Signals and Signs: Detroit Rollouts

Rhonda Welsh, Red Clay Legacy [Poems](Crimson Kairos, 2010). http://www.rhondawelsh.com/fr_home.cfm   Rhonda, a former co-worker, is awesome!

Mark C. Durfee aka The Walking Man, The Line Between (Motor City Burning Press, 2010) Go here: http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/  
 












Cassandra Swiderski, Passengers (2011). This "novel features two stories set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in Kansas." Swiderski (Spieles) is Collections and Resources Librarian, Macomb Community College (South Campus), in Warren, Michigan, USA.  As an adjunct, I taught English at Macomb for several years and heartily support a fellow librarian!













Storylandia 3, The Wapshott Journal of Fiction: Michelle Brooks, Dead Girl, Live Boy, a 2011 novella; Ginger Mayerson, Editor. Here's one way to order it: https://www.createspace.com/3547683













Finally, here's an artifact from Super Bowl XL (2006) "Motown Style." It's a bar napkin scan, but as such, is it a signal or a sign?

Today's Rune: The Self.

James R. Tomlinson: Adopted Behaviors

Adopted Behaviors: Flash Memoir, Short Stories & Flash Fiction by James R. Tomlinson. [Detroit]: Motor City Burning Press, 2010.

FLASH MEMOIR
“The Trigger Man & His Accomplice”
“A Creative Nonfiction Escape”
“This One’s for the Birds”

SHORT STORIES
“Adopted Behaviors”
“Bread & Water Revival”
“Thumbprints, Deadlines”
“Jail Bait”
“Floss”

FLASH FICTION
“The Sober Truth about Tyler & Zachary on Bickerstaff Street”
“Animus”
“Pitch”
“Still Life in Detroit”
“If You’d Only Pay Attention”

Jim Tomlinson intones many of the selections included here with a wry -- and sly -- voice, reminding me of William S. Burroughs (especially Junky). There’s almost always an intentionally displaced sense of time and space as in Costa-Gavras films like Z and Missing.*

“Jail Bait” reminds me in part of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Commit a Crime,” but inverting Coumadin for Red Devil Lye -- and reversing the intent of the woman from loathing to affection.

Tomlinson’s choices for names are interesting. Is it synchronicity or coding? I don’t know. But take the first line in this story:

“Joshua Liddy swallows rat poison and rushes out the door to beat the high school bus to the corner of Samsa and Conner” – to peep at a young musician he calls Greta (like Hansel and Gretel?) 

Liddy makes me think of G. Gordon Liddy; Samsa, of Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung / The Metamorphosis. So far as I can tell looking at a Detroit street map, there’s a Connor but not a Samsa; I have no idea where "Jolene and Lareby“ might be, either. Then there’s the character named Rizzo – bringing to mind Rizzo the Ratso from Midnight Cowboy. Rizzo likes vermiculite:

"Vermiculite," he repeats, "helps the plants to grow. I told you that. . ."  

It’s fun to get caught in the mesh, looking for new clues, absorbing the tales entirely and also deconstructing them.

From "Thumbprints, Deadlines,“ here’s a deftly detailed  working class scene – it would seem as truthful an observation of neighbors in my Pennsylvania hometown during the 1960s as for the narrator in Hazel Park, Michigan: 

My childhood home two blocks away, a bluish-grey bungalow with a fatigued yellow porch and rusted-metal awning. From that porch, I last saw my father standing in the front yard, sporting a hunter’s orange cap and matching rain slicker; a sot with a balled-up fist clutching mother by her frizzy blond hair while she swung her cast-iron frying pan, not in defense, but as a tool of her emotion. You turned down overtime, didn’t you?

To quote JR: "Adopted Behaviors is . . . related in some way to the human condition and/or prison experience." Also note: "He teaches convicted felons for the Michigan Department of Corrections." 

Though the examples given above are from the longer pieces, I like JR's flash memoirs and flash fiction even more. They are pithy, too.

It’s good to see Motor City Burning Press revving up. Before you can say John Lee Hooker, more productions, I suspect, will be wooshing down the road.

http://motorcityburningpress.blogspot.com/2010/07/mcbp-debut-adopted-behaviors.html

*Free associating, these things surface after re-reading Adopted Behaviors: Deadpan agency. Culpability. Accomplices – complicities – implications -- accomplishments. Everything is part of the dynamic. PoV remains actually involved while seemingly detached. Shared ownership of what happens, part of the mix. Complexity.

 
Today's Rune: Harvest.

James R. Tomlinson Interview: Part 2

Here's the second part of my first formal interview with James R. Tomlinson (aka Jim Tomlinson and JR Tomlinson). I'm aiming to do my take on Adopted Behaviors (Motor City Burning Press, 2010), his excellent chapbook, soon.  

