Hope Is The John Prine Song You're Thinking Of

Ben Theyerl

I was standing in a farm field in Eau Claire a few years back when John Prine wandered back into my life. He'd first been there during childhood, when my Grandfather'd search the dial in the airwaves north of Milwaukee, and I'd listen closely as a man sang "Hello in there, hello" through the radio fuzz. And then he was standing there on stage, singing that song again and well, that was it.

Since then I've been processing life via John Prine. Heck, I've been processing this pandemic via John Prine, and if there's anything good to come out of his departure, it’s that it may make it so others have the comfort of his music as well. You could tap Prine as a master at every little thing he did with folk music—his storytelling, his wit—but you'd be better off to not delineate it. Prine's music has a way of registering with you about life on the terms that life is registered in real time. His brief thoughts were endless. He took the massive complex problems of the world, boiled them down, and showed them to be unabashedly human. And so, Prine's music sticks with you in intimate moments. His words are poetry not in the sense that they're so good they're poetry (though they are), but in that they cast shadows, and ultimately can be heard and misheard. His songs are stories of lives lead that you find yourself leading, even if you don't work with a guy named Rudy at the factory, or all your smiles are legal.

Every few weeks, there’s another Prine song ready for whatever moment arises. My school shut down and suddenly college was over a few weeks back. In the last few days, it was “Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)”, off the album of the same name. The end was near, and my heart did feel "in the icehouse, come hill or come valley." It was the second verse that I kept on repeating in my head though: "I've been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there," and not least of which because in this particular instance I had "sat on the park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair," and my head "had shouted down to my heart, better look out below."

Looking back on Prine's life, it’s beautiful that he slipped into old age like he'd meant to be there his whole life. He was a caricature of the wisecracking relative you always had in your sepia vision of American life, though his jokes made you slap your soul instead of your knee. They reached deeper, were more generous, proved that if you mixed humor with life it equaled empathy. As a testament, "Hello, in there," "Sam Stone," and "Angel from Montgomery," all are celebrated for cueing into the nub of human existence, despite Prine himself never fully embodying that existence. On writing his songs through these characters Prine once said, "no one told me I couldn't," and so he did. And perhaps, that's his lasting lesson for us stuck down here. No one's told us we can't be there for each other, can't be kind, can't be human, so we may as well be. And God Bless John Prine, that lesson comes with forty-five years of mesmerizing, honest-to-goodness, soul-saving music for us to enjoy. Smoke that nine mile cigarette John, and take in the show.

Ben Theyerl is a student and writer from Altoona who currently resides in Maine.

The Comfort Of A Poem: Reflections on Mary Oliver’s “Mysteries, Yes”

Angela Hugunin

I write near the window, in the stillness that only accompanies early mornings. Today, it’s so dark it could be dusk. Fog clings stubbornly to the pine trees in the yard, and my eye settles on our youngest maple. It’s nothing like its predecessors: two towering ashes who stood, stoic and strong, until a sickness stripped them of strength. The baby maple’s trunk is wrapped in some sort of plastic casing, a plaster cast. The tree isn’t beautiful yet; in fact, it looks rather battered. But it’s growing.

A band of tulips is beginning to poke through a patch of mulch. Just last week, it snowed. The tulips didn’t seem to notice or care.

Sometime in the three weeks since I unexpectedly returned to my family home, the grass darkened its hue. It’s no longer a burnt shade of beige, but a deepening lime. By summer it will be the color of emeralds.

When did I last look at these things? I’ve missed so many of these simple miracles by trying to figure other things out. I’ve buried my head in questions that don’t yet have answers, only to emerge stumbling and unsatisfied. Perhaps now isn’t the time for certainty. Perhaps that’s OK.

My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, explores this paradox of living in her poem, “Mysteries, Yes.” I first discovered it after my aunt gave me a massive collection of Oliver’s work. I was drawn to this poem in particular from the get-go. In it, Oliver explores the enigmatic beauty of the world around us. She celebrates the fact that life is difficult to pin down. When I first read the poem a few years ago, I was already far from a fan of uncertainty. Yet I could sense that Oliver was onto something.

How often do I move too quickly to take in the countless “mysteries too marvelous to be understood” in my own life? I’ve gotten comfortable taking the steady growth of my houseplants for granted. I never look at a full plate of food and contemplate the wonder it is that someone had to plant the original seeds, harvest the crop, ship it, and prepare it, and that the result of all that labor can bring me energy. Rarely do I grasp how remarkable it is that art offers consolation through all sorts of human emotion or, as Oliver puts it, “How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.”

I’ve lost count of how many times poems have settled my internal storms. They’ve let me sit with my sadness, ponder it, and almost befriend it. They’ve humbled me by giving me a window into the pain of others. They’ve restrained me from assuming I can grasp things with utmost certainty; they’ve reminded me that this world is far from static.

“From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.”

From where I write, the world is a storm of scars and grief, and somehow, of unexpected delight. This mélange isn’t logical. It’s a mystery. But perhaps now is the perfect time for such a thing.

Perhaps this is the time to take an extra slow sip from a piping mug of coffee, to let the steam melt into the waiting face and to savor the way that dark substance can invigorate the body. Perhaps this is the time to gaze at squirrels in the yard, those lucky rodents who don’t seem to realize—or care—that we’ve changed, those chipper squirrels whose routines continue with full gusto despite everything else. Perhaps this is the time to sit with someone you’ve grown accustomed to seeing each day, to stare at their familiar face under familiar light and look for the unfamiliar things that made you love them in the first place.

This is a time when one of the few things we’re certain about is how little certainty there is. We can scramble to find answers and do what we can to act in the midst of these swirling questions and trials, but this can also be a time to pause. Somehow, in the middle of all these current messes, there are still pleasant—even delightful—mysteries to be found. There are friends to check in on (from a distance), there’s astonishment to be shared. There are poems to be read. There is hope to be found, embraced, passed along.

The heavy blanket of fog in the yard has lightened so that it’s no more than a sheet. The baby maple, still alone, stretches up from its cast. Next year, it may be crowned with leaves, and someday, it will give us shade, like the ones who came before it. Somehow, in the midst of everything, it grows stronger each day.

Angela Hugunin is a writer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and an intern for the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.

Hope is a Magic Pillow

Sarah Jayne Johnson

When I was around 10, I got the stomach flu and it changed me. For whatever reason, this singular night of porcelain companionship triggered a lifetime of hypochondria and illness-related anxiety that made me feel hopeless, lonely, and stressed. I started changing the way I did things to reflect a little voice in my head telling me if I didn’t do things a certain way, I’d get sick. A voice that would circle and spiral until I was crying nearly every night when I went to bed. I wanted so badly to have control over the thing that I feared most, and I started to lose my mind when I couldn’t have it.

