An amazing photo of Armenian-American dramatist William Saroyan and J.D. Salinger's former girlfriend, Oona O'Neill.

Here is a poem by the talented Rachel Zucker, "Long Lines to Stave Off Suicide." Her collection, "Museum of Accidents," is published by Wave Books in Seattle and is one of the best I've read lately. I highly encourage you all to find a copy at your local independent bookshop.

Note: Please pardon the spacing. I'll try to duplicate it as closely as Blogger will allow.


Long Lines to Stave Off Suicide

"One can live without having survived." (Carolyn Forché)


or
I could keep having children which helps a little (hurts
a lot) because everything for a long time is so
keep-the-baby-alive, or I
could keep more to myself gathering
daily facts inwards in towards but this makes for
less interior space
if the line's too short
drown --
too long -- I'm not the first to be beguiled by and not the first to feel
there's something [--hang--] I've swallowed that won't go down --

on Thursday at pre-K
I make pancakes with Abram's class and he asks Ami
and the teacher chose Luna and Derek cried and cried and I
let him measure flour because he kept saying,
that's your mom? your mom? I love your mom! it was weird
so I gave him butter and a blunt knife, hoped the teacher
wouldn't mind and later found out Derek's mom
died in the towers

I couldn't breathe when I heard it or believe what a good mother
I've been just by staying alive

do you think? Joan asks, it's better to die now or back when they were babies and didn't know better? I almost say better to have died when they were babies
but. not true. every good night book. spoon or puréed pear. banana
after brush-your-teeth time. how I held him (restrained in a hospital sheet)
while the idiot doctor who didn't want to dirty his dress shirt
stitched the busted lip. and when I weaned him off the binky and the boob
and the floaties and from biting and kicking and unbuttoning my shirt
in public and from climbing out of the crib and from standing up on the subway
without holding on--better, I say, to
die now


or,


when he reaches an age
(what age?) and I find I can finally swallow it down -- will I?
loosen?


perhaps if I can get the color just right in my study I will not need to stand
in the back of the synagogue and miss the shofar again this year
but it's not right, too light, like springtime. gray-green not gray
or green. not yellow. not blue. it will not do have I done this
on purpose? I picked the color of the inside of a seed I should never have opened?


...where is my breath is...



can barely hear above the clicking of my thinking why
am I so obsessed with paint color and the properties of the seasons
material objects I'm crazy so lazy and driven, relentless, no one could stand this
they call it cyclical negative thinking the constant self-checking
am I okay now? now? now? worse? better? now?
above the well-deserved charge of narcissism, above the thrum
of how many people alive now and now how many dead. I've not read
the New York Times for four years and one month but it hasn't helped.


or would I be
worse?


every touch too much but imperceptible perhaps a fever somewhere? and
people dying faster than I can write poems.




when my student want to write poems
I want to say wait for everyone to die.


instead I say: the poem must have a surprise and needs images
and where are the things? the real world matters. one fish
in a barrel of fish. one bird in a flock of birds.


was it a bass?
a blue jay?



oh, for fuck's sake, there's no difference between "stones" and "rocks" in Virginia's
frock, down, down, down into the world of objects
which the students haven't got
has nearly killed me.

my soon has a dream. cries. is afraid to tell me.
later he says that many, many people
came into his room at night all missing
something: an eye, an arm, a leg, a head
he knew them by their voices instead
and did not like what they were saying




I have everything. even a job.
a child. a child. notebooks I cannot quite
get down.

why, asks my son on the subway, should you
say something if you see something?
pointing at the poster of an abandoned black
duffel on a subway platform. I am trying
to breathe but he's asking and pointing. I say,
birds don't have teeth and need to eat
small rocks, stones, sand to break down food. he
nods, pats my hand.

I'm trying so hard not to show him
my worldview I can barely breathe. gave him
a brother want to give him another and never
tell him there are things
and things that explode and no easy way to know
the difference. I drop him off at school, go to class
where the students say something and say
something and rarely see anything.

I wonder,
what if the black bag is filled with not-bombs? filled with
long, smooth seeds surprisingly soft to the touch
each containing a human baby? shall I swallow one
down?




