tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11749021684279165942024-03-13T22:47:32.843-07:00DISPATCHES | R.B. Moreno, Ph.D.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-35533248924948857432022-09-01T21:00:00.132-07:002023-03-23T11:05:05.502-07:00Sleepier Than Me<p>Sept. 1, 2022 -- A new work of short fiction in mixed-media form—a story I've been whittling away at for years now—has finally reached print. "Sleepier Than Me," which pays tribute to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Seymour_Hoffman" target="_blank">Philip Seymour Hoffman</a> in essaying the loss or near-death of people close to a <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ghostwriter" target="_blank">ghostwriter</a> named Benjamin, was published this summer by <a href="https://www.westernhumanitiesreview.com/" target="_blank"><i>Western Humanities Review</i></a>. An earlier version was included in my dissertation and <a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2020/10/transmigration-and-fictional-essay.html">won a creative writing award</a> in 2020. Here is an excerpt from the story, which features archival photos and other illustrations:</p><blockquote><p>In his 40s, his father began sending Benjamin postcards from distant places, some of which will come back to trouble the ghostwriter during the quarantines, on the eve of the same decade. Not the usual Mayan women at their looms, or the colored doors he knew from Antigua, but less familiar scenes. First there’s the glass-paneled stock exchange in Mexico City, where his correspondent has never seen so many Volkswagens, this whole army of miniature taxis for a population of 20 million. But that’s just a guess, writes his father, and if you think your aunt in Guatemala drives too fast, you should see these guys. Then there’s the fishermen balancing butterfly nets in Michoacán, where his father is talking to some nice people planting trees around a lake, to prevent soil erosion.</p><p>The last letter is from Buenos Aires. This is just before it happens, the ghostwriter imagines. The postcard shows a dark wall of ice spilling into another lake, a barren place where rodents from Europe have eaten away the trees. An impressive glacier in all its greatness, notes the caption.</p><p>Who knows, my son? Maybe I have some ancestors in Patagonia. The ghostwriter tries to picture the table where he’s writing. He tries reading these last words out loud, searching for small interruptions or other clues, but that is all it says.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6hupufugJVpQZ5C3zOl5gaB-_GAsvQLeR3vUF49DUMqiAM8thVPh22u5FKetbVhwL-i8uGCyDVkuiJfm2PCOkNOa8DM2iy3x6RW8uHG6djT41Qqeqjy3XSMKxNkloNBj2xPzVCbtxQr17tMYt42YE9eWbxnPsIXERiyFtKlnw7zifZB74ufHF5tE/s977/low_res_moreno_sleepier_than_me_image6.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Postcards from Patzcuaro, Mexico, and Patagonia" border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="977" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6hupufugJVpQZ5C3zOl5gaB-_GAsvQLeR3vUF49DUMqiAM8thVPh22u5FKetbVhwL-i8uGCyDVkuiJfm2PCOkNOa8DM2iy3x6RW8uHG6djT41Qqeqjy3XSMKxNkloNBj2xPzVCbtxQr17tMYt42YE9eWbxnPsIXERiyFtKlnw7zifZB74ufHF5tE/w400-h149/low_res_moreno_sleepier_than_me_image6.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />The next person young Benjamin lost was more or less anonymous. The ghostwriter didn’t learn the real story until much later, in the obituaries, when the pandemic began picking off certain survivors. For a time, Benjamin suspected it was his father writing, trying to fill in the details. The letters mostly arrived on fluorescent paper, part of a church program that had congregants exchanging messages across zip codes on Sunday mornings. Envelopes and cubbyholes in the narthex, like a couple of agents in Berlin. Every word was capitalized, as if his correspondent had lost patience with various conventions of their lingua franca. At first, all the boy knew was that this guy had daughters in volleyball and basketball and a son who preferred Boy Scouts. Check. He worked for a timber company and didn’t much care for California. Check, check. Benjamin’s father preferred wandering the creek behind the farm to Sunday services, but remained a suspect. […]</blockquote><blockquote><p>In January, his correspondent is very busy. He’s putting together a deal involving equipment and a warehouse and an employee union. He’s negotiating with the union, and must soon agree on the wording of contracts and how things will work and also “the economics” of the deal. “Money,” he adds with a parenthetical smirk. Around this time, the letters arrive handwritten, as if his correspondent can’t get to a computer. But the capitalization continues, with much scribbling and underlining. Then in February, it’s all over. Benjamin meets his correspondent over spaghetti in the church basement. He looks quite bald and excited and also a bit frail. Nothing like his bearded father, who in those days might have been mistaken for a Cuban revolutionary. Even now, the correspondent reminds the ghostwriter of a TV anchor Benjamin doesn’t yet know. His name is Samuel. Just call me Sam Donaldson, says the half-grinning man.</p><p>The next day, or what seemed like the next day, someone who signs her name as Mrs. Anderson writes to say that Sam said to say he’s really sorry. About something called chemotherapy. About the Lord calling him home. </p></blockquote><p><i>WHR</i> <a href="http://www.westernhumanitiesreview.com/back-issues/">75.2</a> arrived in the mail just the other day here in Portland, with a preview available at the journal's website. My thanks to the other contributors and our editors for their work on this issue.</p>R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0Portland, OR, USA45.515232 -122.678385317.204998163821152 -157.8346353 73.825465836178836 -87.5221353tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-14649099931920721962021-10-07T15:00:00.026-07:002021-10-09T10:12:59.662-07:00Quagmire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-91o_fDNf9D0/YV-BfYZDkNI/AAAAAAAA5t8/nx09EYosxpcFBQ86NVt9Z2Adht7-rRKGACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/9781640124523.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-91o_fDNf9D0/YV-BfYZDkNI/AAAAAAAA5t8/nx09EYosxpcFBQ86NVt9Z2Adht7-rRKGACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/9781640124523.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><p>Oct. 7, 2021 -- Another iteration of an <a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2011/09/what-happened-yesterday-in-baghdad.html" target="_blank">essay</a> I authored some 10 years ago—a braiding of conversations among young Iraqis visiting the U.S. along with personal reflections and fragmented reports from their homeland—appears this month in <i><a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/potomac/9781640124523/" target="_blank">Quagmire: Personal Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan</a></i> (University of Nebraska Press, Oct. 2021). The new anthology, edited by <a href="http://www.donaldanderson.us/biography/" target="_blank">Donald Anderson</a>, presents selections from <i>War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities </i>to mark its <a href="https://www.wlajournal.com/IssueArchive.aspx" target="_blank">30 years in print</a>. It also happens to coincide, of course, with the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, that first chapter in the War on Terror that would lead somehow to the invasion of Iraq, the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of casualties to date, and millions upon millions of families across the globe displaced from their homelands, according to <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures" target="_blank">numbers</a> compiled by Brown University's Watson Institute.