July 2017

Here’s a playlist you can work and write to. Awhile ago, in a previous newsletter that we sent out and on our Twitter, we asked you guys for song recommendations. I compiled some of them (hi, Elliott Smith!)–and of course, some of my own weird suggestions (hi, Les Rallizes Dénudés)– on a CCM playlist for you via Spotify. Because music is therapeutic and wonderful.

Sometimes we need to get out of own heads (and our characters’ heads!)–and sometimes, we need to set a tone and just write or walk or think, even if we don’t have a specific plan. I’d definitely also suggest using this playlist as a prompt for when you feel stuck and let yourself write without editing–and see what happens.

More suggestions are always welcome.

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Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Xenos, and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault.

Poetry and music are so intertwined, it’s almost as if we don’t know which starts where, or what came first. And do we even have to?

1. Jack Spicer – “A Book of Music”
2. Jenny Johnson – “Aria”
3. Campbell McGrath – “Charlie Parker”
4. Victor Hernández Cruz – “Latin & Soul”
5. Michael Morse – “Void & Compensation”
6. Bob Hicok – “Go Greyhound”
7. Airea D. Matthews – “Temptation of the Composer”
8. Anaïs Duplan – “from Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus”
9. Rita Dove – “Transit”
10. Robert Graves – “Ghost Music”
11. Troy Onyango – “The Ghost Of Nina Simone; Or The Remains Of An Existence Spiraling Towards The Nadir.”
12. Scott Chalupa – “Gnossienne No. 4”
13. Allyson Horton – “Indiana Avenue: Jazz-Ku for Wes”

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Joanna C. Valente is the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Xenos,  and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault.

Reading what people say about their work can be so helpful when it comes to thinking about craft. Here’s a few recent interviews:

1. Victoria Redel talks to The Rumpus about her new book:

“I believe we all have lists of shame. Long lists. We live with our constellation of shames quite privately. But they weigh us down. I wish I could abracadabra away shame. This is such a waste of our small time on earth. Our bodies are often the focus of shame. The shame of the body changing. Of the sexual body. Of the aging body. Not being able to do what you once could do. Even just looking at your skin as you age, the texture, the wrinkle, the sag, and somehow feeling ashamed and responsible for its changes. Illness enters, too. If you were a better person you wouldn’t be ill. Every failure of the body can become a personal indictment. Abracadabra, Gone, I shout again.”

2. Juan Martinez talking about his debut collection BEST WORST AMERICAN at The Rumpus:

“If there’s one thing I learned, one lifesaving element of fiction I’ve learned to be attuned to, is that I can get characters moving if they’re uncomfortable, and particularly if they’re uncomfortable in ways both physical and existential. So like eighty-five percent of my stories have this tendency toward the essayistic, which can be fun but only if the mind of the narrator has an itch, if there’s this uneasiness troubling the prose. I mean, I’m saying all this but the honest answer is that I’m someone is always a little uncomfortable—like, never quite at home in my own skin—and I find the stories therapeutic because it’s where I get to let that uneasiness breathe and be productive. It’s a way of finding comfort in the discomfort.”

3. Samantha Irby spoke to Hazlitt:

“I always hate everything I write as soon as it’s finished, especially once it’s published and there’s no chance to go back and fix it, make it better. I am also very uncomfortable looking back at older versions of myself. Everything embarrasses me, all the time. And there’s never a moment that I can look at something I’ve written without thinking, ‘That could be funnier. You could have used this word instead of that one. How could anyone have ever published this.'”

4. Elizabeth Crane talked to LARB:

““What if” is at the front of some significantly greater percent of the questions in my head on a daily basis. What would it be like to live in that house? What would it be like to be that person? You know, what would it be like for someone a lot like me (who has maybe spent some good time contemplating what seems like a real possibility of life without the energy resources we’re used to) if the apocalypse hit? (Alternate title: “Life Without Coffee Would Probably Suck.”) And both my novels began with what-ifs — my original idea for We Only Know So Much, when I thought it was going to be a short story, was: What would it be like if there were a family whose members existed so much in their own heads that they almost never had a conversation with anyone else in their family? Which could have worked in a short story but in a novel left me without a lot in the way of, you know, scenes. And with History, the initial question was: What if I could sit down with my (dead) mom and try to work a few things out? But you’re right, there is probably a bit more called for in the way of answers or insight for some of the characters in the novels than there is in the stories. Too many possibilities, to bring it back to that. Even in a novel that has an ending that can be seen more than one way, I hope the reader has the feeling of a satisfying resolution, even if it’s not tied in a bow, which will definitely never happen in anything I’ll write.”

5. Scott McClanahan talked to Fanzine:

” I could say I’ve exploited my family and the people I know for their stories. I’ve been like a vampire or a farmer that way. But at the same who else would write about these magnificent people except me. Most writers think they are singular people, but not me. I want to find the singular people and then chew them up for my fiction and be their witness. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded.”

