Surrealist A.W. Sprague II

Island Head - by A.W. Sprague II

“Ego Ergo Imbroglio” – by A.W. Sprague II

 First Place – Surreal Circus

“Ego Ergo Imbroglio”

Here I am

and there I go

Ego Ergo Imbroglio

Where ever I am

is where I know

there’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

A confident man

fumbling a plan

that’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

when wringing the hands

or making a stand

it’s Ego Ergo Imbroglio

intricate

confusing

sometimes deluding

Ego Ergo Imbroglio

my own best friend

my own worst enemy

I’m Ego Ergo Imbroglio

When self is self-centered

expect bad weather

because Ego means Ergo Imbroglio

The best laid plans

whether mouse or man

are Ego Ergo Imbroglio

- by A.W. Sprague II

“The Dramatic Dharma of Dueling Dualism” – by A.W. Sprague II

A.W. Sprague II is an artist and writer who explores Surrealism and investigates big questions – Zen, Dharma, Dali, Kerouac, even Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Within his philosophical ponderings, Sprague – known to his friends as Bill – creates a world, one brilliant with color and vision, complex and perplexed, evocative and elaborate. He labors over the absurd and the meaning of life, finding a place to express himself in art and words.

“Decreased Working Class Dining Fashion Courtesy of Migratory Manufacturing Madness” – by A.W. Sprague II

Bill, you’ve told me about your early childhood in a small town along the Susquehanna River in central New York, near an industrial plant that built parts for the Saturn V space program. I’m struck by the same elements in your art: the pastoral setting of fields and waterways, marked by the grand workings of man in his determination to explore. Do you think your beginnings, in terms of place and experience, have influenced your art? Would you tell us about this?

Absolutely. The Foothills of the Catskills is a region filled with spectacular scenery marked by the progress of mankind. From the trees and grassy meadows, low mountains and babbling brooks, blue skies and midnight moons to the railroad tracks, iron bridges and concrete dam that were all part of my childhood surroundings, those influences appear in many ways, both subtle and gross, in my assembled scenarios. I can also attribute the joy and desire I have for creating art and writing pieces to growing up in that region. There was, and still is, a very strong cultural arts presence in the area; and it imbued me with the perspective that art is both valuable and important.

The proximity of the Saturn V project to my childhood home made the notion of space travel perfectly tangible to me. It gave me an expectation for a science-fiction level future. Another impact of the Saturn V program was learning how manufacturing jobs could bring pride and economic stability to a previously depressed region; and then how those things would fade when the manufacturing jobs disappeared.

“Jimmy Snork Ponders the Moon” – by A.W. Sprague II

Obelisk, icon, or satellite?

Tough question. I love obelisks for what they are, icons for what they do, and satellites because I act like one. I’d like to vote for all three.

“The Memory Pool” – by A.W. Sprague II

Literary influences? And art influences?

The first author to have a profound impact on my life was Steinbeck; and the effect did not come from reading his books, but rather from seeing about one hour’s worth of the black-and-white movie version of The Grapes of Wrath. At the age of nine, I felt that television news was just the plight of strangers who lived in places far away. I had little context for what they were experiencing. The dramatic portrayal of Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl farmers hit me at an emotional level like the proverbial ton of bricks. It vexed me for days and led to several meaningful conversations with my parent about what “real” life was like. I was much less a child after that.

Conscious influences on my art would be the color palette of Maxfield Parrish, the attitude of Robert Rauschenberg, the approach of Dadaism and the presentations of Dali. The inspirations I juggle in my mind when writing include Carlos Castenada, Gene Rodenberry, Roald Dahl, Rod Serling, and Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

“Prometheus’ Pals” – by A.W. Sprague II

the nothing to be alarmed about alarm bell is ringing

remain calm

the nothing to be alarmed about alarm bell rings

because there is nothing to be alarmed about

so remain calm

- from The Nothing to Be Alarmed About Alarm Bell Rings

– an illustrated book by A.W. Sprague

“An Evolution of Toys” – by A.W. Sprague II

Do you think your experiences while in the Air Force during the 1970′s have shaped your writing in terms of structure and subject? I’m thinking especially of your illustrated book, When the Nothing to Be Alarmed About Alarm Bell Rings.

