Luna Park and Travis Kurowski on my work at COIN

Travis Kurowski, editor of Luna Park, wrote about my dialect work at COIN in "It," and "Race, Authenticity, Culpability," in an essay called "Writing the Other: Michael Copperman and the Ethics of Representation," today. He said:

"So what did I remember about lit mags from reading Copperman’s story? Sort of what Emily Dickinson got when reading a poem:

"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?"

Lit mags have, historically, been the home of the avant garde, or at least a good portion of the best avant garde we’ve got. What many of us hope to find in their pages is, if not the Poundian new, at least something distinct, different, maybe even problematic. Something amarketable, if that’s even a word. Something hard to pin down. And, if that is combined with a great deal of literary panache and empathy, than there is often nothing better.

But, more than just moving me, than just having “the top of my head were taken off” reading—which specifically happened in the last line of the piece—Copperman’s story and complimentary essay engaged my intellect, as reader and writer, forcing me to confront the basic notion of representation in creative work. And this, all the above taken together, the moving alongside the problematic, the new and the empathetic, is, I suppose, what I’ve long read lit mags for, have read them for since I first picked up a copy of Paris Review in the Southern Oregon University library and read Shepard’s “Climb Aboard the Mighty Flea.” It was Garcia Marquez’s Kafka moment. It was “Awesome!” combined with “Writers can do that?!”

Along with a great story, lovely writing, and compelling characters, what is interesting about “It” is its direct engagement with the core element of creative writing: imagining others (even if that means imaging our past selves."

Read the full text for yourself at Luna Park, but I can think of no finer reader for my work than as fine a writer and thinker as Mr. Kurowski.