Erik: How did you come to write and produce Adopted Behaviors and where would you like to see Motor City Burning Press in the future?

Jim: I thought it was time I put together some of my writing into a chapbook.  Motor City Burning Press seemed like a perfect fit. I organized my favorite pieces into three categories: flash memoir, short story, and flash fiction. The flash memoir sets the tone, gives the reader an idea of what I’m all about. Spencer Dew, a reviewer for decomP magazinE, compared me to a pugilist, stating that I pummeled my words onto the page. Most of his references came from “Jail Bait,” which won a short story award at Wayne State University. Also, Dew claimed that I viewed myself in a sort of detached way, like I was observing myself from a distance. Hell, anyone who looks in a mirror has moments like that. The only difference is I’m trapped on the inside looking out; maybe it’s metaphysical, or mental, all I know is that I’ve got these golden handcuffs around my wrists waiting for the perfect opportunity to escape. Physically: I hope to retire from the prison system in six years; mentally (for now anyway): I hope to escape through my writing.

I’m not sure what’s in store for MCBP. What I do know is that my actions have been deliberate: first a chapbook and then an e-book for The Clarity of Night. My way of saying, “Hey there fellow MCBP comrades, look at me, look at what I have to offer!” If it’s not impressive, fine, I’ll read submissions, stuff envelopes, shag coffee, whatever it takes. Perhaps one day I’ll be invited to the party, instead of always kicking at the door. Trust me, I do know how to kick.

Hot off the press, please see Jim's latest, "The Trigger Man and His Accomplice" at: 

http://www.sleetmagazine.com/selected/tomlinson.html 

For Motor City Burning Press, see:

http://motorcityburningpress.blogspot.com/

And for JR's Thumbprints:

http://jrthumbprints.blogspot.com/

Today's Rune: Partnership.

James R. Tomlinson Interview: Part 1

A fellow leftie, James R. Tomlinson (also known as Jim Tomlinson and JR Tomlinson), author of Adopted Behaviors (Motor City Burning Press, 2010) and other works, graciously agreed to conduct a written interview recently. Part 2 will follow tomorrow, with hyperlinks.

Erik: Give us some background on your life.

Jim: I’m not sure where to begin. I made my first appearance in this world in 1963 at the Bad Axe Hospital in Michigan’s Thumb. I was breech born. I came into the world feet first. I’m not sure why this is important, but for some reason I feel it set my trajectory in life. Also, I’m what some people would call an “evil” left-hander. As for my childhood, I can’t complain. My father, an autoworker, taught me how to ride motorcycles and snowmobiles as well as how to handle a gun. I still have my 1978 “Successful Michigan Deer Hunter” patch. I’ll never forget the feeling of shooting something bigger than me. Sleet Magazine published a flash memoir of my first hunting experience under their Irregular section; it sums up my memories of those impressionable years. Susan Solomon, the editor, said it reminded her of Lionel Dahmer’s “A Father’s Story.” I’m just glad my days of killing wild animals didn’t escalate into something far worse.

As for my career, I never planned on being a prison educator. I believe an accumulation of small events led me to where I am today. My grandfather used to tell me stories about working with trustees at Jackson Prison’s old farm system, how the trustees would disappear for short stretches of time to get friendly with the animals. It’s always the abuse of animals and unsavory characters that I remember. I work with plenty of unsavory characters. There are days where, like Davy Rothbart (a former Michigan convict-teacher turned writer), I wish I’d made a clean break from the concertina-wires and gun towers. Nineteen years is a long time to teach the unteachables. I’d like to think of myself as a civilized father-figure giving advice to a bunch of Dexters, someone trying to teach convicts how to uncomplicate their lives, how to reconnect with their positive side. My teaching practices may be a bit unorthodox but how else do you teach a serial killer?

End Part 1.

Today's Rune: The Self.  RIP, Tony Curtis and Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde).

A Follow-up with Mark C. Durfee

As a sequel to the September 6 post on Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit, here's a little more information about the poet/author, Mark C. Durfee, quoting him directly:

Durfee is thought to be an Americanized version of the French, Dupris. The family left France in the 16th century during the Huguenot oppression and found itself a hundred or so years later in New England via Old England as Durfys' and Durfees' The Durfees are still a large family in New England with banks and streets, schools and trash bins carrying on the name. My particular branch moved through the upper mid-west with a Durfee settling in MI doing what Durfees do best which apparently is; reproduce. My father Donal* B. Durfee married My mother Mary Elizabeth Stewart not long after they met. The old man was working at a Cunningham's drug store as a pharmacist and mom was just out of college. Mom was first generation American (Scots-Canadian) while pop's family had been here since the Mayflower or thereabouts. The marriage which lasted all of their lives spawned 5 kids of which I was the fourth. Born in 1954 I was not quite at the head of the Boomer generation and not quite the tail end of it. Not quite a hippie and not quite a disco dancer. I went to the same Catholic school from 1st grade to 11th grade when it closed. I had failed 9th grade Algebra twice and was not allowed to graduate early so I went to another HS and was politely asked to leave as soon as I had the 1/2 credit I needed. I have since then dropped basic algebra 5 more times, (my proudest failure).

