nickcourtright.com

Year One, by Franz Wright

nickcourtright — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:51:06 +0000

Year One

I was still standing
on a northern corner.

Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.

The Next Big Thing: remember chain mail? This is that, but for writers.

nickcourtright — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:38:59 +0000

The Next Big Thing is a pretty cool self-interview situation in which one author tags five other authors, and then those authors tag five other authors. And if you do it, all of your dreams will come true.

At least, that’s what I’m assuming.

But it’s a good thing, and I was tagged by the excellent Kyle McCord, who was tagged by Matthew Guenette who was tagged by Mary Biddinger who was tagged by Jennifer Militello who was tagged by a writer in England who was tagged by someone else on earth or maybe not from earth. Here are my answers, and who I’m tagging for next week.

What is the working title of the book?

The title of the done published book is Punchline, which was initially titled Summer Book and then Book A, though those last two were less titles, and more just the names of Word documents. I do think it interesting, now, in retrospect, to imagine what would have been different had one of those ended up being the actual title…

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The idea of the book came from the desperate need to write a book. I was stalled on another project and needed something new, so I wrote and wrote and this is what happened. I was paying a lot of attention to the Bhagavad Gita and ancient Greek philosophy at the time, if I recall.

What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. “Philosophy” or, ack, “Spirituality,” if you’re feeling fancy or if I have the strange desire to want to sell more books.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

This is a weird question, since my book doesn’t have any characters, per se. There are people in it: the first poem is called “The Despot,” so I suppose he would need to be a character, perhaps played by Francisco Franco or Saddam Hussein, only then the camera pulls out to reveal that the despot is in fact you, whoever you are.

If there were a narrator he’d be part Tommy Lee Jones, part Ryan Gosling. The former because I’d listen to anything that guy says and take it seriously, the latter because hey girl, why the hell not?

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Punchline is an exploration of what we know and what we cannot know, and how we come to grips with and find beauty in a world that offers a frustrating lack of answers to our most pressing mortal questions. Or something like that.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

One month. I wrote 30,000 words in May of 2010 when my son was one-year-old, then spent the rest of the year editing down what was, in fact, mania.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Federico Garcia Lorca’s words and murder, the aging of Picasso, the Gospels and what to make of them, Ram Dass’ maharaja and mother, scale and anthropic bias, E.O. Wilson and Moore’s Law, the wisdom and crazy brain of William Blake, Einstein’s faith, fighting the most famous line of James Wright, Photoshop re: The Soviet Union/China/Truth and History, whether we can trust Ezra Pound, rocks and non-rocks, Aristotelian substantialism, the wit of Carl Sagan, Gandhi’s legacy, American culture and the ethics of its exportation, Borges’ ceaseless rereadability and genius, the brilliance and contradiction of the Bhagavad Gita, Kantian ethics, the I Ching as a superstitious non-superstitious guidebook, the Dalai Lama being exactly what he’s supposed to be, the sun god Ra, Joyce Carol Oates’ impeccable sense of evil, Whitman of course, The Indian Removal Act, Target and its brethren, Shunryu Suzuki who saved my life, the dance-pop outfit YACHT, Lao-Tse if that’s how we’re spelling it now, Paul the Apostle as a source of conflict, Robert Bly the cantanker and sage, what happens after you die, my wife and child and what they mean.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Its pretty cover, designed by Justin Runge.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book was published in April of 2012 by Gold Wake Press, run by Jared Wahlgren, and home to many excellent books that honor mine by sharing a label.

My tagged writers for next Wednesday are:

Noah Falck
Trey Moody
Rose Solari
Bryce Wilson
Marcus Pactor

Robinson Alone and Kees Remembered: An Interview with Author Kathleen Rooney

nickcourtright — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:20:04 +0000

Literature and art and music have a long and storied (sordid?) history of key characters offing themselves ingloriously, with the strange effect that sometimes this offing increases their legend, and thus, the profundity and damage of their work, to previously unthinkable levels. Consider the cases of Hemingway, Van Gogh, and Cobain for a top-level sampler platter of this phenomenon, and we all know the list is much longer. On that longer list there is a question mark next to the name Weldon Kees—a mid-twentieth-century writer of acclaim, he mysteriously disappeared to, potentially, a new life in Mexico, or alternately, his self-ordained doom at the hands of the Golden Gate Bridge. Kathleen Rooney, the dynamic founding editor of Rose Metal Press, explores Kees’ story in Robinson Alone, her phenomenal and groundbreaking new novel-in-poems. We called up Rooney to talk Kees, plagiarism, and, of course, cross-dressing.

Click here to read the interview!

Mother Ginger and The Nutcracker: An Interview with Jenna Bush Hager

nickcourtright — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 17:19:06 +0000

Every year at the Long Center is one of the most worthwhile pieces of what some would call “high culture” Christmas tradition. The long-running and always fantastic Nutcracker, the Tchaikovsky-scored piece featuring such awesome characters as Clara and The Mouse King, is something everyone should see at least once. This past weekend, the non-dancing role of Mother Ginger was played by none other than Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of one of the most controversial American Presidents this world has ever experienced. We had an opportunity to chat for a few minutes with the soon-to-be-mother, a New York resident whose answers prove beyond a doubt that she’s a politician by DNA—although we wish she would have answered direct questions more, well, directly, we understand that we, unlike some, can’t always get what we want.

Click here to read the interview!

Discovering the Afterlife and the Democracy of 7-Eleven: An Interview with Poet Dorothea Lasky

nickcourtright — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:16:10 +0000

Some of the greatest, most insightful, most dangerous, and most damn interesting writing happening in today’s world gets lost in the din of the complicated messes we call lives. But some of this just can’t stay under the radar forever, and large among those cases is that of Dorothea Lasky, a spicy and daring writer whose new book of poems, Thunderbird, ranges far and wide in its efforts to give us something not only to be entertained by, but to think about. Lasky, a New York resident and graduate of Harvard and Penn, is on her third book, and her largely unpunctuated and propulsive poetry is some of the most energetic literature out right now. With this on the table, we called up Lasky to talk Indonesian goddesses, where to find democracy, why “confession” is a dirty word, and the problem of persona.