The Next Best Book Club discussion

Your comment about James Lipton brought this question to mind -- What literary or artistic endeavor that you've never tried would you love to dive into?

I would love to make films -- say like Cassavettes or John Sayles. And I'd love to learn how to sculpt. Both seem to call to me, so maybe someday!

Hosho, I want to know... what's your all-time guilty pleasure reading?

I suppose it starts with what I consider guity reading -- and, for me, that's re-reading my favorite books over and over. Guilty only because I've only got so much time, and there's still so much I have yet to read! But, I tell you, I have to re-read the great books -- they're a wellspring of ideas and craft...seeing how they were made. I usually read a few new ones -- small press stuff, and now, with some writer friends of mine breaking out, I try to get all the new stuff from the folks I know...but every 2 or 3 books or so I have to pick up Ask the Dust, or On the Road, or Catcher in the Rye, or Women, or Tropic of Cancer and read it for the umpteenth time. It's like catching up with an old friend who you haven't seen in a while...I love that stuff.

I'm counting the minutes until I can get at the growler of Luna De Los Muertos Stout in the fridge -- made here in town by Tractor Brewing Co.

How about you folks...who's drinking what tonight?

I'm curious too.. what's everyone's drink preference?

I guess no one is drinking on account of it being a school night and all...

Well, no one ELSE, I mean...

Well, I'm not drinking now, but I hope to share a few with family this week-end. Your beautifully crafted poems about drinking bring to mind the great times I had over the years with many different people. Each has a story, if like you, one is willing to listen. Some incredibly funny, some down right sad, all in all just life wrapped in a few hours.
I have to ask which is your favorite poem in this collection?

I tried commenting last night, but I guess it disappeared into the ether?

I'm not very adventurous in my alcohol consumption. I can't stomach beers, lagers, ales, wines, any of that. I totally buy into the "liquor is quicker" mindset. For me it's mostly rum (rum&coke) and vodka (White Russians) and verrrry occasionally something else. I have a great curiosity (and an equal fear) of one day trying moonshine.

For Nancy: Yowza! My favorite poem in the collection? No way to settle on one. I will say that 1) the first and th elast poem were chosen very specifically and 2) all the poems about love and death are, to me, the backbone of the collection -- and any one of them could be a favorite on any given day.

Nancy, what is YOUR favorite poem in the collection? (Or anyone else, for that matter!)

And Derek: Okay -- so a mixed drink specialist...I can dig it. How about a Bloody Mary? Let me ask you this: have you tried margaritas? If you ever make it to Albuquerque, get yourself a carafe of the house margarita -- rocks, salt -- and prepare to LIVE! As for moonshine -- well, you are wise to be afraid...be very afraid!

I love so many of these poems, so it's really hard choosing a favorite. I really like the one on page 49. Here's an excerpt to trigger people's memories:

raging, diarrheal
conversational
torrent…
But the woman is like
the goddamned Terminator,
she absolutely, positively
will not stop…until you are
dead.

I found this absolutely hilarious, and I could totally relate to the situation. My husband and I had recently visited a good friend at a bar and our friend's boss, who was ridiculously smashed and incoherent, ran into us and completely hijacked the conversation and our poor friend. So, the humor in this poem is spot on.

The other the poem that really touched me was the one that starts on page 39. Here's an excerpt:

and the world
you once knew
was gone,
snuffed out
in a brutal whiff,
it was early afternoon,
and there was
nothing
left,

This poem is extremely powerful and moving. It really touches on death well. One minute everything is normal; you are watching a game with your buddy and the next second your whole world has changed and someone you love is gone from this world. It's a crazy and painful thing to have to wrap your mind around. And death is like that--random, unexpected, and harsh.

Hosho, if you want to share your Bloody Mary recipe with us that'd be awesome. :) I have a food blog and I could totally feature your recipe on my blog and mention your amazing drunken poems!

Hosho, too difficult to pick a favorite-that is why I asked you. Your work is always thoughtful and moving. If I had to pick I would agree that the first one really gets to me - your brother is a crack up and yes you and your buddy needed his help. This one really made me laugh. There are a few that really tore me up, the one with the Veteran shows your ability to see, to feel and your love and compassion shine throughout. The one with your friend losing his life while yours trys to make sense of it, tears me to bits and last but not least is the one in where you watch your Aunts dancing, laughing drinking and you can actually see them as younger woman with thoughts, dreams, wins and losses makes me cry every time I read it. This book is so different than your previous works- all are masterpieces. I love your book 37 Psalms from the Badlands, the poem COURAGE IN ALL THE DAYS, ALL THE THINGS- oh I could go on and on but the readers looking at this I have a broadside of yours on my desk this poem I feel I should share with them. Titled CICADA
Sick of his own face, sick of his skin, of the dark, he crawls outside himself
to sing-

a better poet than most.

I think this one is hard to not take with you- keep writing, loving, sharing, enjoying and of course drinking with friends and family.

