Chekhov's Mistress
Kleinzahler Redux
I recently mentioned August Kleinzahler’s memoir, Cutty, One Rock, with one of his poems to give you an idea of how well he writes. Tingle Alley also featured an essay of his against Good Poetry (at least as it is chosen for the masses by our sonorous companion, Mr. Keillor ). So to add to the mix, I just found Kleinzahler’s diary he posted for a week last year at Slate. Here’s a brief excerpt from the first entry:
“4 a.m.: What the hell is going on up there now? It’s a blupblup sound like one of those sci-fi-mad-scientist-laboratory-experiment sounds. I disapprove of the young at this hour.
I have been in this rent-controlled apartment here in San Francisco’s Haight District for 23 years, 23 years just about today, in fact. Happy anniversary. Might as well be an anniversary: I’m married to this flat. If I ever had to move, my options would be very limited, to say the least. The logical next stop would probably be a trailer park on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. I can see myself now, throwing empty half-pint bottles of Jim Beam out the window at rattlesnakes…
It’s noon in London now. My friends there are thinking about lunch. ”Should I have a split of red with my kebab?“ they’re asking themselves. ”Why not?“ Terrible piss-artists, the Brits, especially my writer friends. In New Jersey, my old, recently widowed mother is reading through the Times after breakfast. Whenever she encounters anything about Bush she mutters, ”Schmuck“ under her breath, like a curse.”
It’s all very funny. Read it. If I could write like that, my wife would read this site once in a while instead of those “mommy blogs.”
This is how I came upon it: the Contemporary Poetry Review -> their site The Page -> to the diary on Slate.
Read widely, think well, and write often.
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