I entered the US Navy in April of '72 and became a radar operator on a WWII era Destroyer. My sea duty lasted about 2 years and didn't take me any further afield than the Atlantic Ocean, Halifax NS to Jacksonville FL. In mid-74 the ship was running in hurricane seas and I was foolishly outside heading to my duty station when I took a rogue wave off the starboard side. I almost, but not quite got, to meet Poseidon that day and in return for not going over the side to see the old god, I took a fracture to the left elbow instead.Three days later I was off loaded in Newport RI and that was the last time I saw the ship. I went to Philadelphia Naval Medical Center and became drug addicted over the next year. I left Philadelphia in May of '75 in the midst of an extreme drug psychosis, I was 20. July 28th, 1975, the day I turned 21 I left Detroit and spent the next four years walking, hitchhiking and generally avoiding capture. I have seen North America from Cape North NS to San Diego, Chilliwak BC to Key West FL, Moose Factory Ont to New Orleans LA and points between. I've spent fair amounts of time in Philadelphia, New York City, Berkeley, Chicago, and came back to Detroit permanently in 1979.

While the tribe of heathens I was spawned from is well educated, rife with advanced degrees, I myself never completed any formal schooling beyond a for profit trade school that taught me fundamental auto mechanics, which I eventually excelled at as a Master Auto *ahem* Technician. The above paragraph is my Majoris Curriculum Vitae. I began, much to the shame & chagrin of my father, to write poetry when I was 14. I don't remember writing pining teenage love drivel because I am my mothers son. She fought for the rights of people in Detroit's worst neighborhoods as a social worker and she brought me on board at about 11 years old. We'll never know though because when I went in the navy someone burnt my journals. I didn't care but I didn't stop either. I just never kept anything I wrote after wards. That is until I met community college where I found some encouragement in the endeavor. In 2002 I began to keep, in a loose fashion, everything I wrote. I have seven completed full length manuscripts that need editing, over a hundred essays on various matters of social and political interests of mine and as of this writing somewhere between 2000 and 3000 pieces of verse. I used to be humble about the writing, giving the pat answer of "I write because I have to." Bullshit; I write because I can. God within me allowed me this talent, shows me ways to develop it and, I use it unashamedly. My grandmother Mary Stewart started me off in this poetic ideation. She was a housewife who had a professional life before marriage. She encouraged me with Frost, Sandburg, Dickens, Browning and Guest, among others. My personal favorites are Clemens, Crane, Bukowski (of course), Brautigan, with some of the Russians thrown in for measure Solzhenitsyn & Chekhov and some of my struggling contemporaries I read on the Internet.

As a matter of taste I do not struggle for rhyme or specifically defined meter but a simple flow in the patois of a certain piece. I believe that everything written should not only be readable but it also must be presentable in a spoken word venue. It is that balance I am working on now.

Here's a link to Mark C. Durfee aka Walking Man's blog:

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/

Today's Rune: Flow. *This is correct.

The Walking Man's Detroit

Why would a country devote so much time and energy and people power in faraway places like Iraq and Afghanistan when it's left so many of its own great cities to crumble? Why so much effort to "win the hearts and minds" of inhabitants of distant lands, and so little effort to help its own struggling inhabitants?

Those are my framing questions as I take up Mark C. Durfee's Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit (2009). Mark writes from the heart of Detroit. He is has seen Detroit and many other American places with his own eyes; aside from military service and four years of wandering, he has chosen to remain in Detroit for much of his life, even though the city is down to some 750,000 people -- from a high of 1.9 million in the 1950s ("CAN IT BE SO?").

The mix of prose and poetry in Stink is very effective. This is not a Chamber of Commerce sponsored book by any means. Mark's work bears witness to Detroit realities: pervasive municipal corruption, neglect, abandonment, implosion. Senseless violence, furtive police responses (at best), prejudice cutting in all directions.

Stink: Poetry and Prose of Detroit is the very model of a jeremiad for Detroit, for urban dwellers, for humanity at large. Yet Mark also holds out hope for people power, for those who can topple the corrupt and usher in better things, a more civil kind of status quo, a real civil society.

Stink is a reminder that we have as a society been drifting off course. Toward Iraq and Afghanistan (and to Vietnam before them, and to the ever-sprawling suburbs), and away from our deepest problems.

