Wrack, hacks, and inky courage

I griped about the quality of the AWP Writer's Chronicle last month, so it's only fair that I should applaud the current issue, which includes a bunch of interesting stuff:

1. An author interview that actually made me want to read something new. I've never read anything by Don Lee, but the interview inspired me to order his novel Wrack and Ruin. The main character raises brussels sprouts. I'm trying to remember the last time I encountered a brussels sprout farmer in a book and I'm drawing a blank.

2. A passionate essay by poet Martin Espada, who thinks poets should be less precious and more political. Commenting on Shelley's claim that poets are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," Espada writes,

Poets should have no trouble identifying with being 'unacknowledged.' They grouse about being ignored, about paltry attendance at readings and royalty statements that would cause most novelists to jump off a bridge. Yet poets also contribute to their marginalization by producing hermetic verse and living insular lives, confined to the academy or to circles of other poets, by mocking themselves as childish and unworldly, by refusing to embrace their role as unacknowledged legislators. The only antidote to irrelevancy is relevancy. The British poet Adrian Mitchell famously said: 'Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.'

3. A helpful article by Brenda Miller, "The Case Against Courage in Creative Nonfiction." She argues that the way to be courageous in creative nonfiction is not simply to let one's inner pain bleed all over the page but to focus on form. Caustic contents require sturdy containers; "For some writers," she says, "the conscious use of form can sometimes be the only way certain kinds of truths can be approached at all. Since these truths need to be contained more forcefully, form essentially becomes the writer's inky courage." She appreciates the "inadvertent revelations" that occur when "the essay now seems to be reveal information about the writer, rather than the writer revealing these tidbits directly to the reader." That's a fine line, but Miller provides some concrete examples and methods to help students achieve this kind of "inky courage."

Three good articles and a book full of brussels sprouts winging its way to my office. What's not to love?