One night, while wiping big red tears from my eyes, my dad came and sat at the foot of my bed. He had brought me his coveted “magic pillow” that made any big, terrible thing melt away from the moment your ear touched the pillowcase. 

“Okay, so what’s wrong?” he asked.

“I don’t know I just, I don’t want to get sick,” I said, between shallow, uneven gulps of air.

“Well,” my dad said, “that’s not always up to you. Sometimes we have to realize that a lot of things in life are out of our control, and that’s okay. You can only do all you can do.” He then wrapped the covers around me, fluffed my pillow, and my fear subsided a bit.

The world is a giant, beautiful, and scary sphere spinning around whether we like it or not. Now more than ever, it’s important to lean on each other (figuratively, of course) to hold this big blue ball in place. Comfort yourself by comforting others. Grieve openly and in unison with those you love.  Be vulnerable from afar, and recognize that hopelessness only wins if you let it. Talk to the people you love because, chances are, they’re going to love you right back. And when all of this is over, and we start to settle back into normalcy, that love will still linger.

So grab your magic pillow, and maybe call your dad if you can, because you can only do all you can do.

Sarah Jayne Johnson is a writer and community advocate living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Hope is the Thing Whose Paws Twitch When She Dreams

Deb Peterson

The good girl walks easy,

sure-footed on a path she knows by heart.

Her nose, a tuning fork, vibrates

at cracker crumbs on a sidewalk,

stains on a fluttering wrapper,

a soggy tidbit half-buried in slush.

Some days when she pulls hard,

the leash follows her lead.

Some days, a squirrel dashes up a tree;

in her heart, she chases it into the sky.

Nobody hopes like a dog, and nobody who has a dog for a friend can be without hope. Under the name Delaney Green, Debra Peterson writes long and short works of speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared online and has been published in Black Dandy; Barstow & Grand; Bouchercon 2014: Murder at the Beach; and Passages: Best of NewMyths. She has worked as a reporter, a copy editor, a professional actress, a Broadway theater concessions manager, a high school English teacher, an adjunct professor, a farm laborer, and, lately, a coronavirus mask-sewer. She writes sporadic blog posts at delaneygreenwriter.com.

Hope Is The Thing We Hear

Jessi Peterson

Hope is the thing

we hear, or in this case don’t

when the traffic noise from Hwy 29

no longer follows the curvature of the hills,

singing down slopes, channeling

down ravines to reach us.

Hope is what we are listening for now,

the rippling trill of the crane’s return,

often flying too far up to be seen.

The soft sough of wind through the feathers

of swans as they aim for pooled snowmelt

in the fields west of town, a spot
to rest, to glean like Ruth

what’s left of last year’s harvest.

The late night yodel and yip of coyotes

from the prairie floodplain along the river,

already such consummate artists

at social distancing they hear me crack

our patio door a quarter mile away

and clam up.

The rumble of a neighbor’s truck, dropping off

a widow’s mite of wood

for my mother’s woodstove

but not dropping in.

The almost silent rasp of my pet snail eating,

just out of estivation while we go in,

his retractable teeth contending with spinach and waiting

for the grass I planted in his cage today to sprout.

Waiting like the rest of us, taking things at the pace he knows

that we don’t know yet.

Jessi Peterson is the children’s librarian in Chippewa Falls and her favorite days of the week are storytime days. She misses reading and singing and acting silly with kids at the library while we are all doing our best to tamp down COVID-19.   She is a poetry reader for local literary journal Barstow and Grand (submission period open now!) and her work has appeared there as well as in Wisconsin People and Ideas, Sky Island Journal,  Crab Orchard Review and the Local Lit column of Volume One. Her chapbook Century Farm is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Hope Is The Thing That Glints

Jennifer Eddy

From the wet slicked-back grass of spring

Flattened by these many months of winter

Which even now have not completely left us

Hope gleams forth

From what once was snow,

Before sublimation

And passing traffic turned it coarse and dark.

Hope is the thing that splints

Our spirits from exhaustion—

Wildfires, contagion

Locusts:

The plagues

Of choking over-population—

Murmuring, Rest.

Your Prince will come.

Hope is just the thing,

The unrecognized yearning

A glimpse

Unexpected

Of the precious ring

You thought you’d lost forever

Last December

Glinting now in the dull grey grass.

Jennifer Eddy is a grateful member of The Poets of the Oak Lair and the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild.

Hope is the Thing In The Corner

Alex Tronson

At the supermarket, two men claw each other over a six-pack of toilet paper rolls. They’re fighting over the good stuff, though. The off-brand rolls stay stocked, undesired, the last kids picked in gym class. The men are loud. I can hear the fight from my small balcony—the only fresh air I get these days. I retreat inside. Each time the world ends I try not to think about it.

I wrestle with the remote and bypass the news for something more my speed. A Robert Mitchum film, an episode of Ghost Adventures, whatever’s popular on HBO. I watch television until my eyes dry up. My partner, Cheryl, is doing taxes in the bedroom. She says to herself, “it all feels kind of futile, now, doesn’t it?”

“What does?” I say. “Taxes?”

But she’s not talking to me. She’s plugged in, crunching numbers and despairing over the sum.

“I should be more productive,” I say. Write a song. Write a poem. Do my homework. But after a minute, I say, “No, I should do whatever I want.”

I hope that someone, somewhere, is working harder than I am. That someone, somewhere, is intelligent and qualified and making great leaps of progress. That someone, somewhere, isn’t feeling as defeated as I am. But Hope cowers behind the armchair in the corner. Hope peeks out the window by the television.

Later, Cheryl rummages through the kitchen cupboards. She says, “We should go to the store soon, probably, don’t you think?”

“Is that a good idea?” I say from the couch. “Right now?”

“Okay,” she says. “Fine. How much peanut butter do you want on your toast?”

I’m not a scientist. I’m not in the profession of health care or sanitation. I’m not a parent. I’m not swabbing the nostrils of the sick or developing vaccines. I’m a grad student. I’m watching old movies and chatting with my classmates over the internet. I’m reading thousands of tweets and hardly writing them.

“Do you think we should be doing more?” I say. “Sewing masks and whatnot?”

Cheryl brings over two plates of toast. She sits next to me on the couch. Her leg rests over my leg. We’re alone together, I think. But even that’s a luxury.

She takes a bite and chews it slowly. “You don’t know how to sew,” she finally says. “Plus, we’re inside. We’re distant. We’re doing what they told us to do.”

“Is that enough?” I say.

Cheryl shrugs as if to say: what’s enough?

Hope is still ducked in the corner. Hope stares with shiny, pleading eyes. Hope is looking for a spot on the cushion between us, waiting for me to give the signal.

