midwest eclogue by Stacie Cassarino
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Stacie Cassarino, “Midwest Eclogue” [ID in ALT]
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10 & 23 for the writer asks? 💕
This got uh. Waaaay too long.
10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?
I am honestly not sure what it means to me, or at least I am not sure I could describe it in words.
I find it hard to separate writing that’s haunting because of some element of the style itself, from writing that’s haunting because it describes something haunting (probably explains why I am haunted by Wikipedia pages and old homemade websites in all honesty).
Usually I would say, quotes/passages that continue to pop into my head regardless of whether or not I’ve consciously decided to revisit them.
Off the top of my head, and I am 100% forgetting things:
Summer Solstice and Midwest Eclogue by Stacie Cassarino.
The beginning of Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson where he talks about the dangers of diving and how divers can become disoriented and lost exploring a wreck. I read this in the library of a B&B in Vermont probably 15 years ago and still think about it so.
There’s a passage in Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s Growing Up in Coal Country about the breaker boys inventing their own sign language that I think about at least once a week.
The portions of Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat that talk about Joe Rantz’s upbringing and that of his wife Joyce, and their relationship. Like I did cry and I want to cry again every time I think about it.
Easy Company Soldier by Donald Malarkey. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a reread but - mainly the passages where he talks about Oregon, and about Joe Toye. You can never say I am unpredictable.
Résistance by Agnès Humbert. I went through a period in high school of reading and rereading this book a lot which…idk what to make of that, tbh. It’s very heavy and very…good, which is probably an inappropriate adjective for a memoir that includes the author’s experiences of being enslaved by the Nazis. There’s a portion of the epilogue (?) or introduction (I think? Or possibly even a footnote) by Barbara Mellor that talks about the fate of the fighters imprisoned at Fort Mont-Valérien that I still think about.
By that same token, Martha Gellhorn’s writing on similar horrors, and that is definitely for her style as well as the facts of what she’s describing.
In terms of being haunted by my own writing, I would say…sometimes? It’s usually really wrapped up in the research I might be doing for, getting immersed? Also definitely tied to the sort of pandemic atmosphere/time when I wasn’t working and my days were very unstructured and it was summer and very easy to get lost in things. I would say the reincarnation/disaster AU which I’m sure is very surprising. Just lots of ideas swirling around and reading about awful things and that landscape. Other than that, I can’t really think of another piece? Possibly the first scene I wrote of Jo and Frankie together, but that was more of a fever dream, have-to-get-it-on-the-page vibe rather than a haunting. Possibly these are the same??
23. Describe the physical environment in which you write. Be as detailed as possible. Tell me what’s around you as you work. Paint me a picture.
I…am very variable in where I write, which is usually one of several spots around the house — the living room mostly, or my room, or our “guest room” aka home office/home gym/storage area/it has an old armchair that I like and no one else in the family does. The constants are usually: a glass of water on the side table and the remains of an iced coffee beverage, pillows and/or blankets, natural light if I can (though my room is not the place for that), terrible posture, and I am usually in comfy clothes if not in my actual pajamas.
If I’m in the living room or guest room the TV is usually on low, sometimes with a writing playlist on Spotify (yes I have both on at the same time) but it really depends — sometimes I do just the music, sometimes I need silence.
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Midwest Eclogue
by David Baker
We wade into a blackened pond to save
the dying water.
The water isn't dying
—we know, we know—it's the fish and frogs
starving, pushed out
by subsurface growth.
Still, that's how they put it to us,
our new neighbors
who've come to watch
their new neighbors
cope with a stagnant, weedy,
quarter-acre runoff swamp.
