Showcase October 2022

Object & Idea

Dear Readers,

We welcome you back, with ocher leaves and hot teas.

On our minds: expanding each issue to include a 2nd mailing with more interview and insight into each writer’s philosophy and background. For now, we publish 1x per month w/ a follow up summary. Be sure to read last month’s issue!

Showcase showers you in ochers, in syrups and sap, bidding you well through October!

In this month’s issue, we’re featuring great work from mid and early-career lovely humans: flash fiction from Thaisa Frank—a story with bite and reverberations—and poetry from David Jonas—a pithy poem worth thorough consideration.

We’re so intrigued by our writers this month, each posing a different look at how to think about self, about craft and creativity—Thaisa Frank’s balancing act of useful heuristics vs unlearning-what-you-know; and David Jonas’ humbling capsuled takes. Their work deserves a close read and we think the interviews along with their self-analyses (object & idea) will be interesting for writers at all levels. Please join in with discussion of your own work or (constructive) opinions. Read, ponder, and enjoy!

• Jump to Prose

  • Idea

  • Interview

• Jump to Poetry

  • Idea

  • Interview

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• Joan Frank, author of the just released Juniper Street

• Robert Kirvel, author of iWater and other Convictions

Follow this link for our full list of supporters and to read about joining: HERE!

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PROSE

Flash Fiction by Thaisa Frank
—Originally published in the anthology Short Form Creative Writing, from Bloomsbury Press, 2018.

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OBJECT:

Poland

Her husband died suddenly of a heart-attack right in the middle of writing a poem. He was only thirty-eight, at the height of his powers--and people felt he had a great deal more to give, not just through his poetry but through the way he lived his life. His second wife, who was nearly ten years younger, found the poem half-finished, moments after he died, and put it in her pocket for safe-keeping. She'd never liked his poetry, nor did she like the poem, but she read it again and again, as if it would explain something. The poem was about Poland. It was about how her husband kept seeing Poland in the rear-view mirror of his car, and how the country kept following him wherever he went. It was about fugitives hiding in barns, people eating ice for bread. Her husband had never been to Poland. His parents had come from Germany, just before World War II, and she had no sense that Poland meant anything to him. This made the poem more elusive, and its elusiveness made her sure that it contained something important.
Whenever she read the poem, she breathed Poland's air, walked through its fields, worried about people hiding in barns. And whenever she read it she felt remorse--the kind you feel when someone has died and you realize that you've never paid enough attention to them. She thought of the times she'd listened to her husband with half an ear and of the times he asked where he put his glasses and car-keys and she hadn't helped him look. After awhile, she began to have similar feelings about Poland—a country she'd never paid attention to. She studied its maps, went to Polish movies, bought a book of Polish folk songs. Poland stayed on her mind like a small, subliminal itch.
One day when she was driving on a back-country road, she looked in her rear-view mirror and saw Poland in back of her. It was snowy and dark, the Poland of her husband's poem. She made turns, went down other roads, and still it was there, a country she could walk to. It was all she could do to keep from going there, and when she came home she mailed the poem to her husband's first wife, explaining it was the last thing he'd ever written and maybe she'd like to have it. It was a risky thing to do—neither liked the other—and in a matter of days she got a call from the woman who said:  Why are you doing this to me, Ellen? Why in God's name don't you let me leave him behind? There was static on the line, a great subterranean undertow, and soon both women were pulled there, walking in the country of Poland. He was there, too, always in the distance, and the first wife, sensing this, said, "Well, as far as I'm concerned, he can just go to hell.” She said this almost pleasantly—it wasn't an expression of malice—and the second wife, answered: "I agree. Completely. It's the only way."

