MQR Online

The Poetics of Reverie

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* Claire Skinner *

But who actually daydreams? If you’re anything like me, you might feel the anxious urge to constantly be doing something. A day of commuting, meetings, emailing, and running errands feels productive. I’m tired after it. I can reassure myself that I’ve done something, that I’m worthy of waking again tomorrow. To lounge around on the sofa, drifting in and out of naps, gazing at a white rose blooming outside the window feels slothful, lazy, and (shall I say it?) frightening. It’s as if I’m asking the God of Free Market Economics to throw a lightning bolt at my daydreaming head. I’m frightened because if I give myself over to reverie, it may mean that I’ve accomplished nothing, that I’ve gotten nowhere, that I’m still me, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow: flawed, bad at math.

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Something Like Groping Around In The Dark In A Half-Familiar House

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* Kristie Kachler *
I’ve been learning German off and on for almost two years now, and sometimes the language seems to have batted its pretty eyes at me and turned away. Like any doomed pairing worth its salt, we share an irreconcilable incompatibility: I’m precise when precision is important, but at a point I leave stray details alone so that I can read and sleep and stuff. Unfortunately, German requires its learners to be always on duty with an unerring, unflagging attention to detail. The grammar is so involved that I’ve started to suspect you have to practice it from birth to have any hope of mastering it[1]. Strictures of word order plague beginners whose verbs are always burning off like fog before the end of a relative clause, while the chicaneries of declinations ensure that it’s almost impossible for even an advanced learner to string together, say, three perfectly accurate sentences. There’s probably a German proverb that speaks to the shame of overcomplicating a thing that could be simple, but no one has taught it to me yet. All the native speakers I know are too busy hin-ning and her-ring, heraus-ing and hinauf-ing away. To listen in on this is to entertain visions of the nimblest governess running to and fro in an Alpine wonderland, and then to admit that The Sound of Music made too deep an impression, and then to suspect an impending seizure if you have to listen much longer.

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Exploring Different Pathways

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* A.L. Major *
I’ve been told by more than one writer friend that to write a novel you must every day chain yourself to your chair for as long as necessary. So that’s what I do. I sit. On average I might spend eight hours sitting—though four of those hours I’m probably checking Facebook. A few months ago a friend posted this article by Susan Orleans about the perils of sitting and how sitting can cause obesity, high blood sugar, blood pressure, excess body fat. While reading, my initial thought was, “Wow. This is proof! My job is killing me.” I became overwhelmed by a certain kind of panic that felt to me very American— only those who live in privileged countries, after all, have to the time to worry about how many hours they are sitting during the day.

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On Cynicism and Celebrating An Imbecility

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* Paula Mendoza*

I read this Salon article about GenXers and mid-life crises which hones in on a few particulars of one generation’s anxiety about growing old. Author of the article, Sarah Scribner, citing economist and demographer Neil Howe, spoke of how the Boomer generation’s mid-life crisis was marked by a kind of claustrophobia over the constrictions of family and career, whereas with GenXers, the opposite fear prevails—an agoraphobia that paralyzes with seemingly infinite choices and options…I’d like to speak to what Scribner calls a ‘survivalist’ tendency in this demographic—that quality of enterprising restlessness, fashioned by economic crises, war, and two terms of a Bush presidency.

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Bad Girl Poetry

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* Claire Skinner *

Some days, the best of intentions fly out the window, and all I want to do is drink a buttery glass or two of white wine, stream episodes of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix, and take a long, luxurious nap. Who cares if it’s a Tuesday? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to listen to the part of myself that is calling out for rest, for a day on the sofa in pajamas. I’ve decided to roll with these, to quote Pilgrim’s Progress, “Sloughs of Despond,” without (too much) self-judgment. Forget the gym. Forget returning emails with any semblance of timeliness. Forget the dishes waiting patiently in the sink. Forget it. Today I’m slothful, morose, and sleepy.

Since I’m of the literary persuasion, on days like this I need a poem that understands my predicament, that wallows with me, that raises its glass. Cheers.

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Do Like the Inupiaq

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* Zhanna Vaynberg *

Central Siberia has forty words for snow-like weather, and in the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, there are about seventy terms for ice: “utuqaq,” ice that lasts year after year; “siguliaksraq,” the patchwork layer of ice crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and “auniq,” ice that is filled with holes, like Swiss cheese. Replace the word ‘ice’ with ‘love’ and it makes perfect sense to adopt these words as our own! They’d be much more accurate than the very general term “love.”

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Substantiations of Violence, Romanticism, and Lame Jokes: An Interview with Douglas Trevor

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“I think the idea that writing makes people feel better is usually mistaken. Finishing a book, or a story, or an article, is an accomplishment and that should bring a measure of joy and/or relief, but I think when people set out to write about painful experiences they delude themselves when they claim that they will feel better at the end of the experience. They might feel better by virtue of finishing the book or the story, but I don’t think that means they will feel better about whatever was ailing them when they started out. I just don’t think writing cures despair. Melville says as much in his diaries, and so does Shakespeare’s speaker at the end of the Sonnets: ‘Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.'”

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