Raw to the Bone: On Springsteen, Rivers, and the Arc of Creativity in Poets' Quarterly

April Lindner had the idea to gather us (Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, Ann Michael, me—her Springsteen loving friends) at the Glory Days Symposium at Monmouth University more than a year ago. We each gave papers, each talked about the influence that Bruce Springsteen has had on us.

I spoke about the arc of creativity under the influence of Bruce Springsteen's river songs, and I'm so happy to be able to share a link to that full essay here today, for the piece now stands among works by Donald Hall, Daisy Fried, Barbara Crooker, and Caroline Maun (among others) in the current issue of Poets' Quarterly.

It begins like this, below, and carries forward here:

Might as well start with “Shenandoah,” the old pioneer song that Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band transformed into sweet bitters in the living room of Springsteen’s fabled New Jersey farmhouse.  “Shenandoah,” the tenth song on the We Shall Overcome/Seeger Sessions album, is music being made, as Springsteen himself has said. Music created in the moment, held between teeth, conducted with the frayed bracelet strings of an uplifted hand. It’s music hummed, hymned, and high in the shoulder blades, deep in the blue pulse of a straining vein. Patti’s lighting candles in the darkening farmhouse, as the band tunes in. The antique clock ticks. The thickly framed mirror doubles the volumes of sound and space. And now the Sessions Band is elaborating, confabulating, and the Shenandoah roves.

 Many thanks to Leslie Nielsen, and Ann Michael.

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Bruce Springsteen, Asbury Park, Monmouth University

As readers of this blog know, it has been a tumultuous time here—a sinking realization that not all the people you trust to get something right (or to do right) do.  A sense of helplessness about a false newspaper claim.  And so many friends stepping in to cry out against the injustice.

And while I will never be able to leave this cruelty behind—for it is not about me (about that I would not care) but about someone I deeply love—I did physically leave home very early yesterday morning to join friends at the Glory Days Symposium, an intelligent gathering of people who recognize that Springsteen does so much more than entertain. (One of my own—many—appreciations of Springsteen is here.)  I was proud to join April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ann E. Michael, and Ned Balbo on a storytelling panel, and deeply inspired by the conversations I heard along the way.  I was happy to at last meet Mark Bernhard, an associate provost at University of Southern Indiana, who puts so much of himself into this event.

Mid-afternoon I slipped away to Asbury Park and walked the boardwalk alone.  Sea and salt and time to be.  A quick but essential exchange with my editor, Tamra Tuller.  A funny, I-am-the-luckiest-mother-on-earth text carnival with my son.

Monmouth University, where the Glory Days Symposium was held, is a green campus, architecturally cohering and whole.  At its center stands Wilson Hall, a Horace Trumbauer designed mansion originally built, in 1929, as the private residence of F.W. Woolworth Co. president Hubert Templeton Parson.  In the summer of 1916, in a building lost to fire on this same site, Woodrow Wilson worked through his presidential campaign.  If this Trumbauer building looks familiar to you, that's because it served as the set for the movie, Annie.

I share above some images from the day.

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Raw to the Bone: Putting the Springsteen Paper to Rest

Yes, it has obsessed me, but it is done.  "Raw to the Bone:  Transported to Truth and Memory by Springsteen's River Songs" is written at last, and it will slumber now, until September, when I will have the great pleasure of joining April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, and Ann Michael at the Glory Days Symposium at Monmouth University.  This blog will now return to its regularly scheduled (ha, I never schedule anything) program.

From the paper:

The music will rise through the soles of my feet.  It will scour, channel, silt, and further rise.   In the dark cavern of my hips it will catch and swish.  Outside, perhaps, the stars have come up, and probably the deer have vanished, and maybe the cicadas are rumbling around in their own mangled souls.  But inside, a river churns, widens, roars, and steeps, and I am dancing Springsteen.    