The idea/subject for “Alarm Bell” originated with the government’s daily terror alerts in the years after September 11, 2001. In concert, both national and local media followed suit with speculations on most likely targets, precautions to take, and things to do if caught in an event or aftermath. This constant barrage of fear-instilling thoughts pushed me to a point where I had to reassure myself that a terrorist act was not likely to happen in my town, or at any of the places I frequented. Remembering the words of a recovering alcoholic I once knew, in how he had conditioned his mind to react to advertisements for alcohol as reminders that he should not drink, I turned my situation on its head by perceiving the alerts as alarms that told me everything was going to be okay.

The inspiration for the structure came from a common element in Dystopian stories, in which a repetitive regimented announcement, usually broadcast by a totalitarian government, drones on for the purpose of conditioning the populace. Influences from my military experience can be found in several of the pictures in this piece.

“Celebratory Minions of The Absurd Embrace The Directions of Sacred Leaders and Venerate an Indicated Untitled” – by A.W. Sprague II

Tell us about your interest in Surrealism and your work with The Surreal Circus.

Surrealism has been a fascination of mine since I was young. The odd objects, strange arrangements, and eerie backdrops usually present a sense of mystery or mysticism, and the puzzle solver within me rises eagerly to the challenge of ferreting out meaning. From an artistic standpoint, I embrace Surrealism because I believe we all need to have our psyches challenged. The history of humanity is filled with incidences where we, as a group, had to alter mental perceptions on the fly in order to accommodate newly discovered, life-changing dimensions of reality, previously hidden or unnoticed. In this light, Surrealism is an evolutionary helper that exercises the part of our mind which digests, interprets, and adapts to unusual and unexpected things from the safety of home, gallery, or museum.

The Surreal Circus was a very active Internet group. I have to say “was” because the Gather.com web site has been stalled under renovations for the past five months; very sad. At the time I stumbled into The Circus, it was being actively managed by an arts and nature blogger, Ann Marcaida (annmarcaida.tumblr.com). Ann’s open and friendly communications set an interactive and encouraging spirit which permeated the overall group. After sharing many works, both artistic and written, and having them well received, I entered a short story in their flash fiction contest and an image in their digital art contest. Honorable mention was awarded to the story, while the image won First Place. Soon after this, I was invited to become one of the moderators.

Moderating for a group is a challenge. Work submitted to the group had to be reviewed and approved; and there were as many as fifty submissions per day.  Blatantly off-topic submissions could be rejected easily, while on-topic and near-topic submissions required extra thought and consideration. Moderating to that level of flow and criteria often took hours. My favorite reward was the inspiration that so often came after being saturated in the works of others.

“Jealoedipusib” – by A.W. Sprague II

“I’m a plastic coated dharma bum,

dashboard companion to a station wagon,

bubblin’ down some roads of life.”

“The clerk walked me over and handed me a copy of “On The Road” suggesting it as a good place to start and then left me to it. I read the jacket and hesitantly put it back. “The Dharma Bums” was next to it and that was the book I’d come looking for. I wanted to read the book that supposedly chronicled the start of the Zen lunatics and the rucksack wanderers.

You’ll probably think it pretentious that I think of myself as spiritual kin to Kerouac types. Rest assured, I’m fully aware that compared to their solar brilliance I am but a twinkle in the eye of someone who was looking the other way.”

- from “Plastic Coated Dharma Bum” – by A.W. Sprague II

A.W. Sprague II – Artist & Writer

A.W. Sprague II is a creative artist and writer, currently living in Central Ohio. He uses photo manipulation software and digital illustration techniques to create artwork along the surreal, science fiction, and graphic genres. He also paints with acrylics, builds ceramics, creates mixed media sculptures and writes poetry, essays, non-fiction, and fiction. His award-winning work has been featured in several places on the Internet, as well as published in small, alternative, and amateur presses since 1986. Previous to that, it filled notebooks, decorated walls and gathered dust in piles and boxes.