6. Noah Cicero spoke with Electric Literature:

“Give it to the Grand Canyon took me nine months to write, 40,000 words. I go to Starbucks and put headphones on and listen to music — the same song over and over again. Go to Work I wrote mostly to “Rhyme” by Metallica. In Bipolar Cowboy, the songs in the book are the songs I was listening to — “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver, Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” Fleetwood Mac songs. I didn’t do that when I was young but now I do because I’m never going to be famous famous. (If someone gave me $80,000 and said ‘here’s a concept and a nice house to sit in,’ I could write on a Mac computer every day peacefully with a research assistant — the full-fledged Dave Eggers experience — and not listen to music.) When I wrote the Grand Canyon book, it was three-four times a week. I would go to Starbucks and sit for an hour and a half until I finished the coffee, about 1,100 words at a time. I don’t count the words, really, I count the sittings.”

7. Beth Ditto said some stuff to BUST:

“I am still uncomfortable with my voice. But when I was really young, when The Gossip first started out — I was 18,19 — all I wanted was to sound like Kathleen Hanna. But that wasn’t happening! I also had throat surgery to remove polyps from my vocal chords. That made my voice smoother, LIKE A LAAAYDAY.”

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Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016) and the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). Joanna received a MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM, as well as an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire, BUST, and elsewhere.

#CopingWith is CCM’s interview series run by managing editor Joanna C. Valente

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Jacklyn Janeksela is the author of her book “fitting a witch//hexing the stitch,” was released in June 2017 (The Operating System). Besides that, however, Janeksela was also a contributor in CCM’s anthology “A Shadow Map.”

Of her book, Juliet Escoria said, “Like all good poetry, Jacklyn Janeksela’s poetry is a straddler – occupying the future and the past, the earthly world of pigtails and red dresses as well as the other world of the devil and astral plane. If you read this book, you will become a straddler too, a person who is both enchanted and possessed.”

Luckily, she talked to me about her favorite gif, meal, and apocalypse plans:

Describe your favorite meal.

My own heart on a plate.

What music do often you write to, if at all?

I require silence or whatever sound nature gives me for the day.

In between, you can catch me floating on Bosnian Rainbows or diving into Swans. Anything that’s not fucking around with sound or art, voice & vulnerability —experimental mayhem. I melt over Motorama and Marilyn Manson; Small Depo, Soft Kill, SQÜRL. Plus stuff like LA Witch, Dead Rabbits, Tropic of Cancer, Chelsea Wolfe, The Ghost Ease, Froth, Blood Orange, Savages, Mi Pequeña Muerte, & Mary Bell. Of course, Tori Amos & The Cure are always present –like always & forever in a seriously obsessed can’t-get-you-outta-my-mind-or-heart kinda way. I have a band –The Velblouds, so I listen to myself + one, often.

What are three books that you’ve always identified with?

The Fear of Flying, Confessions of an Opium Eater, Steppenwolfe/Damien/Siddhartha (tied for 3^rd).

Choose one painting that describes who you are. What is it?

One? Jesus, I see one per day that expresses who I am or what I feel. I refuse to pick just one, but I will say that Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Seigfried Zademack, & Frances Bacon are of the same soul energy & vibration.

Choose a gif that encompasses mornings for you.

& if you were curious, here are my nights:

What do you imagine the apocalypse is like? How would you want to die?

The apocalypse is an invention to frighten us; and it serves its purpose. It looks like whatever I want it to look like and is equal to how I envision self & life. I don’t want to die so I won’t. And death is but a word, a concept; and I’m friends with death, we’re cool like that. But should I have to choose a way to go, for example because of an interview, I’d say during orgasm due the proximity of death.

If you could only watch three films for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Last Lovers Left Alive, Jules et Jim, and Django/Santa Sangre/Edward Scissorhands (tied for 3^rd).

How would you describe your social media persona/role?

Mission: support art, humans, and awakening. But I try to be more focused on my terrestrial persona/role because the internet will die one day; I don’t want to lose touch with myself too much and forget how to be a human.

What’s your favorite animal and why?

Cats because they are mediums; so are rabbits. But one day I will have a goat on a farm somewhere far away. All animals are gods, that’s why I don’t eat them.

What do you carry with you at all times?

Pen, paper, magic, water, stones.

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jacklyn janeksela is a wolf and a raven, a cluster of stars, &  a direct descent of the divine feminine.  jacklyn janeksela can be found @ Thought Catalog, Luna Magazine, Talking Book, Three Point Press, DumDum Magazine, Visceral Brooklyn, Anti-Heroin Chic, Public Pool, Reality Hands, Mannequin Haus, Velvet-Tail, Requited Journal, The Feminist Wire, Word For/Word, Literary Orphans, Lavender Review, & Pank.  she is in a post-punk band called the velblouds. her baby @ femalefilet.  more art @ artmugre & a clip.  her first book, fitting a witch//hexing the stitch, will be born in 2017 (The Operating System).  she is an energy.  find her @ hermetic hare for herbal astrological readings.

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets.