Image Junkyard 2, Week 4

Another day, another cathedral, this one a block of white stone with the obligatory papal pink marble and blue ceilings crushed from lapis lazuli. As we crane tired necks to find the point above the bare-calved angels where Mary’s upraised hand pins the tented sky to its firmament, a beggar in soft papal pink drifts toward us. She wears guilt between her fingers and a soft skirt of papal pink that clouds her sandaled feet, a one-coined hand out in the universal language and a photograph of two children in the other. Rebuffed, she rebounds, as if the air presses her to us, not a fly, but poplar fluff, so weightless. Later, after we have buried our heads, unpalmed no coins, given only our dead faces, after the tour, we see her floating from a café, pinching a cornetto, the soft, flaky dough falling to the cement only to be picked back up by the wind.

Image Junkyard 1, Week 4

I tread cobble stone and brick whose mortar age has turned to sea foam, color of my wedding dress. I’ll wear it all soft green and sewn pearls, and under a year’s May sky, I’ll glint like glass lapped clean from sand, hand tracing yours, older, a hand that collects calluses like shells on an empty sun bitten afternoon in Sorrento. In Spoleto, though, far from the coast, even the roofs grow weeds and mold stains the terra cotta to sunset, orange, slate, coral. I’ll wear a pink rose in my reef of dark curls.

Original Prompt 1, Week 4

“Though we vacationed in a castle, though I/ rode you hard one morning to the hum/ of bees that buggered lavender, and later/ we shared gelato by a spotlit dome/ where pigeons looped like coins from a parade--/ we weren’t transported back to newlyweds.”

Beth Ann Fennelly, “Souvenir”

My mother, before the dresses of soft ash, halved pink and bitter, ate it glazed with sugar, but I respect the grapefruit, the only of its surname that can spoil the tongue for hours, trap the mouth like my mother’s Japanese jewelry box, shut now in Georgia, holding the dark against splinters of jade, a coral earring, busted pearls, and two age-rubbed Dire Straits tickets. Though I returned twice for the sunburnt taste of the puritan grapefruit sorbetto, though I let the Pantheon lower behind me, a massive stone and marble sunset, and thumbed the nozinno to take Rome’s only clarity into myself, and knew the words to “Tunnel of Love” a busker thrummed before a policeman, long burn between his lips, I did not miss my mother out of death, into the piazza. It was not for her eyes that I turned my back and threw two centesimi to the Trevi, it was for my fiancé, to pull him here with my return. I poured my mother over the blue of sky and the rails of the Walnut Street Bridge, letting her drift to the Tennessee, dark rain. She was not there in the ash still clinging to my sandals from a Saturday in Pompeii. 

Peer Comments 1, Week 4

To The Mummified Remains of Saint Ubaldo on Top of Gubbio

Known for humility, you lie at the apex, out of reach,

pedestaled, exposed, the years pressing down a man

to a shrunken child’s body. Protector of Gubbio,

who protects you, day after day, at the front of the Basilica

throngs before the marble altar with raised arms,

cameras in hand capturing your grotesque,

rigor mortis reflection? What do you reflect on?

Known for poverty, now forever clad in gold brocade

of a bishop’s robe, the silhouette of your open-jawed

mouth, stark as if a tourist socked a punch to your gut

and you forgot to tighten. Your mitre cap belongs

on a larger head. What is the smell of the air

trapped inside crystal, stale, medicinal? Behind you,

sunlight through the decorated windows streams your life

before the finely carved doors locked you out,

before fragments of frescoes cloistered you in.

Known for fervor and miracles, can you see the candles

stored in the nave, do you join the race?

What do you celebrate now? A misplaced pigeon?

What would you give for just one shadow

across your face, black, sharp, featheredges?

At night do you slip out and down steep Mount Ingino?

Do you wander the cobbled streets of Gubbio with feral cats,

where a used lift ticket rolls in wind spattered

with roasted boar? Do you stop mouth agape, amazed

your name emblazes postcards inside darkened shops?

And when you fly up, back to your glass perch,

before slipping into a cold bed, do you dismiss the bells

reminding the time, touch your tight sienna-tinged flesh,

notice you are not so different than another March,

another April, for centuries wondering

where they put not your brain, but your heart?

from Jo’s “Junkyard 3—Week 3”

Jo, I love this draft’s imagining of the interior life of Ubaldo from within the interior of his glass case. My favorite details and what I see as the strongest lines of this draft include: “years pressing down on a man to a shrunken child’s body,” “as if a tourist socked a punch to your gut,” and the lines that follow, critiquing his cap and wondering what it smells like inside the case. I find your imagining of Ubaldo’s nightly flights really strange and interesting, though I think you could really strengthen this section, making it active, no longer a thought, but the truth: “At night, he slips down steep Mount Ingino to feel the cobbled streets of Gubbio with the bottoms of his sienna-tinged feet, surrounded by feral cats….” When you get to the line about Ubaldo seeing the postcards, it breaks the magic, goes with expectation, portraying the stunned historical figure out of his time period. I suggest you either cut this, or make a turn against those expectations, maybe he isn’t stunned or disgusted or disappointed? He is used to this face and the faces that surround him constantly. I definitely think you have a false ending with “for centuries wondering/ where they put not your brain, but your heart?” due to its sentimentality. I wonder if his life of submission translates to his life now, after death? He’s soft as his body is rigid? I also prefer this in third person, rather than an address, at least for a draft, because I could see it creating more distance and decreasing the pity and sentimentality that anyone would feel for the poor guy. I really enjoyed reading this strong, imagistic, imaginative trip.