</p><p>The collection's title, notes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Beidler" target="_blank">Philip Beidler</a> in his foreword, "says exactly what it means: that a post-Vietnam War America, having extricated itself toward the end of the twentieth century from the morass of Indochina, at the beginning of the twenty-first actually found it possible to create a new military and geopolitical quagmire in the desert."</p><p>Perhaps this mirrored reality makes it doubly hard for we Americans to comprehend the nature and scale of the violence that the wars have visited on so many lives. Our collective "ignorance about Afghanistan," in retrospect, "was as pervasive as it was sixty years prior regarding Vietnam—but that was not the cause of failure and defeat in either country," argues <a href="https://bostonreview.net/war-security/christian-g-appy-abandoning-afghans-start" target="_blank">one review</a> of a contemporaneous volume, <i>The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War </i>(Simon & Schuster, Aug. 2021). Such critiques and investigations point instead to high-ranking moral failures, like queries from a decades-long echo chamber: "Why were they willing to continue killing men, women, and children, and to imperil more of their own citizens, knowing that no clear-cut victory could ever be achieved? It is a haunting question."</p><p>No less haunting, for this writer, are the stories we find in <i>Quagmire</i>. Some accounts call to mind W. G. Sebald's soul-ravaged characters, as in this line from the narrator of <i>The Emigrants</i> (New Directions, 1996): "I gradually became convinced that Uncle Adelwarth had an infallible memory, but that, at the same time, he scarcely allowed himself to access it." Indeed, to quote from Beidler's foreword once more:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">The work included here is generally so powerful as to reduce one to appalled silence. … from the horrific to the banal … a true literature of witness. Something changes radically in the lives of those who have looked upon the face of battle. To borrow from Donald Anderson, the phrasing "the voice that knows" says it all.</p></blockquote><p>To read Anderson's prologue and other front matter, browse <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/search/?supapress_order=relevance&page_number=1&publisher=potomac" target="_blank">Potomac Books</a>, an imprint of UNP, or preview <i>Quagmire</i> in <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Quagmire/AuA9EAAAQBAJ" target="_blank">Google Books</a>. And to join me in bearing witness to these enduring stories, kindly ask your local library or bookstore for a copy.</p>R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-82210365649855022032020-10-27T23:46:00.005-07:002020-10-28T21:33:53.989-07:00Transmigration and the Fictional Essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8xkn0xB-ftA/X5kL9c-nQiI/AAAAAAAAufA/WWkc_ye7C6A82kafVYBxJnuFWRwrRsqRwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide10.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8xkn0xB-ftA/X5kL9c-nQiI/AAAAAAAAufA/WWkc_ye7C6A82kafVYBxJnuFWRwrRsqRwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide10.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Over the weekend, RBM delivered a craft talk on W. G. Sebald and genre adapted from <i><a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2020/07/the-land-of-infinite-variety-stories.html">The Land of Infinite Variety: Stories and Other Prose</a> </i>at the Western Literature Association's <a href="https://westernlitcon.org/" target="_blank">55th annual conference</a>, held virtually this year due to the pandemic. Here is an audio clip from his remarks—an excerpt from the artist's statement that opens his dissertation:</p><p><iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/918843394%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-8M5chsofkMp&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe></p><div style="color: #cccccc; font-family: Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 100; line-break: anywhere; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; word-break: normal;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/r-b-moreno" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="rbmoreno.info">rbmoreno.info</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/r-b-moreno/clip-from-the-land-of-infinite-variety-transmigration-and-the-fictional-essay/s-8M5chsofkMp" style="color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="Clip from The Land of Infinite Variety: Transmigration and the Fictional Essay">Clip from The Land of Infinite Variety: Transmigration and the Fictional Essay</a></div><p></p><p>In opening and concluding his talk, RBM read from "Sleepier Than Me," a new short story from the not-yet-published collection. At a Friday night awards ceremony, the story received WLA's annual <a href="http://www.westernlit.org/creative-writing-award/" target="_blank">creative writing award</a>. In 2014, RBM <a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2014/11/the-view-from-empress.html">received an honorable mention</a> from the association for another work of short fiction later included in <i>Infinite Variety </i>and <a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2016/04/snap-box.html">published by <i>Drunken Boat</i></a><i>. </i>As in the collection, a series of archival images punctuates each of these works. A few more slides from Saturday:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IptnV0--0Y8/X5kMd5CkB2I/AAAAAAAAufI/I8IHUGmeAD8hY2yZclpWDU6IGEbj2QwwgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IptnV0--0Y8/X5kMd5CkB2I/AAAAAAAAufI/I8IHUGmeAD8hY2yZclpWDU6IGEbj2QwwgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide2.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0xV48siLa0M/X5kMph2rWzI/AAAAAAAAufM/uTGVANXC8TUeq9QcBThnJjBAsIx4mcT3QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0xV48siLa0M/X5kMph2rWzI/AAAAAAAAufM/uTGVANXC8TUeq9QcBThnJjBAsIx4mcT3QCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide1.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IvEdmhtiG3c/X5kMx7v4F-I/AAAAAAAAufU/VKxMleTLTsEm66aZxJf4N-YOzHCULuNLgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide6.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IvEdmhtiG3c/X5kMx7v4F-I/AAAAAAAAufU/VKxMleTLTsEm66aZxJf4N-YOzHCULuNLgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide6.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RopvHwrU83U/X5kNE8d4M4I/AAAAAAAAufc/HbGwRlnBZgo7VrStuhQhKlZ0s3bon3MFwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide11.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RopvHwrU83U/X5kNE8d4M4I/AAAAAAAAufc/HbGwRlnBZgo7VrStuhQhKlZ0s3bon3MFwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide11.png" width="400" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GnC53AMu23w/X5kOIYdZ_7I/AAAAAAAAufw/yy_n_j4LW-kz6QUp2g0JbGOxRlK0Ie0OACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Slide12.