the dramatic

Yes, I did borrow this book from Alison. And yes, she already wrote about it.

But as I went back through it typing in several pages of quotes that I loved, it became clear to me that I wanted to write about it too.  First off, please read this book - if you like memoirs, if you are not afraid of hard stories, if you like someone who can make you laugh out loud.

There are a few places that especially touched me.  Like here, when a writing mentor (Etheridge) tells her exactly what he thinks is wrong with her poems…

Etheridge used a pen to poke the fedora back on his head. Looking at me with bloodshot eyes, he asked with frank curiosity, Now, why is a little girl from Bumf___, Texas, dragging Friedrich Nietzsche – kicking and screaming – into this poem? Like you’re gonna preach.  You ain’t no preacher, Mary Karr.  You’re a singer.

When I bristled that I’d been a philosophy major in college, he said, And that’s all you’re telling anybody. What you took in college. You’re pointing right back at your own head, telling everybody how smart it is. Write what you know.

But according to you, I don’t know squat.

Your heart, Mary Karr, he’d say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don’t. Or won’t.

How many times do I try to point right back at my own head, telling the world how smart I am? How many times do I try to preach instead of sing?

Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air, a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody’s head off.

Mmmm.  I love any good description of art done well, but this one will stick with me for awhile.  Who doesn’t want to write a poem that could blow everybody’s head off? Of course, I love reading every part of her story having to do with writing - it is a gift to sit with someone so well versed and with such reverence for that craft - but the thing that really struck me about her story was the way she seemed to crawl inside my brain.  The way her thinking sounded so familiar. It’s astounding how a great writer can do that, make you feel like someone took the thoughts right out of your head and arranged them on paper with such exacting language that it makes you suck in your breath. But this time had a slightly different turn.

Did I mention that this memoir is largely the story of her dealing with an addiction to alcohol?

The more I read, the more I thought I think like an addict, I am an addict in some sense of the word, heck, I think we all are. I felt myself growing a little envious of the people in her story, the coping mechanisms she ended up with to help keep her sober.  Let me try to say this better: I don’t want to diminish the struggle of addiction in any way, I’m not trying to be flippant.  But it did make me think, really, that most everyone I know has some seriously wrong thinking going on (personalized through our own life experiences) and that we have bent our lives around that thinking in ways that aren’t helpful.  I may not be an alcoholic, but these sentences are about me:

…What happened to those great poems I was going to set the world weeping with? Tomorrow!

How sweet it’s prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible. Tomorrow, I will rise at three a.m. and log two hours writing before Dev [her son] stumps out. I’ll take a five-mile jog, start a cheap but nutritious stew, submit a query letter to The American Scholar for an essay.  If only I could be left alone for a few days to drink like I want to, I could get my papers graded.

And, that I could certainly be helped by someone like Joan, Mary Karr’s sponsor, helping me straighten that thinking out:

Part of me clings to the idea that I am the most disadvantaged person trying to get sober – a joke given that I’m thin and white and employed, HIV-negative, with insurance and reasonably straight teeth. Before I judge somebody or indulge a groundless fear, Joan says I’m supposed to ask myself: What is your source of information? If the answer is – as it usually is – I thought it up, I should dismiss the idea.

Actually, if I am honest, I am helped by people, all the time.  They listen to what comes out of my head, hold up grace and truth.  I guess what I saw in her book is the constant awareness that an addict has of their brokenness, the complete knowing that trying to fake it will end up badly.  It’s something I could stand to hold a little more of.

Ok, one final quote - great (and scary) advice from her mentor, Toby, on writing about yourself.  I can only hope that I will try and heed it…

Don’t approach your history as something to be shaken for its cautionary fruit…Tell your stories, and your story will be revealed…Don’t be afraid of appearing angry, small-minded, obtuse, mean, immoral, amoral, calculating, or anything else. Take no care for your dignity. Those were hard things for me to come by, and I offer them to you for what they may be worth.

this time last year: prison choir (25. 02. 2009)