Meteor, Influences, Ambiance

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

My book Meteor, which won the Gival Press Poetry Award for publication in 2018, should be out any day now. I'm working on a brief Q & A about it, and this got me to noodling. One of the standard questions for any poet, any writer, is about their influences. I wrote many of these poems an eon ago; indeed, some are more than 20 years old. The most recent poem in the collection is from 2010. (Why did it take so long to publish? That would be another blog post. Suffice to say, I didn't make much effort; I was more focused on writing an epic novel and a book about a book and the Mexican Revolution.)

Back when, I would have said that my main influences as a poet were, in alphabetical order, Raymond Carver, Harry Smith, Stevie Smith, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats. But I think that now, from this distant perspective of 2018, that in writing these poems I was perhaps equally influenced by James Howard Kunstler's razor-sharp nonfiction, in particular, his The Geography of Nowhere, and by certain musicians prominent in the '70 and '80s-- not only by their lyrics, but the physical ambiance they create, the trickster, shapeshifting way they pull down the astral by sound, rhythm, the masks of archetypes. In English, we lack vocabulary for this.

Two examples:

Laurie Anderson, "O Superman"



The Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime"




> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here. 

P.S. If you'd like to sign up for my once-in-a-ridiculously-long-while newsletter, you'll get the news when Meteor is available.

Poetic Alliteration

Poetic Listing

Poetic Repetition

Diction Drops & Spikes

As of this year, the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.

Thanks to the Battle of Hastings of 1066! Because it is a blend of languages, mainly Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, English offers unusual facility for diction drops and spikes, and you, dear writerly reader, if you care to dare, can employ these for a richly dazzling array of effects. Irony, comedy, sarcasm, intimacy, poignancy, revelation, poetry, punch, sass, shock... it's a long list and I'm sure that you can make it longer.

[>>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM]

Here, taken from a few favorite books and blogs, are some examples of diction spikes-- that is, a sudden rise in the level of formality of vocabulary and syntax (wherein it all gets very elliptically Latinate)-- and drops-- gettin' funky with the grammar and using short, sharp words.

See if you can spot the spikes and drops. I separate them out for you below the quotes.

"What then, does one do with one's justified anger? Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose. They generally work. When they fail, she has the ability to dismiss inferior behavior from her mind as coming from inferior people. You will perhaps points out that she will never know the joy of delivering a well-deserved sock in the chops. True-- but she will never inspire one, either."

-- Judith Martin, Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

SPIKE: "What then, does one do with one's justified anger? Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose."
DROP : "sock in the chops"

"Department of Transportation engineers explained that aluminum highway signs bore a chemical film which kept them from oxidizing. And that the film over time formed a halo effect, a light-purple tinge which migrated to stress points on the metals' surface. The regional maintentance engineer didn't think the sign looked a bit like the Virgin, by the way. You must of had to use your imagination. Though maybe, he admitted, he was unenlightened. The manager of the plant that supplied the aluminum sheets assured everyone that they weren't treated by monks or anything. It was done by a bunch of folks in Alabama."

-- Philip Garrison, "La Reconquisita of the Inland Empire"

SPIKE: "Department of Transportation engineers explained that aluminum highway signs bore a chemical film which kept them from oxidizing. And that the film over time formed a halo effect, a light-purple tinge which migrated to stress points on the metals' surface."
DROP:  "...didn't think the sign looked a bit like the Virgin, by the way. You must of had to use your imagination..."
SPIKE:  "The manager of the plant that supplied the aluminum sheets assured everyone..."
DROP: "...they weren't treated by monks or anything. It was done by a bunch of folks in Alabama."

"As I thought about composing a new blog post over the past couple of weeks, I resisted the idea of writing about wildfire, even as the topic claimed a growing share of mind day after day. For one thing, I've touched the subject before. For another, yet another blog bemoaning the lack of precipitation seemed tiresome. Plus, well, geez: fires are such a downer."

-- Andrea Jones, "Out of the Background" in "Between Urban and Wild" blog, July 4, 2018

SPIKE:  "...bemoaning the lack of precipitation seemed tiresome."
DROP: "Plus, well, geez: fires are such a downer."

