Send Giants: Maurice Sendak Left Today

Photo by Michael M. Hughes, All Rights Reserved ,
used with photographer's permission

Send Giants:

An Elegy in 2012

May 8, 2012

Dear Mr. Sendak:

Please tell the lion that you care (even if you don't), and it will maybe let you come back. Speak very loudly because it's dark in there, and according to the newspapers, its mouth is shut tight. And this lion never gets sick when it eats. 


Or maybe we can send giants. They can shake you out. 

Then the newspapers can print a correction tomorrow, like they do and nobody catches the correction because they're not looking or don't even get the paper the next day and so they keep thinking the wrong thing the reporter wrote.  But I'll look for it. 

Your Friend,

Erin, age 5 30

*

From Pierre by
Maurice Sendak (June 10, 1928-May 8, 2012)

"I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more. ... What I dread is the isolation. ... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready." 

---Maurice Sendak  

NPR interview with Terri Gross

(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 8, Roots by Chadwick Redden

"Ghost Trees" by Rosino,
Used under a CC license

Welcome to Tuesday, the eighth day of National Short Story Month.  Today's selection was recently published in the literary journal red lightbulbs, an increasingly exciting location for new and interesting poetry and fiction:




"We drove ninety miles south to watch the lunar eclipse. Light pollution and cloud cover all the way down. In a field your shoelaces forgot their knots . . ."

"Roots" 

by Chadwick Redden
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 7, All the Anne Franks by Erik Hoel

"Lone Russian Bear" by jzool,
Used under CC license

She found today's selection for National Short Story Month a few years ago when she decided to nominate a story for the annual Million Writers Award and ran across this story in Strange Horizons:

"When the aliens came and cut the sky up into golden ribbons Dan Milestone ran inside to get his daughter Margaret and put her up on his shoulders in the front yard and told her that this was history and she told him to put her down because he was embarrassing her."

"All the Anne Franks" 

by Erik Hoel
(2009)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 6, The Juniper Tree

by Paleontour,
Used under CC license

My Mama She Kil't Me

My Father He Ate Me

Oh, What a Good Boy Am I!

It's Day 6 of National Short Story month, and today's selection is the folk-story, 

"The Juniper Tree"

The following version is from the 1875 collection, German Popular Stories, edited by Edgar Taylor.

Click to 

continue reading 

The Juniper Tree! 

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 5, The Brewsters by Laura Ellen Scott

Room with a View by Rick Kempel,
Used under CC license

"We always called that rusty metal shack the Brewster house."

In continuing the celebration of National Short Story Month, today's selected story is this linguistic beauty:

"The Brewsters" 

by Laura Ellen Scott, 

from her collection Curio
(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 4, Diagnostic Drift by Michael Martone

Transparent by Kasia,
used under CC license

Since 1996, April has belonged to the poets.  But it has only been a few years, at least in her memory, that May has been unofficially officially declared National Short Story Month.

So, to celebrate the art of the short story, each day of May a story will be selected and posted at What She Might Think.

Since we're four days in, rather than catch up with four different stories, here's a lyrical short story in four parts:

 "Diagnostic Drift" by Michael Martone  

The End of National Poetry Month, 2012

Hyacinth Happiness by Lachlan Rogers. (CC)

We are at nearly the end of April, which means it's the end of this year's National Poetry Month.  


And, so, a bit of a medley to celebrate poetry month in a single shot, if you haven't already been celebrating. 


One passage like a poem, one poem, one poet, one excerpt.


A passage like a poem:

1) “Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”    —Maurice Sendak

A poem:
2) Eating Poetry by Mark Strand 

A poet:

3) Also, if you haven't read the Interview with Laura Read, a poet, then there's this, too.

An excerpt from a poem.

4)

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;	35
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,	40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.                                              (from The Wasteland by our man T.S. Eliot)

How the Sun Burns: Forthcoming in The Minnesota Review

Rock Quarry
by paparutzi (CC)

 The minnesota review has just accepted her story "How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble", which will be a story in her next book Midwest in Memoriam. 

The story is slated for Spring 2013 publication.

Cheers!

To Shift & Grit: New Review of The Floating Order

"It’s Pringle’s ability to get inside the mind of a child and see the adult world from their perspective that is the real strength of this collection. Another is the shifting nature of reality from this perspective."

Faye Through Glass
by Aislinn Ritchie (cc)

~writes John Kenny, in a new review of The Floating Order. Kenny is a writer, and co-editor of Dublin's Albedo One and Aeon Press. Please find the full review at his website.

One Bull-Running Over: 2012 Pulitzer-Prize Winners Announced

Pulitzer Prize Medal

All those running in fiction were trampled, no one survived.

The announcements might get a bit more press this year since, of the list of winners, the winning work of fiction is a blank space--the committee decided that none of the finalist-books in the fiction section merited the Pulitzer.  Finalists, but not fine enough, evidently for more than that.

According to the administrator of the prizes (via the L.A. Times), This isn't the first, but eleventh, time to happen in the fiction side of the Pulitzers.

No doubt this decision will raise a flurry of discussion in the fiction world--among writers, editors, publishers, and readers.  For, while we've gotten the memo that there was no prize, now it's time to decide, or consider, what the memo means in terms of what the committee is suggesting about quality.

Picasso and the Bull Out of Light, in Life

And, perhaps, another sort of discussion will occur from this in regards to the $50 "handling" fee that must accompany each work (and four copies of each book) submitted into the running for the Pulitzers.  A $50 fee that is hardly a scratch on the bucket for the large presses, but the weight of a brick in the bucket for small presses.

For a list of all the winners, visit the Pulitzer website.

***

The next running of the writers is for The National Book Award. Deadline for submission is June 15, 2012 (postmark date).  Works published between December 1, 2011 and November 30, 2012 are eligible . . . but with eligibility also must come a publisher who can afford these conditions (among others) of the prize:

All publishers submitting books for the National Book Award must agree to:

• Contribute $1,000 toward a promotional campaign if a submitted book becomes a Finalist.
• Inform authors of submitted books that, if selected as Finalists, they must be present at the National Book Awards Ceremony and at related events in New York City.
• Cover all travel and accommodation costs for Finalists and provide them with seats at the Awards Ceremony.
• Purchase from the National Book Foundation, when appropriate, medallions to be affixed to the covers of Finalist and Winning books. [bold, mine] The Foundation will also license the medallion image artwork for reproduction on the covers of Finalist and Winning books.
• Inform authors that, if selected as Finalists, they must agree to participate in the Foundation's website-related publicity.