This morning, alone,
I'm listening to music so as not to hear
the explosion
if there is one certainly eventually will be one
(today an alert)
every moment is not yet
exploded or gaseous or biolgical,
not yet infectious. should I
not ride the subway? I ask. the husband:
you've felt pretty low lately
anyway. we both laugh.




In class a student says, living in a metropolis is good because it helps you have an open min which is good so you're not ignorant.


so here I am again with 8,168,388 people.


Good morning, I don't say to anyone, I'm experiencing panic. And
depression. No, actually, nothing's wrong but thanks for the Kleenex. Sometimes
the subway sets it off. Or the bus. Elevator. Small spaces. The vacuum
cleaner. Ambient radio. Things inside other things as if myself a Russian doll or
that everyone has masks my unmedicated eye can't help but notice --

I like short lines, say a student.
I like poems without images, says a student.
I wanted everything to sound very superficial, says a student.
You never said it had to be interesting, says a student.


I want someone to ask me if I like my job.


I want someone to explain why I put a large duffel bag of explosives
into my mouth and tried to swallow it down when I was just
trying to stay alive, terrified my sons could see my missings, and how is it the cops
don't stop me and my open-minded subway neighbors smile sweetly
as we hurtle along and I tell my jostling boys, no, no you must hold on, hold on,
any moment it could stop, suddenly, stop
short, I must
hold on.

One of my favorite authors, J.D. Salinger, passed away yesterday. Four years ago I started a collection of his ("Raise High the Roofbeams," I believe) and quickly devoured all of the short stories he ever published. I never made it more than a third into "Catcher in the Rye." I was, perhaps, the only young American who simply couldn't sympathize with Caulfield. But the enigmatic Glass family had me charmed. Salinger's use of literary irony and his way of astutely crafting dialogue between family members -- intimacy without being overwrought with affection -- warmed and delighted. So, thank you, Mr. Salinger, for being a writer. Thank you for publishing these stories. They have had such a tremendous impact on my writing as well as modern America and its literature. Even if you never wanted to achieve such success, you did.



Update: I really cannot recall with which book I started. But I recall afterward recommending all of the books, though they were (in my opinion) best when read in a particular order. I will have to see if I have it written anywhere which order exactly it was.

Here is one of the excerpts from "Raise High" (a very funny one, though not the absolute best) I quoted on my blog in 2006:

As the Matron of Honor followed me toward the bedroom, where the phone was, the bride's father's uncle came toward us from the far end of the hall. His face was in the ferocious repose that had fooled me during most of the car ride, but as he came closer to us in the hall, the mask reversed itself; he pantomimed to us both the very highest salutations and greetings, and I found myself grinning and nodding immoderately in return. His sparse white hair looked freshly combed - almost freshly washed, as though he might have discovered a tiny barbershop cached away at the other end of the apartment. When he'd passed us, I felt a compulsion to look back over my shoulder, and when I did, he waved to me, vigorously - a great, bon-voyage, come-back-soon wave. It picked me up no end. "What is he? Crazy?" the Matron of Honor said. I said I hoped so, and opened the door of the bedroom.

Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

Just when you have given up all hope, here I am! Where? Here, at my desk in our new apartment -- a place that deserves the title of "home," the object of a mission I have assigned myself to for over three years now. The apartment is in the sort of Victorian building easily found in Seattle. It has smooth, wooden floors and a picture rail from which we will hang pictures. The kitchen is small, but the appliances new. The space is bright and warm. The apartment sits high, on the third floor in a building atop Capitol Hill, which is one of Seattle's highest points. I am a couple of blocks from a district known as "Millionaire's Row" as well as the Volunteer Park Conservatory. But I am also walking distance to the co-op, a few independent movie theaters and a branch of the public library. When I look out of this Craftsman-styled window, I see a residential street and wide strips of grass. Beyond the trees rest the snowy Cascades. Is it snowy here in Seattle this January? Not a bit -- over the past few days the temperature has hovered around 50 degrees. It has been fairly sunny, too, I must add.

Is it an adequate substitute for Berlin? No. But what city in America is?
Am I better employed now than I was in Europe? Not really.
Do I feel the tiniest bit caged?
Does the jealousy of my youthful romps rot through the surface of my soul? Yeah, it does.

But nothing means that I can't again cave in to my wanderlust. For now I ought to accept some responsibility and put my education to "practical" use (if I can manage). There are some things that must be tended to.