"When I was a young man in the 1970s, New York was on its ass. Bankrupt. President Gerald Ford told panhandling Mayor Abe Beame to "drop dead." Nothing was being cared for. The subway cars were so grafitti-splattered you could hardly find the doors or see out the windows. Times Square was like the place Pinocchio grew donkey ears. Muggers lurked in the shadows of Bonwit Teller on 57th and Fifth. These were the climax years of the post-war (WWII) diaspora to the suburbs. The middle class had been moving out of the city for three decades leaving behind the lame, the halt, the feckless, the clueless, and the obdurate 'risk oblivious' cohort of artsy bohemians for whom the blandishments of suburbia were a no-go state of mind. New York seemed done for."

-- James Howard Kunstler, "The Future of the City"

DROP: "...New York was on its ass."
DROP: "drop dead."
SPIKE: "These were the climax years of the post-war (WWII) diaspora to the suburbs. The middle class had been moving out of the city for three decades leaving behind the lame, the halt, the feckless, the clueless, and the obdurate 'risk oblivious' cohort of artsy bohemians for whom the blandishments of suburbia were a no-go state of mind."
DROP: "New York seemed done for."


P.S. More resources for writers on my workshop page, including "Giant Golden Buddha" and 364 More Five Minute Writing Exercises.


> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Grokking Plot: The Elegant Example of Bread and Jam for Frances

Writing Loglines and the Concept of the "Eyespan"

The StandStand: One Highly Recommended Way 

to Keep on Writing While Standing

Top 12+ Books Read in 2017

>> CONTINUE READING THIS POST ON THE NEW PLATFORM AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM



This has been a year of extra-intensive reading, the bulk of it for my book in-progress on Far West Texas. Specifically, I've had some catching up to do on the oil industry and New Mexico history (impossible to grok Far West Texas without those subjects). I say this every year but truly, this may have been my richest year of reading yet. I feel so lucky to have encountered these works; each and every one of these authors has my sincere admiration and immense gratitude.

Indiebound

1. The Professor's House 
by Willa Cather
A deeply weird and profoundly American novel. I had been meaning to read The Professor's House for years, and I finally did-- and by uncannily felicitous happenstance, just after visiting Acoma, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde. (P.S. Whoever calls this book flawed I call a puddinghead.)

> Recommended: "The New York World of Willa Cather" at the Society Library, New York City.


2. The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek
by Barry Cunliffe
A brilliant book that evokes the ghost of a lost book and the world it came out of so unfathomably long ago. This is one I look forward to savoring again.

3. Tie:

Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850
by Andrew J. Torget

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Slavery in America 
by Andrés Resendiz

I have been reading intensively about Texas, and that includes its fraught ethnic relations, for the past several years, yet with these two books about slavery-- both recent and major scholarly contributions-- by golly, the whole thang just gelled. For U.S. readers I recommend reading first Torget; then, without delay, Resendiz.

> Also recommended: Podcast interview with Andrew J. Torget by Liz Covart

> Also recommended: Podcast interview with Andres Resendiz by Liz Covart

4. Tie:

The Daring Flight of My Pen: Cultural Politics and Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva Mexico, 1610
by Genaro M. Padilla
It astonishes me that so few Americans or Mexicans have ever heard of the epic poem Historia de la Nueva Mexico-- and that would include Yours Truly, until I found The Daring Flight of My Pen. Padilla's book about Pérez de Villagrá's book rearranged all the furniture in the way I think about the U.S., about the Southwest, and about Mexico-- and waxed the floor and put in new curtains, too.

The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest
by Marc Simmons

I recommend reading these two books together, first Simmons; then, without fail, Padilla.

5. The Eastern Establishment and the Western Experience:
The West of Frederic Remington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Owen Wister 
by G. Edward White
This is an oldie, originally published in 1968 out of a PhD dissertation from Yale University's American Studies. It may be little known, but it shouldn't be. I'll be referencing it in my own work.

6. The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
by Paul Bogard
Beautifully written, fully researched, verily eye-opening.

7. Shrinking the Technosphere
by Dmitri Orlov
This book has an important and urgent message, but it also comes with a gamelan orchestra of super-freaky esoteric undertones. In other words, to appreciate the clanging in there, you have to be ready to appreciate it. Not for the pleasantly numbed of Smombiedom.

8. Resist Much, Obey Little: Remembering Edward Abbey
Edited by James R. Hepworth and Gregory McNamee
Its impossible to go far into reading about the American West without encountering Edward Abbey and his works, and in particular his iconic Desert Solitaire. Resist Much, Obey Little, an eclectic collection of essays and interviews, is at once a festschrift and an adventure in the funhouse of Abbey's mind.