His art and writing are featured on his website http://tastethebrain.blogspot.com and at http://columbusarts.com/artists/464-aw-sprague-ii/.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Matthew Draughter: Vision and Voice

The reason for our departure will be

splashed across newspapers, it will be investigated.

Known by all, known to everyone as the day

of our separation—noted by a day and time,

noted by a heat index. A temperature so hot

that the blue balloons of your birthday party

burst, and the helium dispersed into the air.

A time when we retreated because we confused

the popping of the balloons with gunshots. A date

remembered by few. We are absent from the body,

no longer tied, but free.

 - from the poem, “The 1200 Block of Simon Bolivar” – For Brianna Allen

by Matthew Draughter

I first met Matthew Draughter at his Certificate of Artistry reading at Lusher Charter High School in New Orleans. Lusher focuses on the arts and academics, giving students interested in creative writing, fine arts, music, and arts media a conservatory-style education. Matthew’s voice stood out to me, and I was included in his senior thesis defense. His bright, wise way of answering questions during the defense is also reflected in his writing. When I read his words, I hear strains of Carl Sandburg and E.E. Cummings in his poetry, and threads of Virginia Woolf and Flannery O’Connor in his prose. But these are only my impressions. His literary influences surprised me, arriving not only out of his creative writing classes, but from his interest in gender and the female voice. I love his responses and am very happy to share them here.

Matthew Draughter

 Photo credit: Lila Molina

Matthew, you are a native of New Orleans, and your writing is infused with a sense of place, a love of place, which in a way becomes an allegiance to the city. Can you speak a little about how your stories and poetry are influenced by the city and community? For example, in your poems, “X – a city,” about how the city was marked and marred in the aftermath of Katrina’s flooding, and “The 1200 Block of Simon Bolivar Avenue,” a tribute and a cry out for Brianna Allen, the little girl at a birthday party killed in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting in May 2012.

To be honest, when I first started writing, I thought New Orleans was boring, and I hated writing about the city. But in the past year I began to realize there was a voice here, and that voice began to speak to me. Until I put it on the page, I didn’t realize how lyrical and full of imagery that native voice was. When I started writing more and more about the city, I was able to grasp what the voice of New Orleans was trying to tell me, and that’s when the real writing came. The city began to influence many parts of my writing, and it was never so much about being aware of the setting or having a sense of place—to me it was just writing about where I’m from as it relates to where I am in my life now. It’s funny, you never know how beautiful your home is until you stop, stand back, and look at where you came from.

As it relates to my work, like “X- a city” and “The 1200 Block of Simon Bolivar,” there is a sense of tribute, but also a sense of what I’ve learned from events in the city. This past year I felt driven to find out things about myself, including the connection to my home. I love my city, and there is so much I’ve taken from all of the areas of New Orleans. Each section of the city has spoken to me, and that is where my connection comes from. These particular pieces act as homage to events that have caused tremendous loss. For “X” it was Katrina, and for “The 1200 Block” it was a murder. Both events are ones that hit the city hard, but most importantly these events touched me and made me think more about where I am really from and how much the city means to me.

I was fortunate to attend your Certificate of Artistry thesis defense at Lusher High School this past May. Your senior thesis, titled “Ways of Women,” is a very thoughtful and beautifully sequenced collection of stories and poetry, in which the female narrative voice is predominant. Tell us about how you decided to focus on this perspective, and about your purposeful use of gender in writing.

Gender roles have always been something I’ve been interested in. Whether it’s the unstoppable femme fatale, or a strong female figure. The truth is, women have always come across as more interesting characters to me. I am a male, and I know what it’s like to be one. That’s why I like writing about women. I feel that as a writer you should never be in your comfort zone, and you should always find a way to challenge yourself. I do that through gender roles. My thesis, “Ways of Women,” is a compilation of works inspired by women in my life. Through these works I’ve recognized the importance of gender roles in literature, but I’ve also discovered what has captivated me most about women. In each of my pieces there is a mystery behind the woman—that idea of secrecy is what has inspired me to focus on women, especially in stories like “Hive” and “Bonnie.” What is unknown about women intrigues me—that’s what makes me dig deeper. As it relates to my characters, I think that there are some secrets they can have, even from me. I want my literary women to be just as mysterious to me as they are for my readers. This allows me to dig and discover, but it also gives me the chance to realize when to step back.

