Gulf Coast nonfiction editor Thea Lim was kind enough to alert me that my essay in their 25th Anniversary issue just received a kind review. They said:
"Michael Copperman's non-fiction, "To Cut”, is a stark look into the world of "cutting weight." Here, extreme wrestlers lead a joyless life of deprivation and dehydration for the sake of winning, attempting to avoid the 1998 NCAA Weight Class policy. Wrestlers wrap feet in plastic to lose fluid and pounds, or run wildly in wilting heat, covered in wool. When pounds fall by the hour, lives are in the balance, always. The author informs us:
The truth was that wrestling itself was easy, at least for me. Yes, there was the jittery anticipation of the match, and the demands of competition: instinct and execution and all-consuming focus. But I had natural ability and agility and balance. The training and the actual matches didn't demand half the will and devotion that cutting weight required. Cutting was the essence of the sport.
The author, at twenty-one, nearly goes too far himself. Luckily, love of the sport is finally dulled by bodily pain of every kind: “I couldn't go on. I stood, stripped off the plastics and went to the water fountain and drank.” He loses, and wins, as he swallows. The reader is horrified by the many ways these men find to weigh less, to acquire acclaim or purpose. This is a unique view of a life few would want. The writing is matter-of-fact, graphic and replete with horrific unforgettable detail."
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
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.
"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.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Work in Gulf Coast; After so many clouds, Summer
Please do go to the newstands, and pick up Gulf Coast's 25th Anniversary issue, which contains my essay "To Cut." The issue is beautifully produced, and the company in the issue are the sort of writers I'm accustomed to admiring from afar.
What other news from the front? Well, there's the staying in Eugene another year, which I'm attempting to embrace as opposed to mourn. I have a job that I love, and ahead the free expanse of summer to write, and how many people have that-- meaningful work, time to pursue art? It's not likely I'll be accommodating to the humdrum ease and provincial pleasures of Eugene any day soon-- I fit in less well here every year I stay-- and so, to seek I stay, seeking finally to get away. How's that for addle-brained poetry. But at least the sunlight is finally here!
And barely soon enough-- it was an early, wet Fall, a long bleak Winter, a sunless, dreary Spring. My birthday is is two days: let the Summer rise in a glory of heat and light, and let us turn our pale faces to the sky and look there, to paraphrase an old Hawaiian proverb, for wisdom.
What other news from the front? Well, there's the staying in Eugene another year, which I'm attempting to embrace as opposed to mourn. I have a job that I love, and ahead the free expanse of summer to write, and how many people have that-- meaningful work, time to pursue art? It's not likely I'll be accommodating to the humdrum ease and provincial pleasures of Eugene any day soon-- I fit in less well here every year I stay-- and so, to seek I stay, seeking finally to get away. How's that for addle-brained poetry. But at least the sunlight is finally here!
And barely soon enough-- it was an early, wet Fall, a long bleak Winter, a sunless, dreary Spring. My birthday is is two days: let the Summer rise in a glory of heat and light, and let us turn our pale faces to the sky and look there, to paraphrase an old Hawaiian proverb, for wisdom.
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