9. Big Batch re: The Oil Patch
Having crunched through a library's worth of reading on the oil industry, herewith a selection of some of the more worthy tomes:

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power
by Daniel Yergin

This one won the Pulitzer Prize when it came out more than two decades ago, and most deservedly. It rewired my thinking about World War II, among many other episodes in the last century.

Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma
by Joseph A. Tainter and Tadeusz W. Patzek
Some years back I had the privilege of being helicoptered out to a working oil platform. It was an unsettling and briskly sobering experience, and I suspect that it primed me to especially appreciate this book.
> Also recommended: Texas Observer interview with Tad Patzek

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
by James Howard Kunstler
So majestically and sometimes hilariously dismal! (I remain a faithful reader of Kunstler's unspeakably-titled blog.)

The Blood of the Earth: As Essay on Magic and Peak Oil
John Michael Greer
Reading Greer is akin to spooning up Swiss chocolate pudding: page after page of smoothly yumsie schoggi. Yes, even if it's got crunchy stuff about oil and-- keep your crash helmets on!-- magic.

When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation
by Alice Friedemann 
This is another one I will be referencing at length when I write about I-10 and I-20, the heavily-trafficked interstate highways that cross the Trans-Pecos.

10. Tie:

Amado Muro and Me: A Tale of Honesty and Deception
by Robert Seltzer

El Paso Days
by Elroy Bode
More about Bode in this post.


11. Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River
by Patrick Dearen
> Read my review about this book for Literal magazine.

12. Books: A Memoir
by Larry McMurtry

13. Abandoned Earth: Poems
Linwood D. Rumney


P.S. My amigas novelists and esayists Kathleen Alcalá and Leslie Pietrzyk offer lists of their top reads for 2017 here and here.

 UPDATE:  Poet Joseph Hutchison offers his list on his blog, The Perpetual Bird, here.  I was so delighted and touched to see two chapbooks I had published some years ago, the extraordinary collection of poetry, Ghosts of the Palace of Blue Tiles by Jorge Fernández Granados, translated by John Oliver Simon (Tameme, 2008), and my translation of the short story by Agustín Cadena, An Avocado from Michoacán (Tameme, 2007). Gracias, Joseph, your mentions are an honor.

FURTHER UPDATE: My amiga poet, essayist and literary translator Patricia Dubrava offers her list of top reads on her blog, Holding the Light, here.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Reading Mexico:

Recommendations for a Book Club of Extra-Curious 

& Adventurous English-language Readers

Top 10 + Books Read 2016

Top 10 Books Read 2006

Recent and Current Reading: Cather, Bogard, Kunstler, Padilla, Abbey

The Professor's House
by Willa Cather
In one of the strangest, most elegant and powerful novels I have ever read, Cather combs apart the strands of the very DNA of North America.

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

by Paul Bogard

If you still want to vacation in Las Vegas after reading this...

Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation 

by James Howard Kunstler

For those who have not yet drunk the Kool-Aid of Geewhizdomerie. Kunstler, maestro of colorful metaphors and hilarious diction drops, is always a wicked pleasure to read. 

The Daring Flight of My Pen: Cultural Politics and Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva México, 1610
By Genaro M. Padilla
At once a brilliant work of scholarship and a powerful personal essay, The Daring Flight of My Pen is vital reading for anyone anywhere who would attempt to understand North American history. 

Resist Much, Obey Little: Remembering Edward Abbey

Edited By James R. Hepworth and Gregory McNamee

One cannot go far into reading about the American West without encountering Edward Abbey and, in particular, his iconic Desert Solitaire. This eclectic collection of essays and interviews is like an adventure in the fun house of Edward Abbey's mind.

For those of you who follow this blog: As you might guess from this reading list I am at work on the book about Far West Texas. Stay tuned for podcast #21; I really am going to post it soon. In the meantime, I welcome you to listen in to the other 20 podcasts here.

