18. Readings } A leg. & bones.

At a party in Iowa City hosted by Erika Jo Brown, I tripped over a pair of glittery red and gold trimmed cowgirl boots. I crouched down to right them but ended up staring at ‘em for more than a few minutes—till Joshua Unikel took me aside to talk poetics.

I didn’t think about the boots again till I lay down for a three hour nap before John and I needed to leave for Northfield. Those boots shone above me in the dark hotel room, a pair of Mars lights.

Many to thank for Iowa City. Especially poets Rob Schlegel, Keisha Lewellyn Schlegel, Joshua Unikel, and Matthew Klane. A good crowd attended the reading at Prairie Lights. I was thrilled to meet Cole Swenson, whose books I’ve been reading since I came upon Park at Talking Leaves in Buffalo, about a decade ago.

The next morning John and I read and spoke at St. Olaf College, a visit arranged by Kaethe Schwehn, who then brought several of her colleagues to our Magers & Quinn reading in Minneapolis. There, we read with Alan DeNiro, who whispered to me a very odd anecdote just before I got up to read, something he’d read in the paper, about a girl whose bones were crystallizing. I said, “Don’t you mean her organs?” He looked at me funny and I wondered if he’d said anything to me at all.

We enjoyed Milwaukee for its local kindness: “Stef” the roller derby announcer, Avital from Brazil, and Jo at Buckley’s on Cass. We read there too. At Boswell’s. Not only a bookstore, but a museum of tin Band-Aid boxes and abandoned card catalogs. I flipped through and found the card for The Nets of Space by Emil Petaja. I didn’t dream that book!

Last Wednesday I returned to UConn to give a reading at the Co-op. Thanks to Kim for her reportage and to Ms. Staubach for hosting me. Eliza Smith, beloved New Genre intern and Shakespearean scholar attended, as did Katelyn W., to whom I gave a copy of Werewolves and Shapeshifters, and Emily W.—she and I talked Spenser and though Ben Johnson wrote that “Spenser has no writ,” we’re inclined to agree with Coleridge who admired the “indescribable sweetness and fluent projection of his verse….”

Sunday found me in Providence, R.I., where I happily spent a couple hours on Wickenden Street, in a waterfront park, and on a block of cement in a parking lot. The sun set, just behind a factory (three smoke stacks); behind me, when the clouds—gray, pink (purple, white)—broke, the moon. Not full. I’d’ve stared longer at the sky, watched the whole of its transition from day to night, but I was due at Abe’s Bar for the Cousins Reading Series, hosted by William Walsh and Darcie Dennigan.

Darcie, who just happened to be Kim’s teacher (at UConn) introduced me lovely with a few kind words. I read with John, who entertained us all with the lighting and an excellent reading, and with Matt Bell and Carol Novak. Better than the incredible sky was the company of two old friends, Jeremy Withers, who gave me a copy of his solo album (more on that later) and Elizabeth Dooher, now a sculptor in New Bedford. Both have saved my life many times; their presence, revitalizing.

As I drove home on very dark and narrow roads, I caught the glimmer of a deer’s eye in my headlights and slowed to a stop. The deer crossed the road—paused to gaze at the car—and then into the forest.

Tonight, I’ll sink Manhattan.

17. Virgil dreams & } smoke.

Kelly Spitzer selected story from Color Plates and interviewed me for Issue 29 of SmokeLong. The interview took time: I answered the first question on the west coast and the last on the east. Fair enough. I like the questions. For instance, she asked what my weirdest childhood memory was and after some hemming and hawing, I replied:

“In early November, which is by far the eeriest time of the year—at least in New England—I was in the woods near my house—a strictly forbidden locale. I was, uh, seven? I was pretty deep in the woods and I took a path I hadn't taken before. It was probably about three in the afternoon—the sun already a little low in the sky. From somewhere off the path I heard a grunt. This scared the living daylights out of me, I was sure it was a wild boar—not likely, but, you know, I was seven. I didn't want to run away. I knew from experience that dogs tended to chase me when I ran, so I kind of backed up for a while, took every step painfully slow. Somehow, I managed to walk a loop, and ended up off the path at the mouth of a huge pit. I kid you not. I peered over the edge. The low light lit just a crescent of the bottom of the pit. It was, I thought (remember I was seven, so who knows), about fifteen feet deep. And I heard another grunt. Oh God it was so loud, Kelly! I saw a big animal, uh, kind of bumble through that crescent of light and I ran. I crashed through brush and branches, until I found my way to the path and finally to my little neighborhood. By the time I got home I was wheezing pretty hard and it took my worried mother a little while to get the story from me. She was mad, of course, that I'd been in the woods, but not madder than she was a) glad I was home and b) troubled that there was a large animal in a pit in the woods behind her house.

I hope this isn't a let down but there really isn't much else to the story. I guess Mom called the police or animal control or something. I eventually found the path again—foolish curiosity. It was full-on winter by then and the ground was covered with snow. A little distance off the path I found a frozen pool. I poked a branch through the ice. It wasn't deep, a few inches, all that remained of a vernal pond, probably. I don't know if that was the spot. I told my buddy Brian about it and we believed fervently that there was a beast tunneling in the woods behind my house and then we got to junior high and didn't believe anymore (and didn't hang out anymore, either).”

Truthfully, I’m not sure that’s the weirdest story from my childhood. I mean, childhood is weird, man.

Tomorrow, John Cotter and I head west to Iowa City, where we’ll read at Prairie Lights; from there we travel to Northfield, Minnesota, to Minneapolis, and finally Milwaukee. Here, John provides a few more details.

To Virgil: Toward the end of The Aeneid is a simile that caught my eye: “Just as in dreams when the night-swoon of sleep/ Weighs on our eyes, it seems we try in vein/ To keep running, try with all our might,/But in the midst of effort faint and fail;/ Our tongue is powerless, familiar strength/ Will not hold up the body, not a sound/ Or word will come: just so with Turnus now….” (Fitzgerald trans.)

We’ve all had this dream. Running from a threat, we’re mired in dream-tar. Virgil wrote about that dream 2,030 years ago (give or take), and that dream was common enough then for Virgil to use it to explain the way Turnus’ moved while fighting Aeneas! When our sleeping selves calls up that imagery, we’re tapping into something ancient. Perhaps what chases us in the dream has changed. Maybe not. We wake from the dream and a spear pins us to the ground.

16. Werewolves & } Small Press Saturday

John Skipp’s latest anthology, Werewolves and Shapeshifters, is published. I’ve not read much of it yet—my author’s copy arrived two days ago and most of my reading time is owned by Virgil’s The Aeneid and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (and assorted secondary materials). I read Steve Duffy’s “Side-Effects May Include.” I realized after the first line that I’d read it before, but I thoroughly enjoyed it again. I must have first read it in Exotic Gothic 2 (ed. by Danel Olson).

Duffy first came to my attention with his first collection, a set of M.R. James pastiches. Then “The Penny Drops” (written in collaboration with Ian Rodwell). I also published "Glass Stoppered Bottles" in issue #3 of New Genre. Soon after, I started to see weirder stuff, altering my first impression that Duffy’s scope was limited to (excellent) quiet ghost stories. Specifically, two stories in early issues of the journal Supernatural Tales that riffed off of urban legends and 1960s history hinted at a post-modern ripple, and let me see that his style could be very contemporary. I’ve not read his newest collection, Tragic Life Stories. I will, I will!

Werewolves and Shapeshifters will, like its zombie counterpart, reach a massive audience, much larger Duffy (or I) typically reach. Some of the people who buy it for the big, comfortable names will make some exciting discoveries.

(My contribution to Skipp’s anthology is “The Animal Aspect of Her Movement.”)

BY THE WAY, join me Saturday, Oct. 2nd in Newton, MA for Small Press Saturday, “as [Newtonville Books] celebrates independent publishing with the editors and contributors to these fine presses”: Rose Metal Press, Ampersand Books, Dzanc Books, Madras Press, and Small Anchor Press. The event starts at 2pm. I’ve been told that following the event, there will be a wild boar hunt. Venus has warned me not join in, told me the portents are all bad, has begged me to stay with her, but what the hay, how often do I get to hunt wild boar?

15. Readings } Portland, ME & Chicago, IL

John just finished reading Ciaran Carson’s translation of Inferno, so we talked about Brunetto Latini, Dante’s former teacher, mysteriously damned (by Dante) to the ring of the sodomites: “To me he seemed like one /who, in the fields around Verona, runs /for that prize, a length of green festoon. /He seemed to be the one that wins, not loses.” The conversation turned to Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent piece in the New York Review of Books about Edmund White’s latest book City Boy; Mendelsohn criticizes White’s “intellectually grotesque” reading of Inferno, specifically regarding Latini: “This reflexive tendency to reduce everything to the dimensions of [White’s] erotic interests and predilections can become wearying….” Then I brought up a short essay by White himself, and a line that had caught my eye regarding The Beats: “Early on, when they were just inventing themselves and their original brand of writing, Ginsberg and Kerouac decided to turn all their friends into myths.”

Though lightly attended, the reading in Portland was a great pleasure. Chris Bowe (the owner of Longfellow Books) gave excellent introductions, excellent because they were not merely recitations of bios John and I wrote, but a response to our work. People came because they read and were intrigued by descriptions of our books. Cupcakes were served that were frosted to be Color Plates. After John and I read we answered thoughtful audience questions for an hour.

After the reading, fog fell. John and I sat outside and ate burgers at Shay’s (seated near us, a group attempting to consume a fishbowl filled with an absinthe-blue cocktail). We walked for a while, drove a while, ended the night in a locked courtyard surrounded by sprinklers with a stoned couple who’d been asleep or screwing when the gates were closed, and couldn’t figure out how to get out. We showed them the way. As a gift, they handed us two marbles, one with the face of Mao, the other, an eye.

I read twice in Chicago, Friday (the 18th) with Jennifer Karmin at Myopic Books, and then as part of the Orange Alert series at The Whistler Saturday night. Matthew Klane and Amy Nowak drove from Iowa city to see me and Jennifer; Jennifer packed the room and I was just as pleased to see Aaaaaaaaaaalice sold as I was to sell a couple copies of Color Plates. This was the first time I’d seen my book, and it’s an odd moment: books by other people are real, books by you own self are objects imported from an alternate reality.

After the reading at The Whistler, I ate a brilliant meal in Logan Square with Rose Metal Press co-publisher Kathleen Rooney, her husband Martin, fellow reader Davis Schneiderman, Jennifer Karmin, and the poet Snezana Zabic. I’m terrible about self-promotion. Snezana emailed to ask if I was reading in Chicago days before I left, then told me she would be at my reading. I, of course, should have invited her. I was delighted she was there.

Lastly, an odd moment in Portland. Very early in the morning—was it four? was it five?—I woke to a noise—a “huff, huff.” I swore it was made by something at the end of my bed. I sat up—waited for my eyes to adjust—they didn’t, quite, heard the sound again, got up, walked to the door—I was now sure the noise came from the hall. I peered through the peephole—nothing—opened the door, and stepped into the hall. At the end of the hall—where the hall met a bay of elevators, stood an enormous white horse. It huffed. It turned its head and the dim light caught something—something crystal that sprouted from the horse’s forehead. I panicked, slammed the door shut, stood behind it a moment, breathing hard, calmed myself and thought: I did not see a white horse in the hallway of the Holiday Inn. I opened the door, looked out, and I was right, of course, there was no horse. Not only that, but the hall was configured differently. It did not end at a bay of elevators, the elevators were down a side corridor. I went back to bed.

14. Links } They are boring.

Not all of them are boring.

"Neglectorinos no more!" [blog post by Don Share re. my essay "This is Not Sad; This is Not Funny"]

Fall Books Preview ["Golaski is a champion of experimental and genre-bending fiction"; a reading at Longfellow Books, Portland, Maine, 7pm, Sept. 24th]

"...and August's rare delight may be April's fool." [blog post by Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne, re. "Green"]

Small Press Spotlight ["Adam Golaski is embarking on an ambitious and adventuresome multi-city book tour..."]

"Someday on Planar Surface" [another story by Matthew Pendleton; read his lovely fiction in print by purchasing New Genre #6]

"Checking in with Rose Metal Press" ["I've been through magic and through life's reality / I've lived a thousand years and it never bothered me... don't try to reach me cause I'd tear up your mind / I've seen the future and I've left it behind / fictionaut! fictionaut!"]

"Sekrit Project Reveals" [LiveJournal post by Althea Kontis re. Werewolves and Shapeshifters, an anthology edited by John Skipp]

Color Plates [Goodreads marked it as to-read]

Raw Dog Screaming Press Retrospective [Gorelets post by Michael A. Arnzen re. Worse Than Myself, Sheep and Wolves, and 100 Jolts]

Cinnabar's Gnosis [a weird review of an anthology in honor of the writings of Gustav Meyrink I contributed to. "Proustian selves by cassette tape. Proustian selves as flies."]

"Open Letters Montly: August, 2010" [Like Fire blog post re. "Green" and the August issue of OLM]

Worse Than Myself [a review posted by the Speculative Fiction Junkie. He points out that "many of the horrors in close proximity to comforts." So true!]

"The Open Letters Monthly Anthology" [an announcement by stevereads: "here is the brooding, authoritative essay-voice of Adam Golaski still at the dawn of his career"]

"Adam Golaski's book of little stories..." [blog post by Rose Metal Press, with a link to the Little Stories blog]

13. Color Plates } “the subtle intersections between appreciation and invention”

My publisher sent me a link to the short review of Color Plates that appeared in Publisher’s Weekly. It’s a positive review, for which I am grateful.

Built into the review is an assumption that the reviewer made about the book: that because the paintings that are the book’s inspiration are 19th century paintings, the stories must be set in the 19th century. They’re not.

Neither are they explicitly now, though. The reviewer has picked up on something that the stories couldn’t escape: even though they’re all set in the present (or a time like the present), something essentially 19th century was brought into them. Or, maybe what the reviewer has picked up isn’t that specific. Maybe the stories don’t feel like they’re set in the 21st century because they’re set so much in their own world.

12. Color Plates } I came across this note:

“The first Color Plates reading I ever gave (three from Toulouse-Lautrec) was at the 2003 World Horror Convention in Kansas City. I read to an audience of three: Alice Henderson, Kimberly Zagoren and Phil Locasio. That same night I read a fourth plate, ‘The Toilette,’ to a much larger crowd for the Morbid Curiosity-sponsored flash fiction contest. Alice won third place.”

All Hallows #32, published two months before Mr. Locasio and I met at the convention, featured fiction by both of us: his “Sundown in Yellow Scar” and my “Back Home” (collected in Worse Than Myself). My path hasn’t crossed with Ms. Zagoren’s since that weekend; she’s the author of two books (that I know of). Ms. Henderson and I attended several conventions together. We’ll be together again when Werewolves and Shapeshifters, edited by John Skipp, is published this October.

Two weeks from now, Rose Metal Press and I will debut Color Plates in Chicago.