Gender roles allow me to think more about the big picture of the work, and ultimately, what everything means as a whole. A female character can give the narrative a sense of depth that not all male characters can. It’s just more interesting that way.

In your story, “Hive,” the use of metaphorical language reveals a woman trapped in a hive of memory. Virginia Woolf inspired this piece, yes? Would you speak about the use of metaphor and the very close viewpoint of this story?

“Hive” was inspired by Virginia Woolf—specifically, Mrs. Dalloway. I was drawn to the fact that Woolf was so intimate with her characters’ points of view. The focus on her characters allows readers to enter their perspectives, their minds, even when the narrator isn’t in first person. That’s the effect I wanted in “Hive.” Through details, I gained a precision that entrapped my main character. The entrapment she feels is a product of the events from her past, and I decided to expound on that. For the point of view I didn’t want to have a first person narrator because the entrapment Charlotte feels could be extremely overbearing to readers. Third person limited gave me the chance to explore her world. Through metaphor I was able to extend the senses and the idea of how Charlotte’s memory works in the narrative. This gave me a sense of control and allowed me to find her character. I became Charlotte while I was writing this story. I had to be able to think like her; that was the only way I could create her. I also had to step away and realize there were certain aspects I didn’t want to know. This is where the idea of the “hive” came from. I wanted her to have secrets that not even I knew. When I created her memory of the bees, the metaphor came on its own. She’s a very intriguing character, and there’s a side to her that I still don’t know. As a writer, of course, you need to know your characters. But, to me, I don’t want to know them as well as some other writers know theirs. That’s why my fiction is mostly character-driven. It gives me a chance to explore and understand how far the exploration will go. In that way, the metaphor of “Hive” came to be.

Some of your stories include details such as texture and fabric.  And so: raw silk, chiffon, or taffeta? 

Chiffon. I like the way it layers. It just flows a way certain fabrics don’t.

Influences? Writers, artists, designers.

In fiction, Flannery O’Connor and John Cheever and Ralph Ellison, as well as Virginia Woolf. I love how their range is so different, how they have different methods of characterization. I’ve learned so much from each of these writers.

In poetry, I’m a huge fan of Anne Sexton. She’s always inspired and influenced my thoughts about structure and diction, and how they work together for a poem. And ever since I started writing, I’ve loved William Butler Yeats. Recently, my work has been inspired by contemporary poets, like Ntozake Shange, Terrance Hayes, Kevin Young, and Langston Hughes. I’ve studied and drawn from them as I’ve began to find my own voice. “X – a city” was actually inspired by Terrance Hayes. The rhythm was a response from “Blue Seuss.” I was flattered when you mentioned E. E. Cummings because I think he’s brilliant. “The 1200 Block of Simon Bolivar Avenue” wasn’t influenced by another poet; it was just me and everything I’ve ever wanted in a poem. It wasn’t a response, rather a creation of something that had been on my mind for a very long time, and I finally had the chance to write it. Something triggered that poem’s creation.

In terms of designers, I admire Chanel and Alexander McQueen. These two have changed the face of the fashion industry. I love Givenchy and Marchesa because of the construction of their designs. I love when designers take fashion risks, as that parallels the risks I take in writing. That’s why I love fashion as much as I love writing. The risks are endless, and when you mess up, you can just start over. They both seem to go hand in hand, and it’s all art—and that’s the most important thing for me.

Matthew Draughter

Photo credit: Cassidy Driskel

Congratulations! You’ve graduated from Lusher and will be attending Loyola University in the fall. What are your academic plans?  What are your hopes and dreams?