For more, see:

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/2009/08/pimpin-stinkdetroit-style.html

Today's Rune: Defense. On Labor Day (Monday), HBO will air The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, a documentary set in Ohio but obviously pertinent to Detroit and the rest of the USA, too. 9 p.m. Detroit time, 9/7/2009.

This Wheel's On Fire

Today I was going to post in praise of books, too, but for now, a shout-out to Motor City Burning Press. Check the link below or on ye olde sidebar for the fifty dollar logo contest. Lots about Detroit to work from. What does Detroit mean to you? To me, it means the Red Wings are about to win tomorrow night! But much more than that, of course. Cars, Industry a la Diego Rivera, sports, music, architecture, the new press and art in general. The people. Race relations. A powerful symbol of the USA for a century. Tons of history going way back. Here's a chance to make your mark and earn some running money:

http://motorcityburningpress.blogspot.com/

Photo of "The Big Tire" on I-94 by moi, Erik D. France, while driving. Multi-tasking, you know.

Today's Rune: Initiation.

John Lee Hooker: Urban Blues

A great album: John Lee Hooker's Urban Blues (1967). This is the one that features "The Motor City is Burning," a personal take on the '67 Detroit Riots (brazenly politicized in the MC5 cover version -- but this one is much better, the real thing). JLH has a powerful electric sound on this album, with a very raw feel. In addition to "The Motor City is Burning," songs like "Mr. Lucky" and "Backbiters and Syndicaters" stand out -- the first is kind of creepy (imagine Mr. Lucky -- angel or devil? --standing in your room, telling you how lucky your life will be) and the second is just plain cool.

"Hot Spring Water" is a two-part mini-story about a dude trying to contain his deranged girlfriend/wife; and "Cry Before I Go" vs. "Think Twice Before You Go" are flipsides of a man leaving a woman and a woman leaving a man. In other words, in this one album John Lee Hooker writes a whole book on life. For an extra period piece, there's always, "I Gotta Go to Vietnam/(I Don't Wanna Go to Vietnam)."

Love Detroit! Go Red Wings! Good luck to GM! And a salute to Motor City Burning Press!

Today's Rune: Signals.

Accolades: Arte y Pico Awards

I humbly "pass the peas" on to five bloggers with the understanding that we're all busy living in the modern world. No hard feelings if you choose not to accept at this juncture but three extra cheers if you do!

The rules:

1. You have to pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

[Johnny Yen generously gave "Erik's Choice" an Arte y Pico Award: "The breadth and depth of Erik's blogging is amazing. Whether it's Iggy Pop, Diane Arbus, the White Stripes or Albert Camus, his posts are illuminating, interesting and entertaining." Shucks. Thanks, Johnny!]: Here Comes Johnny Yen Again at http://johnnyyen.blogspot.com/.

2. Each award should have the name of the author with a link to their blog.

3. Award winners have to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who gave them the award (done at the end of Paragraph 1).

4. Please include a link to the “Arte Y Pico” blog so that everyone will know where the award came from: http://arteypico.blogspot.com/ (Arte y pico: El arte es maravilloso, mas aun cuando se puede compartir con otros).

5. Show these rules.

And now (drum roll), my choices for the Arte y Pico Award! What they all share is consistency over time, depth, and seriousness of purpose, with a sometimes funny twist:

Lana Gramlich, The Dreaming Tree http://lucidflora.blogspot.com/

I thoroughly enjoy Lana's focus on photography and artwork, dreams and cultural advocacy. Beautiful, dreamy, but also sobering about our global prospects.

Charles Gramlich, Razored Zen http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com/

Charles writes a lot about writing, family, place, teaching, and just about anything under the sun, and he does so with exceptionally measured fairness and experientially-derived wisdom.

James R. Tomlinson, JR's Thumbprints http://jrthumbprints.blogspot.com/

Jim's writing draws mostly on his experiences as a prison educator, a dramatic niche with all sorts of possibilities, but let's not forget his colorful posts on fishing, neighbors and family, dogs, landscaping, and some real cool photographs of yesteryear.

Sidney Williams, Sid Is Alive http://www.sidisalive.com/

Sid's eclectic posts embrace cats, writing, technology, culture, and a rich variety of life experiences. He also writes about family and friends and always seems to be able to maintain a very positive disposition.

Mark Durfee aka The Walking Man
http://www.themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com

Mark regularly exhibits great strength and intensity whether he's articulating thoughts about Detroit, politics, culture, memory or life in general, laying down poetry, or rendering philosophy in action.

It's always a great pleasure to read these blogs and to participate in this freewheeling, virtual -- and vital -- community. Thank you, all.

Today's Rune: Partnership.