To Rosanna:
Pg. 49 -- being set upon by an wonk! I've always felt bolted to the chair and powerless -- as I don't want to hurt anyone's feeling unnecessarily...but I also really don't want the conversation to continue! I actually admire people who recognize and react in these spots...and as seen on pg (Flor-Bama) and pg. ("Too late!"). I occasionally pull it off myself...though I usually feel bad.

+ Yes -- the death on pg 39 is pivotal to the book, and your analysis of it is spot on...random, unexpected, and harsh. The title of my 2nd book came from this same afternoon: Something Random & Tragic To Set The Guts Aflame... And frankly, I doubt I could do a reading of it without cracking. That was a hard poem to write...but one I knew I had to write. If memory serves, it was one of the last ones I wrote.

As for my Bloody Mary recipe on your food blog...

Man oh man...that's what I'm talking about! I am 100% IN!! Heck -- I'll make you a little video of one being made if you can post video. Let me know! Until then...

The Official DrunkSkull Blood Mary Recipe:
Spicy V-8, Worchestershire, horseradish, minced garlic, fresh chopped basil, cracked black pepper, cajun spice blend, Old Bay, a squirt of Sriracha, squeeze a lime wedge or 2 lime.
Vodka: Your choice -- Kettle One, Skyy, Stoli, Absolut, Dark Eyes (just kidding) -- I wouldn't even include Grey Goose, and definitely not Chopin -- Chopin (my favorite vodka) is a sippin' vodka...not a mixer!
Salt the rim using lime juice with celery salt + old Bay + cajun spice blend
Garnish with celery stalk, pickled green beans, a jalapeno if you've got it.

You can see one here at 0:10! http://youtu.be/-8__wE526-Y

To Nancy:
Well well well...you have more McCreesh books than I do! I'm not kidding...I don't think I have a copy of 37 Psalms of my own! And almost no one has ALL THE DAYS, ALL THE THINGS...so thank you, you've got a great collection! And the poems you mentioned are excetly the kinds of poems that, when I finished them, really allowed me to see the depths I could plumb with this approach, with these "drunk poems." Bukowski is, for my money, one of the most misunderstood writers of the last 50 years. He is routinely dismissed as a boorish oaf, a misogynist, a dirty old man. What the dismissers never see is the deep and profound understanding of humanity, of what it is like to be on the bottom, the outside, to be face-down in the gutter -- to his own demons and limitations with humor and grace on a daily basis. That's the tradition I was aiming for. The book isn't a celebration of booze...it's a celebration of life, it all its glory and imperfection.

And yes, my brother is absolutely a crack up. He doesn't say much...but when he does, he knocks it out of the park!

Hosh, i can read some Bukowski influence sure, but it's not derivative and that's one of the many things i love about the book. There's a positivity that's infectious. Just this evening the wife and i were sitting around w/ friends telling drinking stories and the best, most interesting stories have a human element that almost anyone can relate to. I immediately thought of your poem stories. I can only assume you thought about how "realistic" your poems may or may not seem to others. Hell, what's my question? i guess i'm wondering, at what point did you say to yourself within a particular story, "Enough? Because there's happy, sad, ecstatic, moody, goofy, introspective... but you somehow don' t go overboard.

My husband is now reading this and is really impressed, too, although he'll never comment on the thread.

I absolutely love this collection. I don't know exactly what I was expecting before I read it, but the life force throughout is amazing. An absolute joyous celebration mixed with deep pain, but what stays with me the most is the celebration.

I just got For All These Wretched, Beautiful, and Isignificant Things . . . from Amazon. It looks like it will be very different. Looking forward to reading it and getting a sense of your different styles.

First -- before I forget: Thank you both -- heck, that you all -- for taking time, and for offering me so many kind words. I'm honored that the book has reached you, that you gambled on it and it paid off. Makes me feel good to know the book is out there and in good hands!

Dave: Call it the prejudice of memory, or just call it pure dumb luck -- but the way that I remembered much of the work had, within it, some kind of natural narrative, and natural intro and exit. In fact, the way the first drafts were written -- so fast, at times 10 or more a day, the key was simply finding the right first line. Once I found it, boom -- it all just spewed out and fell into place. There are tons of reasons for people to like a story, a book, a movie, a painting...but the most compelling and consistent thing I respond to when reading or exploring the arts is when I recognize something, in a piece, that I had long imagined as my own. Suddenly the loneliness of an experience evaporates and we realize that someone understands our deepest hurt, our most glaring failures...and we are, in that moment, less alone. I believe that is what art does -- it marries people through common experience. "The best, most interesting stories have a human element," you said...absolutely. The best, most interesting stories are about US!

Peg said: "the lifeforce throughout is amazing." This is, to me, the one quality that all the writing I dearly love has in common. It is the spirit, the beautifully imperfect human spirit behind the creation of a thing that, through humor and character actions, reveals itself to the reader. This is that powerful human connection that, to me, is magic. You can read Li Po -- words he wrote centuries ago -- and, when they click and boom in your mind, he may as well be sitting with you in the room, drunk and laughing, trying to convince you to go out and kiss the moon. WRETCHED will be an interesting experience, having first read this book. And whereas THIRST is a beautiful and joyous thing, despite the pain...I think WRETCHED is a wounded, and suffering search for redemptive beauty. Somewhere the different feel of each book passes the other, as if some midnight train through the snowy Alps. What surprises me most, when comparing the 2 books, is that I somehow wrote them both. It doesn't seem possible -- and yet, there I was for each of them!

