Lit-Mag-Love-Train

I love literary magazines. It isn’t hard to do. They’re packed with beautiful and strange and provocative material. I love them! So much! For the times they make my chest feel wonderfully inadequate, and for those when I have to squirm, often in awe, and for others when I don’t know what to know, or to think, really, except that there’s something to the words that I can’t keep myself from wanting. 

I want as many people on my lit-mag-love-train as I can get; there are quite a few already, but I’m greedy: I want more. And it’s not even my train, I’m just a passenger. But I’m on it, I’m snacking, it’s fun, I’m meeting stories, poems and essays, reviews, critiques, interviews, sometimes people I know, a lot of times not. I make friends. I’m not the most outgoing person, but stories

(stories because they’re what I tend towards, although I’ve been lately very much enjoying interviews in The Paris Review, the reading of them feeling to me a little how I do when walking around at night as people’s curtains are wide and house innards visible, which is to say completely curious and sometimes covetous and other times comforted, maybe a little freaked out, as freaky as it may be to read what I’ve just revealed, but it’s true: I like to see what people are doing, or what a room does by itself, and interviews, in their many ways, provide that same satisfaction, about heads and processes and approaches; also, I’ll take any tight poem that wrings its extra out and leaves me with chewy, rich prose, which, really, is what I look for in stories, too, so we’re back, at last, to what I started with),

stories have a way of making me feel at home, even when I’m unfamiliar with the structure. But when I’m unfamiliar, I’m curious, so come the questions, to which I receive answers, or part of one, or nothing, really, that I can do much with at all, but even then, these bodies have invited me to ask, which is some of the most fun, revelatory engagement: how does the writer make this feeling in me, how does this character get away with saying that, how can something so mundane and originally familiar be suddenly so tilted and terrifying? How! Do! They! Do it?!

I sound a little like a nut. I’m some of one, sure.

Before I worked at G. Roots, I grew up visiting here, brought by parents to pick through kids’ books and, later, coming on my own to wander the store until I remembered a day contains time and tasks within its time needing done and then, because I’d lost all track of things, I skedaddled. And then I came back. This happened in high school, in college on breaks to home, and then when I moved home but worked elsewhere, and then again during times back from grad school, and now that I’m here and one of the GR bees I get to be with the shelves every day I’m in, and then on some days I’m not expected, too, because I just can’t help myself. All my time in here was, and is still, research – isn’t that the best? That all these guts be things that, to interact with, will yield good, even if I don’t always like or get it, and then the times that I do. Still, at some point down some road, I’ll benefit from having run into the material, I know it, I’ve felt it, I’ll feel it again. It’s fantastic.

So maybe I’m not so much a nut as I am a smart cookie. Like one of those from the bakery two doors down, built of super dough full of seeds and carob and the sweet and the salt and the nuts, slivers of them, or meal, for texture, taste. Maybe.

Are you on my train yet? Have you heard its horn? Are you making your hands like a megaphone and yelling CALYX as we blow past, Corvallis, or is there a toot that sometimes sounds like a tone the eco(system) would make, or others like something tin, maybe a house in our valley’s rain and wind, and sometimes you can tell that it’s not in Paris anymore, though that’s where it began, that lilt. Sometimes it’s public. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s normal, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s the way a box might sound, a coffin, maybe, if somehow you got in it and shouldn’t have and were doing your best, then, to get out. To sound the alarm. Some! Are! Jubila(n)t! Others strictly poet(ry)ic.

In college, then grad school, I got myself into all the bookstores I could find, which, in grad school, in my little Wyoming town alone, made for four independents and a Hasting’s box, cruising their contents, looking not only for books but lit mags, too, old ones, new ones, going home and searching online for them, taking any found to my basement to cull, erecting towers of them on the bedside table. Researching. Because each one is an anthology, a sampler, of what the editors found interesting, what they felt fit their call for submissions, if they had one; what, at the heart of it all, moved them. It’s insightful stuff, seeing what moves people, and if you’re writing, that kind of information is indispensable. You might be hoping to publish. You might be hoping to start your own little animal to put on the train or maybe to have in your yard, to feed, to exercise, to love. Perhaps you’re hoping for direction. Perhaps you’ll find just the place that’s been looking for you, and you it.

This town, beaver as it is, is one lucky duck, too, beefy with writers, many of whom work at the university, and many in the MFA Program in Creative Writing. MFA meaning, among other things, even more writers working on collections or novels or chapbooks and, writers, am I lucking into you reading this? Will you be visiting us to find not only the books but the literary magazines, too, ready here to inspire, full of what the big guns and kids are doing these days with language and story, dripping with discoveries. And then: just who will you find who wants to eat your story or poem or essay because it’s too good to let go once received? Come and decide! Do you see this? Visit! We’ll sweeten the deal, up the ante, ticket you for the lit-mag-love-train by offering a discount to students who come for a journal and mention their studentness. Like: Hey, I’m in the MFA. Or: Hey, I’m in high school and dig journals. Or: Get this, I’m in undergrad and this whole literary magazine thing really, really revs me, you know? I know. I’ve been there. I’m there right now, which is here, ready to welcome all you about to stream in. To point you to shelves and hear your suggestions for more journals. I will nerd out about literary magazines with you any time you want. Seriously. And remember, I’m not the most outgoing. But when it comes to this, if nothing else, I grin a lot and flap my hands and yeah, I ooo and ahhh and point and elbow and everything. Whatever it takes to get you stoked about these gems with me, supporting writers sticking their prosey, poetic necks out, and editors and/or publishers sticking out their pockets, and all of them their hearts, giving us these thoughtfully arranged words to build worlds in our heads and make us feel.

The Power of Mooch

     The life of a grown up can be a busy place. We’ve all been there. And although we are all lucky enough to live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, there are times when the solace and wisdom found in the nature around us is overlooked or forgotten. These are the times nature can help us the most. The birds the trees, the bugs the leaves, and even our very own cats and dogs can connect us to something that is still and soothing. 

     Finding this can be profound, at least, but it doesn’t have to be melodramatic all the time. It can be simple, succinct and fun. This is exactly why I love reading the comics and children’s books of Patrick McDonnell so very much. Not only is he an award winning cartoonist who declaratively illustrates our companionship with and love of nature and animals, he is a real crusader for animal rights. He sits on the national board of directors for the humane society and regularly works with animal protection groups.

     His collections of comic strips are always great to have when you need a pick up. My copy of Stop and Smell the Roses at home has well worn pages that I have opened many times for a quick and quirky dose of animal wisdom. His newest collection, Our Little Kat King, is even better! Mooch & Earl, and other various woodland and suburban creatures, bring a smile to the face and the feeling that everything is right with the world. 
     Recently, his collaboration with Eckhart Tolle was released in paperback. Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from Our Dogs and Cats is one of those books that I buy in bulk and give away as often as possible. Each page presents one of McDonnell’s illustrations, and words by Eckhart Tolle that remind us to live in the present moment. They direct the reader to look to their pets as Zen masters who always live in the now. It is poignant, heartwarming and most importantly applicable in our everyday lives.

     What Tolle says in Guardians of Being sums up McDonnell’s illustrations pretty well saying, “Everything natural –every flower, tree, and animal – has important lessons to teach us if we would only stop, look and listen.” Patrick McDonnell so effortlessly shows us that in our busy lives we can be present, content, and compassionate. What’s even more, and probably the most important is that he allows us to share this with our children.

     Over the years, McDonnell has written several children’s books. They all follow a similar picture book format, featuring around forty pages of his wonderful comic illustrations alongside delightful lines of text.  The Gift of Nothing was his very first children’s book. In it Mooch the cat doesn’t know what to get Earl the dog as a gift because he already has everything. In the end he discovers that he can give Earl a moment; a precious present moment with his best friend. This cute story has a very Zen feel. I have used it during story time often- both with the physical book and as an interactive oration. In either situation children love the book and understand the message.
     In Just Like Heaven Mooch the cat wakes up to quite a foggy day and decides he must be in heaven. The story is a look at everyday beauty and wonder.  The people and places we love are to be appreciated here and now. It reminds me of my foggy morning commutes. Is heaven really just a place on earth? In South, McDonnell actually leaves out print and tells a story just with pictures. I love reading this particular story with children and letting them help tell the story as we go through each of the illustrations. A small bird is left behind by the flock when they fly south. Who will help him find his way??? Mooch of course! The simplest of his books is probably Wag!, which explores what makes Earl the dog’s tail really get going. Earl knows the secret to the joy of life. Do you?

     One of my very favorite picture books is Hug Time, which was recently released in a board book version. How exciting! It can be shared with even younger folks now. Jules the kitten goes on a mission to hug the whole world! He hugs a giraffe, tree, petite pudu and even a “species brand new!” It’s all so precious! 
     And of course, what better way to connect our children with the wisdom and beauty of nature than through a picture book version of Dr. Jane Goodall’s biography? Me…Jane presents the story of a young Dr. Jane Goodall who wanted most of all to live with and help animals. Then what do you know? She does. The story is laid out a little different than his previous books with anecdotes straight from Goodall’s autobiography.  When Jane was young, she and Jubilee (her stuffed chimpanzee) started the Alligator Society for young naturalists. McDonnell includes well executed illustrations from her ‘nature notebook’ as she explores the wilderness around her, including squirrels and chickens! Not only does this book challenge children to explore and learn from the world around them, it also shows them that big dreams can, and do, come true. Kids aren’t the only ones who need to be reminded of this. We all do.

     I think Patrick McDonnell says it best himself -“The world is so big…And yet so small. It’s time that we embrace it all.”