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GnC53AMu23w/X5kOIYdZ_7I/AAAAAAAAufw/yy_n_j4LW-kz6QUp2g0JbGOxRlK0Ie0OACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Slide12.png" width="400" /></a></div>RBM extends gratitude to this year's conference organizers and selection committees, congratulations to other WLA award winners, and appreciation to our plenary speakers and honorees: former U.S. poet laureate <a href="https://twitter.com/rbmoreno/status/1319066445926387712" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Juan Felipe Herrera</a>, author <a href="https://twitter.com/rbmoreno/status/1319428889593036800" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stephen Graham Jones</a>, teacher and poet <a href="https://twitter.com/rbmoreno/status/1319699077194412032" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Natalie Diaz</a>, and comic artist <a href="https://twitter.com/rbmoreno/status/1320098431717707776" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Arigon Starr</a>.<p></p>R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0Oregon, USA43.8041334 -120.55420121.8817659194141783 169.1332988 85.726500880585817 -50.241701199999994tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-22934659827899170652020-07-19T22:00:00.004-07:002020-10-28T09:01:12.494-07:00'The Land of Infinite Variety: Stories and Other Prose' Now Indexed on ProQuest<div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">July 19, 2020 -- The arrival of a first-class envelope at my doorstep here in Portland over the weekend took me back about 10 years. It bore the seal of the university I've attended as a doctoral student for much of that time, and in the corner, the words DIPLOMA—DO NOT BEND. Amid the uncertainties of the global pandemic, like so many other newly-minted scholars and professionals exiting graduate programs in 2020, I'd been waiting for this materialization, some real-world sign of the terminus of my studies. This was it, complete with tissue paper, faux leather, and the digitally-rendered signatures of various officials.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Forget about commencement. The impersonality of the white envelope and its carefully-wrapped contents carried me back, instead, to memories of the Peace Corps and my smoke-filled exit from southern Kyrgyzstan via the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/manas-air-base-transit-center-at-manas-kyrgyzstan" target="_blank">Manas Air Base</a> outside Bishkek, which I've <a href="http://www.rbmoreno.info/2010/06/exit-osh.html">narrated</a> </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">in previous posts. (The writer Jia Tolentino, also from K-18, our doomed volunteer class of 2010, has <a href="https://jia.blog/" target="_blank">chronicled</a> </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">parallel experiences and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/opinion/14tolentino.html" target="_blank">argued for agency reforms</a> meant to prevent other kinds of violence.)</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Months after the evacuations of many in K-18, an unmarked truck with a U.S. government plate deposited a similarly-shrouded parcel at my doorstep in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I had returned to complete a master's degree in English at Colorado State. Inside the package I found assorted dictionaries, notebooks, travel guides, novels, and dusty personal effects that had survived the looting of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyz_Revolution_of_2010" target="_blank">Melon Revolution</a>. In other words, the rhetorical artifacts of my tenure abroad as a university educator—some 100 days of living with host families, preparing to co-teach English with local instructors, and beginning the journey toward fluency in one of Central Asia's dozens of Turkic languages. It had all ended in waves of violence that swept through the Kyrgyz provinces in mid-June 2010, for reasons still not well understood, resulting in hundreds of thousands of families displaced. And some 2,000 deaths—including the reported killing of two fixers hired to ferry my own team of American volunteers out of the chaos of an ancient city in flames.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">Writing and reflecting on the broader systems of violence and colonization in which I found myself implicated that summer—and on what it means to arrive "home" in the American West—has taken the better part of a decade. And that work of self-examination (personal, fictive, familial, rhetorical) is far from finished. But this summer, along with my doctoral diploma, I can point to another kind of materiality: the assemblage, in manuscript form, of a book of stories and other prose now available on ProQuest (metadata only, for the near future). Below I'm sharing the abstract and table of contents for <i><a href="https://search.proquest.com/pqdtglobal" target="_blank">The Land of Infinite Variety</a>, </i>and offering thanks to the many generous souls who have guided this work and its author thus far.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">For Madden, then, the essay as a form is not limited to conventional genres of fact. His thought experiment maintains that Sebald’s first three translated “novels” can actually be read as nonfiction, while the fourth, <i>Austerlitz</i> (The Modern Library, 2001) “performs the actions of an essay” (174). In response, I might propose that we place Sebald’s works along a spectrum of essaying as a mode of discourse, rather than unnecessarily divorcing <i>The Emigrants,</i> for example, from the canon of literary fiction by applying the “non” prefix. More generally, however, my work asserts support for Madden’s thesis. Sebald’s and similar volumes of under-recognized “essays”—ranging from Brian Kiteley’s “novel” <i>Still Life with Insects</i> (Graywolf, 1989) to emerging works perhaps best captured in the title essay of Alexander Chee’s <i>How to Write an Autobiographical Novel</i> (Houghton, 2018)—have been remarkably influential in composing certain stories at the heart of <i>Infinite Variety</i>. “The events of your life like an empty field . . . Invent something,” Chee muses, “that fits the shape of what you know,” then tell the story of this thing through “a character like you, but not you” (246). As of late, we find works fitting this mold in almost every kind of experimental fiction. From the lyrical fixations of Lydia Davis and Rita Bullwinkel to wartime cycles such as Phil Klay’s <i>Redeployment</i> (Penguin, 2014). From the New American anthologies of Ben Marcus to Ben Lerner’s <i>The Topeka School</i> (Farrar, 2019), with its chapters culled from essays, autoethnographic stories of therapy, fictionalized memories of high school forensics, and appearances of Duccio’s <i>Madonna and Child,</i> “a real painting,” in places that do not correspond with real time. Such anachronisms, explains Lerner in the back matter, work to signal his social novel’s “unstable mixture of fact and fiction” (285).