I plan on majoring in International Business. I feel as though college is where you find yourself, so anything can happen between now and the time I graduate. I also want to continue to pursue my writing. Loyola has great literary magazines, and I would love to have the opportunity to have my work published in one of them. After college, I would really like to work for a fashion company to see how design, writing, art, and business come together. I want to go to school for design and eventually work toward an MBA. I’ve always seen life as a book—you can decide to make it as big as Moby Dick or as tiny as a pamphlet. I see myself taking more risks, because that’s the only way I’ll ever know what works and what doesn’t.

In terms of my writing career, I won’t ever stop. It’s what I have to do. After graduation, I hit a point in time when I thought, “Now what?” I started reading like I used to, and reading always sparks my imagination. Reading and writing are counterparts: you can’t have one without the other. As long as you’re reading, your imagination for writing is stimulated. I’ll keep writing about what intrigues me, about the things I love. Eventually, I’d love to be a published writer. I’d love to have three books by the time I’m thirty-three. But for now I just want to be able to finish the story I’m currently working on. I’m going to take it a day at a time, so I’m always enjoying life and can always experience something new.

And because we love a little lagniappe in New Orleans: your favorite music?

This question makes me smile. Honestly, I appreciate all types of music. I love listening to R&B, and I like some Rap. Sometimes I just like to sit and listen to Tchaikovsky and meditate on parts of Swan Lake. Other times I like to blast Kanye West. Then there are those moments when I feel like listening to music from my childhood: Destiny’s Child, The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears. No matter what, I love music that tells a story. For me, there needs to be a beginning, middle, and end. That’s why I respect artists who still create albums. Singers like Alicia Keys and Adele have songs that have layers. That’s what I feel writing should have. That’s why, for me, music and writing are synonymous.

My favorite artist of all time is Mariah Carey. All of her songs do things lyrically that other artists can’t achieve. Her albums work as units, and there’s an element that drives each song from start to finish. This is why I love all of her music. Whether she’s singing about an enduring love story, or about missing an ex, there’s a narrative. She also has an amazing voice, which makes me happy no matter what. The element that Mariah uses in her albums—the thing that drives them—that’s what I look for when I write. My favorite Mariah album, Daydream, has a summery haze that coats every song. I feel that when you write, there should be an element—a summery haze—that coats each and every piece you write in its own way. Strangely enough, that’s the album that I listened to when I wrote “Hive.”

Most recently, one of my favorite albums is Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, which I love for its cohesive body of work. From start to finish, it flows. That’s how every poem, short story, and novel should be. Each song in an album should speak to the others, just as every line of every literary work should, in turn revealing what is versatile and unique about the whole piece.

Matthew Draughter is a writer from New Orleans. He attended the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop in 2011 and received Gold Key Awards in the 2011 and 2013 Southeast Louisiana Regional Scholastic Young Art and Writing Competition in Fiction, Poetry, and the Senior Portfolio categories. He recently graduated from Lusher Charter High School, where he competed in Track and Cross Country and completed his Certificate of Artistry in Creative Writing, and will attend Loyola University in the fall.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

*

This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.

Brooklyn's Jamel Brinkley

Photo Credit – Keisha Green

“Claudius Van Clyde and I both preferred girls of a certain plumpness—in part, I

think, because that’s what black guys are supposed to like, because liking it confirmed

something about us—but he had gotten to Sybil first. So for the moment I was left to

deal with the prophet of the bubble. I was fine with that. I needed a good distraction, and

a good thing about hanging with Claudius Van Clyde was that you never failed to get

noticed. He had come to Columbia from West Oakland with certain notions regarding

life in New York, that the city’s summer heat and dust, its soot-caked winter ice, were

those of the cultural comet, which he ached to witness if not ride. Because of these

notions—which were optimistic, American—he manipulated gestures, surfaces, and

disguises, seemed to push the very core of himself outward so that you could see in his

face, in the flare of his broad nostrils, the hard radiance of the soul-stuff that some people

go on and on about. Though not quite handsome, he could fool you with his pretensions

and he was gorgeously insincere. Among his implements were a collection of Eastern style

conical hats and two-, three-, and four-finger rings. His pick for that night: a fez,

which was tilted forward on his head so that we, both of us, were emboldened by the

obscene probing swing of the tassel.”