Hosho, too difficult to pick a favorite-that is why I asked you. Your work is always thoughtful and moving. If I had to pick I would agree that the first one really gets to me - your brother is a crack up and yes you and your buddy needed his help. This one really made me laugh. There are a few that really tore me up, the one with the Veteran shows your ability to see, to feel and your love and compassion shine throughout. The one with your friend losing his life while yours tries to make sense of it, tears me to bits and last but not least is the one in where you watch your Aunts dancing, laughing drinking and you can actually see them as younger woman with thoughts, dreams, wins and losses, makes me cry every time I read it. This book is so different than your previous works- all are masterpieces. I love your book 37 Psalms from the Badlands, and the poem COURAGE, IN ALL THE DAYS, ALL THE THINGS. Oh I could go on and on. I would like to share this for the readers, I have a broadside of yours on my desk, titled CICADA
Sick of his own face,
sick of his skin,
of the dark,
he crawls outside himself
to sing-

a better poet than most.


Keep writing, loving, sharing, enjoying and of course drinking with friends and family.

Whoops, I did not realize that I had already posted this!

Pretty early to be into the sherry isn't it?

I kid, I kid...

Ok, so let me ask a bookish but not your book sort of question. If you could have lunch with any author/poet, dead or alive who would it be and what would you want to talk with them about?

As long as we're dreaming, I'd shoot the works -- I'd want to have lunch with Walt Whitman.

And I would want to talk about how I could see the world the way he does. To me, he is a spiritual time traveler...and he laid down a stepping-stone path to how to live a profoundly happy life.

Of course, we're far off the path, and still haven't caught up to him!

Well guys, We've only got a couple of hours left to this discussion so I wanted to swing by and thank Hosho oh-so-very-much for hanging with us all week!

It was a lot of fun watching him interact with you all.

I hope you take a moment to thank him for his time here with us as well!

Gosh I got here just in time. Work has prevented me from getting to the discussion all week, but now I finally have a moment and a cocktail in hand.

You said in the introduction that you remember most of these nights clearly, that being said, with the topic of the collection being drinking do you think anything went missing from there poems or were there any events where you felt you had to take artistic license to fill in the blanks?

I'm sorry that I didn't get to participate more in the discussion. I truly enjoyed reading all your answers.

ps. I've adopted "Only Fascists drink white wine" as a personal moto

Hosho thanks for doing this. I loved A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst and I'm really glad to have been introduced to your work. And after your recent post I checked out Li Po. I'm glad for that as well - I had never read his poems.

Thank you Hosho, Lori and NBBC for the wonderful book and the chance to participate in this discussion!

Just poured myself a nightcap -- Lagavulin, for anyone keeping track. I'll toast the final hour of this enjoyable discussion. Thank you all for making it such a good time. I've had a ball.

Rachelle: Hello hello -- glad you coud make it. And yes -- that's a great motto. It's hugely popular at parties!

The only thing I intentionally left out were the nights that were dull, and didn't rate as memories. I felt that, in order to do the collection right, to do it justice -- it had to be drinking in all its myriad forms...the best and worst of it. And if there were blackout, or blanks -- I left them in. It never would've felt right to make stuff up -- to me that fundamentally changes the spirit of what the collection hopes to accomplish. It would change what I felt was an honest search for meaning into some ugly -- a gross need to mythologize or embellish is some kind of misguided competition. And what's the point of that? The book isn't ABOUT drinking, though, of course, drinking appears (or is implied) on every single page. I tried to tell all the stories I remember as I remember them...no filler, and no bullshit. Memory is imperfect, of course -- as are perceptions...but to invent meant lying, and lying cheapens and corrupts...so, to answer the question: No. I'm not sure if you'll think more or less of me now! Thanks for a fun question!

Peg: Yes...Li Po. And Catullus. The original drunk poets! Li Po has so many poems where he sits alone, drunk, with the moon...where he scoffs at the deepest worries in life...it's truly wonderful.

Thank you for your kind words, too. Small press folks have such a hard time getting books out, and spreading the word. The good news is -- in this day & age you can probably buy signed copies from authors, which is better for you...and better for them too! Access to the writers and artists working today has never been easier. Take advantage. Tell them you like what they're doing. It's enough -- usually -- to keep them working, keep new, interesting stuff in your mailbox. Buy from the people who wrote it, or who made it...buy direct. And keep supporting your favorites!

Sláinte!

And, for anyone still reading this and/or interested after the fact: I'll check in here from time to time, and will gladly answer questions, etc.

Hi Everyone,
You can go here for the Official DrunkSkull Bloody Mary recipe and video tutorial + a chance to win the DrunkSkull Survival Kit:
http://www.flavorfuljourneys.com/drun...

Good luck!

After this week, I'm ready for a bucket of them!