CLA: Dislocate Magazine

By Swati Avasthi, Blog Editor

Junot Diaz’s recent novel, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, has won so many awards that when University of Minnesota’s Professor Evelyn Ch’ien listed them while introducing the author at his reading at the U of M last week, she had to stop and take a breath. After reading from his book, Junot Diaz answered questions from Professor Chi’en and from an audience so large that people were sitting on the floor. The blunt question I wondered, that I always wonder when a writer acquires such deserved approbation, is how did he do it? How did he create a book that is so rich with character and that is so flexible and inventive with language?

During the presentation, he read and spoke slowly, deliberately, as though he wanted the air to transmit the weight and texture of each word. Or perhaps, I was just interpreting his manner of speaking through my lens of nerdy-wordy admiration. But then he spoke about language, talking about how he layered linguistic choices and worked for ten years to acquire the linguistic muscles to incorporate such a variety of languages in his book.

After the presentation, during the book-signing, I asked him if he was working from the unconscious, letting the characters speak through their own voice, or the conscious, deliberately constructing sentences one at a time. He answered that you write every sentence over and over again. So, he told me, language on the page comes from both.

So, how did he do it? While Junot Diaz didn’t give us the key (as if there is one) he did give me a clue. The absorption of language slowly filters to the unconscious. It filters though hard work and time and observation, even for a master, much less the rest of us.

I left with evidence that of the unwritten rule: as a writers, we must always listen, must always hear the millions of languages around me, before we can speak, before we can write.

Posted by Dislocate Literary Journal at 11:16 AM | Permalink

By Swati Avasthi, Blog Editor

When Peter Johnson introduced his work at a reading he and Nin Andrews gave earlier this week at the University of Minnesota, he told his audience that he hoped we would leave and either stare longingly at each other over our cups of coffee at Starbucks or make good use of our beds. (One of which I did and I won’t tell you which one.) Moving from his poem “Almost Happy� to “Happy� Peter Johnson is a master of using the little moments and little pieces of life to describe one of the hardest things to write about: happiness. The humor he employs in his poems lead us to both laugh and ruminate on the metaphors. Nin Andrews addressed happiness in a way we all can relate to: the power of the orgasms. After reading from her orgasm poems, she told us she would get “less nervy.� But she didn’t. She kept us on the edge by using unconventional, interesting and effective strategies in her poetry that draws the reader so close into the world of the poem that we don’t want to leave.

I have come to believe that the language of happiness is disappearing from our literature and from our speech. I find myself fighting against its gradual and subtle decline in my conversations when I’m trying to describe the simple pleasure of a day gone by when I’ve finished all my work, gotten my kids fed, and am ready to read in bed or in my own writing.

But I was treated to a listening to two distinguished writers challenge my assumption that happiness is disappearing from our language. Look to their work for a simple metaphor, a repeating structure, or the celebration of an orgasm. Read how they guide us to a path that is as rife with conflict as with pleasure. I know that I will be reading and re-reading, studying their prose poems to know more about how to seize and represent moments of pleasure on the page. And I hope you will look for them in our upcoming issue of Dislocate or, of course, between the covers of their books.

Posted by Dislocate Literary Journal at 8:01 PM | Permalink

by Holly Vanderhaar, Nonfiction Editor

If I go a week without questioning my decision to become a writer, I know something must be wrong. I always operated under the assumption that if you were meant to do something, that something would flow easily and be a joy—at least most of the time—to undertake. Not that there aren’t moments when the writing is going well, when I feel I’m (dare I use a cliché?) “in the zone� and I experience something that must be akin to a runner’s high. (Or at least what I imagine a runner’s high must feel like, since I generally try to avoid that particular activity.) But that “writer’s high� comes infrequently, and most of the time I have to bribe or trick myself into confronting that blank white page.

Many years ago I considered getting a PhD in psychology, and for a while I was a research assistant in a behavior lab, working with rats and pigeons. You know, the stereotypical “peck this key and get some food� gig. Anyone familiar with operant conditioning can tell you that if you are trying to strengthen a particular behavior like pecking a key—or, in our case, twenty-six of them, give or take—the most effective technique is that of intermittent reinforcement. What this means, essentially, is that the animal gets a reward, but only some of the time. Slot machines are a prime example; keep pulling that lever and eventually, your reward will come. Don’t give up! It could be the very next time. Or the next. Or the next. Vegas is just one big rat and pigeon colony, in more ways than one.

I give my students tips to overcome writer’s block. By now, we’re all familiar with them. Take a walk, listen to music, meditate. Free-write. Use a prompt. But I end my spiel with the home truth that sometimes you just have to push through it. Sometimes the techniques won’t work. In the real world, we face deadlines and we don’t always have the luxury of waiting for the gentle throat-clearing and whispered suggestion from the Muse. I would estimate that my own work is about ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration (seasoned liberally with profanity). I used to think that meant I wasn’t meant to be a writer, that I didn’t enjoy it enough. But I suppose that’s how vocations work. For whatever reason, and by whatever force, you are called to do something. The rewards may be few and far between, but they will come. Just keep pecking those keys.

Posted by Holly Vanderhaar at 9:47 AM | Permalink