Alex Tronson is a writer from Minneapolis, currently an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans. His fiction and essays have been published in Barstow & Grand, Red Cedar Review, and The Summerset Review. You can find him online at @alex_tronson

Hope is Toni Morrison

Jonathan Rylander

I’ve been trying to wake up earlier these days, and I take certain strides to make it happen.

“Alexa, set alarm for 6 a.m.”

My partner, Chris, hates me for doing this. He also hates the phone alarms that go off in the middle of the night, that I forgot to delete because I honestly can’t remember how many I actually set.

“Jonathan!” he’ll say. “For God’s sake, why do you need to be up that early on a Saturday?”

And I’ll say something along the lines of, “I want to get a jump on some work” or “I need to  write.”

But what I haven’t exactly admitted to Chris is what I’m really trying to do. What I’m really trying to do is re-see my craft as a writer, and to do so I’m trying on new methods or strategies of authors I admire. Take, for instance, Toni Morrison. I once read that her early morning routine involved making coffee and writing while—keyword while—it was still dark outside. The beauty in the moment, for her, must have rested in the sort of inspiration that could only emerge as the first speck of dawn broke through the crack of her eye, or how the first warmth of morning sun settled into her skin. 

In waking earlier, I’m trying to follow Morrison’s lead. Surely, she did something right.

In my composition course this spring, I’ve turned to Morrison again in assigning her 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture as one possible text that students can rhetorically analyze for their first paper. If you haven’t read or listened to the speech online, it’s moral lesson essentially boils down to this: language is fragile and what we do with it is ultimately in our hands.

Of course, the speech is much more complex in the way it engages issues of oppression and violence, and of how it employs such beautiful imagery to do so—such as this fragile bird, one that symbolizes language and that sits in the hands of young children standing before a blind woman.

Indeed, Toni Morrison gives me hope. Other writers give me hope, and listening to their craft, to how they do it, matters. Such listening enables me to re-see my own work, to re-shape words as they rest within the pen I hold or the keys I type.

My partner and I argue a lot. When it comes to political matters and philosophical debates, we often clash and fail to meet eye-to-eye. Without doubt, we will continue to argue. But when Chris tells me to stop worrying about setting all these alarms, maybe I need to stop arguing and listen more carefully to what he might really be saying. What he might really be saying is this: when it comes to your writing, when it comes to your words, what you do with them is ultimately in your hands. 

Jonathan Rylander is a Guild member and Assistant Professor of English at UW-Eau Claire. He also directs the Center for Writing Excellence on campus. When he’s not writing or teaching, he enjoys exploring the north shore of Minnesota and seeking out the newest, hippest dog park with his partner and Beauregard Lee—their Bernese Mountain Dog.

Literary Citizenship in the Time of Coronavirus: Pragmatic Ways to Support Writers

Elizabeth de Cleyre

Six months ago I placed three pieces of writing. The first is still in revisions with a lovely editor who is very busy. The second was killed after the editor sat on the first draft for two months and then decided it wasn’t what they were looking for. The third was published and unpaid, and then an editor at another publication offered to re-print and pay me for it (reprints are a rarity). It was slated for publication March 18th. On March 17th, I received an email saying that they were holding the piece to prioritize coverage of the pandemic. 

I write this not to complain, but to demonstrate how even in a booming economy, the economics of writing are erratic at best. When I placed these three pieces around the same time, a friend and small business owner said it must have been nice to receive the influx of income. Ha! They were incredulous when I said I wouldn’t see a penny until the pieces were printed, and possibly not for another month afterward, as most publications have net-30 terms. (Allegra Hobbs elaborates on the industry standard in an article for Study Hall.)

“ I don’t know anyone who goes into writing for the money, and seasoned writers usually advise students to become anything but writers because it can be a long, hard road riddled with rejection. Writing is a long game. Rejection I was prepared for, but no one told me there’d be a pandemic too.”

I don’t know anyone who goes into writing for the money, and seasoned writers usually advise students to become anything but writers because it can be a long, hard road riddled with rejection. Writing is a long game. Rejection I was prepared for, but no one told me there’d be a pandemic too.

I hardly need to remind you that the future is a massive question mark for all of us, not just for writers, who often work behind the scenes, supporting and propping up other creatives, entrepreneurs, and businesses. Some of us went from writing press releases, promoting local events, reviewing albums, concerts, books, and gallery openings to crafting internal memos telling staff to work from home for the foreseeable future, or editing letters for layoffs. Publications cut freelance budgets first and those of us who work in restaurants or retail find our non-writing income either dramatically reduced or dried up.

But there’s a certain shade of irony in the fact that many of us are relying on writing now more than ever: from the latest news articles and updates that keep us informed, to the novels and stories that keep us company and offer a brief escape or respite, either in book form or adapted into binge-worthy shows and films.

‘Literary citizenship’ is a term loosely describing not just how to be a good writer, but also a good person, namely to other writers. It’s like ‘Midwest Nice’ but for publishing, and we’re lucky to live in a region that has an active community of writers and readers. Now that we’re all practicing physical distancing and self-isolation, we may not be able to support one another in the ways we’re used to. Thankfully, most of the suggestions for how to support writers (and the people who support them) in the Chippewa Valley and beyond can offer some solace for readers and non-writers alike. Books, essays, articles, podcasts can be a means of escape, a way to get lost in other lives, real or imagined.

 Below are some suggestions with links to further resources. Many of these are free! Some of these apply to other creative industries. And though it’s a lengthy list, meant to cover both writers of books and writers of short form or online content, it is by no means inexhaustible. If you have any innovative ideas please leave a comment!

We’re all in this together.

A Partial List of Ways to Support Writers:

First and foremost, do not remind your writer friend that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague. We know. And we’re perfectly fine at driving ourselves sick with comparison, thanks, because we are on the internet.

Now for some low-hanging fruit: READ! The nice thing about supporting writers is that it’s possible to do this while secluded at home. If you’re not already in a book club, start one with your pals.

If your library is closed, remember libraries often have extensive digital resources if you possess internet access. Read e-books online, or create a to-read list for when they reopen. While the library is physically closed, see if you can go online to request books or materials they don’t currently carry, helping them expand their offerings.

Dotters Books co-owners Margaret Leonard (left) and Jill Heinke Moen (right)

credit: Drew Kaiser

 Not sure what to read? Bookstores like Dotters Books often offer personal recommendations, reading lists, or subscriptions to relieve you of the burden of having to choose. Binge-watching a show that was based on a book? Read the book instead! (My Brilliant Friend, The Handmaid’s Tale, Game of Thrones...is it just me or is every show based on a book now?)