</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Turning to my own work, “A Fictional Essay On or About the 100th Meridian, Alphabetically Arranged,” for example, borrows its title and underlying structure from Dinty W. Moore’s enduring “Son of Mr. Green Jeans: An Essay on Fatherhood, Alphabetically Arranged,” which found its way from <i>Crazyhorse</i> to <i>Harper’s</i>. Moore, also a former journalist, catalogues some two dozen images of fathers (from classic television, the natural world, academia, genetics, and so on), beginning with “Allen, Tim,” then gradually intersecting with more personal entries such as “Vasectomies” (49-52). In my fictional essay’s examination of 26 scenes from a line of demarcation with “great significance” in the American West, an opening section titled “Adventure” introduces the cultural memory of “three fair-skinned, French tourists” paddling southward into the bowels of the high country. Their journey is followed by more personal “Echoes”:</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It’s the same storied meridian many American families deserted—propelled less by adventure than desperation—in the year before the voyagers arrived to the land they called the Far-West. Might Antoine’s journal somehow call into question the writer’s own nostalgia for the late frontier—built on his grandfather’s late memories (1928-2013) of the Dakotas? . . . How many echoes, and how much dissonance? What of the parallels in these perpendicular lines of flight? (123)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">. . . In this wayward manner, [my] work unfolds with parallels to what Sebald once described to a </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">New Yorker</i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> interviewer: “Not even my Ph.D. research was done systematically. It was done in a random, haphazard fashion. The more I got on, the more I felt that, really, one can find something only in that way—in the same way in which, say, a dog runs through a field” (qtd. in Madden 170).</span></div>
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R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-85018475710371751232019-03-27T12:00:00.000-07:002019-06-28T20:44:00.858-07:00#AWP19 RoundupJoin RBM and friends for this year's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/2074858549271806/" target="_blank">Festival of Language 2019</a> offsite readings, 5-8 p.m. tonight, March 27, Ford Food & Drink, 2505 SE 11th Avenue, Portland, Oregon. Raul will deliver the closing reading, just before 8 p.m.<br />
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Along with other working writers based on the West Coast, Raul will present a panel discussion, "<a href="https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/event_detail/14374" target="_blank">Selfish, Sleepless, Self-Deprecating: Parents on Children and the Writing Life</a>," at 3 p.m. on Thursday. Beyond the panel, connect with Raul and local colleagues at Bookfair tables T1002 (<a href="http://www.clark.edu/academics/programs/dept/english/" target="_blank">Clark College</a>) and T10107 (<i><a href="http://www.salmoncreekjournal.com/" target="_blank">Salmon Creek Journal</a></i>). See you there, <a href="https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/archive/2019/overview" target="_blank">#AWP19</a>!<br />
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Later this week, friends are invited to another offsite reading, "Voices from Across the River," hosted by Clark College on Saturday evening at <a href="https://1122gallery.com/workshops--events.html" target="_blank">1122 Gallery</a> in Portland's Montavilla neighborhood. Please see below for details.<br />
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<br />R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.comPortland, OR, USA45.5154586 -122.6793460999999845.1595846 -123.32479309999998 45.8713326 -122.03389909999997tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-58509964773084067732018-12-03T14:13:00.001-08:002022-04-13T13:47:03.856-07:00Flash Prose Nominated for PushcartAlong with other compositions, "Blowfish," a work of flash prose by RBM <a href="https://issuu.com/salmoncreekjournal/docs/scj-final-webversion" target="_blank">published earlier this year</a> by <i>Salmon Creek Journal</i>, has been nominated by the journal for a Pushcart Prize. More on the nomination process can be found <a href="http://www.pushcartprize.com/nomination.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Please enjoy an excerpt:<br />
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The Dakotas have probably crossed the county line. The Dakotas are not the kind of boys you’ll find in a Walmart parking lot. So why this careful study of Entrance and Exit? Of tired woman and wailing would-be piano man? Inside there is Grocery and there is Pharmacy. Centers Garden, Vision, and Photo, and 1-Hour Photo. Where would the Dakotas hide? Sporting Goods? The walk-in cooler?</blockquote>
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For the rest of this and more works by writers and artists from Washington State University Vancouver and other corners of the Northwest, please visit the journal's <a href="https://issuu.com/salmoncreekjournal" target="_blank">archives</a>. (Submissions are currently open to the public and close Jan. 11.) Thanks to the hardworking SCJ staff for this kind recognition.</div>
R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-61697201661342870012016-11-09T22:00:00.001-08:002022-09-01T23:26:05.851-07:00Fastwrite: Election Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-adt99gCBFPw/WCQVglrWoNI/AAAAAAAASdQ/xdCcSyJVOw44NBFX2CcUmWiZY9L0A8H9ACEw/s1600/paper_bottle_cap.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-adt99gCBFPw/WCQVglrWoNI/AAAAAAAASdQ/xdCcSyJVOw44NBFX2CcUmWiZY9L0A8H9ACEw/s200/paper_bottle_cap.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Nov. 9, 2016 -- This month, on the campus where I teach English, we're studying "living sources." Fieldwork, et cetera. Today I asked students to write for 10 minutes in a notebook about something or someone you've overheard in the past 24 hours. "Give your topic a face," <a href="http://bruceballenger.com/about.html" target="_blank">Bruce Ballenger</a> urges his curious and not-so-curious researchers. Here's what I got down.<br />
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<i>North Portland. November 9, 2016. Corner bakery, big windows. </i></blockquote>
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<i>The man sitting down the bench from me is on his phone. I can't make out the caller. His mother, maybe. He loves her very much—that much is clear. What's also obvious? This morning, this man is nearing some breaking point.</i></blockquote>
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<i>"You don't understand," says the man. "You're a white, straight American and you can't understand what this means for me. It's a nightmare. For someone who's gay, I mean. I'm gay, remember?" </i></blockquote>
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<i>The man has curly brown hair and big headphones wrapped around his Adam's apple. Up-down, up-down. </i></blockquote>
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<i>He's working, he told his sad friend earlier, for a little paper company off Mississippi. They're trying to convert a Craftsman into office space. Free beer, sans wireless. So he's working from the bakery today.</i></blockquote>
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<i>"You don't understand," the man repeats, his whisper beginning to crack. "I'm fine, I'll be fine. But I have friends in North Carolina. I'm worried sick about them. For their safety, I mean. They don't understand.</i></blockquote>
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<i>"And listen, when I get back, I don't want to hear about this. Nothing. Not at Thanksgiving. Not now. They don't understand, and you don't, and I don't either."</i></blockquote>
And I don't either. But that's what I heard today, I told the class. Who's next?<br />
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Update -- Another version of this piece appears in the 2017 issue of <i><a href="http://www.salmoncreekjournal.com/archive/" target="_blank">Salmon Creek Journal</a></i>.