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Top 10 + Books Read in 2016

Book Review: Patrick Dearen's Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River

Book Review: Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire

Cyberflanerie: Granola Shotgun on "The Springfield Strategy," Kunstler Interviews Orlov, Rachel Laudan on the Mexico-Islamic Connection, RALPH Mag & More

Granola Shotgun on "The Springfield Strategy"
A few months back I started following Granola Shotgun by "Johnny," a self-described "amateur architecture buff a with a passionate interest in how we all live and occupy the landscape."  So far his posts have been consistently informative and thought-provoking. This recent one on what Johnny terms "The Springfield Strategy" struck my gong on multiple levels: the examples of taking major life-enhancing opportunities others miss; pattern integrity versus pattern corruption / decay; and finally the views of Springfield, Massachusetts itself. (Believe it or not, Springfield makes a cameo in my book in-progress on Far West Texas. Back in ye olde day, Springfield, sprung from the Agawam Plantation on the Connecticut River, pioneer settlement of my just-missed-the-Mayflower ancestor, was the original bleeding edge of the Wild West.)

amazon

A fascinating podcast: James Howard Kunstler interviews Dmitry Orlov on his book, Shrinking the Technosphere.

Orlov's Shrinking the Technosphere is brilliant... but I remain mystified as to why he makes no mention of the works of Kevin Kelly--who also discusses the Unabomber at length in the also brilliant What Technology Wants-- nor any reference to the ideas of psychonaut John C. Lilly.

Orlov now blogs his lengthy, occasionally consternating, always surprising, information rich, often hilarious, and beautifully written essays behind a Patreon paywall-- not a Trumpesque impediment; a buck a month gets you in. But caveat emptor: Orlov can get waaaaay-out metaphysical-- albeit not as far into outer asteroid-belt orbits as John C. Lilly--or, not yet, anyway.

Food historian Rachael Laudan delves deeper into the Mexico-Islamic Connection
(Having blasted apart the story of mole, which my Mexican husband is still recovering from, she's now talking about chicken.)

> See also Laudan's post on When Is the Easter Bunny Not a Bunny? (most assuredly not for vegetarians).

So having spotted the review of Dr. Thoman Cowan's Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, I dashed off an email to Lolita Lark, editor of RALPH mag and by response, ended up with a whole page there, including links to RALPH mag's reviews of my books. Good thing my ego has a tether! P.S. I haven't scrounged up any emu oil pills yet, but yes, I am rereading Cowan. And I'm all for Dr. Cowan's vegetable powders.

Artist and travel writer Jim Johnston looks at the Pinta la Revolución show at Bellas Artes for his Mexico City blog.
(I saw that show myself back in March, highly recommended.)

Not far from my recent stomping grounds in El Paso, landscape architect David Cristiani hikes Tortugas Mountain looking for cacti.

Poet and translator Patricia Dubrava on The Little Engine That Could.

David Allen's GTD blog on Making Use of Weird Windows of Time

How Tim Ferriss Became the Oprah of Audio. An insightful interview with the maestro of mass by Ryan Holiday for the Observer.

(And what of my podcasts, you might be wondering? Stay tuned. Marfa Mondays Podcast #21, which goes to Bracketville, Texas, will be posted shortly. I guess I could call it-- taking inspiritation from Greg Gibson's upcoming "bookectomy"--a podcastectomy. I have been working on it for too ridiculously long a time.)

And finally, just because, here in Mexico City is my writing assistant, Uli Quetzalpugtl, lifting his nose to the glory of the last of the jacaranda blossoms for this year.

Uli Quetzalpugtl with the Jacaranda, Mexico City, 2017.
Photo: C.M. Mayo

> Your comments are always welcome. Write to me here.

Cyberflanerie: Carnyx Edition

Typosphere, Ho! "Stay West" on my 1961 Hermes 3000

Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River by Patrick Dearen

Podcasting: 5 Frequently Asked Questions for Yours Truly

On Wednesdays I run a guest-blog post when I happen to have one. This week's didn't come through. Oh well! So I'm going to talk about podcasting, my new enthusiasm. (Click here to visit my main podcast page.)

WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO START PODCASTING?
I started podcasting back in 2009 because I wanted to make available my lecture at the Library of Congress about the research behind my novel based on the true story, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. The last prince was, in fact, Agustin de Iturbide y Green, grandson of Mexico's first emperor, Agustin de Iturbide. Because the story takes place in Mexico during its Second Empire or so-called "French Intervention," one might very naturally assume that my archival research would be primarily in Mexico. But in fact the Library of Congress has the main archives, that of the Emperor Iturbide (first Emperor) and the Iturbide family. Mexico's second Emperor, Maximilian von Habsburg, has his archive in Vienna and, though I did visit that archive, fortunately for me, there is a nearly complete copy at the Library of Congress. Anyway, I explained all of this is elaborate detail in my lecture, now a podcast, which you can listen to here.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A PODCAST?
There are many ways, and I won't bother count them, but I can tell you, I find it very easy to use Apple's "Garage Band" program. I usually just talk into my iPhone's dictation app and take the mp3 file from there. I am sure professional sound engineers would be horrified. Oh well! If I want to add music, I buy clips at royalty-free sites such as istock.com, uniquetracks.com or Music Bakery.

