Merwin the mighty

One of the great privileges of my life — aside from being a husband and a father, of course — was meeting W.S. Merwin. He was eager to get home to Hawaii, to his wife, to his gardens, but we talked for about an hour while he was visiting Claremont McKenna College a few years ago. I had my connections to the college, and my identity as a rep for a large newspaper, and that created the kind of opportunity that only seems possible in a dream. But I was also forewarned that he was leery of interviews and suspicious of reporters because they routinely mangled the currency of his craft and took his comments out of context. I was reminded of that warning after reading a comment included in a Huff Post article about a new film of the poet's life. Merwin sounds like a person whose life is characterized mainly by "I don't...":

"He said 'I'm not going to talk about Buddhism and I'm not going to talk about my writing process,' and on top of that, he's just a deeply private person," the filmmaker says in the article. Merwin  "put some creative parameters on what the film is."

Initially, I felt the same parameters. Especially when he eyed the digital recorder in my shirt breast-pocket. He told me not to use it. What could I do?  I tried so hard to keep up with the flow of his thoughts, but I couldn't scribble fast enough.

I knew his work pretty well, especially his Purgatorio translation and early poetry, and the lovely little book about his years in Provence. I asked him question after question. Maybe that made a difference.

I also started expressing my  frustrations over the fate of a manuscript, and he didn't hide his irritation at the whole marketing process, either. It was a revelation. The whole thing bothered him--Him!--too. When he talked about visiting Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's, it felt like a flash-bomb had gone off in my face -- Pound, for God's sake, he knew Pound!

He was as generous to me, and as passionate about his work, as the young Princeton student who once talked poetry with John Berryman:

I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write

And suddenly I heard those words that I'd never expected to hear. He pointed at my recorder and said,  "ok, you can let it run a little."

RELATED: MERWIN AND ME

• Los Angeles Times: A Q & A with M.S. Merwin
• Call of the Siren: On poets and the poetry presses
• Los Angeles Times: Merwin in the South of France

The myth of summer reading

June is here, and so are the summer reading lists… and, always, as I scan these lists, at my back I hear, Time's winged chariot drawing near .... And I'm bored to tears.

Maybe I'm getting old, or too jaded from compiling lists like these for the Times for many a season, but nothing seems to spell tedium or wasted time more than the lists that media outlets want you to use to fill up your vacation time.

To borrow from another myth, I'd rather roll a boulder up a hill and down again, and then up again and … you get the idea.

What these tiring (and tiresome) lists and random sets of suggestions remind me of is something else:  how the old cyclical nature of publishing is completely gone.

Traditionally Spring and Fall have been the big seasons for the book business. That didn't mean that Winter and Summer were dark -- only that the titles with the greatest chance of spectacular success, financially and intellectually, usually didn't appear then.

I know what you're thinking: There are more windows of opportunity now. A writer who didn't appear in the Spring/Fall now has a better chance of finding an audience. You're right. I couldn't agree more, especially since I share that hope.

But what I'm simply responding to here is how dull and dry the summer reading lists look this year! Various newspapers, magazines, and online publications are telling us to indulge this season in wild, juicy, carefree reading like it's an adulterous affair or a drug habit.

The problem is, most of the lists that I've found -- aside from J.P. Morgan's interesting "billionaire's" list leaked recently -- seem far from offering anything wild or, more important, worthwhile. If you're a Stephen King fan, I suppose you have to read "Mr. Mercedes" -- but what I recommend is shunning the summer lists altogether. Do some research on your own. Search the smaller presses for something admirable that would otherwise fall below the radar and plunge into it when you're not plunging off a diving board or a dock.

And that gives me an idea for my next post: a list of small presses worth your time and consideration. Maybe some titles, too? Coming soon!

I'm sorry for the curmudgeonly tone, my friends, but what do you think? Am I overlooking any forthcoming titles that I should treat like the crack of the literary world?  Let me know. Onward!

RELATED:

• The Wall Street Journal on what the billionaires will be reading this summer 

What is it about the letter M? Three writers' passings

The literary world has taken a very big hit over the past few weeks. It lost three Ms -- Peter Mathiessen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and now Alistair MacLeod. It isn't that the writing world expected more from them. Mathiessen and Marquez were both sick and well past their writing primes. MacLeod,who hailed from Canada, brewed up only a single novel and a small collection of short fiction over his 77 years on the planet.

But the reason why they'll be missed is for what they taught, by example, about the writing life.

Plenty has been said in recent weeks about the first two Ms. MacLeod's passing is far more recent, and his name is lesser known.

But when I read Margalit Fox's very nice overview of MacLeod in the New York Times, I felt such admiration for him that I wanted to pass it along in case you haven't had the pleasure to read him.

While there's far too much of T.C. Boyle or Joyce Carol Oates around (my humble opinion, you don't have to agree with me), there would never be enough of MacLeod. Hurrying into print was never his modus operandi.

"For a long time, I was described as one of North America's most promising writers," he says in quote from Fox's article. "Pretty soon, I was going to be one of North America's most promising geriatric writers...."

Some writers don't publish much because they don't have much to say; others think they have more to say than they do.

And then there's a third kind of writer, the one who understands that narrative truths need to simmer for a long time, like a good pot of stew.

That was MacLeod. To use another metaphor, MacLeod preferred to dig down, setting layer upon layer of family history and fishermen lore like a master mason in the single novel mentioned earlier, "No Great Mischief."