R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-110680343611780902016-04-23T11:15:00.000-07:002020-01-27T18:10:54.855-08:00Snap Box<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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RBM has a new short story, "<a href="http://d7.drunkenboat.com/db23/fiction/raul-benjamin-moreno" target="_blank">Snap Box</a>," in the current issue of <i>Drunken Boat</i>. An excerpt:<br />
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But this too is probably a false picture. This town, like Isabel and maybe Aurelia, shares its name with debutantes—the daughters of Percy, the transcontinental tycoon. In pictures, Percy A. Rockefeller’s thick jowls and small worried eyes remind you of a picture book. Right there on the shelf in the TV room: <i>Percy the Small Engine</i> (1956), about a shape-shifting locomotive who sometimes prefers the look of a green caterpillar with red stripes. ¶ What has become of your daughters? The question ripples in the heat. The caterpillar rears above the wasteland.</blockquote>
For more fiction from DB23, and statistics coinciding with the <a href="http://www.vidaweb.org/the-2015-vida-count/" target="_blank">2015 VIDA Count</a>, see fiction editor Sybil Baker's <a href="http://d7.drunkenboat.com/db23/fiction" target="_blank">introduction to the issue</a>. And don't miss the moving DB23 folio on homelessness.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-50201890600373356352015-11-08T13:13:00.000-08:002018-11-21T09:39:30.043-08:00Fall Readings at #PAMLA2015 and #WesternLit2015<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container tr_bq" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A father-son portrait from "Thanksgiving for Aurelia"</td></tr>
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November 8, 2015 -- This fall, RBM brought new chapters of a prose manuscript-in-progress, <i>The Land of Infinite Variety, </i>to the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association's <a href="http://www.pamla.org/2015/schedule" target="_blank">113th annual conference in Portland</a>, and to the Western Literature Association's <a href="http://www.westernlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WLA-Program-2015-Web.pdf?371950" target="_blank">50th annual conference in Reno</a> (PDF).<br />
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At Friday's PAMLA session on "<a href="http://www.pamla.org/2015/sessions/creative-writing-brief-prose-forms" target="_blank">brief prose forms</a>," organized and moderated by Megan Spiegel of Western Washington University, RBM read from a lyric essay on motherhood, "Thanksgiving for Aurelia," modeled after Dinty W. Moore's "<a href="http://ojs.library.cofc.edu/index.php/crazyhorse/article/view/6133" target="_blank">Son of Mr. Green Jeans: An Essay on Fatherhood, Alphabetically Arranged</a>." <i>Glimmer Train</i> <a href="http://glimmertrain.com/documents/finalists/2015_August_SSA_Top_25_list.pdf" target="_blank">recently shortlisted</a> (PDF) a related work of fiction as a finalist for the magazine's Short Story Award for New Writers.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slides from "The Archivist and The Voyager"</td></tr>
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At October's WLA session on "intergenerational memoir," moderated by Megan Riley McGilchrist of the American School in London, RBM read from "The Archivist and The Voyager," another alphabetically-arranged essay. This chapter from RBM's forthcoming collection juxtaposes accounts of the American West from two journals of the late 1930s: that of his grandfather, and that of French tourist <a href="http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv41345" target="_blank">Antoine de Seynes</a>. The story of the latter "voyager" and two companions was recently documented in a feature-length film, <i>Voyagers Without Trace</i> (2015), which debuted in Portland. (RBM served as a post-production associate producer; there's more on this acclaimed project at <a href="https://www.opb.org/artsandlife/series/oregonlens/kayak-colorado-green-river-french-trio-documentary/" target="_blank">OPB.org</a>.) Below is a brief excerpt from RBM's reading in Reno:</div>
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One fragment, from that first westerly passage, stands out from the rest. Some measure of redemption, let’s say, for our collective memory. It’s an image of descent, under the noonday sun of 1930-something, from the high plateau of the Old West into the fruit valleys of the Northwest: peaches, pears, apples, toilets, electricity. Men crawling like so many insects over something called the Grand Coulee. Such wonders, says my great uncle, in his eulogy. The three boys gazing the whole time, I’m told, from the rear window of a 1929 Chevrolet. </blockquote>
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The car rolls to a stop at a big painted lodge in the basin. The youngest boy, the one usually last in line, steps out first, now suddenly a tourist. Just then, something peculiar catches the boy’s eye—a glinting transom at the peak, the very zenith of the roofline. And so the young archivist scurries up the railing to have a look. </blockquote>
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Staring back, through the beveled glass, is the boy’s own reflection—the sight of which sends us both tumbling back to earth.</blockquote>
R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-39114266285165623912015-07-12T00:23:00.001-07:002015-07-12T01:19:35.670-07:00Thirteen Ways of Looking at an IslandJuly 10, 2015 -- From a week of kayaking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Sea" target="_blank">Salish Sea</a> with a Sigma zoom lens (100-300 mm), <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174503" target="_blank">thirteen views</a> of <a href="http://www.parks.wa.gov/594/Sucia-Island" target="_blank">Sucia Island</a>, an <a href="http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/FED_NOTICES/NAGPRADIR/nic1692.html" target="_blank">early home</a> to the <a href="http://www.nmai.si.edu/environment/lummi/People.aspx" target="_blank">Lummi people</a>. The island's cryptic geology, which <a href="https://goo.gl/8VgpON" target="_blank">alarmed Spanish explorers</a>, owes its designs to intertidal erosion and the sculpting of countless organisms. Stony clams protruding from the walls of Fossil Bay, for example, tell a story <a href="http://www.sanjuanjournal.com/green_editions/?iid=i20150522190310406" target="_blank">80 million years in the making</a>.