- from “No More Than a Bubble”

by Jamel Brinkley

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Jamel Brinkley and I met at the Kenyon Writers Workshop in 2012, where each day Lee K. Abbott assigned a writing prompt, and the next morning we responded with story beginnings. The prompts were more than good, and the stories we came back with were more than surprising. Out of those surprises came really great complications, enormous wads of southern-style levity, racy descriptions of girls rolling in paint, Pacific coast road trips, Flatbush house parties, and god-like archetypes. A range of work that blew us all away. 

Jamel went on to other workshops and blew away a few more writers and teachers with his windswept street writing, inclusive of junkmen, Jamaican-African-American-Dominican girls, wild dogs, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, fez tassels, and near disappointment. His hard work and words have landed him a place at the Iowa Writers Workshop. No telling what the future will bring, but thankfully, it will include more stories and eventual volumes that bear Jamel Brinkley’s name.

Photo credit – Gya Watson

Jamel, you write short stories and are working on a novel. Could you compare the experience of creating short form vs. writing long?

The first thing I should do is confess that up until about two years ago, I was deathly afraid of writing short stories. The gaps in my knowledge of short stories, which are still significant, were then enormous.  I was all about novels, and in a drawer somewhere I have a 600-page dung heap of a novel that is probably still steaming and stinking things up.  I workshopped part of that novel at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop a few years ago, and I found much to my dismay that I had absolutely no understanding of structure.  What I had written was an incoherent mess.

The novel I’m working on now might more accurately be called a novella, or at least I envision it that way.  I’m trying to be way more modest about the scope and the pages, trying to be more mindful about structure, to exert more control so that it doesn’t turn into a “loose baggy monster” of the worst kind.  I’ve been working more on stories than the novel recently, and my sense is that both forms are difficult as hell.  Stories call for an extraordinary amount of control and efficiency, and in those miniaturized spaces, I find it particularly challenging to maintain the feeling and soul and voice I want while making things happen satisfactorily on the emotional and action plot levels.  I’ve had a hard time ramping up the tension.  I get caught up in sentences, a fact that is bad enough in a story, but imagine 600 pages of that nonsense!

The level of description and depth in your writing is phenomenal. Have you come to this from the foundation of years and years of reading and writing, or as this always been your inclination? Either way, who out in the world are your greatest influences?

Well, thank you, first of all.  I do think I’ve always been drawn to vivid writing, to details and images, the possibilities of rhythm in a sentence and a poetic line.  In high school and college, I fancied myself a poet, and I was devastated when I discovered that there was an unflattering name for what I had been writing: purple prose.  One of my challenges is to avoid layering on images, adjectives, and details in such a way that my writing becomes obscure, muddled.  So while I used to love Nabokov at his most florid, now I try to pay attention to writers who have a firm handle on what sentences can do, who know when to tighten and release the reins.  This wishful list of influences will be necessarily incomplete, but here goes:  James Baldwin (his essays and short stories), the James Joyce of Dubliners, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, J.D. Salinger, Marilynne Robinson (especially Housekeeping), Junot Díaz (especially Drown and Oscar Wao), Charles D’Ambrosio, Barry Hannah, Lee K. Abbott, Toni Morrison, Denis Johnson, Edward P. Jones, Amy Hempel, Nathaniel Mackey, Tobias Wolff, Gayl Jones, William Trevor, Alice Munro, John Edgar Wideman, Jhumpa Lahiri.  I’ll stop here, with guilty feelings about leaving off so many of the fiction writers I admire, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Q-Tip, Black Thought, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, Ghostface Killah, and MF Doom as folks who inspire and perhaps influence me.  And don’t get me started on jazz!

Lions, tigers, or bears?

Lions, without question.  I spent many years as an employee, undergraduate and graduate student at Columbia, whose mascot is the lion.  I’ve also been called a lion because of my hair, here and there by friends who are adherents of Rastafari, and more significantly by former students who thought I looked like Simba from The Lion King.  There’s not much that’s lion-like about me beyond that; I’m a November baby, and I’m definitely more Scorpio than Leo.

