Reese Okyong Kwon

The one weedy stalk

reesekwon — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:49:39 +0000

It’s not the story though, not the friend

leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,”

which is the part of stories one never quite believes.

I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain

it must sometimes make a kind of singing.

And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps—

First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

- from “Faint Music,” by Robert Hass

Too bad for marxism

reesekwon — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:20:25 +0000

“Not that I’m a marxist of any kind. I would have made a wonderful marxist if I’d been born into it, probably, which is the only way it could have stuck. Too bad for marxism. I feel toward marxists the way you feel toward Greek Orthodox people when New Year’s Eve comes and they get to go to this fantasy mass with basso priests droning, candles flaring, gold leaf all over. If only you could believe it. Also my temperament is marxist in that analytically looking for the cui bono or materialist explanation is nearly always correct in retrospect. Also I love marxist academics because it turns them into such absolute bloodhounds when it comes to critiquing actually existing capitalism. But as for the dungheap states these bouquets of humane thought have turned into as they decomposed, no thank you and again no thank you.”

- Norman Rush, Mating

The weird singing of a demiurge

reesekwon — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:20:40 +0000

“Writing a story wasn’t as easy as writing a letter, or telling a story to a friend. It should be, I believed. Chekhov said it was easy. But I could hardly finish a page in a day. I’d find myself getting too involved in the words, the strange relations of their sounds, as if there were a music below the words, like the weird singing of a demiurge out of which came images, virtual things, streets and trees and people. It would become louder and louder, as if the music were the story. I had to get myself out of the way, let it happen, but I couldn’t. I was a bad dancer, hearing the music, dancing the steps, unable to let the music dance me.”

- Leonard Michaels, Sylvia

The 25¢ press

reesekwon — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 02:46:51 +0000

Fitzgerald in a letter to his editor, Maxwell Perkins:

“Would the 25¢ press keep Gatsby in the public eye,—or is the book unpopular. Has it had its chance? Would a popular reissue in that series with a preface not by me but by one of its admirers—I can maybe pick one—make it a favorite with classrooms, profs, lovers of English prose—anybody. But to die—so completely and unjustly after having given so much. Even now there is little published in American fiction that doesn’t slightly bear my stamp—in a small way I was an original.”

- from Max Perkins: Editor of Genius

Chekhov said he wrote as easily as a bird sings

reesekwon — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:10:05 +0000

“Chekhov said he wrote as easily as a bird sings. That would be nice. I’m like a bird who’s listened to all the other birds singing. Over there, in the next yard (very distant), are the songs I like. For a while I imitated them as best I could, until I figured out my own song, which I am now contentedly singing. Of course, what the bird doesn’t know (because it has a birdbrain) is that it isn’t just a matter of learning one song. You have to come up with a new song for every book. For now, I’ve got the song for this book. And that’s when it becomes fun. That’s why you don’t want to finish too quickly.”

- From an FSG “Work in Progress” interview with Jeffrey Eugenides

The space where a thought would be

reesekwon — Mon, 30 May 2011 02:55:49 +0000

“In Sappho’s poem, her addresses to gods are orderly, perfect poetic products, but the way—and this is the magic of fragments—the way that poem breaks off leads into a thought that can’t ever be apprehended. There is the space where a thought would be, but which you can’t get hold of. I love that space. It’s the reason I like to deal with fragments. Because no matter what the thought would be if it were fully worked out, it wouldn’t be as good as the suggestion of a thought that the space gives you. Nothing fully worked out could be so arresting, spooky.”

- From the Paris Review interview with Anne Carson

Call and Response

reesekwon — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:01:11 +0000

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture, it’s said, except maybe it isn’t, because what about the memorable passage in Howard’s End about Beethoven’s Fifth (“Now comes the wonderful movement: first of all the goblins, and then a trio of elephants dancing”), or the ending of Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” or Vinteuil’s sonata in Proust, or, or, or?

I’m very excited to be part of this April’s Call + Response line-up, in which four visual artists will create work in response to four short literary pieces, including one by yours truly. The other writers are Stuart Dybek, Naomi Ayala, and Srikanth Reddy; the artists are Amanda Burnham, Maggie Michael, Jon Bobby Benjamin, and TM Sisters. The organizers, William Bert and Kira Wisnewski, had asked for a short, previously unpublished story, and I’d been rereading “Sonny’s Blues,” which got me thinking about writing about musical performances, which reminded me of a burlesque show I’d once seen on the Lower East Side.

I’d once, long ago, tried to write about that show, and didn’t like what I had; I tried again, and turned it into the story that will be on display starting April 16th at the Hamiltonian Gallery in DC, side-by-side with what Maggie Michael makes. So! Maggie Michael’s X will in some way be inspired by my Y, which was inspired by a few burlesque dancers’ Z, which I believe is like talking about music about architecture about dancing?

AWP!

reesekwon — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 04:23:46 +0000

It might sound like the cry of some sort of an endangered bird, but it’s just a yearly gathering of writers and editors, who are, I suppose, a variety of fairly endangered bird. It’s my first AWP, and I’ll be reading at:

1. A panel reading on “A Voice of Her Own” on Saturday, 2/5, at noon, in Virginia C, the Marriott lobby

Also reading: Alexander Chee, Porochista Khakpour, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, Hasanthika Sirisena, and Tiphanie Yanique

Description: This reading presents writers who have given fictional voice to women from patriarchal societies. What are the joys and responsibilities of creating characters from women who traditionally have had fewer opportunities to speak for themselves? Drawing from their experiences with and research into Japanese, Iranian, Caribbean, Korean, Sri Lankan, and historical French communities, both native and expatriate, six writers will read and discuss passages featuring the women they have made.

2. An off-site reading with American Short Fiction on Friday, 2/4, from 5-8 PM, at the Black Squirrel.

Also reading: Josh Weil, Michael Martone, and Melinda Moustakis, as well as poets John M. Anderson, Haines Eason, and Kathryn Nuernberger from the Bat City Review

Not gone, not here

reesekwon — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:31:41 +0000

From Alan Shapiro’s “Wherever My Dead Go When I’m Not Remembering Them”:

Not gone, not here, a fern trace in the stone
of living tissue it can quicken from;
or the dried–up channel and the absent current;
or maybe it’s like a subway passenger
on a platform in a dim lit station late
at night between trains, after the trains have stopped—
ahead only the faintest rumbling of
the last one disappearing, and behind
the dark you’re looking down for any hint
of light—where is it? why won’t it come? You
wandering now along the yellow line,
restless, not knowing who you are, or where,
until you see it; there it is, at last
[...]

Full text (and audio!) here.

Cheryl’s Gone

reesekwon — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:21:18 +0000

A reading! Thursday! I’m reading on December 16th with the excellent people of Cheryl’s Gone.

The line-up:
Jennifer Atkinson
David Kinloch
Dolsy Smith

The details:
December 16, 8pm
Big Bear Café
1st & R NW
Washington, D.C.

A representative sentence of the story from which I’ll be reading:
“She’d agonized over what she should wear, which was pretty funny, since, as he’d pointed out, she probably wasn’t going to be in them very long.”