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R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-33851132822033710692015-05-26T23:44:00.000-07:002015-05-27T00:17:53.863-07:00The View from (Another) Long IslandMay 25, 2015 -- Pictures from a long weekend exploring Washington's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_(disambiguation)" target="_blank">Long Island</a>, where lumber production <a href="http://www.portofwillapaharbor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=13" target="_blank">doubled</a> in the postwar years, and surrounding <a href="http://www.fws.gov/Refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=13552" target="_blank">Willapa Bay</a>, one of North America's most extensive estuaries.
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February 6, 2015 -- RBM is thrilled to have new nonfiction, "<a href="http://quarterlywest.press/?p=1896" target="_blank">The Agronomist as Hero</a>," featured in the current issue of <i>Quarterly West,</i> a literary journal based at the University of Utah. Here's a brief excerpt:<br />
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My father stands at another intersection, inspecting another column of green that did not have permission to materialize. In the photo I take after turning on the recorder, he has this gleeful look about him, all rounded spectacles and crossed arms, because these spreading trunks and star-shaped canopies are now beyond question. They’ve always bordered the elementary school and the playground and the best sledding hill in town. </blockquote>
For more prose, poetry, and new media from issue 84, visit the journal's <a href="http://quarterlywest.com/?page_id=1787" target="_blank">dandy-looking website</a>. Or for more on "courage, love of adventure," and "the nature of landscape," you can find a similarly-titled essay on Claude Lévi-Strauss, by Susan Sontag, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1963/nov/28/a-hero-of-our-time/" target="_blank">over here</a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-1056483569553332792014-11-10T18:53:00.000-08:002014-11-14T11:36:45.435-08:00The View from The Empress<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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November 10, 2014 -- Over the weekend, RBM attended the Western Literature Association's annual conference, hosted this year by the University of Victoria's <a href="http://english.uvic.ca/newsandevents/border_songs__western_literature_association_conference_2014.html" target="_blank">Department of English</a> at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empress_(hotel)" target="_blank">The Empress</a> hotel on Vancouver Island. Along with panels ranging from indigenous literature to borderlands criticism, the four-day gathering <a href="https://twitter.com/rbmoreno/status/530989749066944512" target="_blank">featured a celebration</a> of Washington novelist Jim Lynch's <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/books/02maslin.html" target="_blank">Border Songs</a> </i>(2009).
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On Saturday, RBM read from a nonfiction collage, "Once More to Aurelia," which WLA named runner-up for best creative writing submission. Back in March, RBM read from the same manuscript-in-progress at this year's <a href="http://www.mnsu.edu/nativelit/NALSprogram2014forWeb.pdf" target="_blank">Native American Literature Symposium</a> (PDF). Here's a brief excerpt from "Once More to Aurelia," and this year's full list of WLA award winners. (Thanks to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Manfred" target="_blank">Frederick Manfred</a>, and all the award committee members!)<br />
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At the big gravel lot, the office is locked but Judy has left my keys under the mat, with a receipt and <i>sorry we missed</i> <i>you </i>scribbled in blue. Three months of parking out here on the edge of nothing has cost $212, for which I'm grateful, but only after checking the windshield. The cab lost some paint to last month's hailstorm, but at least the glass held out. So has the battery, but just barely. I power down the windows. I give the engine some gas. I whisper a prayer of thanks to Judy, and then something small and yellow begins dive-bombing the windshield, filling the nothingness with a sound I haven't heard in 20 years. It's coming from the driver's side mirror. Giant yellow wasps—streaming from the housing, pouring into the cab, knocking themselves silly against everything that shines in the August heat.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I paw at the console, forcing one window back up, the other down. The old motors groan, sucking down the last of the juice from the hood. It seems to take a whole minute, but finally there's glass between me and the nest. I can see it more clearly now, wrapped around my reflection on three sides, each muddy cavity pulsing with a tiny angry missile. More or less exactly the picture of the Badlands that I carry in my mind’s eye. Welcome, says the sign on 44.</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Congratulations, one and all! See you next year <a href="http://www.westernlit.org/wla-conference-2015/" target="_blank">in Reno</a></td></tr>
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R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-46282897281097085012014-02-26T11:00:00.000-08:002014-02-26T11:00:41.469-08:00#AWP14<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0C6RjMi9Ddg/Uw45PYJI8iI/AAAAAAAALpo/csouYPxghrs/s1600/festival_language_2014.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0C6RjMi9Ddg/Uw45PYJI8iI/AAAAAAAALpo/csouYPxghrs/s320/festival_language_2014.jpg" /></a>
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Join RBM, other creative writers at the <a href="http://www.usd.edu/arts-and-sciences/english/" target="_blank">University of South Dakota</a>, and friends for a reading tonight at the Festival of Language, now in its sixth year, at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Seattle. RBM will open the off-site event at Rock Bottom, 1333 Fifth Avenue, at 5:00 p.m. Also on the roster: Anna March, Jenny Ferguson (also of <a href="http://www.usd.edu/arts-and-sciences/english/" target="_blank">USD</a>), Leona Sevick, Koon Woon, Steve Halle, Margaret Rozga, Janèe J. Baugher, Wendy Vardaman, Karen Stefano, Midge Raymond, Kevin Allen, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Tom Bligh, Ken McPherson, Meg Tuite, Jane L. Carman (our fearless organizer), Robert Vaughan, Rebecca Goodman, Lily Hoang, Renee D’Aoust, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Holms Troelstrup, David Stevenson, Ewa Chrusciel, Derrick Harriell, Sara Henning (managing editor of <a href="http://southdakotareview.com/" target="_blank">SDR</a>), Janice Lee, Martin Nakell, Debra Di Blasi, Len Kuntz, Daniel Nester, Alissa Nutting, Lance Olsen, Jonathan Penton, Lasantha Rodrigo, Michael Mejia, Bill Yarrow, Jen Knox, Su Smallen, Monica Storss, Joani Reese, Teniesha Kessler-Emanuel (also of USD), Holly Baker (also of USD), Kathryn Kysar, Kirk Nesset, Beth Gilstrap-Barnes, Brian W. Hedgepeth, Lee Goodman, and Christopher Allen. There's more information over at <a href="http://www.festivalwriter.org/">FestivalWriter.org</a> and <a href="https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule_overview_offsite">AWPWriter.org</a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-41476711309457277412014-02-08T15:02:00.000-08:002014-02-08T15:04:03.830-08:00Photo of the Day<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-URs8GBelYME/Uvav31j9rLI/AAAAAAAALlY/6MbkIGOlY-M/s1600/1-P1040399.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-URs8GBelYME/Uvav31j9rLI/AAAAAAAALlY/6MbkIGOlY-M/s320/1-P1040399.JPG" /></a>