What he taught -- and still teaches --  can be reduced to two words. Be patient.

If any writer is suffering anxiety over finishing a manuscript, over getting things right, try to relax. Breathe. There are plenty of publishers but there's only one of you. Take the time needed to make your story properly sing. That's a lesson that MacLeod teaches us even now.

Staying up late with A.L. Kennedy

I've mentioned before how much I adore A.L. Kennedy's columns on writing in the Guardian. There are many people who post items on this topic, and not very many are successful at it. Either they sound too academic or preachy or remote from anything that we care about.

But not Kennedy -- her pieces have always managed to blend the personal and the practical in a way that leaves you feeling inspired, and realistic, about the tasks ahead of you.

And I've been dealing with withdrawal symptoms ever since they stopped appearing last year.

What did I really expect? That she would want -- or need -- to keep dissecting aspects of her experience as a writer for my benefit forever? Did I think she'd forsake her fiction just for that (her new book, by the way, is the story collection "All The Rage.")

Oh, c'mon now.

Instead, the Scottish author's ken has gotten much wider with a new piece that appeared in the past week at the Guardian. With "Insomnia and me," she talks about something that troubles plenty of people at bedtime.

Her writing life is still there, skirting the edges of the column and informing much of what she says. In a short space, she also offers some affirming perspectives that sound like they've been truly hard-won, not platitudinal:

…[T]ime alone in bed with an unreliable mind is still a battle. When I can't sleep I recite the fears that would harm me most: harm to the man I love, or my mother, ill health, bad ill health, penury, death. It's horrible and pointless. So now I try to use the inventory to rehearse my appreciation for the good I have about me, to promise I will seize the day. What we love can be lost, so why not love it a lot while it's here?

In the end, this column, like all the rest, reminds us that what the best pieces do is communicate and connect us. And the best writers, like Kennedy, very rarely stay settled in one space, one topic, when their curiosity is too great and their voices are pulling them somewhere else.

I'm just glad she's back.

For more of Kennedy, find the link in the blogroll here at Call of the Siren.

RELATED: TWO POWERFUL POSTS

• "How Tough is Motherhood?" at Mummy Says...
• "Expiry dates" at Life As A Widower

Wondercon and my 401(k)

While the literary world is mourning the passing of one superhero right now (rest in peace,Gabriel Garcia Marquez!) and Christians everywhere are celebrating another this weekend, I've been thinking about comic book heroes after taking my boys to Wondercon in Anaheim, Calif. It was the perfect opportunity to make some acquisitions like these

and also to conduct a little research on what's-selling-for-what in the superhero market these days. I still have a bunch of old comics from my younger days, and they should be worth something, right? I just didn't realize how much.

Among the new acquisitions, I absolutely had to have a copy of "The Wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey" from X-Men, even though it's disappointing. Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne ripped little kids' hearts apart with "The Dark Phoenix Saga" back in the 1980s, and this issue is an attempt to heal up what's unhealable. I'm glad to have it, but the entire thing is far too sentimental to measure up to what Claremont & Company created. They chose the best, and only way to conclude that story. Nuff said.

On the other hand, nothing that the immortal Jack Kirby ever created can disappoint. While the price tag on his "New Gods" series scared me off (for the time being, at least), I picked up this nifty issue of "The Demon" instead. Switching companies, from Marvel to DC, did nothing to dilute or change his signature style and voice.  Open these pages and you instantly know where you are and whose world you've entered. Kirby was a true comics mythologist, and in this issue he gives us another terrific origins story for the aptly-named demonologist Jason Blood. Beware, faint-hearted readers!

Finally, I spotted the name of "Claremont" on the cover of a series about the heroes known as "The Sovereign Seven":

and when I realized that the name belonged to the same fellow who created the Dark Phoenix tales, and that he wrote this series for DC, not Marvel, I had just one reaction: I'm in!!!

As far as my 401(k) is concerned, my friends, Yours Truly owns several special old editions of certain comics, but I never knew their value. I never bothered to hunt in any comics price guides or surf e-Bay to see what they were worth.

One of these is an early issue of Daredevil, his battle against the Purple Man in #4, before the blind crusader switched to his devil-red costume:

... as well as this early appearance of storyteller Frank Miller ("300," "Sin City," "The Dark Knight Returns") in Daredevil:

Even then, early in his career, Miller had a fully mature, sophisticated touch. This issue is creepy! There's also a later issue of DD's that features Miller's introduction of the assassin Elektra:

In my mind, I can still see that comic book rack in the drugstore -- I can still hear it squeaking as my mother yelled at me and I frantically searched for something to buy. Elektra's silhouette and the look on Daredevil's face closed the deal for me.

And then there's the Dark Phoenix climactic issue (mentioned above) which is nothing short of Greek Tragedy, Marvel-style:

Well, my good friends, I found that these single issues range from $100 to several hundred dollars. I certainly can't quit my job anytime soon, but it was a nice discovery -- sort of like finding some old savings bonds in the attic that once belonged to Granny.

It's also a nice vindication of a childhood obsession, too. See? All that lawn-mowing money didn't go to waste afterall! What kind of stock portfolio gets this kind of return on investment?!

Not to mention that my boys and I have several more boxes of old comics to examine. Who knows what else we'll find?!!