Hail & Farewell

Farewell to Michael Tod Edgerton, who drove during September, and welcome to Kelly Cherry,  who'll be in charge during October.

RIP Frank Parker

So sorry to hear of the passing of Frank Parker, our driver/editor of just this past June. May he rest in peace.

Hal

submitting to TRUCK

I will be the editor for October. This is not to suggest that I have any idea of what I'm to do. But do send me poems--either out of copyright, or by yourself and with permission to post without copyright. I'm partial to poems that make me think but I appreciate many kinds of poetry and look forward to your submissions.

Kindly send submissions to me at kcherry@wisc.edu.

Many thanks,

Kelly Cherry

New Questions New Answers

Describe a person you love. How would you know them without their face?

I would know him by his hands and his voice and his smell. His face is a small matter when compared to his energy.

How did you first know you were in love and what makes you unsure of it?

I knew I was in love with him when, regardless of the consequences, I still want him. My uncertainly comes when time passes between our moments together. I look for answers and confirmation everywhere but it is never forthcoming.

What besides love do you doubt and what makes you doubt it?

I doubt the bigger picture. I doubt we are here for larger purposes but rather simply have risen above the food chain. Life is so cruel and unfair and dirty. If we are all part of one another, then why don't we know it and why don't we act like it?

More Questions to Be Answered

What are you from and why do you care?

Does art really do anything but entertain and distract?

Why aren't you more involved in trying to better the world of others?

More Questions and Answers

Why don't you listen to what the universe or your mind or your body or your god whispers ever more closely to you?

Because it is difficult to trust, especially what appears to be good or benevolent.

If you could, what gift that is impossible for you to give would you offer and to whom? Why this specific gift to this specific person or persons?

The will to live, which I would give to any person considering killing themselves because of depression. Because I have known people who did and saw the wake of grief it leaves.

Describe a person you love. How would you know them without their face?

S—. I would know her voice, the fast tumble of words. Even without language, I'd know her habit of little burrs between sentences. Ummms and errrs, like tiny motors idling.

How did you first know you were in love and what makes you unsure of it?

It is really hard to defining the "knowing" moment but I think it was based on acknowledging how incredibly sad I would be at the thought of his absence. (That and still loving to see his profile while reading.) Ten years in, our daily-ness has dulled that sadness and certainty takes its place. That certainty can make me restless.

Answers from Lawrence Upton

Where do you come from and why do you care?

I’m told it’s Africa. That’s my greatgreatgreats * n.

More recently, and personally, it’s St Thomas’s Hospital in South London. Sunday 20th February 1949 5:45 a.m. local time. So I’m told. I was there; but I was busy and didn’t have a watch and diary.

The nurse, my mother said, announced that from the look of me I would be either a professor or a clergyman. I was told that so often that it has stuck; as has the memory of upsetting her when I said to her, as a teenager, that it was preposterous thing to say and the nurse undoubtedly probably said it to everyone or said one of a set of such things.

Then I came from Vauxhall. That’s where I was fitted out with consciousness and shades of the prison house.

Go back two generations one side and I come from Sussex and two generations before that from S W Cornwall, near Falmouth.

On the other side, two generations, I come from Co Kildare and Scilly.

I have never been to Ireland. I have adopted Scilly as my place of origin.

I can – could – trace my origin back on Scilly to 1750. It’s on record. I have not transcribed it. I am not that interested. An indication of place and ethnicity is enough. I’ll make up the rest.

I lost contact with my nearest Island cousin over 30 years ago. I wrote to him last year and he didn’t reply. Why should he? We have little in common except ancestors. For some months each year we are in the same space, unaware of each other.

Why don’t you listen to what the universe or your mind or your body or your god whispers ever more closely to you?

I do, somewhat. I listen most to my mind and then sometimes my body and sometimes the universe. If I have a god he’s busy with my silent cousin or analogously silent.

I Iisten to my body intermittently. I observe the universe more than listen.

In what way have you betrayed or disappointed yourself or others?

In almost every way. I have disappointed others more than myself. Though I do listen to myself, I may hear what I want to hear.

I have a small sense of my betrayals of myself and the world and am seeking to redress what I can as the sense grows.

A friend, who shared my enforced Roman Catholic upbringing, but got more of it than I, tells me guilt is bad. I say: excess of guilt is bad. Imposed guilt is bad. Awareness of guilt is beneficial or potentially so. Like bearable pain. Pass the pain killers; I’ve got the message.

Anyway, I’m going to have a coffee now.

Which way is left?

Back Seat Drivers Wanted:

Please help me navigate. Get out your maps, your GPS, or compass. This month on Truck, I am continuing my participatory-based writing project, "what most vividly (a choral work)." Taking my cue from Bhanu Kapil's questionnaire-based work, The Vertical interrogation of Strangers, I am soliciting responses from the willing to my own set of questions, then cutting, collaging, transforming and developing them into a multi-voiced work that more or less drives itself, an auto-piloted public projection, of sorts (and a bit out of sort, here and there).

You can read more about it at my website for what most vividly, and the first published excerpt will be up any day in Drunken Boat #14.

What I am asking you to do for Truck is to answer any or all of the questions, which will change occasionally over the course of the month. You can offer me your most straightforward, honest answers for possible future use in my personal project, or use the questions as prompts for your own creative writing responses, which will be exhibited here at Truck. Post these in the comments section of this blog, or email them to me at tod[at]whatmostvividly[dot]com and I will post them here.

Please let me know 1) if you do not want them to be used as material for "what most vividly (a choral work)," and 2) if using email, whether you want your answers or creative responses posted to Truck anonymously or credited.

Here are some questions; please send me some answers (with thanks in advance for helping me get down the road):

* Where do you come from and why do you care?

* Why don’t you listen to what the universe or your mind or your body or your god whispers ever more closely to you?

* In what way have you betrayed or disappointed yourself or others?