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IDEA:

It’s hard to talk about ideas that help create fiction because at some point the story begins to tell you what to do and you let go of ideas and just run with it. But I have a few touchstones that help me: First, I believe a good piece of fiction has what we call unity: This means the story flows effortlessly and encourages the reader to enter what John Gardner calls “the fictional dream,” forgetting the world they’re in and believing the world of the story. Perhaps because I’m a minimalist, I find the “fictional dream” is best achieved by being mindful of Aristotle’s three unities, where—as much as possible—action occurs in a single time, a single place and doesn’t clutter the narrative with backstories or unnecessary descriptions of transitions. The rules of the three unities have become less rigid since Aristotle, but his notion of unity helps me leave out whatever isn’t necessary. So when I come to a transition, for example, instead of describing how a character gets from place to place, I just move on or use white space to let the reader take a leap of the imagination with me. I also believe that if you find your voice, your writing—no matter how outrageous—has authority. In my book, Finding Your Writers Voice, with St. Martins, I define voice as who you are and how you express that artistically. No one else has your voice. It’s as unique as a thumbprint. Writers usually begin by imitating other writers, which is a helpful way to begin. But at some point, you realize you can only write with your own voice. And as you begin to discover that voice, you begin to write stories that only you can tell.

As for historical context, flash has often been a form of political protest, showing people the absurd world we live in (Daniil Kharms was executed for his prose poems). I happen to believe that we live in such a world with governments and corporations justifying absurd actions. Although I don’t write with a message in mind, when an outrageous image occurs to me, I tend to trust it, whether it’s a train to the end of the world or Poland chasing a car. War-torn countries don't chase cars. But their presence is powerful, even if we ignore them.

Last, I have a great faith in the power of the imagination. Like Wallace Stevens, I think imagination is different from the unconscious. It reaches out into the world—as well as into the self—and translates perceptions into words, art, and music. So I trust that an image—like the image of Poland—will bring me to a point where the story is telling me what to do.

Again, these are just touchstones, not formulas. At some point, I lose control and forget them. When I come back to revision, I use them again. They help me sharpen the story.

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INTERVIEW

Showcase: We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it?

Thaisa: I always start a piece with a sentence that I hear. In a sense I feel that writing is like music, and the sentence sounds intriguing—it has a kind of valence and makes me shiver. So I begin a piece to discover what the sentence reveals.  I’m labeled as  a “voice-driven” or “image-driven” writer as opposed to a “character driven” or “plot driven”. I write to discover  the story and after the story begins, I find the characters and later I find the narrative arc.

In a sense, the story begins to flow from the tiny seed of a sentence, although sometimes the sentence sits for a long time before the next words come. In this case, I wrote to the point at which the woman saw Poland in in the rear view window of her car. I didn’t know why she was obsessed with Poland—although a critic might say that the fact that its war-torn history was a metaphor for her husband’s death. But writers don’t write for critics and I became—as though I were her—obsessed with the country of Poland. In this particular piece, I came to the point at which she saw Poland in the rear-view mirror of her car. At this point, I really got stuck, wrote a bad paragraph about her picking up a hitchhiker, put the piece down, and got back to it a month later, in which I suddenly had her sending the poem to her husband’s first wife. I suppose a literary critic would say she sent the poem to the first wife to get rid of her obsession and her mourning, but as a writer, I just had her send the wife the story. And then all three of them are really together in the country of Poland, united by the telephone lines. When the first wife says, “Well, he can just go to hell. It’s the only way.” I didn’t plan on this being the end of the story. I just knew that it was. 

I didn’t plan on a “theme” but discovered it: In this case, I suppose it was about coming to terms with death, but it also was about heartlessness—a heartlessness that is sometimes necessary, but also extends to mistreatment of people. You could also take this to a political level as well as a domestic one. (Governments are heartless all the time.) But I didn’t have an intention or theme when I started the story—just a belief that the first sentence would lead to a narrative.

In general, I think it’s not a good idea to start with a theme because a theme is abstract. What the writer believes will emerge if the writer has found their voice. When a writer trusts their voice they can pretty much take their readers where they want to go. In my book on voice, I defined it as: “who you are and how you express that artistically.”

What motivates you on a craft level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items? What about aesthetics: how do you wield beauty?

As is clear from my description of Poland, a first sentence usually makes me curious. This sentence is like a stepping stone that creates another stepping stone and eventually creates a path. Sometimes I can’t find the next stone and have to work on something else, letting subliminal writing below the surface find the next stone. Later, in revision, I cut unnecessary clutter and may add descriptions and flesh-out characters. And I always trust my imagination. Wallace Stevens has said, “imagination is the only genius,” and also has called the imagination “the necessary angel”  and “the weather of the mind.” Like Stevens, I believe that faith in the imagination wields beauty.

