Elinor Nauen

Everybody has something that makes them feel secure, as long as they have enough of it. I buy dental floss pretty much every time I go to the drugstore. Maggie's grandpa had extension cords in every drawer of his house. Susan Cataldo's most memorable observation was that buying a four-pack of toilet paper made you feel like you were going to be around for a while. I guess that's it: I'll live long enough to need all this floss. Will I outlive the ink cartridge, the staples, the socks I just bought? When is it time to stop adding on?

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The tradition of fictional personae and false attribution goes back pretty much as far as writing has existed. There are Greek, Biblical, and classical works where the claimed author is not who really wrote it. Homer didn't write Homer, King David didn't write the psalms.

Some writers use pseudonyms: George Eliot, Mark Twain, and there are people who invent a whole separate person, an alter ego (Latin for "the other I"). In the literary world it's common: Chatterton attributed a series of poems to a 15th-century priest named Thomas Rowley; James Macpherson wrote the works supposedly composed by a 3rd century Scottish bard named Ossian (and incidentally gave a boost to Scottish cultural nationalism); Richard Hell wrote Theresa Stern's Wanna Go Out?, the KOFF poets gave us Maria (Surprise Surprise Surprise That's Not My Finger) Mancini.

I can barely think of a writer who hasn't fooled around with identity—it's part of what artists do: change words into poems, change personality into novels. We speak in the voices of Civil War veterans, Lord Byron, aliens. We become someone else in order to explore other lives, thoughts, ideas.

I edit the smallest magazine in the world, 16 pages, circulation 350. I ran a sweet 50-word story by a woman whom a few people believe to be an invention, & boy have I heard about it. They are not amused.

There's no financial fraud. The story was good, no matter the source. So why are they bugging? Why do they care? Is it that non-artists feel somehow cheated or fooled or that someone is getting away with something? Do they have no sense of humor? Do they feel like it's somehow a joke at their expense?

I really don't understand it. In art all that matters is if it works.

I think if you want gossip you’ll have to turn to Catullus: “Spaniards clean their teeth and scour their gums with the same water that issues from their bladders. So if your teeth are clean, my friend, we know how you have used your urine.” “It was only yesterday you snubbed the honest wives of foremen on your master’s farms, now your boyish charms are fallen.”  Read More 

As a lifelong learner (aprenc tant existeixo: I learn, therefore I am), I've been taking Coursera classes on economics, language, physics & more. I'm not sure how much I'm taking in—let alone retaining—but I do like how enthusiastic the teachers are & how much they want us to appreciate their subjects. This physics guy ("How Things Work") can't believe how cool these formulas are: don't we agree?!!?! I barely passed the first test, even though I was paying attention. That was yesterday, & if I had to take it today, I doubt if I could still remember velocity, mass, acceleration, the newton, & how they interact (or do they?).  Read More 

According to a wonderful article by Mark David Kaufman in the Public Domain Review (which finds & writes lovingly about all sorts of oddball bits from the past), 27 cartoons were made about Private Snafu, starting in 1943. They were intended to educate GIs what not to do: sleep under a tree without your gas mask, stick your rifle in the mud,  Read More 

I feel withered & delicate, the neighborhood & its terrible destruction, the helicopters, the gawkers. Instead, a poem, which I wrote for a reading I was invited by Diana Rickard to be part of last week at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn, in conjunction with an art exhibit called "Home Again."

if you lived here, you’d be Home by now

1) Sioux Falls
Hometown
Homeland
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They’d thought no fatalities but now say 2 people are missing. Three buildings from the corner in, on the west side of the avenue, are down. A few blocks of Second Avenue still closed to traffic, foot or vehicular. Dozens of people homeless. Some hero Read More 

I tried not to even look, I didn't take photos, too many people doing that, what? what? is it "news," as though it's not suffering? relief that it was someone else's tragedy? do people just like being close to something out of the ordinary? I think this is why I like big snowstorms: that same impulse but largely benign. I have a headache like crazy, don't listen to me.