 Did you know you can travel without leaving your house? Armchair travel! If you had to cancel a trip or the sudden travel restrictions make you want to break out your passport, dip into an absorbing, transporting read. If you don’t like spending too much time in one country, check out Best American Travel Writing, subscribe to AFAR magazine, or catch up on George Saunders’ humorous travel essays for GQ, most of which are online and free. I’m partial to Thomas Swick, a former mentor of mine whose book The Joys of Travel is uplifting and heartfelt.

Support indie bookstores! Many-a bookstore employs writers, so continuing to buy from local booksellers keeps your money in the community and helps retain their well-read staff. Need more reasons to support local? According to IndieBound.org, when you spend $100 locally, $52 of that stays in your community (as opposed to $6.50 at a national chain, and $0 when you buy from a remote vendor that doesn’t collect sales tax).

Not sure where to find an indie bookseller? Bookshop.org allows you to buy online from local bookstores. According to LitHub (which has a very helpful article on supporting bookstores during the pandemic), “For the next eight weeks, [...] indie stores using Bookshop will receive 30% of the cover price of any sale, up from 25%. Bookshop will earn no revenue from those sales.”

More of an audiobook person? While many of us are familiar with Audible (an Amazon company), libro.fm allows you to listen to the same audiobooks and support local bookstores. Use their coupon code SHOPBOOKSTORESNOW for two-for-one deals, and explore their playlist that contributes 100% of proceeds to local bookstores. (Eau Claire’s own Dotters Books has a libro.fm link!) 

You know who else would love your support? Indie publishers! Graywolf Press is a small nonprofit in Minneapolis that offers a “Galley Club” subscription with access to new books before they’re officially released. And Other Stories is a not-for-profit publisher in the United Kingdom with fantastic books. Since bookshops are experiencing financial hardship due to closures, And Other Stories is currently donating 20% of subscriptions to independent booksellers.

If a writer has a backlist of titles, now is a great time to get caught up! With new books coming out all the time, it can be tempting to only read the latest and greatest. After you’ve combed through the doorstoppers and classics you’ve always meant to get around to (like this list by Chelsea Batten), see if an author you like has a previous title you could read. (I’ve been recommending Courtney Maum’s novel Touch; Maum published two books in 2019 and all of her novels are fantastic.)

Nickolas Butler at The Priory Writers’ Retreat

Credit: Justin Patchin

Does your favorite writer have a website? In addition to books, some writers like Nickolas Butler sell broadsides, while others sell mugs with clever (expletive-laced) phrases on it. (Not linking to those, because we’re family-friendly here.)

Occasionally writers will have a Patreon page where monthly subscribers support their work and have access to exclusive content. No Patreon? Ask if they have a Venmo or PayPal and send them $5 because you liked their latest article or (if you’re like me) finally read that article they wrote two years ago. For writers who don’t (yet) have published books, this is an easy way to support their work.

I’m not sure if you heard the buzz about newsletters, but a lot of writers have one (this writer included). They’re often free and full of knowledge, like Courtney Maum’s latest, which includes fourteen films to help you escape. Newsletters are helpful to emerging and established writers because publishers often look for authors with a “platform,” or an audience. A mailing list is the best way for writers to share recent publications or news, because they don’t have to worry about Facebook or Instagram messing with algorithmatics (or whatever they’re called).

Speaking of algorithms, leave a review! With all this reading you’ve been doing, you surely have an opinion or two (and hopefully a few nice ones). Write reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and other outlets to help authors reach more readers.

Podcasts! Once you’ve listened to enough news and true crime podcasts to sufficiently terrify yourself for eternity, check out some fiction podcasts, like the ones Chelsea Batten mentions in this article for The Manual. For nonfiction, I’m partial to the Longform podcast. The New Yorker runs both fiction and poetry podcasts, while Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios features short episodes with one poem. Are you caught up on the Chippewa Valley’s own serialized radio drama Bend in the River? Or episodes of Oddly Enough? What are you waiting for?! They are all available online at Converge Radio!

Then tweet about it! Posting about your latest read on social media or sharing an interview (or podcast) with an author also helps writers connect with readers. Take to Facebook or wherever the kids are these days. Twitter? Instagram? Snapchat? TikTok? I can’t keep up. (Remember to tag them and give ‘em a follow while you’re at it.)

Speaking of platforms: Medium pays writers. There’s a free version so you can start finding writers or publications to follow. Then for $5 per month, you can read as many articles as you like, and Medium allocates funds directly to the writers of the articles you read. Every little bit counts!

And while we’re on the subject of subscribing, remember the little literary magazines and journals. If bookstores are closed and you can’t pick up the latest copy of The Paris Review (ahem, this is my current dilemma), sign up for a year’s subscription online. This guarantees patronage for the magazine and allows them to continue to pay their writers. Online mags like The Atavist feature absorbing longform content, with audio accompaniments as well. Back issues of the Chippewa Valley’s own Barstow & Grand are available on their website, and submissions are open through April 30.

It should go without saying that newspapers, magazines and media outlets providing comprehensive coverage on the pandemic (or a welcome escape from the constant news cycle) also offer subscriptions. While many publications removed their paywalls so citizens can access information, please remember that the writers and journalists who are on the frontlines researching and reporting are often putting themselves (and potentially their families) at risk so that we can remain informed and be prepared. Drops in advertising led to massive layoffs and cuts in media. Understaffed publications across the nation are struggling to keep up with coverage while experiencing a surge in readership (the SF Examiner saw 6,000 times average page views on a single day in March, while The Atlantic removed its paywall for coronavirus coverage and gained 36,000 subscribers, per Study Hall). Subscriptions and memberships are the best ways to support publications and journalists, which we need now more than ever. (Volume One recently launched their own Reader Membership for those of us in the Chippewa Valley.)

Christina Clancy

credit: Jimmy Bartelt

 Authors whose books are currently being released had to cancel launch events, book tours, signings, and speaking gigs. It can take years to go from idea to publication, with no way of predicting the cultural climate in which your book will debut, and no way to control it. Pre-ordering new books through indie booksellers is a great way to support debut or new titles. (Might I recommend Wisconsin’s own Christina Clancy, who visited the Guild’s Winter Writers’ Weekend at the Oxbow Hotel in February and has an absorbing novel coming out in June, The Second Home?)

 If an author had to cancel in-person readings, check out their social media or website to see if they’re offering any online events. When Rebecca Dinerstein Knight’s book tour for her second novel Hex was cancelled, she participated in a series of livestreams on Instagram, Facebook, and Zoom, where readers from all over the world could join. Author and musician Michael Perry is updating his website sneezingcow.com regularly with mini-concerts and readings “From the Little Writing Room Above the Garage.” In lieu of a tip jar, Perry is asking people to donate to the Feed My People Food Bank or the Chippewa Valley Artist Relief Fund (which includes funding for creative writers).

