. I had more of a response to one page in good old Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying…

Who can say it better than Hermann Hesse said it, that if more people read itinerant Swiss writer Robert Walser the world would be a better place. His writings are those of a man possessed by life as something extraordinary, a landscape of cloudburst and leaf and riding across the Potsdamer Platz in an omnibus. His gifts are so plentiful, they threaten to break him. Perhaps that’s why these pieces of his life and work are so brief and so fleeting. Like sheets of ice melting in a sudden thaw. Whether reflecting on Theseus and Hercules or the wind (“Does the wind not feel that it is windy?”) Walser offers up a deeply poetic visionary world. One can see why he abandoned himself to an insane asylum — he needed a safe place to contain his brilliance.

Why is foliage dying in the autumn secretly golden, and why does one think of springtime flowers having tongues, to shape some kind of conversation.. The wind seems to be an undependable blunderer; its lull is as sweet as compliance, blissful in itself, flowing round itself, feeling itself beautiful.

 *

He was young, handsome and exuberant, she sly and sensitive. Classicism in person, she had something fond and obstreperous to deal with in him. On the water of the pond that appertained to the garden extending behind the house, swans were swimming.

He was always wanting more from her than she had the capacity to give, and again and again she found occasion to bid him content himself with kissing a small hand…

There was a long wait.

 

He was the boyfriend of Courtney Love before Kurt Cobain. He was also a guitarist and co-founder of Hole, with Courtney, and continued to play with her until Hole’s breakup in 2002. He survived Cobain’s life and Courtney’s (ongoing life) and now, almost 20 years after Cobain’s death, Eric Erlandson has released a book of explosive text centered on the suicide of Cobain and the lives of those around him. His words, in 52 prose poems or “letters to Kurt” are not a flood, but a tidal wave: a drowning, and a saving, and a drowning again. Erlandson seems engulfed by life and memory, a solitary figure in a chaotic incendiary landscape. Does he achieve purification in the end? Redemption? Now a practitioner of Nichiren Soshu Buddhism, with a gentle almost pacific demeanour,he said recently that he found writing the book, at the very least, “cathartic.” Influenced by the form of Letters to Yesenin, Jim Harrison’s letters to the suicided poet Sergei Yesenin, and a spiritual descendant of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Walser, Letters to Kurt is a raw exploration of language and life in extremis.

 

An example of style: The maple-glazed day you grew sulky. The custardy career of your play. A sprinkled simoniac of sin. Media blackhead holes. Your tried and true twist. The split gnomon in your head casting deep fried shadow… No time to feed the pigeons. Yea, yea, I know. I’m negative but reasonable.

An ending: “I wish our final parting could’ve been more inspiring. Not this plea bargain for payroll, with me as a cop escorting the accused you, reluctantly agreeing to turn yourself in. I saw you to the gate, an almost-dead legend limping onto another plane, your plan moving along like light. A double nod and you were gone. If I could do it again I would.

Spent several hours on lines with Parth at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Read his story Manhattan, just out in Narrrative. Also, check out this nice photo of him (and a book review) from Gently Read Literature