The character, Claudius Van Clyde, in your story, “No More than a Bubble,” comes across as an archetype, a kind of jester, large and laughing, in love with life; yet through the narrator’s eyes, Claudius is truly flesh-and-blood with vulnerabilities and a demeanor that lead him and the narrator to near disgrace. Is this larger archetypal view something you intended, or a natural direction that the story took? Are there Claudius Van Clydes in your life, the kind of magnanimous personalities that beg for story?

I did intend it.  Claudius strikes me a particularly “New York” kind of character, in both the literary and life senses.  There are many versions of Claudius Van Clyde where I live, in Brooklyn.  These are folks who strike me as needing or wanting to match the grandiosity of New York City.  In a place teeming with stimuli, they make elaborate efforts to draw attention to themselves, to make things swirl around them, and I think that they often have fascinating reasons for doing so.  I’ve written about a couple of these character types.  I think they draw my attention because they are so unlike me and because I have such strong and complicated feelings about them.  I guess I’m happy to play Nick to their Gatsby.

How has teaching high school English had an effect on your writing, from managing time to influencing the subject and slant of your writing? The twist and swerve of language in your stories are completely new, utterly unique. Are you inspired by your students’ vocabulary and by the street-speak and sounds of the boroughs?

For me, teaching high school English pulls from the same well of time, energy, and mind that I need to write.  So during the school year, I get very little work done.  If I’m lucky, if there aren’t piles of student essays waiting to be read and graded, I get some work done on weekends.  Otherwise I rely on holidays and seasonal breaks.  Right now I teach in a very traditional independent school, so if anything my work with these students pulls me towards writing that is canonical.  The qualities in my language that you very kindly describe, the vocabulary and the urban rhythm and vernacular, probably come from the way my upbringing, musical influences, more “experimental” reading, and earlier teaching experiences dance with the more traditional and canonical work I’ve been immersed in over the last four to five years.

Exciting times ahead! You’ll be leaving New York, as the Iowa Writers Workshop awaits you, and you begin in the fall, yes? A quotation you gave me from Ellison’s Invisible Man seems quite fitting: “The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.” What are your expectations, goals, and dreams as you approach the next two years? And beyond?

Yes, this is the first time in my conscious existence that I’ll be living someplace other than in New York City.  I’m nervous and thrilled.  I’m thrilled to have the gift of time, which is something that Lan Samantha Chang, the director of the Iowa program, emphasized to me in her typically generous and clear-headed way.  It seems like such an obvious thing, but when you reach a certain age and have established routines, relationships, a career, realizing how enormous and precious a gift time might require someone like Sam to believe in you and your work enough to force-feed you a healthy dose of clarity and plain good sense.  I’m thrilled to have the time and the opportunity to say “yes” to everything, which was Lee K. Abbott’s advice to me: study with everyone, take poetry classes, read read read.  Despite the suspicion and criticism the Workshop sometimes engenders, it seems like it can’t possibly be a bad thing to spend two years reading and writing in a high-quality program where the very town takes you seriously as a writer.  I want to finish my short novel and build a short story collection, but my real goal is to say “yes” to everything, to throw myself fully into this two-year conversation with brilliant teachers and peers, and into what Charlie D’Ambrosio described as a conversation with yourself “in the solitary struggle of writing sentences.”  Of course, I want to be published someday—what writer doesn’t?—but I can wait for that to happen.  “I want to be an honest man and a good writer,” as Baldwin said, and I think my experience at Iowa will help with at least one of those goals.

Jamel Brinkley is a writer from Brooklyn, New York.  He has degrees from Columbia University and teaches high school English in New York City.  This fall he will begin study at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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The Poppy: An Interview Series

Four to six questions begin as pods, then burst open with answers, bright lapis, 

black-stamened, conspicuous—ornament, remembrance, opiate.

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This interview first posted at Hothouse Magazine.