In an interview about his school, Stanley Bosworth speaks of the
god in all of us, the god in which we do not even have to believe, “because
simply the fact of Bach, the fact of music…the fact of discovery, the fact of
Degas, the fact of one thousand other artists and writers and Yeats above all is what
sacredness is about…” All of this, he concludes, is the fundamental “mobile” of Saint Ann’s School.
His interviews bring back the memory of hearing him speak
live. To me it always felt like watching
a masterful musician improvise- thrilling, risky, profound. “We are near god as ever we can be…”
The school, he tells, is about communication. How appropriate that a literary journal was
born here.
About
her collection of short stories, “A Burden of Earth,” E.L. Doctorow wrote: "Beth
Bosworth sets her stories in the labyrinth of family life, bravely exploring
its dark turns and heartstopping entanglements. The minds of her characters are
self haunted with their memories, and what is imagined as the past is as
crucially immediate as the present.” In
2000, she founded The Saint Ann’s Review: A Journal of Contemporary Arts and
Letters. Teaching at Saint Ann’s since 1985,
Bosworth regards the review as a natural outgrowth of our community- a juggling
act and a privilege, with one foot in the community, and the other foot out.
The SAR publishes work by writers around the globe. “We’ve juxtapose pieces by
experienced writers such as Peter Carey, Mary Gordon, Mary Beth Hughs, John Hollander,
Mervyn Taylor, and Diane Greco, with works by writers coming right now into
their own,” she explains. The
SAR hosts a reading series running January-June, and has featured interviews
with Edwidge Danticat, Daniel Bergner, Amitav Ghosh, Philip Levine, and
others. The magazine also features
memoir, reviews, art, plays, criticism and translation.
I recently started work as assistant
editor. Going through past issues, I
found myself wading through wonders:
Traveling
Song
By Mervyn
Taylor
For Sekou
Last
night in the park Odetta sang Alabama
Bound,
And I
thought I saw your hat
Moving
through the crowd, and I thought
I heard
you call for a second microphone and
Everything
just got so still.
And
Odetta sang
That
traveling song, and the glare
From her
white dress made me close my eyes.
And the
white boy made that stride piano
Sound
like a train moving through the dark,
And
Odetta did like she was waving from
A window,
and you were coming down the aisle.
Last stop, you whispered, without slowing down.
One day
in the office, I caught Beth frozen over a poem. “I used to love this poem,” she said. “Do you still?” I asked. “Yes”
Childish
Things
By Alberta
Turner
I have
put childish things away,
have
scrubbed and rinsed and put
on shoes
and grown discrete.
My morals
loosen, my breasts
sag, my
nose lengthens.
My vote
is uncertain.
Dinosaurs
in plastic coats
greet me
in the Child’s
Museum. I drink milk.
I wear
diapers. My future is
inscribed
on granite
and
deciphered by tourists
with
pointy heads, who
drive up
in saucers. My god floats
in space,
hunting for stars
that have
swallowed their
light.
Somewhere
is written
That
lives are round.
We worry,
but we’ll be OK.
Come,
Little Ones, curl
around
me, and wait.
In an interview with Edwidge Danticat, Beth Bosworth asks what guides the shape of a story or a novel.
"ED:
The characters guide that. The characters guide how the story is told.
The stories that I've written in third person always come that way, where
you see a scene and you're watching something, as opposed to the stories that I
tell in the first person, where I feel that I hear the person telling me the
story. The stories and characters often dictate the form and the
structure. And some stories are faster than others because you feel
that's how the person would tell it. There's an attempt at copying a voice.
BB:
You use the word "patience." What you're describing seems to require
time and a degree of peace, to be able to hear the characters.
ED:
Well, as far as the time goes, I'm learning more and more to wait for something
to come. To wait for the stories. Because I've had such great
coincidences, where I'm writing a story and I just see something on the street
that is the answer to where the story should go next. Or I go to bed and
have a dream which dictates the next move for the character. I'm just now
learning more and more to trust that, that if it comes, it's ok, and if it
doesn't, it's ok too. We live in a society where everything works so quickly
that it's much harder to wait for a catalyst or a solution. However, I am
learning more and more if a story's not working, to just leave it alone and
give it time to resolve itself.
BB:
You enjoy writing?
ED: I enjoy
writing but sometimes I find it extremely difficult. Sometimes it feels like somebody really
sadistic is playing with you, because some days it’s great and then other days
it’s so hard and you feel like you’ll never do it again. That’s why I say I’m learning to be patient
and to trust that it will happen again, that a line, or a word will come when
it wants to."
The god that is everywhere may strike; if she does, good, and if not, also good. Stanley loves it.
The
upcoming issue features poetry by Justin Boening (including a review of his
chapbook “Self-Portrait as Missing Person,”) and Marina Kaganova, translations of
Arseny Tarkovsky by Jeff Landman, a translation of Efrain Bartolome’s “Ocosingo
War Diary: Voices from Chiapas” by Kevin Brown, and prose by Ingrid Norton,
Diane Greco, and Curt
Saltzman. It also features an interview and poems by Saar Yachin, as well as essays by Lori Horvitz, Sue Allison, and art by writers who make art
such as Mark Strand and Bianca Stone. We
read submissions September-July.
Listen
to Beth Bosworth read from her work on “The Next Hour” WBAI 99.5 FM this Sunday
from 11-12 www.wbai.org. Also featuring playwright Halley Feiffer and poet D. Nurkse
Watch
“First Meetings” by Arseny Tarkovsky in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “The Mirror"
Translation
by Jeff Landman
Each moment of our every
meeting
we celebrated in revelation,
one in the whole world. You
bolder and lighter than a bird
on wing,
down the stairs like vertigo
took me running through the
dew-
damp lilac to your sanctuary
on the other side of the
silvered glass.
When night began grace
was granted me, the chancel
gates
opened, and our nakedness
slowly
stretched out sparks in the
darkness,
and awakened, “Be Blessed”
I cried and knew my benediction
bold: you slept
and the lilacs hung heaven’s
whole blue
above your eyelids, and touched
you were calm and your hand was
warm.
And in the crystal rivers
pulsed,
mountains billowed, oceans dawned
glinting,
and you palmed the sphere,
a crystal globe, and you slept
on the throne,
and – Good God! – you were
mine.
Everything in the bright world
was transfigured,
even simple things – a basin, a
pitcher – when
standing between us, as if on
guard,
solid and stratified, was
water.
We were carried God knows
where.
Miraculously built cities
parted
like mirages before us, mint
laid itself beneath our feet,
and
there were birds with us along
the way,
and fish writhed out of the
river,
and the sky unfurled before our
eyes…
While fate trailed our steps
like a madman, blade in hand.