They say, let it go, by which they mean
(this from Scott, cut
like a side of beef,
six-pack belted like a holster to his pants)
it's God's will, or nature's, and besides
it's too much work,
to which his father John, bigger, beer-
gutted, bald scorch of a face, plops
on our dock and says You
got that right. At first we tried sprinkling
chemicals around
the darkening perimeter—to wit,
copper sulfate penta-
hydrate (CuSo4—5H2O),
used variously as
a micronized fungicide in pellets,
a crystalline pesticide "noted
for acute toxicity in bees,"
and here, a powdery "powerhouse algaecide"—
or in other words (this
from John), fancy sun-block
for the water. For weeks the bottom-
black surface glowed
eerily aquamarine,
yet all that died were two fat grass carp,
lazy from the slime
they ate, who floated up
like scaly logs to petrify. That's why
I'm waist-deep
where my neighbors watch, rowing
with a rake through a sludge of leaves,
stirring algae in
a cooking pot, dragging it
through the muddy pool. Each time I pull a gob
of slime and glop, dark
as organs, toward shore,
John yells out, encouraging, that's a good one,
and I shove it on to Ann
to rake up the bank
where we'll haul it off some day.
Don't just sit there
in the willow shade,
I ought to shout. Come on. Help us out.
Or (this from Virgil,
via Corydon), why not at least
go about some needful task? But there's
so much trouble
in the world these days
I've been content to work in peace
beside my wife, my life's
surprising love,
to keep the cardinals throbbing in our close cattails
and frogs at home
in a splash of breathable water.
Each step stirs a slick
of spreading ooze
that follows
orbital in my wake, a little nebula of oil
and algae stars. And look,
overhead the first real star
has answered back: There's darkness
on the way. We drag one more
sloppy mass up the bank
and see its dimming possibilities—
tadpoles and minnows, shiny as coins, egg-
clusters of sun perch, bluegill roe—
throbbing in the grass,
twisting to be loose, aglow
against the color of the coming night. And there go
John and Scott, down
on their knees in the grass,
untangling as many as they can to slip back
to the black pond, before the sky
turns black as well.
There's smoke you can see from the neighbors' chimney,
and the shadows of the hills
are lengthening as they fall.
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The first day it feels like fall
I want to tell my secrets
recklessly until there is nothing
you don’t know that would make
your heart change years from now.
How foolish we are to believe
we might outlive this distance.
I don’t know the names for things
in the prairie, where the expanse
of light and the hissing of tall stalks
makes me move slowly,
like in another country before
I must share it with anyone.
In what do you believe?
In September’s slight motion
of particulars, in the weight of birds,
in lust, propulsion, maps
that lie. You should not have loved
me. Now: goldenrod, prairie-clover,
the ovate-leafted bluebell with its open
throat, saying how did you expect
to feel? The colonies of prairie-smoke
and pods turning golden and papery,
the grassy plains iterating patience,
and things I cannot name.
Begin with apples reddening.
Begin with a woman touching
the cities in your feet. Hartford,
Anchorage, the Bronx. Did you ever
see yourself as more
than yourself? I walk into a part
of afternoon that deepens
inventing an endpoint
for sadness. Everyone is gone.
On the subject of deception,
where do you stand? There’s a chill
in the air and the flowers know,
the goddamned flowers, their loosed
color. Sometimes we are cruel
and we mean it. We author the house
with its threadbare linens, the false
miniatures of people saying look at me.
Will the landscape forgive you?
Is it yours to describe? What
is the sound inside your mouth?
I’m surrounded by grasslands
in every direction. The sound
is a clamoring, because desire
is never singular and we want it
this way. We want it easy.
I have already let go
of summer. Here, the wind –
dispersal of seed and story. Love,
there are things I cannot name.
Stacie Cassarino, “Midwest Eclogue”, in Zero At The Bone
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Midwest Eclogue
The first day it feels like fall
I want to tell my secrets
recklessly until there is nothing
you don’t know that would make
your heart change years from now.
How foolish we are to believe
we might outlive this distance.
I don’t know names for things
in the prairie, where the expanse
of light and the hissing of tall stalks
make me move slowly,
like in another country before
I must share it with anyone.
In what do you believe?
In September’s slight motion
of particulars, in the weight of birds,
in lust, propulsion, maps
that lie. You should not have loved
me. Now: goldenrod, prairie-clover,
the ovate-leafed bluebell with its open
throat saying how did you expect
to feel? Colonies of prairie-smoke
and pods turning golden and papery,
the grassy plains iterating patience,
and things I cannot name.
Begin with apples reddening.