If you’re a writer and you’ve got a few extra hours in your day, sign up for a webinar or workshop, some of which are free! When author Lidia Yuknavitch cancelled and postponed in-person courses at her Portland-based school Corporeal Writing, they offered a free webinar to the first 100 newsletter subscribers to register. (The recorded session is available on their Facebook page for anyone to watch, and Corporeal Writing has online courses as well.) Old Town Books in Virginia is offering pay-what-you-can virtual workshops with writers to help the bookstore’s income while they’re closed. And publisher Catapult hosts online classes year-round.

Laura Jean Baker at a CVWG event.

Credit: Justin Patchin

Some writers are offering workshops and webinars for entrepreneurs and business owners who need help with copywriting or communications (like my good friend Chelsea Batten). Remember: even if you can’t pay for a writer’s services right now, signing up for a free webinar or newsletter means you’re on their list when they have a subsequent offering, like a course or a new book. It’s immensely valuable to both writers and publishers.

Last, and certainly not least, writing guilds exist in many communities, and have databases of local authors to read and support. We're lucky to have The Chippewa Valley Writers Guild, which pays writers for speaking, storytelling, presentations and panels. If events (which are usually free or by donation) were postponed or cancelled, consider donating or become a member to help the organization continue to offer literary programming in the future.

Though this lengthy list is meant to cover both writers of books and writers of short form or online content, it is by no means inexhaustible. If you have any innovative ideas please leave a comment! We’re all in this together. Stay healthy and safe, friends.

 Elizabeth de Cleyre is a writer and editor. Find her at cedecreative.com.

Constellation

Bruce Dethlefsen

one leaf is not a tree

one feather not a wing

no crown a king nor single

note a melody

from darkness are we made

and born alone     our light

our lonely stars though bright

and strong will quickly fade

unless we string the stars

together     choose illumination

then in constellation hope is ours

bring on another day

sing light in common song

shine for the night is long

and dawn is far away

shine for the night is long

and dawn is far away

Bruce Dethlefsen is a poet and the author of several books, most recently, Small Talk (2014). Bruce served at Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2011-2012.

Hope is the Thing That Coughs up a Furball

Erin Stevens

On the fifth day of social distancing, I had my first breakdown. Always a rule follower, I was doing a great job of staying away from everyone, mainly because I live alone. It was just me, hanging out on my couch, in my tiny studio apartment, with a fictional series about aliens cued up on Netflix. 

Before transporting to Roswell, New Mexico for the evening, I gave a final scroll through Instagram. It seemed like every post I saw in my feed, every story I tapped on, everyone was with someone else 一 spouses or partners, family, children, roommates, friends, fugitives being shielded from the law, etc.

Everyone was with someone else but me. 

On any other night, my home-bodied-self would have been like wow, that’s really nice. Good for them! And then I’d go back to eating Izzy’s ice cream and watching an alien fall in love with a human without giving it a second thought.  

But this wasn’t just another night. This was the first Tuesday night of many that would be spent practicing the art of social distancing, and my mind was busier than normal with its incessant overthinking. Nighttime has a way of tricking us into believing the worst things about ourselves and our situations. The weight of an irrational fear I’d never had before tap danced like a hippo on my chest. It felt as if heavy words like “quarantine” and “social distancing” and “isolation” were trying to bust down my front door, three thieves in the night trying to steal my peace and my hope. 

I am so alone I thought, over and over and over. For about five long minutes I stared up at my apartment’s puckered ceiling and had a very uncute meltdown, letting the feeling of absolute loneliness unravel and weave through me - whether it was true or not didn’t matter. 

I needed to get a grip before my neighbors heard me through our shared, thin walls and called the cops or animal control. So I got up to make a cup of tea, because what else are you supposed to do when there’s an internal and external crisis at hand?

On my way to the kitchen, I almost stepped in a small, fresh pile of cat puke. 

Murphy sat next to it, blinking up at me. 

“Seriously?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Read the room, man.” 

More blinking. How dare you forget about me, he seemed to say. I’m here, too.

I grabbed the roll of paper towel and disinfectant that’s always within arms reach these days, then turned around to clean up the mess. 

It was gone. 

I looked at Murphy, confused, then repulsed.

“Did you just eat...” I started to ask. He answered by cleaning his mouth with his paws. I disinfected the area where I thought the puke had been, but couldn’t be certain. 

“You’re so gross,” I said to him.

And then, I laughed. 

Erin Stevens is a writer and cat mom living in Minnesota.

Hope Is The Thing That Lets Me See Them

Kaia Simon

You home?  my sister texts me, and then immediately follows with 😂😩. 

😂😩 because of course I’m home and she knows it. We have nowhere else to be. 

You betcha! I reply, tongue in Midwest cheek. 

One second later, my Google Hangouts app chimes. I click to join. My brother and my sister appear, each in their own box, be-headphoned and smiling at me from their living rooms. I am so happy to see them. 

My sister lives in New Rochelle, NY, the site of one of the first COVID-19 outbreaks in the U.S. My brother lives in Minneapolis, the last of the three of us to be officially ordered to #StayAtHome.

I try to remember to stare at the green light next to my webcam when I’m talking to my brother and sister, because that looks like I’m making eye contact with them. And all I want right now is contact. 

These daily conversations through our webcams help me focus within the radius of what’s most important. We affirm that we are all still symptom-free and feeling good, even if cooped up. While I stare at the webcam light and smile desperately, in my peripheral vision I see my three-year old niece’s quarantine fashion choices of the day. My seven-year-old nephew runs into view and asks me to give him a math problem to solve. “Tía Kaia, I like to add hundreds. So you can give me two numbers that go up to nine hundred and ninety-nine!” He writes the numbers on a folded up piece of paper, and dashes off-camera to solve them. My brother tells us about what it’s like to be the IT guy while his coworkers try to set up video conferences with clients from their own homes. And all the while I focus on the green webcam light, beaming my love through it, willing it to shine through the laptop screens on the other side, hoping they feel it.

I learned this trick—to make eye contact through the camera instead of by looking at their eyes on the screen—when I was applying for professor jobs a couple of years ago and many search committees did first round interviews over Skype. It felt unnatural then, and it still does now. Now, though, this isn’t about projecting a scholarly, put-together self who’d make a great colleague. This is about trying to keep myself steady amid the churn all around me. This is about using a webcam to do with my eyes what my arms cannot: gather my family up close to me, then step back, hold them at arm’s length, and squeeze their shoulders to confirm that they, that we, are okay. Until I can do this in person, I will focus on the green light that connects us. I am so grateful to be able to see them these days. 

Kaia Simon is a writer and professor in the English Department at UW-Eau Claire. 

hope is the thing that endures

Jamie Vue

I am a worst-case scenario, catastrophic-thinking kind of person, but hope is never a memory too far out of reach.   