Where do you feel this work fits in on a historical level? How about aesthetic or stylewise (relative to the past and or present) and can you particularize your answer?

In the nineties, when online publications began, flash fiction took off. And this story fits into that tradition. But in fairness to the origins of flash fiction, I have to mention Voltaire and Baudelaire—both of whom wrote very short pieces. I also have to mention Russell Edson, who became the first writer to get people to pay attention to flash in this country. I corresponded with him when I was writing a book on the writers voice and needed permission to publish one of his pieces. He wrote me letters with very wide margins so the paragraphs in his letters had the startling brevity of flash. I was introduced to both flash and surrealism by the poet David Young. I was a fledgling writer, uncomfortable with traditional forms, and lucky to have met him.

In addition to flash fiction, I write short stories and novels. They all begin like Poland—with a word, or a phrase, or (with a novel) a key scene that I visualize. I’m drawn to inserting events that are impossibly strange and how they impinge on the “real” world. The characters or events in this mundane world have to cope with the new absurdity. Similarly, the absurdity has to cope with the mundane world: For example, in The Trial, by Kafka, K has to cope with being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and is never explained to him. He copes with endless bureaucratic systems and fails. This kind of writing is called “surrealism,”  somewhat different from magic realism, because magic realism creates a world in which people share supernatural belief systems, like interpenetrating realms of time, or visions of ghosts. (I’d class Singer, Borges, and some of Marquez as magical realists.) In any case, I guess surrealism puts me in the tradition of Kafka, Saramago, Monterroso, Beckett, and Daniil Kharms. But magical realists also influenced me. As has Sylvia Plath and Flannery O’Connor for their strong, courageous voices. Last, James Joyce has been an incredible teacher. Dubliners is an impeccable example of stories that are whole, surprising, and complete.

Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say?

Flash fiction is a wonderful tool for teaching and writing because a story is always larger than the sum of its parts and in flash you can see the individual words at the same time that that you see the whole story. In flash I never find limitations because it’s a form in which “less is more.”  I would also say that I never write a piece to express something: I write to discover the story. It’s amazing how many words and descriptions you can omit in most fiction so it becomes a story that is complete and whole (When I was asked to submit pieces for an anthology called New Micro Fiction, I was able to reduce two 400+ word pieces into  300 words without losing anything: In fact, the pieces were sharper.) Again, I would say that I don’t have an internal idea. Perhaps later, I do things to sharpen a piece or change an ending. The less I know about what I intend the better the writing.

Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular? Through this piece, do you mean to be in conversation with anyone, writer, thinker, neighbor or whomever? 

I can’t choose any one because all the writers I like take risks with placing the the powers of imagination in an ordinary world. Kafka has had the greatest influence on me. There are so many writers I admire, including “realists” like Alice Adams and Marilyn Robinson, Jane Mendelsohn, Faulkner, and Dickens. And James Joyce, in Dubliners, has perfect short stories.  I owe so much to so many writers.

I write as though I’m writing a letter to a reader, which in some sense me—that part of myself that would respond to what I’m writing. I don’t think about the reader in the first drafts, but when I revise, I’m very careful not to overwrite so there are spaces that the reader can enter. The reader is an invisible stranger who either share my sensibilities—like a notion of the absurd—or is interested in them.

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POETRY

by David Jonas
—Originally published by Showcase: Object & Idea, October 2022.

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OBJECT:

On Education

It's underestimation we ought not underestimate.

All my life, I've been witness
To its will to decimate,

And it is will;
Will to Underestimate.

I will not stand for it, nor
Under it.

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IDEA:

To be honest, I do not like this poem very much. As a poem, that is. I am incredibly passionate about the place it came from, which I suppose is what makes it worth reading. As for that—the idea—I think my preceding answers are enough. As for the poem’s poetry, I see it as pithy wordplay. It could really be boiled down to a quote from The Office (USA), where Kevin goes something like “why use many word, when few word do trick?” You can then read into it as much as you’d like. Creating such a poem, for me, is an exercise in juicing as much meaning from as little material as possible.