Don't Look Now

Italy is the setting of choice for many narratives that turn on sinister incidents. Daphne Du Maurier’s short story “Don’t Look Now” utilizes Italy as space not only for murder, but the supernatural and absurd. Italy, Venice more specifically, is a site for the return of the dead and premonitions of death in the text, as twin Scottish spinsters see John and Laura’s recently deceased daughter and John sees a moment that will take place after his own death. John and Laura believe they are on a holiday in Italy in order to escape their own tragic history through submersion in a much grander historical narrative, but this site of antiquity only serves to remind them of the personal, in such a way that leads John to his end. Because of the dwarf murderess’s childlike appearance and the loss of a young daughter, John thinks he will redemptively save a child’s life and instead only dies his “silly” death. This text seems to reject the popular conception of Italy as a tourist site where visitors from less old and more developed countries can come to be cleansed in the fount of sanitized, museumized history. Instead, Italy ends those who insist on using it in such a way and Italy’s history only reinforces their own, even using their history against them.

Daisy Miller

Henry James’s Daisy Miller depicts a set of characters, Winterbourne and the Miller family, in two distinct European settings: Vevey, Switzerland and Rome, Italy. The behavior of this cast of characters does not dramatically differ from location to location, but the opportunity to demonstrate character is vastly different between Vevey and Rome. The society that surrounds remains the same, especially in that it focuses its disapprobation on Daisy’s liberality, specifically in regard to gentlemen friends. Winterbourne refers to Daisy as “an American flirt,” connoting that this is her behavior at home as well as abroad, but I wonder if the Rome of this text figures as a space of opportunity for indiscretion and the transgression of social boundaries. The novella shows that regardless of the oceans or national borders that the Miller family crosses, “society” remains fixed, though, especially in Rome, this society seems to find it far more difficult to maintain its usual punishments for unacceptable behavior. This society is structured as a panopticon whose surveillance never fails. Rome, however, is a space where Daisy’s misadventures can become tragic and therefore forgivable. I wonder if Daisy dies of the “Roman fever” because Rome resists this type of tourism. I see Daisy as viewing her adventures as delightfully scandalous, but in the context of Rome, her behavior is hardly impressive. Daisy Miller’s ending honestly stunned me, and I still haven’t really been able to formulate my thoughts on the text in light of it. I know there’s also this idea of artifice and authenticity at the crux of the novella. I can see some Daisy Miller in some of the moments here on our trip.

Peer Comments 1, Week 3

“Most people are excited when they lose their first tooth. I was one of the few who wasn't in fact, I was incredibly unhappy with it. Why? Well, because I can't think of anyone who enjoys falling from a tree head first.

I've always been a climber. I climbed up beds, chairs, tables, and when I was old enough, trees. My parents tried to get me into gymnastics but I preferred climbing what I wanted, when I wanted. I never did like being told what I could and could not do. I never liked being told what to do, period.

So, even though my parents told me not to climb too high and come down slowly, I deliberately pushed myself and climbed up to a branch about six feet up. Much higher than I'd ever gone before. When Mom called me in for dinner, I had trouble climbing down.  But being the proud, stubborn girl I am, I refused to call for help. I would get down under my own power, goshdarnit.

Unfortunately, I miscalculated and my foot slipped sending my headfirst into the ground. I ended up landing mouth first on a stump and knocking my first baby tooth out, even though it wasn't lose or ready to come out.  It hurt like hell, and my Mom and friends had to dig for the tooth.

But I got a Sacajawea gold dollar for my trouble though. So, yeah, it was totally worth it.”

from Emily’s “Week 2: Memory 1: First Tooth”

Emily, I can see your opening strategy, and I think it’s great that you’re playing with those kinds of devices, specifically a reversal of expectation. In a second draft, you might play with a longer introduction with more subtlety. I admire your effort here. One of most important things to keep in mind as a creative writer is “show, don’t tell.” Ask yourself constantly as you write, “How can I make this more sensory? How can I show the reader what it was like to be here and feel these things?” For this draft in particular, you might consider describing in more detail the tree, the view from the top, hearing your mother’s call, and the sensory experience of falling. The specificity of the coin is a good sign of training, and I would love to see you describe that coin in more detail. What was it like to see it glint as you removed your pillow? I’d also love to see you show the reader how you are stubborn, instead of just saying, “being the proud, stubborn girl I am, I refused to call for help.” I really enjoyed reading this memory, because it was very specific and an unexpected choice. I can see parallels to your experience here in Italy through all of the climbing we have been doing. How might you relate a young love of climbing to climbing here, and much more interestingly, how might you juxtapose the reluctant and accidental loss of your first tooth with a specific “loss” through your Italian experience? Has your sense of identity, independence, nationality altered? You could potentially stage this as a “loss” and a Sacajawea gold dollar “gain.” One of my favorite quotes used in Davidson and Fraser’s Writing Poetry is from Emily Dickinson, who said, “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” I imagine you can’t remember every factual detail from this early experience, but part of creative writing it this idea of slanted truth. Don’t be afraid to re-imagine. Maybe you don’t remember all the details, but when you add some creativity to a factual account, you can sometimes more truthfully present that moment than you could with simple fact. Good work!