One image comes to mind. My grandmother floating across the Mekong River, buoyed by two plastic bags, one tied to each arm to keep her above the murky waters, holding on for miles before reaching the refugee camps of Thailand.

Four decades later, and she’s nearly a century old, if not already. She is the element that carries the exhale of hope throughout the generations.

But amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some politicians have been entertaining the idea of saving the economy over human lives, offering up the older and elder generations.

I’m a byproduct of two cultures, one in which the sacrifice of life was given in the name of freedom, and one in which is now considering the sacrifice of life in the name of greed. I know what it means to be birthed out of honorable sacrifice. To know a generation was devastated, lives lost, so that the younger generations could have a future. That is hope that sustains me. That is hope that not even a virus can outlive.  

But to snuff out the light of my elders in exchange for money, that doesn’t resonate.

Growing up, on some days, I watched my parents survive on less than a few dollars with six kids. I know it’s possible. Times were not easy, but we do look back on it as a small fraction of our lives that taught us some big lessons.

It seems a lifetime ago when my siblings and I were sharing a pack of uncooked ramen noodles, as if breaking bread, on the kitchen floor. Now in self-isolation we catch up over virtual chats on the weekends. The nieces and nephew run abound in the background. We share photos of our favorite dishes. We clink beers through a computer screen. The six of us once at each other’s throats now closely bonded by the times we have survived together. Hope was hard to imagine as kids, but it must have planted itself, an intrinsic antidote to the hard times we’d face later in life as adults.

Now the children are watching. And one day when they’re older, they may need to rely on the history we have created to find a semblance of hope. And I know that while we are divided in some ways, they will find it in the compassion we give to others. In the lives we save. Because if given a fighting chance, it is likely that people will not give up on themselves.    

Jamie Vue is a Writing Coach at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Hope Is The Thing We Carry Within the Trunks Of Trees

Connor Drexler

After this is over,

all roads will just be waking 

from their first slumber. 

Worn bar stools, cafe chairs, picnic benches

thinking they’d had their last chance 

at kissing us with splinters, will rise gratefully up 

to embrace our prodigal legs. 

Down the trail where grass 

has finally outgrown our walking, I’ll meet you

at the oldest wood available. 

The long before long after kind of trees. 

The souls so wise I couldn’t know 

where to start with giving them names 

or asking questions worth their wisdom. 

When you meet me there, beneath

emerald leaves of another noisy summer, 

we’ll be reminded our best chance at peace 

was to simply outlive our next terror. 

To persistently take back 

the breath that escapes us. 

And what’s a greater joy than knowing

to survive any time at all is to win day after day 

against powers as big as stars

or too small to see? 

Perhaps only 

that what often comes with the willingness

to stand tall and rooted 

despite what seeks to break us over,

is the ancient mischief of turning

in the same direction 

any indomitable hand attempts 

to plunge us towards oblivion.

Threatening in each fresh moment

to take to that sky whether or not we

had wings. Whether or

not we had permission to

wield a magic this brave.

Connor Drexler lives in Madison, WI. He spends his quarantine time reading books, playing and singing songs, going on long runs, and petting his cat. His work has been featured in Black Horse Review,  Dovecote Magazine, Sky Island Journal, among others.

Hope Is The Thing With Callery Pears

Heather Lanier

The golf-cart-wide asphalt pathways should tip me off to this fact: the Tall Pines Nature Reserve in Gloucester County, New Jersey was not always a nature reserve. It was indeed a golf course. But as my family and I walk among the tall grasses and marshes and pines, I’m not thinking about the land, or its history. I’m thinking about the people, and how to protect them.

The parking lot here was more crowded than I’d hoped. Each time I spot a cluster of folks along the path—often couples, often senior citizens, the ones with the worst odds—my shoulders tighten. I grip the hand of the eight-year-old, the one doctors call “immunocompromised,” the one who greets strangers at restaurant tables like a manager asking How was the chowder? the lobster? the wine?

Tonight at 9:00 P.M., the governor will issue a new mandate, but he hasn’t yet. Which means it’s not officially state law to stay six feet apart. Still, my husband and I will try to keep two gregarious kids six feet from anyone, on an asphalt path the width of a golf-cart.

This is how we are trying to love the world right now: by not getting near.

An older couple walks toward us. I grip a hand. We widen our distance, say hello, move passed.

Almost all the deciduous trees here are bare, except the Callery Pears. They’re in full bloom, white puffs reaching upward. Their five-petaled flowers are delicate whispers, but their black-tipped stamens are coarse and suspicious as chin hairs.

“Smell it,” says my six-year-old, standing beneath one. “This one smells good.”

“Can’t fool me,” my husband says.

Yesterday, nose tilted toward her first Callery Pear blossom, she’d sniffed and was insulted. How could a flower smell this bad? A day later, she’s joined the trees in their cosmic prank.

We see a family of five. We widen our distance, say hello, move passed, steer clear.

We spot two geese beside a marsh, hear frogs croaking in a pond, cross a footbridge over a creek. And every few minutes, we see people, say hello, move passed, steer clear.

But it’s when we arrive at an expanse of trees, without people, that I stop, arrested.

“Look,” I say to my family.

The Callery Pears. Over a dozen of them are scattered across the acres, each separated by five or more dormant trees. They’re together in bloom; they’re apart in land, divided by hundreds of stark, naked branches. Amidst the winterish trees, they look snowed upon. Like the sky decided to blizzard, but only in surprising, joyous intervals.

The Callery Pears are too far right now to stink. Right now, they’re simple echoes of white across a landscape of scarcity. 

Eventually, this entire expanse will fill with lush green. Eventually, everything will be touching again. Eventually, the rest of this land will say it too is alive.

Heather Kirn Lanier is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Raising a Rare Girl (Penguin Press, 2020) along with two award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heart-Shaped Bed in Hiroshima and The Story You Tell Yourself. Her TED talk about raising a child with a rare syndrome has been viewed over two million times. She just moved from Vermont to New Jersey, where she works an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, and searches for good places to hike and roam.

Why The Chippewa Valley Writers Guild Is A Proud Supporter of Volume One's Reader Membership Program (And Why You Should Be, Too!)

B.J. Hollars

In February 2016, when a group of us first conceived of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild, we knew our kickoff event had to be held at the perfect location.  We wanted a place that people were familiar with, a place that was accessible to all, and, if possible, a place with some darn good A/V and lighting, too.

The Local Store—Volume One’s home turf—welcomed us with open arms.  Four years later, Volume One is still welcoming us.  Again and again and again.  

In the 20+ events we’ve held there—from craft talks, to 6x6 readings, to Barstow & Grand release parties—we’ve always had fantastic (if not magical!) experiences.  People come, they enjoy a wonderful event, and then they go home with a free, top-notch arts & culture magazine to boot.  In what universe is all of this given to us for free? 