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February 8, 2014 -- The view from Portland, Oregon, and Day 3 of the <a href="https://twitter.com/weatherchannel/status/431555644467200000" target="_blank">winter storm</a> few in Portlandia, not even William Riker, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579361170912337660" target="_blank">want to call</a> "Orion."R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-40140824558413671082013-11-30T12:12:00.000-08:002015-02-06T15:23:05.490-08:00The Short-Short Storyteller<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zDuxteTNiy8/UppEd7IIc-I/AAAAAAAALR4/nDSayjNbGy0/s1600/milton_conference_cnf_panel.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zDuxteTNiy8/UppEd7IIc-I/AAAAAAAALR4/nDSayjNbGy0/s320/milton_conference_cnf_panel.JPG" /></a>
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November 30, 2013 -- Before the year is out, a few pictures from this month's biannual <a href="http://miltonconference.wordpress.com/">John R. Milton Writers' Conference</a>, hosted by the University of South Dakota English Department in Vermillion (above), and the 2013 <a href="http://www.westernlit.org/">Western Literature Association</a> Conference held in Berkeley in October (below). RBM presented a critical paper, "The Short-Short Storyteller: Walter Benjamin and the Rise of Brief Prose," at both conferences. He also read from <i>The Land of Infinite Variety,</i> a nonfiction manuscript in progress, at the Milton Conference's panel on the genre: "'Traveling from Here to There': The Empathy of Writing Geography and Self," chaired by <a href="http://www.usd.edu/arts-and-sciences/english/fred-arroyo.cfm">Dr. Fred Arroyo</a>. Here's an excerpt from "The Short-Short Storyteller" along with a few slides from Berkeley:<br />
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Thus proceeds the magic, the aura, the spellbinding peculiarity of <a href="http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Storyteller" target="_blank">Benjamin’s essay</a>. Its glimpses of the future of narrative prose and enduring proposals about its history continue to prompt vigorous dialogues that circle back upon themselves--testing out agreements, then proposing new theories of artistic production that collapse at odd moments, like an extended metaphor. And running parallel to this discourse is another, even stranger way of thinking about Benjamin: the counterfactual imagination, which has the doomed German critic showing up at a Dairy Queen in West Texas to diagnose Americans with collective memory loss, or moving to Los Angeles with contemporaries Adorno and Horkheimer to help write the history of urban decay. Perilously, we have embarked on yet another such inquiry, one that acknowledges the influence of Benjamin’s last days on literary criticism, but attempts to recover from the industry more valuable aspects of the cultural apprehension that foregrounds “The Storyteller.” My own essay undertakes a demonstration, more specifically, in stories by Etgar Keret, Sherman Alexie, and Brian Doyle, of certain enduring elements of narrative prose: brevity or compactness; accumulation, or the piling up of multiple tellings; practical wisdom derived from experience; and another feature we might call "indeterminacy," a kind of preservative against sudden extinction. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly for any expatriate who finds his way of conversing with the world confined to the page: orality, that "told out loud" quality of so many stories and novellas, from Robert Louis Stevenson ("the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island"), to the Russian masters ("each of us in turn had to tell something fantastic from his own life," begins Nikolai Leskov), and beyond.</blockquote>
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March 23, 2013 -- This year's Native American Literature Symposium wraps up today at Mystic Lake, a casino, hotel, convention center, golf course, and RV park outside Minneapolis. The complex is owned and operated by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystic_Lake_Casino" target="_blank">Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux</a> community. <a href="http://www.mnsu.edu/nativelit/" target="_blank">NALS 2013</a> featured a conversation with <a href="http://winterinthebloodfilm.com/" target="_blank">filmmakers</a> Alex Smith and Chaske Spencer, a performance by world champion <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_dance" target="_blank">fancy dancers</a>, and screenings of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/IktomiFilms?feature=watch" target="_blank">video essays</a>, among other events. On Friday, RBM read excerpts from "The Land of Infinite Variety," a critical essay on tourism and travel writing in the Dakotas. Here's one of those excerpts and two slides from the presentation:<br />
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A scenario charged with appearances and a certain sense of wonder—that's where I want to begin this inquiry, recognizing that the men who hold sway <i>On the Rez</i> (2000) and across the <i>Infinite West </i>(2012), like their predecessors in “Indian Warning,” cannot help but regard the Other, to some degree, with ambivalence, that “troubled dream” which haunts Conrad, Naipaul, and Homi Bhabha’s other exemplars. I am to examine the traveler’s gaze, then, and also to show, as David Spurr has done in reference to Bhabha with <i>The Rhetoric of Empire</i> (1993), that such “terms of authority, once given voice, are far from having a direct and unambiguous effect”; that “colonial discourse in general is, at some level, always divided against itself”; and that this quality might even grant the postcolonial travelogue a measure of redemption.</blockquote>
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<tr align="center"><td class="tr-caption">On the left: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/ian_frazier/search?contributorName=ian%20frazier" target="_blank">Ian Frazier</a> and <a href="http://www.sdshspress.com/index.php?&id=250&action=912" target="_blank">Fraser Harrison</a></td></tr>