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Bruce Springsteen, Glory Days Symposium, and Thanks

Could there be anything more thrilling (for a reader-rocker) than reading the beautifully researched, impeccably written David Remnick profile of Bruce Springsteen in the July 30 issue of The New Yorker?  The story is called "We Are Alive," and most everyone read it before I did, because my issue didn't arrive until late yesterday afternoon.  I'd read pieces online.  I'd read the raves.  But yesterday, after a very long day of corporate work and minor agitations, I found a breeze and read the profile through.  I didn't have to fall in love again with Bruce Springsteen; I've been in love since I was a kid.  But I loved, loved, loved every word of this story.  I would like to frame it.

(For those who haven't seen my Devon Horse Show photos and video of Jessica Springsteen, who is as sensational in her way as Bruce is, I share them here.)

Perhaps my favorite part of Remnick's article was discovering the way that Springsteen reads, how he thinks about books.  You don't get to be sixty-two and still magnetic, necessary, pulsingly, yes, alive if you don't know something, and if you don't commit yourself to endless learning.  Reading is one of the many ways Springsteen stays so connected to us, and so relevant.  From The New Yorker:

Lately, he has been consumed with Russian fiction.  "It's compensatory—what you missed the first time around," he said.  "I'm sixty-some, and I think, There are a lot of these Russian guys!  What's all the fuss about?  So I was just curious.  That was an incredible book: 'The Brothers Karamazov.' Then I read 'The Gambler.'  The social play in the first half was less interesting to me, but the second half, about obsession, was fun.  That could speak to me. I was a big John Cheever fan, and so when I got into Chekhov I could see where Cheever was coming from.  And I was a big Philip Roth fan, so I got into Saul Bellow, 'Augie March.' These are all new connections for me.  It'd be like finding out now that the Stones covered Chuck Berry."

Next week, I'll begin to write my paper for Glory Days: The Bruce Springsteen Symposium, which is being held in mid-September at Monmouth University, and where I'll be joining April Lindner, Ann Michael, Jane Satterfield, and Ned Balbo on a panel called "Sitting Round Here Trying to Write This Book: Bruce Springsteen and Literary Inspiration." I don't know if I've ever been so intimidated, or (at the same time) excited.  I don't know what I have in me, if I can write smart and well enough.

But this morning I take my energy, my inspiration, from the friends and good souls who have written over the past few days to tell me about their experience with Small Damages.  We writers write a long time, and sometimes our work resonates, and when it does, we are so grateful.  When others reach out to us, we don't know what to say.  We hope that thank you is enough.  And so, this morning, thank you, Jennifer Brown.  Thank you, Alyson Hagy and Robb Forman Dew.  Thank you, Tamara Smith.  Thank you, Elizabeth Ator and Katherine Wilson.  Thank you, Jessica Ferro.  Thank you, Hilary Hanes.  And thank you, Miss Rosella Eleanor LaFevre, who interviewed me a few years ago about Dangerous Neighbors, and who has stayed in touch ever since.  I don't even know how to say thank you for her blog magazine thoughts on Small Damages today.  I can only suggest that if you read it through, you'll know something important about her heart.

To being inspired.  To writing forward.  To keeping on with keeping on, with the hope of better work.  Always.

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Introducing Professor Jane Satterfield of Loyola University

I'd never taken a writing course during my undergraduate days at Penn, and when I wrote I was forever writing alone, reading alone, gauging all the gaps alone. It wasn't until I was in my thirties, then, that I inserted myself into the writing world, taking "family vacations" at workshops in Spoleto, in Prague, and finally at Bread Loaf in Vermont. (My husband being a good sport to go along, my toddler son not having much say in the matter.)

It was at Bread Loaf that I met the poet and memoirist Jane Satterfield. She was ethereal and talented, but also groundedly kind. She was working through transitions, speaking of England, where she'd been born, musing over photographs. The conference was soon over, but we remained friends, and I have watched her come into her own ever since, publishing poetry collections (Shepherdess with an Automatic, Assignation at Vanishing Point), winning poetry grants (including a National Endowment for the Arts award), gaining recognition for her nonfiction as well. Raising a daughter through it all, marrying fellow poet Ned Balbo, and teaching at Loyola, where one day not so long ago she invited me in for a day of teaching as well, and where I saw first hand just how carefully and lovingly she prepares for every day.