 Beyond their hospitality in their physical space, Volume One is doubly generous on the page.  For over 400 issues, they’ve supported the local arts community in innumerable and immeasurable ways.  How many of us have had our work featured within its pages?  And how often have we enjoyed reading other writers’ work?  In addition to supporting a staff of 20, V1 also pays freelance writers for features and open letters.  Which is to say nothing of the mentorship they’ve offered hundreds of writers over the years, further professionalizing them as they continue moving forward in their careers.

Whenever I get a big idea, Nick Meyer and the Volume One team are the first people I call.  Not only because I know they can make the idea better, but because I know they can help transform the idea into a community-wide endeavor.  Volume One is the conduit that allows all of us to collaborate.  They’re the binding for the book our community’s writing together.  And we need that binding now more than ever.

credit: Mike Lunderbrek

Why do we support Volume One?  Because Volume One supports us.  And because we know that the future of our community depends on deepening and strengthening our connections, not losing them. 

Volume One inspired our town to grow into what it’s become today.  The best way to say thank you is to ensure that it can continue to inspire us for many years to come.

Please, if you’re able, join us in supporting V1’s Reader Membership program. The future of our community thanks you.

-BJ Hollars

Executive Director, Chippewa Valley Writers Guild

Hope Is A Wormhole In The Universe

Laura Jean Baker

Every pandemic requires a convincing argument, so this is what I tell myself as my husband Ryan and I dovetail at the kitchen sink. I am forearms deep in Palmolive suds. He is pantomiming flourishes of optimism, twirling the dry towel. Time has dilated and sucked us into a theoretical existence. Before COVID-19, we lived separately on the spacetime continuum of our everyday lives. Now we are metrics in Einstein’s field equations for gravity, cocooned in a worm-tunnel of love.

Since 1996, Ryan and I have navigated distances far longer than the stretch of a collapsible tape measure, used once by a seamstress to pattern my wedding dress, five times by a midwife to chart the bubble of my fundus. For four years and six months, we studied in separate cities, Ryan rock-steady in La Crosse while I sojourned from Boulder to Madison, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and back again. I’d often fall ill, homesick for my partner-in-crime. Longing for Ryan felt like it was a virus.

Marriage in 2001 delivered us to a shared domicile in Ann Arbor, but graduate school was ruthless as a melon baller, scooping out my insides. Ryan was living; I was just a hollow pumpkin earning a creative-writing degree.

By 2003, I’d recovered from my M.F.A., but then Ryan started law school. Everybody refers to law students’ partners as “widows” for a reason. Our lawyers-in-training curled cadaverous over books in far-flung libraries, earning their Juris Doctorates while we stayed home. In 2004, our first daughter was born, followed by a brood of siblings in ’06, ’08, ’10, ’13. As I breastfed “on demand,” Ryan and I didn’t often sleep in the same bed. We dreamed and woke six billion light years apart.

Before March 2020, on any given day, Ryan drove the boys to hockey; I drove the girls to music lessons. Or I chauffeured the boys to movies; he taxied the girls to Starbucks. Only a wormhole, a hypothetical shortcut in space and time, could unite us.

“See you in fifteen years,” we’d say.

Then on March 12, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh announced I’d begin teaching my courses in English online, and ten days later, on March 22, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended in-person proceedings state-wide. Slowly but predictably, everything closed, even the YMCA, our central hub for kids’ activities. We stopped forcing our cars to guzzle gasoline, and we all decelerated.

“Hey, you,” I said as if to a stranger in a cafe. I winked, and he smiled. This was our Corona-inspired meet-cute.

Against the backdrop of our own fear and vigilance, amid our children’s frustration and noise, Ryan and I had suddenly been thrust together again. We synced our lives, re-calibrated our designs on togetherness, began walking “five laps” a day – one for each child – around the mile-long neighborhood circle.

Governor Evers’s stay-at-home order has allowed us to merge with propulsive force. Despite all the dangers a wormhole presents – exotic matter, radiation, the threat of collapse – it’s unexpectedly radiant in here.

Laura Jean Baker is the author of The Motherhood Affidavits and Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She is working hard to be optimistic, #safeathome with her husband and five children.

Hope Is A Clear Window

Peter Whitis

Many of the stories emerging from this imposed social isolation are of people crammed together. This is the other side of that.

My wife of 67 years is confined to her room at her nursing home due to "shelter in place” corona virus restrictions. The isolation, everyone required to wear masks, the absence of touch, the anxiety and sense of solitary confinement were overwhelming her. Her confusion mounted and she had brief periods of panic. I could no longer visit.

 Our solution was to meet at the window to her room and talk through our iPhones. We both remembered the time when our third son, Matthew was born in San Diego during a “Santa Ana”, a severe dust storm. The San Diego hospital closed to all visitors and our solution was to find a window to her room and “visit” that way. It wasn’t a dust storm grinding into our face this time but an invisible virus invading our community. My wife and I, in our mid-80s, were deemed especially vulnerable.

After several days of frustrated communication due to a screen that blocked clear vision, Denny, the maintenance chief, came out to see me at the window. He said he could fix that. The next day he had removed the screen and placed it on another window. He also succeeded in rearranging her room furniture so that she could get closer to the “good” window. Now we could clearly see one another and the solitary confinement no longer seemed so devastating. Hope is a clear window.

Peter Whitis is a writer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Poetry and Pandemonium: A Conversation with Claire Wahmanholm

Hayley Jacobson

Claire Wahmanholm is no stranger to sudden changes. As a high school teacher, she has to deal with students, parents, and lesson planning on a daily basis. Balancing this and her writing life, it isn’t much of a leap to say it can be hectic. She reflects this constant change and other feelings through her poetry. Her newest book, Redmouth, is now available. She has one other full collection, Wilder, and a chapbook, Night Vision. She has been published in multiple literary magazines, including but not limited to; Beloit Poetry Journal, Grist, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, The Paris-American, anthropoid, Fairy Tale Review, New Poetry from the Midwest 2017, and Saltfront.

Wahmanholm was asked to be a speaker at the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild’s “Feather, Flower and Field” poetry event which was to happen mid-April. The event was to focus on poetry and ecology and how the two intertwined but has since been cancelled to better protect both the public and the speakers from catching the strand of coronavirus, COVID-19, that is sweeping the nation.

While Wahmanholm will not be able to read her poetry in public any time soon, she, like many Americans, has more time on her hands. She hopes it will give her time to work on new poetry, as well as configure her classes for an online format, but she more so hopes that it will get better she says.

Hayley Jacobson: Your poems have been published in multiple literary magazines. What was it like when you got the news that your first poem was published?