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INTERVIEW

Showcase:  We’d love to hear how you conceived of the piece. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it?

David: Unverbalized, or rather, verbalized in a proverbial shitload of profane and garbled forms, the poem long existed in my humble repertoire of strong opinions. Having grown up as a third culture kid meant constantly traveling across curricula, getting exposed to a broad idea of what education is, and potentially could be. Dissatisfaction has been an experience of mine across the board. One that I am still facing as I’ve just entered a bachelor’s program at twenty, after one false start already. It is an issue much too broad to tackle here, but I’m quite sure we all know what I mean? I’m seeing one hand… two hands… okay, moving on then.

What motivates you on a craft and aesthetic level? At what point do you consider the nuts and bolts of technique, style, word choice, and other items?

It depends. I am a relatively inexperienced ‘poet,’ but I’ve written myself a note recently that is sufficiently revealing of my ‘process,’ and perhaps relatable, or at least in some way helpful: “Constructing a poem: 1. Idea 2. Language 3. Punctuation 4. Repeat.”

Where do you feel this work fits in on a historical level? How about aesthetic or style-wise and can you particularize your answer?

Philosophy, generally, is where I draw inspiration. I see this poem as sort of a pastiche of a philosophical treatise. I consider my style relatively prosaic, poetry-wise. When it comes to poets, I feel T.S. Eliot has most encouraged me in his honesty, ideation, and lucidity. I do not think my ‘work’ warrants any more consideration in a historical sense than that.

Here we’d like to understand the limitations of the piece as you see it, which can include genre or submission requirement limitations. Were you able to express your internal ideal exactly in what you meant or wanted to say?

Yes. Internal ideal is nothing. The poem is the poem, and more contemplation naturally follows regarding the subject, that need not be expressed in its confines, I would hope.

Are there any pieces, books, or authors to whom you’d compare your work, or that inspire you? Which of the above have influenced you and this piece in particular?

I feel that the sentiments of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” and Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Ethics of Ambiguity” are very indirectly and implicitly done some justice in the poem. To elaborate, the first two in the expression of one’s individuality as being at the core of what education should be. The last, in one’s integration into society, as outward-directedness and altruism as the ideal outcome. I understand that is certainly not evident from the poem alone, but I guess it is where my thoughts on education stem from (after a great deal of intellectualization).

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A note about Showcase:

We recognize that many great pieces sit in obscurity having been published once and provided brief light, only to then languish. But let the creative waters churn. Let what was once sediment rise again as nutrients. Showcase enthusiastically calls for previously published work alongside unpublished work. We also pay writers. As we grow and if we hit certain benchmarks which we’ll share along the way, we’ll be able to raise the payout to writers.

Please subscribe to our new format, share with friends, colleagues, and classmates, and consider submitting work. Submitting is free, but capped at one submission per person to encourage all submerged and historically underrepresented voices, the whole spectrum of writers, to engage. If you’d like to submit more than one piece, then we charge a reading fee.  We will read very actively and pledge a six-week turn around for all submitted work. We will publish monthly on the third Tuesday as well, providing as many opportunities as we can for writers. We hope you will read this issue and continue following our journey!

Finally, we’re sponsored this month by Ephemera’s The Write-In Residency. Please have a flash, a quick looksee.

The Write-In Residency

The Write In Residency will sponsor 2 individuals, where each awardee is gifted a curated package of 10 new books in multiple literary genres each from a different independent publisher, a Moleskin & pen, and a $300 award to upgrade their writing nook or home office. It’s a staycation for the bookish!

Folks will be able to apply directly via Submittable or become a paid yearly subscriber to Ephemera and then apply for free (subscribers will be sent a special link). Read about subscriptions here. Best of luck!

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Showcase is generously supported by:

• Cathy Rose, Writer.

• Jane Ciabattari, Author of Stealing the Fire: Stories

• Scott Archer Jones, Author of And Throw Away The Skins