HOW DO YOU GET A PODCAST ONLINE?
Again, there are many ways, but the one I like to use is podomatic.com. I offer the feed at iTunes. Next year when I start up my Marfa Mondays Project, I plan to also add those podcasts to a youtube page. Stay tuned.

*****UPDATE 1/16/2012***** The Marfa Mondays Podcasts have launched. Read all about it and listen in here.

WHY ARE YOUR PODCASTS FREE?
As they say, information wants to be free. And well, many of my podcasts (such as this one), are, quite frankly, intended to help promote my books and workshops. Others are for my writing students-- a gift to them. Others, such as "Conversations with Other Writers," are just fun to do and I hope people enjoy them.

WHAT PODCASTS DO YOU LISTEN TO?
Podcasting is still very new to me. Just like blogs and youtube channels, there are so many that it takes some time to sift the (alas) few grains of wheat from the Himalayas of chaff. A few podcasts I am delighted to have found are NPR's (and the iPad app lets you put together a playlist); Rice Freeman Zachary's Notes from the Voodoo Lounge; James Howards Kunstler's; and Dr Rita Louise's "Just Energy".

---> For the complete archive of Madam Mayo's guest-blog posts, click here.

Trailers for Books: A Selection

Trailer for 'The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire' by C.M. Mayo from ParsingPlace.com on Vimeo.

Working on the soundtrack for a video shot in Mexico City by Deborah Bonello... meanwhile, just had a fascinating conversation with Julia Sussner, specialist in narrative architecture, who made the trailer for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire (watch the 47 seconds here) (or click above). It's not yet an established genre. Anything goes. Herewith a few widely divergent examples:

For Sandra Gulland's historical novel, Mistress of the Sun

For Miranda July's short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You

For James Howard Kunstler's novel, World Made by Hand

For Stephanie Bennett Vogt's self-help book, Your Spacious Self

For Steven Hart's The Last Three Miles: Politics, Murder, and the Construction of America's First Superhighway
Note: You might want to mute the sound on this one.

For Penny Peirce's self-help book, Frequency

For Anat Baniel's self-help book, Move Into Life

I'd be interested to know about more unusual and/or especially good book trailer videos. Suggestions?

James Howard Kunstler, Marion Nestle, Paula Whyman

Well, it's Monday, and it's the usual prescient doom-and-gloom over at James Howard Kunstler's infelicitously named Clusterfuck Nation blog. Alas, Madam Mayo recommends it. Related to the food scarcity issues Kunstler discusses is the rapid, widespread and largely unnoticed deterioration in the quality of our food supply. For more on that, be sure to check out Marion Nestle's latest, Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine. (Nestle's website is Food Politics.) And, on a happier foodie note, check out my amiga Paula Whyman's blog post on Baking for Writers: Thanksgiving Edition. More anon.

VidLit Monday

It's both a new art form and a new PR tool: the book trailer, a subspecies of "vid-lit," so called after VidLit, a company that makes videos for books. Here's an example of a book trailer (not by that company, as far as I can tell), for James Howard Kunstler's novel, World Made By Hand, which certainly encourages the idea of a "movie based on." And here are several more examples of book trailers. Less-slick are Steven Hart's Thrill-a-Minute Skyway Cam video, apropos of his book, The Last Three Miles: Poltics, Murder and the Construction of America's First Superhighway and Gayle Brandeis's video for her new novel, Self-Storage. As I have a novel coming out next year, I'm interested in the form, but I'm also enchanted by the possibilities of incorporating sound and image (both still and moving) to fiction itself--- especially flash fiction. It's a very different concept than dramatizing the work, as in a movie-like trailer. Neither is it anything like an almost purely visual feast (e.g., Tufte's video about his sculpture, "ZZ Smile"), or even, as Internet film-maker Nick Askew does, a series of mini-documentaries on www.soulbiographies.com.
P.S. Here's some ancient history: the 2005 National Public Radio piece on vid-lit.

New on Madam Mayo's Blogroll

Jim Kunstler, Prophet of Doom. P.S. Quick, buy a twike.