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<br />R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-89196771752493632772013-03-05T23:57:00.002-08:002013-03-05T23:57:28.943-08:00#AWP13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Join RBM and friends for a reading tonight at the Festival of Language, now in its fifth year, at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Boston. RBM will open the off-site event at Dillon's, 955 Boylston Street, at 5:30 p.m. Also on the roster: Halvor Aakhus, Christopher Allen, Janee Baugher, Tom Bligh, Laura Bogart, Jane L. Carman, Ryan Clark, Ewa Chrusciel, Larry O. Dean, Debra Di Blasi, John Domini, Kate Dusenbery, Andy Farnsworth, Sarah R. Garcia, Ani Gjika, Rebecca Goodman, Steve Halle, Stephen Hastings-King, Quintus Havis, Gretchen Ernster Henderson, Deborah Henry, Lily Hoang, Tom Hunley, Len Kuntz, Anna Leahy, Michael Mejia, Martin Nakell, Kirk Nesset, Daniel Nester, Alissa Nutting, Theresa O’Donnell, Doug Rice, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Anita Schmaltz, Leona Sevick, Rob Stephenson, Ayara Stein, David Stevenson, Monica Storss, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Holms Troelstrup, Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, Sam Witt, and Bill Yarrow, with Dakota D. Carman providing music at intermissions. There's more information over at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Festival-of-Language/110261148999292">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule_offsite">AWPWriter.org</a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-5163629282992179812013-01-29T10:00:00.001-08:002022-04-29T14:47:16.340-07:00500 Words on Arbor Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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January 29, 2013 -- RBM has new flash nonfiction, "<a href="http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/500-words-on-arbor-day" target="_blank">500 Words on Arbor Day</a>," featured online this week over at <i>Hobart.</i> So as not to give too much away, here's a (five-word) excerpt:<br />
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... There is talk of lightening ...</blockquote>
For more from <i>Hobart, </i>consider <a href="http://www.hobartpulp.com/print_issues" target="_blank">subscribing</a>, buying a <a href="http://www.hobartpulp.com/books/i-have-blinded-myself-writing-this" target="_blank">good book</a> by a friend of this blog, or reading some of the journal's fine fiction in <i><a href="http://amzn.com/0547242107" target="_blank">The Best American Short Stories 2012</a></i>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-68387947864528834492013-01-07T14:24:00.000-08:002013-01-07T14:24:43.365-08:00The View from Indian Beach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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January 6, 2013 -- The view from Indian Beach and Oregon's <a href="http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_188.php">Ecola State Park</a>, where Lewis and Clark visited a beached whale in 1806, and later, Steven Spielberg's crew filmed much of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goonies"><i>The Goonies</i></a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-29974192958137389912013-01-03T13:43:00.000-08:002013-01-03T13:44:44.285-08:00The View from Wind River<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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December 30, 2012 -- Pictures from a perfect day along Washington's upper Wind River, where recreational access has <a href="http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/dec/19/wind-river-sno-park-access-returns-normal/">returned to "normal" this season</a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-132855723745393762012-12-10T22:00:00.001-08:002023-03-07T08:42:07.055-08:00Kakorrhaphiophobia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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RBM has a new short story, "<a href="http://otisnebula.com/otisnebula/ON6_RBMoreno.html" target="_blank">Kakorrhaphiophobia</a>," in the current issue of <i><a href="http://otisnebula.com/otisnebula/ON6_contents.html" target="_blank">Otis Nebula</a>.</i> An excerpt:<br />
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This had happened once before, during his freelancing days in Washington, before he went back to teaching—in the vast, unfinished basement on Georgia Avenue that he’d shared with a luggage boy from the Marriott. Feral cats had ripped holes in their window screens. Benjamin awoke to the sound of his laundry money being poured into a sock. The boy’s brow was glistening, and he held a finger to his lips. Benjamin thought he was being robbed—was about to offer the boy some real money—when the sock took flight. It only hung near the water pipes for a half-second. Just long enough for something fast and brown to seize hold, then crash to the linoleum, where it flapped for a while. The boy said he’d used the same trick back home, in Nigeria. Benjamin wasn’t sure if it could be true, but it made his column that week—all about harmless Chiroptera, his place in literature and his good work in your backyard.</blockquote>
For more from <i>ON6,</i> check out <a href="https://www.newpages.com/blog/magazines/magazine-reviews/otis-nebula-issue-6/" target="_blank">this week's review</a> from NewPages.com.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-39530245513877705402012-09-22T18:57:00.002-07:002012-09-22T18:57:48.712-07:00Photo of the Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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September 22, 2012 -- Sunset over the lower Missouri on this, the first day of autumn.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-3170689596138551622012-09-22T18:45:00.000-07:002012-09-22T19:33:46.851-07:00The View from North Platte<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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August 12, 2012 -- Scenes real and hallucinatory from the <a href="http://www.fortcody.com/" target="_blank">Fort Cody Trading Post</a> in North Platte, Nebraska, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill_Ranch" target="_blank">Scout's Rest</a>, William Frederick "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill" target="_blank">Buffalo Bill</a>" Cody's nearby ranch, which housed livestock for the showman's infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_West_Shows" target="_blank">Wild West</a>.R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1174902168427916594.post-21366867180547146272012-08-06T19:54:00.002-07:002012-08-06T19:55:19.453-07:00Photo of the Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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August 5, 2012 -- The view from Washington's <a href="http://www.clarkcofair.com/" target="_blank">Clark County Fair</a> and "<a href="http://www.dockdogs.com/event-reader-ers/events/2012-clark-county-fair-wk1.html">The World's Premier Canine Aquatics Competition</a>."R.B. Morenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03692175257149243815noreply@blogger.com0