It's one thing to be a student of writing. It's another to try to light the way. Today I post excerpts from a recent conversation that I had with Jane—the first of what will be two Jane postings—to help remind us all (as this school year begins) just what teaching writers do, how much of themselves they give.

How did Loyola find you, and when? What made that university and your interests a fit?

That’s an interesting question, Beth, because my story’s a little unusual. After I finished my M.F.A at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop I was doing some composition teaching at a local community college when Phil McCaffrey, the English and Writing Chair at Loyola, called to see if I could cover two classes at the last minute. There were other young writers like me teaching in the program and there was a great deal of literary energy and a sense of community: we had—and still have—a vital reading series, for instance, and many of us shared work-in-progress that would later appear in our first books. Loyola’s commitment to the liberal arts is strong and I felt very comfortable teaching at an institution where interdisciplinary study is encouraged.

Your students are some of the luckiest souls around. Talk a little bit about the classes you teach, the students you meet, and the one or two lessons you hope your students will remember.

Thanks, Beth, that’s so generous. I enjoy seeing my students discover new ways of thinking and writing. There’s so much growth that happens for students over the course of a single semester and I’ve been lucky in recent years to have “repeaters” so I can really watch young writers develop into formidable stylists. I teach workshop courses in the essay and in poetry and all my classes are very interactive—lots of group work and presentations along with daily writing and discussion centering on what we can learn, as writers, from each work we read.

I’ve met so many wonderful students over the years. There’s always some excitement in the classroom—moments of thoughtful discussion or good workshop sessions where students’ generous response to each others’ work sparks real growth. I remember one group of first-students who were especially kind and honest. “Tom, we love you,” one student said to another, “and this is why I can say this: verbosity is pomposity. Tell it to us true.” I held my breath. Wondered what would happen next. “You’re right,” Tom said, “point well taken.” And the class burst into laughter.

Is there a book or a poem that you always teach, always reference in some way?

If I’m relentless on one thing, it’s reading. Sometimes I maybe assign (is it truly possible?) too much. Jamaica Kincaid’s essays “Columbus in Chains,” “On Seeing England for the First Time,” “Girl” and “Biography of a Dress” are standards for me. They’re so visually sharp and deal with uncomfortable truths. Although many of my students aren’t likely to have experienced the tragedies of colonialism and oppression first-hand, Kincaid reveals just how deeply our language and education shape us.

One of my favorite books to teach is Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family. It’s simply gorgeous prose, a narrative mosaic that’s fugue-like and dense but also poignant and funny. The historical backdrop is powerfully woven throughout the book; his portraits are sharply honest and empathetic. What’s not to love? Plus his acknowledgements are long and detailed—his material comes out of book research, interviews, and travel and he makes it clear that writing’s a collaborative act born out of connection to a community. I like students to learn those lessons.

How does one begin a conversation about books? How much can you really frame up in advance? How much of teaching requires being able to think and assimilate right there, in that room?

How right you are! There’s a certain degree of preparation: you decide you’re going to highlight voice or use of controlling metaphor or character or whatever; maybe you give discussion questions ahead of time or at the start of class. But sometimes the class swings to something else entirely, issues that concern your young writers at that very moment in that very room. For instance, "What makes Don DeLillo think he can or should write about 9/11 in a novel?" That came up in a class of seniors recently. The teacher’s choice is: we can stop and think about that or we can move on. I like to stop and linger when questions come up spontaneously. Even if that question sounded slightly critical and was voiced a little sarcastically, I like to think the student was really asking something quite different: how do we—and should we—decide what’s a “fit” topic for literature?

Learning’s not always linear. The same senior class reacted very negatively to an innovative book of poems. I was so disappointed. I had to find a way to turn discussion around without sounding like a scolding parent. But when the students attended the writer’s reading, they gained additional insights and became rather fond of the book. Reading’s an intellectual act but it’s also very emotional. Guiding discussion is a tough balance.

(to be continued)

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