Begin with a woman touching
the cities in your feet. Hartford,
Anchorage, the Bronx. Did you ever
see yourself as more
than yourself? I walk into a part
of afternoon that deepens
inventing an endpoint
for sadness. Everyone is gone.
On the subject of deception,
where do you stand? There’s a chill
in the air and the flowers know,
the goddamned flowers, their loosed
color. Sometimes we are cruel
and we mean it. We author the house
with its threadbare linens, the false
miniatures of people saying look at me.
Will the landscape forgive you?
Is it yours to describe? What
is the sound inside your mouth?
I’m surrounded by grasslands
in every direction. The sound
is a clamoring, because desire
is never singular and we want it
this way. We want it easy.
I have already let go
of summer. Here, the wind—
dispersal of seeds and story. Love,
there are things I cannot name.
–Stacie Cassarino, from Zero at the Bone
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In what do you believe?
In September’s slight motion
of particulars, in the weight of birds,
in lust, propulsion, maps
that lie.
From Midwest Eclogue by Stacie Cassarino
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"Midwest Eclogue" —Stacie Cassarino The first day it feels like fall I want to tell my secrets recklessly until there is nothing you don't know that would make your heart change years from now. How foolish we are to believe we might outlive this distance. I don't know names for things in the prairie, where the expanse of light and the hissing of tall stalks make me move slowly, like in another country before I must share it with anyone. In what do you believe? In September's slight motion of particulars, in the weight of birds, in lust, propulsion, maps that lie. You should not have loved me. Now: goldenrod, prairie-clover, the ovate-leafed bluebell with its open throat saying how did you expect to feel? Colonies of prairie-smoke and pods turning golden and papery, the grassy plains iterating patience, and things I cannot name. Begin with apples reddening. Begin with a woman touching the cities in your feet. Hartford, Anchorage, the Bronx. Did you ever see yourself as more than yourself? I walk into a part of afternoon that deepens inventing an endpoint for sadness. Everyone is gone. On the subject of deception, where do you stand? There's a chill in the air and the flowers know, the goddamned flowers, their loosed color. Sometimes we are cruel and we mean it. We author the house with its threadbare linens, the false miniatures of people saying look at me. Will the landscape forgive you? Is it yours to describe? What is the sound inside your mouth? I'm surrounded by grasslands in every direction. The sound is a clamoring, because desire is never singular and we want it this way. We want it easy. I have already let go of summer. Here, the wind-- dispersal of seeds and story. Love, there are things I cannot name.
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The first day it feels like fall
I want to tell my secrets
recklessly until there is nothing
you don’t know that would make
your heart change years from now.
How foolish we are to believe
we might outlive this distance.
I don’t know names for things
in the prairie, where the expanse
of light and the hissing of tall stalks
make me move slowly,
like in another country before
I must share it with anyone.
In what do you believe?
In September’s slight motion
of particulars, in the weight of birds,
in lust, propulsion, maps
that lie. You should not have loved
me. Now: goldenrod, prairie-clover,
the ovate-leafed bluebell with its open
throat saying how did you expect
to feel? Colonies of prairie-smoke
and pods turning golden and papery,
the grassy plains iterating patience,
and things I cannot name.
Begin with apples reddening.
Begin with a woman touching
the cities in your feet. Hartford,
Anchorage, the Bronx. Did you ever
see yourself as more
than yourself? I walk into a part
of afternoon that deepens
inventing an endpoint
for sadness. Everyone is gone.
On the subject of deception,
where do you stand? There’s a chill
in the air and the flowers know,
the goddamned flowers, their loosed
color. Sometimes we are cruel
and we mean it. We author the house
with its threadbare linens, the false
miniatures of people saying look at me.
Will the landscape forgive you?
Is it yours to describe? What
is the sound inside your mouth?
I’m surrounded by grasslands
in ever direction. The sound
is a clamoring, because desire
is never singular and we want it
this way. We want it easy.
I have already let go
of summer. Here, the wind—
dispersal of seeds and story. Love,
there are things I cannot name.
Midwest Eclogue, Stacie Cassarino
( via rabbit-light)
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How foolish we are to believe
we might outlive this distance.
From Midwest Eclogue by Stacie Cassarino
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