When Herman Melville & Emily Dickinson Made Whoopee (on a prairie on the high seas)

First of all, due to circumstances beyond my control, such as fulltime work and wifi-connection issues at home, I have had to stuff the 3000 Loving feature "Foodstuff Friday" in the freezer. My freezer, known as "back burner" to some, is commodius and durable, so no worry there. 

Secondly, if Emily and Herman were to trample gender-inclination expectations (she being thought to veer toward the ladies and he toward the men, though the Kinsey scale is merely a scale and many of us are all over it), they well could have produced me.  (And I would be, and am, a production.) 
I just read Elizabeth Hardwick's beautifully written short biography of Melville, entitled, I believe, Herman Melville. His inclination to ponder the immortal was reinforced (should Moby-Dick and friends not settle the issue) by the following quotation she offered from Hawthorne's diairy.  Please note that I found the quotation online at the blog Hawthorne in Salem.

Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists-and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before-in wandering to-and fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us (Eng NB, Vol II, 163).

Emily Dickinson ("Ma" to me) has reiterated her interest in Eternity and other malefactors not infrequently and so, when dashing off a bio statement for a book review of We Make Gardens by Jeanne Larsen, I wrote the following:

Sarah Sarai is the love child of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, who both thought frequently about death and its accoutrement and were each their own person. Her BlazeVOX-published collection, The Future Is Happy, was released in 2009. Loose Gravel Press will publish her chapbook later this year. Her poems are in (or soon will be in) reviews including Threepenny, Mississippi, Minnesota, Eleven Eleven, Pank, Boston, Gargoyle, POOL and Parthenon West. She has taught and does in fact hold an MFA (in fiction) from Sarah Lawrence College, (stories in ragazine.cc, South Dakota Review, Storyglossia, Stone’s Throw, Tampa Review, VerbSap, Weber Studies and more) but earns her living copyediting in ad agencies.

Well, you get the idea. I gotta copyedit (which is two words but I don't care). The picture is serendipity, pure serndipity.  I googled Mellville and Dickinson and not only found an image but it is attributed to Ron Silliman.  Providence is mine.

Hello, it's me again, your friendly neighborhood bio statement

I  wasn't honest yesterday. There was a reason I was uncomfortable with bio statements. I had to submit one, and this one to the academy. I'm one of the speakers at the Wed., February 9, 2011 "Tendencies--Poetics and Practice" lecture series. 7 p.m.

Because the series is at the CUNY Grad. Center (5th Avenue and 34th Street); because the series is run by Tim Peterson, a Ph.D. candidate and good poet unusually well-versed in poetic theory; because participants in this series generally have doctorates, or exhibits at MOMA, or impressive grants and often adore theory, which I don't, I was on the defensive.

That's the truth--the emotional underpinning to my brief posting on biographical statements. I am not intimidated by academics, but in this case, it would look better if I were one, or at least that's my story. I'm who I am and that's the problem.
So here's what I sent Tim yesterday afternoon, and it's not a disgrace. Imagine the others, however, shiny as Achilles shield with degrees and job titles, and far more sober.

Sarah Sarai is a theory. She was raised to transcend gender, race, class, the body; failed. About her collection, The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books]), Gerald Schwartz wrote, "the confrontation and interactions with an emotional life gives the author's poems a nervy, discomfiting vitality. Their very rawness and urgency bring these poems to a kind of transcendence." Poems in Threepenny Review, Parthenon West, Mississippi Review. Columbia Review, Pank, Eleven Eleven and many others; a chapbook forthcoming from Loose Gravel Press; a Pushcart nomination in poetry. Fiction in journals including South Dakota Review, Fairy Tale Review, Tampa Review, Storyglossia. She has an M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and while she's taught writing at Antioch/Seattle, Fordham, Pace, BMCC/CUNY—and St. Mathias High School, for girls, in Los Angeles, she makes her living outside the academy, copyediting in ad agencies. Her grants (Seattle and King County Arts Commission) and fellowship (National Endowment for the Humanities) date back to another millennium, as does her theology.

More on publication, bio statements & thusly

image from elfwood.com

Most journals want short bio statements. The work represents the author more than her time in the academy or grants, or should.

I'm happiest when authors self-deflate and are funny in listing accomplishments; feel most comfortable writing that kind of biography. Maybe that's because I can't ante up impressive academic credentials, or any that mean anything to me, or maybe I am a product of the aw-shucks-ma'am strain of Gary Cooper-ish self-estimation.

Of course I am egotistical in my own way, and a bit contemptuous of a proper-noun bio statement without flair. Everyone has standards. And maybe I'm too (toooooo) analytical. I keep breaking down accomplishments with self-talk.

Self-talk:  Well, being listed as a best by the New Yorker or N.Y.Times, simply means one person at those publications liked the writer. It doesn't mean clouds opened up and a booming voice (female, foxy) said, "This is the best."  But it's not without meaning and I'd be proud to be liked, loved or even tolerated by most any publication.

I wanted to be in The Threepenny Review from its beginning. My mom sent me an L.A. Times clipping about the journal and I was jazzed by Wendy Lesser's vision. Something about Gargoyle caught my eye, too; its editor Richard Peabody seemed so cool from far-off Seattle, and of course his last name so old money, so Gatsby.

Wendy Lesser is great (I had a poem in Threepenny a few years ago) as is Richard Peabody, with whom I share musical memories of our era (poem forthcoming in Gargoyle). Don't be careful what you wish for.  Just submit over and over.

This was going to be more about bio statements but, hey, the year is young. Stay tuned.