It's around the corner from me & the same block, Second Ave between 7th & St Marks, where B&H is. "Tanky God we ok B&H is fine next bulding of us drop down so sad." I love those guys.

I'm home now, suffering, having breathed terrible acrid air. Shaky. Read More 

Maggie & I went over to NYU this afternoon to talk to someone at the library + a guy who's writing a book about punk & poetry, and wanted to see & hear about KOFF magazine. He also wanted us to watch a video of a reading at a laundromat from the summer of 1977. Eileen said I was in  Read More 

Remember how condescending Joyce is in Portrait of the Artist to a friend for remembering something by thinking back to where he was and what he was eating when it happened? It is so like some Irish Catholics I know to have that condemnatory attitude toward the body (not you, Lal! & not Johnny either). They dismiss the physical self, live in head and heart as though there were no body. Your mind is part of your body: Isn’t that most clear when you have a cold & your brain is fuzzy? Or is your brain woolly, therefore you get a cold? Does foggy thinking cause illness? A dampness of the brain that settles in the lungs? Am I getting sick because I can’t write a stupid article for a stupid magazine? Does the Nobel Prize prevent (cure) illness? Which Joyce never won. AND he was a terrible hypochondriac. QED.

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I’m reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in a 1961 Cambridge University edition I got from a dead friend’s apartment, with a cranky intro by a blind editor. Pages fall out as I read, which reminds me of a story about an old woman who read one page of the Bible every morning in the outhouse, then used that page as toilet paper. Read More 

Charters I only met once but of course knew his work on behalf of the blues. Musicians I listen to all the time I only know of because of him. I met him when he was reading with Aram Saroyan at the Nuyorican Café. I was the only person who showed up! so the 3 of us  Read More 

O Danny! The smartest, most tireless, most infuriating, most persuasive person I've probably ever known has died of the horrible pancreatic cancer. Far too soon. His biography—radio "News Dissector," journalist, activist, filmmaker, author—could be that of half a dozen overly energized people; look him up. I am only going to  Read More 

Where is Chris Christie when I'm feeling like a good political scandal? I've noticed that I have to check to see if what I'm reading is from The Onion, so much seems exaggerated: 47 U.S. Senators who openly commit treason. Government panels and committees about women with no women members or experts. The straight arrows are just as bad as the corner cutters, ideologically driven as they are and unconcerned about exceptions or weakness. I can remember when it seemed like politics had sunk to an all-time low with Richard Nixon, who I still blame for the disgrace & disrespect in public life.  Read More 

Once again I was so happy to be with a person that I forgot to take a picture of him or of us. This was Mike (now Michael, of course) Sellz. We've known each other since 9th grade, I think, when we were both in a Jewish youth group in Cornbelt Region of BBYO: Sioux Falls, Omaha, where he's from,  Read More 

On my kitchen table are these books, all of which are in my "read immediately" stack: the correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell; the autobiographies of William Carlos Williams and Yehuda Amichai; 2 or 3 Pot Thief mysteries; 2 new (used) books I got in the mail yesterday: Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam  Read More 

Johnny: "Watch out! Don't you see that old lady?!"

Me: "Why's she walking across the street? Why's she so slow?"

I have some of these on my bike but it's not the same. I miss having a car.

Johnny got called on to be a contestant in our granddaughter's high-school production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. When they asked him to spell ptomaine, he instead sang "The Alphabet Song." One thing I like about that man is how uninhibited he is. Put him onstage & you never know what will happen. He doesn't either. If he could ever do his spontaneous performance twice, he'd be a great actor.  Read More 

Not sure what this picture shows: that I can melt cheese on a whole wheat burrito? that it can form a suggestive picture? that it's Friday & I'm fading? that my new glasses give me a headache but that I keep trying to get used to them? that I have to go the library right this minute, or the next? that I might not make it to black belt promotion after all? that my desk is not as cleared off as I like it to be on Fridays? that I'm sad (& chuckling) thinking about my late sister, whose birthday is today? It's like modern poetry: there's a lot more here than meets the eye.  Read More 

I went to karate class & I ate a carton of yogurt & was shocked to read about an Arkansas state legislator who gamed the adoption system, then abused the girls he & his wife had taken in. It was so windy I almost couldn't move forward on my bike & I got whacked by flying gravel and paper. I found out that  Read More 

Working on a project that involves the union of the future. Work will be different then as it is different than it was when I had all these jobs.

