One Secret Thing

Day 245 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and my mom is still reading Saving Jesus from the Church, by Robin Meyers, for a class and in preparation for the author's visit here in late October.  She is also reading plays for the play selection committee at Heartland Theatre, to help determine next year's season.

Having recovered from The Unswept Room, by Sharon Olds, I am now reading her 2008 book, One Secret Thing, and, oh my God, the long poem "War" is devastating.  It is in several parts, each separately titled, each giving us a glimpse of war through individual suffering or horror.  After this large look at war, I know the poems to come will be about the private family war documented in other poems...but I know love is coming, too, and reconciliation, and some kind of peace.  I see it in the stars.

I saw others in the bleachers reading, too, in between volleyball matches today at the Columbus Day no-school v-ball tourney...some with post-it tabs and bookmarks, but I left people to their private reading moments.

More tomorrow.

A Time of Passion

Day 243 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and I have been reading The Unswept Room, by Sharon Olds, because I had the opportunity and because I like her as a poet.  I've learned a lot from her.  I stand amazed at how she can write about sex, love, family dysfunction, spiritual matters.

I had heard that her marriage broke up, but I still don't know the circumstances.  There are poems in this book that just break my heart.  She is as astonished as I am.  Here are 2 lines from "A Time of Passion":

It never crossed my mind that he no longer 
loved me, that we had left the realm of love.

She's just stating it.  It is so simple and so stunning all at once.  It comes at the end of a sex poem, one of those she does so well, that, on its second read, contains all the ambivalence, threat, and evidence.  All the stuff she doesn't see while it's going on but does see as a poet, later.

I find this frightening.  It's the way the still-married couple is frightened in the play Dinner With Friends, by Donald Margulies.  It's also a movie with Andie MacDowell, Toni Collette (a favorite of mine), Dennis Quaid, and Greg Kinnear.  It might be time for me to watch that again.  I was in the play once.

In the cemetery walk, I am a woman who had an unhappy marriage.  Maybe I am too sensitive to all that right now.  Wooee.

OK, I cheered myself up.  By finding that picture of me upside down.

The Dead and the Living

Day 174 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and today I am pondering the dead and the living.

That is a wonderful book of poems and was my introduction to Sharon Olds. The Dead and the Living was the Lamont Poetry selection for 1983, judged by June Jordan, Charles Simic, and David Wagoner. It also won the 1984 National Book Critics' Circle Award for Poetry. I have taught several poems from this book in literature classes, or used them as prompts or samples in creative writing classes because they are straightforward, readily available in both language and feeling, and have jagged edges and hard emotions, so the student readers and writers respect them. They are real.

But there is nothing for me in them today, no phrase or set of lines to mark the sudden death of Chris Al-Aswad, a lovely young man who lived in my town, came into the bookstore where I work frequently and just a couple weeks ago, and who is/was the editor of a gorgeous online literary magazine called Escape Into Life.

The title so clearly, now, in retrospect, states what he wanted to do, "escape into life."

I don't know the circumstances of his death, nor what he wanted to escape into life from, but I know from his blog that he had troubles, tough times, and tenderness, and that he was driven by glorious aspirations. He wanted to be a writer. He wanted people to read what he wrote. And they did. He showcased art and poetry beautifully in his magazine, got people engaged in the essays; he gathered a bunch of lively, creative writers to make it an exciting place to visit...and now, dreadfully, he is gone.

I see that his mother, Rosalind Al-Aswad, was a visual artist, coming to that after a life as a businesswoman and clothing designer for Sears. She died young, too, at 60, from a debilitating disease. Chris died at 31, much too young.

Sometimes I celebrate, whimsically, the random coincidii of life. Randomness applies more soberly here. In this case, I was at the beach in Michigan with family and had just been talking about Chris with my sister, Chris, saying how delighted I was to have met him and, very recently, taking over when his poetry editor left. (We had just put up the Sarah J. Sloat feature the week before.) Oddly then, mid-week, I had a pang. Something troubling, undefined.

Friday night I dozed on the couch while the rest of the vacationing family played a loud, raucous game of Catch Phrase, followed by Taboo. Then I sat up, fully awake, and went page by page through the Chicago Tribune, not something I usually do. Near the end, at the alphabetical beginning of the small-print obituaries, there was "Al-Aswad, Christopher R.," an unusual name, terribly familiar. I tore it out with my fingers, the 2" x 2" obituary, and carried it around in my pocket till I got home. I kept hoping it wasn't him. But it is.

His wake was Friday, his services Saturday, in the Chicago area, when I was traveling home to the town in which he most recently lived. He is of a mixed heritage, interfaith family--Russian Jewish mother, Iraqi Christian father--and memorials go to the Shem Center for Interfaith Spirituality, 708 N. Harvey Ave., Oak Park, IL, 60302. Or to the Rosalind D. Al-Aswad Memorial Fund, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Office of Development, 37 S. Wabash, Suite 818, Chicago, IL 60603.