Claire Wahmanholm: My first real publication was the poem “Dover in November” (a poem of the same title appears in Redmouth, but they’re very very different). It was accepted by Cider Press Review back in July of 2010. I was doing a fellowship in Florence, Italy at the time, and I remember drinking Limoncello that night and then also accidentally sticking my finger in the electrical outlet underneath the desk in my excitement. PSA: don’t drink Limoncello and try to plug anything into foreign outlets.

HJ: What was your inspiration for your second collection, Redmouth? What was your favorite poem to write?

CW: I wrote a lot of Redmouth during my exam year at Utah, and my lists were focused on the elegy as well as the religious and scientific sublime. So Classical elegiac texts (especially Theocritus and Ovid) loom behind many of these poems, as does Lucretius, Pascal, the Book of Job, Julian of Norwich, Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, and Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Redmouth is a lot about how grief pulverizes the self and makes it a stranger to the rest of the world.

My favorite poems to write aren’t necessarily the ones that end up being my favorites to read. But if we’re talking about craft, and which poems were fun to write in the moment, it would probably be one that was really process-intensive (and there are a lot of these in the book!). “Answer” and “Dover in November” both relied on working pretty closely with their source texts (May Swenson’s “Question” and Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” respectively). I love both of those poems dearly, so spending that time with them was really rewarding. But the poems that feature rhyme schemes (all the sonnets, “Lullaby,” “Heliosphere”) were also fun to try to pull off. And the erasures were also satisfying to puzzle out. I love having restrictions to work against—there’s very much that “sense of difficulty overcome.”

HJ: I notice you tend to focus on darker subjects. One of my favorite poems of yours was “The Carrion Flower” that was published in Winter Tangerine. What draws you to the darker side of life? How do you reflect that in your work? 

CW: Oh, I’m so glad you like that one! I do, too. I don’t know if I would go so far as Tolstoy does and say that “all happy families are alike,” but I will say that other people’s happiness doesn’t do much for me. That is, happiness in some way feels more subjective, more private, more inaccessible, than grief does. This isn’t to say it isn’t interesting—just that it doesn’t share particularly well (for me). But for some reason, reading about other people’s grief is far more interesting and immediate. When I’m inhabiting terror or grief or panic, it feels productive to solidify the borders of that experience—to make them more tangible or “knowable” in some way (which is what poetry does, at least for me). When I’m feeling sublime happiness, it feels far less necessary to provide that same level of structure. 

HJ: Titles have always been hard for me. How do you come up with some titles for your work?

CW: It really depends on the overarching project. I rarely think of poems as individual entities anymore—I think about them as eventual characters in a larger project. For the prose poems in Night Vision (and later Wilder), I wanted the titles to not distract from the world-building, so I tried to keep them as uniform and neutral as possible (so they’re mostly “The X,” “The Y,” etc.).

But I also like to repeat titles (four of the above prose poems are called “Relaxation Tape,” for example). In my new manuscript I have a bunch of titles that start “The New” (“The New Fear,” “The New Horticulture”); I have a series about glaciers that are titled “Glacier 1,” “Glacier 2,” etc.; and I have several that riff on the phrase “a land where everything is trying to kill you” (“You Will Soon Enter a Land Where Everything Will Try to Kill You”; “In a Land Where Everything is Trying to Kill Me, I Enter a New Phase of My Life in Which It Would be Very Bad if I Died”; “In a Land Where Everything Is Trying to Kill You, I Teach You to be an Autotomist”). I like using titles to tie the various threads of a manuscript together. Doing this also forms little families within a manuscript, which I’m into. I use it as a rhythmic element in some ways.  

HJ: Your works are both dark and fantastical. How do you walk the line of realistic while tying in fantasy so well?

CW: For me at least, realism is necessary for the fantasy to land. I like speculative stuff when it adheres fairly closely to what we might think of as the “real world.” I don’t want folks to have an excuse to feel removed from the context of the poems—I want it to feel like this world, but with a couple horrifying slants. So, I like to use fairly familiar landscapes (forests, fields, valleys, etc.) that behave in hostile, off-kilter ways. I want the effect to be uncanny in the Freudian sense of the term.

HJ: Poetry is all about balancing life and writing. What are some tips you have for keeping balance in your life when times seem tough—especially right now with the outbreak of COVID-19?

CW: Great great question. I’m very much living in this tension right now (as we all are to various degrees). I teach high school, so I’m only ever able to write in the summer anyway, which leads to an admittedly pretty unbalanced schedule where I have to go go go in the summer, shut it all off for nine months, and then pick up where I left off and hit the ground running again. But the thing that keeps me tethered to the writing life during the school year is reading (which is, really, just as much a part of “doing poetry” as the actual writing is). And that’s what I’m doing a lot of right now—both because I’m reconfiguring my classes for distance learning (which means having to rebuild a portion of the syllabus), and also because reading other people’s stuff takes me out of myself in a helpful way (also it’s helping me live in a steadier world than social media can provide right now). My students are scheduled to do blank verse + sonnets when we start up online, so I’ve been immersing myself in those forms while I put this new syllabus together. There’s this great chunk of lines from Tennyson’s In Memoriam: “But, for the unquiet heart and brain,/ A use in measured language lies;/ The sad mechanic exercise/ Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.”

HJ: What advice do you have for young writers and poets?

CW: Try to write as many different kinds of poems as possible. I think it’s very easy to be like, “oh, I don’t write in form,” or “I don’t write persona poems” or “I don’t write about cities” etc. I get it—once you’ve mastered a certain kind of mode or voice or material, it can be tempting to stay in that space. Who doesn’t like to do what they’re good at? And I certainly haven’t been awesome at this, historically. When I was first starting out, I was pretty sure that free verse was it for me and that everything else was trash. But then in my MFA program I was forced to take form seriously, and I was like jkjkjk this is the best most rigorous thing and everything else is trash. Then I got into prose poems and was like jkjkjk this is it, for real. I wasted a lot of time being resistant to trying new things, and I’d like that time back now.

I also have some more advice at the bottom of this interview , which basically boils down to a) read, b) find a good workshop group, and c) surprise yourself.

Hope's My Umbrella Plant

Karen Loeb

No cousins, aunts or uncles

anywhere around

Sings the blues in winter

weeping leaves scatter on the rug

Potted plant in prison—

roots knowing no ground

My baby now

Then one day in November

or was it December

a lacy blossom appears

amid last year’s leaves

Dots of flowers burst open

tiny petals

another blossom on a new branch

then beads of water

my schefflera imagining Brazil

or Florida breezes

not a windy river town

laden with snow

My baby now

We’ve been together

fifteen years

first bloomed after twelve

Again this season

no apparent reason

Karen Loeb is writer-in-residence of Eau Claire, Wisconsin and an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.