Spring Forward Fall Back: A work about work


2 days: 2 gas stations: fresh out of high school, washing windshields, adding oil, pumping gas

2 semesters: Michigan State library where a girl named Mickey said, “These are the pants I wore at Woodstock.”

4 months: Kryptonics polyurethane factory in Boulder, where I was a sandblaster & met my first junkie. Would have been second but  Read More 

Sometimes I'm inspired or invested in this daily whatever-it-is, sometimes it's a chore, sometimes I surprise myself with how experiences or observations come together to make more than the sum of their parts. Kind of like my days in general, although many times my life is more  Read More 

Tim McCarver

In 1980 we called him Uncle Tim.
His nicely ruined American beauty.
We were in love with all Irish face.

Memphis voice calling games
knew why it rolled & how to do it all.
His fingers have more knuckles than ours.

Everyone still in love with everyone
Everyone still alive & we had uncles
we didn’t even need.

 

I helped a little on The Perfect Season, as Tim's co-author, Danny Peary, is an old pal of mine. I'd been at David Wells' perfect game that spring, so they picked my brain about that, & I think I maybe did some other research. It's always strange to have a strand of feeling about someone, for reasons that have little to do with them (the Irish connection in this case: Ted Berrigan & my husband, Irish amadons that I love wildly), then meet them in their real life, where you are not a strand at all, & they aren't either, not really.

I must have poetry dysmorphia. I have been pretty much burying my most recent work, thinking it academic rather than engaging (although I have been loving writing it)—only to find it well-received when I had a couple of readings this week. The audience (mirror) laughed & listened. How strange: Next I'll find out I'm not 6'2" & my confusion will be complete.  Read More 

Is it pathetic that I feel more accomplished finishing my laundry than just about anything else? I'm not even short on clean underwear. It's mostly that now I don't have to do it again for a couple of weeks, when the bag is as heavy as I want to haul.

I'm probably misquoting but it's a line of Maggie Dubris's that I always liked: Change is instantaneous, the way when you take off your shirt & throw it in the corner it becomes laundry.

This makes me think of spontaneous combustion. I'm the optimist's daughter. So much can happen with the snap of a finger.

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Wonderful snow! I walked miles in it, relishing every white star. The first time it snowed as much as I was promised. Didn't shut down the city, although one of our Prose Pros readers got stuck in Detroit A plane slid off a runway at LaGuardia, preventing her from landing at JFK.

When I said how happy the snow made me, a friend said, "I feel like we do not live in the same universe." Read More 

This is not my year!

First of all, we haven't had a lot of snow. Our storm of the century missed Manhattan by 30 miles. Then, every time it's snowed at all, it's either been the middle of the night or I was on deadline, and then only a couple of inches.

Many people I know are saying "enough already!" and talking about spring, while I'm still waiting for winter.  Read More 

It seems some humans left without feeding the tiger. When I got home, Buster had knocked everything off the tub top, including the bag of catfood. Which he had ripped open—without managing to find the food.

Does Patsy's have the best pizza or is what's so great the ritual of driving up 1st Avenue to 118th St to what was once Italian Harlem on a Saturday evening with Sharon, trying to find a good place to park, ordering without looking at the menu, being recognized (Sharon) by the waiter, reminiscing about our other trips up there, links in a chain of coal-oven pizza nights at Patsy's. All of that & just knowing about a New York semi-institution, a place New Yorkers go. Read More 

Several non-Jewish relatives and friends at Henry's bar mitzvah and since then have pointed out that there is no ceremony like it, at least that they could think of, in most other cultures. He learned & then sang in a foreign language (& alphabet) plus researched & delivered a short, serious talk.

My friend Barbara's 13-year-old grandson  Read More