I Don't Cry Loudly, Nor Do I Cry for Very Long
Dear Joe, I admit that travel, the departure and arrival associated with it, sometimes makes me weepy. If I cry, I usually cry on airplanes, most often during take-off and landing, and especially if I am reading a book. I cried on the flight home from Russia a few summers ago when I finished reading Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. I cried on a flight to Houston last year — I was traveling on my own, was deliriously winging my way home to my wife — when I finished Stoner by John Williams. And I cried while reading your book on the flight out of Denver in the late winter of 2010.
Dear Joe,
I admit that travel, the departure and arrival associated with it, sometimes makes me weepy. If I cry, I usually cry on airplanes, most often during take-off and landing, and especially if I am reading a book. I cried on the flight home from Russia a few summers ago when I finished reading Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. I cried on a flight to Houston last year — I was traveling on my own, was deliriously winging my way home to my wife — when I finished Stoner by John Williams. And I cried while reading your book on the flight out of Denver in the late winter of 2010.
I don’t cry loudly, nor do I cry for very long. I doubt any other passengers suspect my sadness. My wife has not noticed my occasionally crying on flights, and she usually sits next to me. No, instead, I tear up and flush red. My heart yank-yanks just a little bit harder. And yet, I feel embarrassed. There’s something about the modernity of travel, now, that discourages us from emoting. It’s very hard to feel normal when crying in the midst of hundreds of other people, each sitting still and forward, trapped in a miraculous tube at altitudes far beyond our comprehension.
No, I want to celebrate travel, distances, meridians, departure and arrival. I want to celebrate the sadness of circumnavigation, and what better way to do so than to invoke the spirit of Antonio Pigafetta. What better way than to read of you and Cheryl, of your struggles to navigate 665 miles, the 665 miles between Indiana and D.C. To read:
. . . If prayers
are swift, deranged birds
I am letting them loose from the decks of my body
Look for them. Two years
& more promised, seven months
apart, what gifts are there
to give? A ring
To describe your finger or another book
in which to write what is your pleasure or
Dear Joe,
Hello? the tools to bind a book
& how much flesh is the book?
& how much bread is the book?
If it is possible to enjoy the sadness of distance and extension, possible to share that joy of sadness with others, then too it is possible to realize that, in many cases, the anticipation of our arrival tempers such sadness, producing around it a relieving corona.
And outside, I see clouds passing beneath me.
Yours,
Ryan
Scary, No Scary Is Cleverly Costumed As A Hostess Cupcake
The collection is appended by an index of subjects, beginning with “Bats” and ending with “World, the.” The index serves as a catalog of recurring images and scenarios that aggregate layers of intrigue as the book progresses, as Schomburg constructs new worlds out of raw memory.
In fact, for the purposes of this metaphor, it is a Hostess cupcake. Out of the package, it presents itself as a gaudy, misshapen darkness, but it smells great and goes well with a cup of coffee. Its ingredients have familiar names, but it’s only a “cupcake” insofar as it invents its own vocabulary out of words we already know.
The collection is appended by an index of subjects, beginning with “Bats” and ending with “World, the.” The index serves as a catalog of recurring images and scenarios that aggregate layers of intrigue as the book progresses, as Schomburg constructs new worlds out of raw memory.
These worlds are bound by their own rules. The chair age precedes the table age, and so there is no table setting; the pond is inescapable with only one paddle; if there is a black hole present, someone will be pushed in without the slightest hesitation.
Scary, No Scary may be read either way. Schomburg’s verse is always playful, and always deadly serious: “If we stand still long enough / a gigantic meteorite / will crash into our skulls and kill us.”
The paperback edition of Scary, No Scary has a single pitch-black page inside the front cover and immediately before the back cover, and the title poem invites the reader into a haunted house. The poems inside speak to intense loneliness, violence, and destruction, but they are also about love, simple kindness, and building boats out of eyelashes. The oppressive black exterior belies the complex nature of the white cream filling: there is careful nuance to the undeniably alluring flavor at the center of this foreboding cupcake.
A collection of quirky, surreal poems is fine. A collection of surreal poems as sincere, clever, and modest as these is remarkable. In three sections, Schomburg demonstrates his deft mastery of the well-wrought lyric sequence. The first time you see a hummingbird or a black hole, it’s charming. The second time, these images have become touchstones in the midst of a strange mythology unnervingly oblivious to any distinction between the supernatural and the everyday. There is an extent to which anything is possible in these pages, but this strangeness is always tempered by honest-to-god humanity, which is utterly terrifying if you happened to choose “scary.”
Scary, No Scary is a wonderful book to have on your shelf, and an even better book to pull off and read while the spirits of the dead are rising from their graves. If you’ve missed a trip to a haunted house this season that’s OK, because this book is better. It’s immediately readable, hilarious and harrowing. It’s surreal and it all makes perfect sense. Read this book. When you do, when the hunched, old man invites you inside and gives you the choice, choose “no scary.” You’ll be glad you did.