An Excerpt from “The Big Time” by Robert Bozic

EXCERPT FROM A CHAPTER IN A MEMOIR

It was all incredible to me. Just five years earlier, I was homeless, sleeping on the streets of Toronto, and now I was gearing up to fight at Madison Square Garden. Word had spread among my old high school friends, who, despite being in college and tied up with summer jobs, managed to wrangle a couple of days off to witness the fight. A few of them, thrilled at the idea of attending a match in New York, hastily organized a road trip.

Three days before the main event, Chuvalo, his entourage, and mine (which, at this point, comprised only Bev, my trainer, and myself, as Bertie and a couple of Lansdowne guys were coming in for just one night) arrived in New York. We all checked into the New Yorker Hotel, a venerable establishment nestled on Seventh Avenue between 33rd and 34th Street. It stood just south of what was arguably the seediest area in New York City, quite possibly in the entire United States. This neighborhood was infamous for its porn shops, strip joints, and a mix of greasy eateries like the original Tad’s Steakhouse, sprawling northward up to 43rd Street, where the Broadway Theatres began. On the southern border lay Eighth Avenue, home to the main bus terminal, Port Authority. Within a block or two of the Port Authority, a series of the most desolate-looking hotels offered rooms by the hour.

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Interview: David Wayne Stewart

1.)  Which country is more divided right now, Canada or the United States?

Political discourse is coarsening everywhere these days, but polarization seems dangerously pronounced here in the U.S. Our current moment reminds me of the Quebec separatist era of my childhood, which was also marked by the hyper-politicization of issues that had previously been uncontroversial, set against an urban-rural divide. In the end, Canada sleepwalked its way to a constitutional crisis that almost tore the country apart. Perhaps Americans can look to that Canadian story as a cautionary tale.

2.)  What’s Canada’s best asset?

Despite its fraught history as a colonial nation, Canada has shown a more recent capacity to acknowledge and reckon with its past wrongs. The Spicer Commission’s town halls during the Quebec Constitutional crisis of the 1990s, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on residential schools of the early 2000s, are examples of the Canadian government listening to people’s concerns, and creating a historical record of injustice in pursuit of collective healing and social change. These experiences are cultural assets that will serve Canada in the decades to come as it continues to welcome immigrants and transition to a more knowledge-based economy.

3.)  Who’s your favorite hockey team?

As a kid in small-town Quebec, I used to walk home from school through cold and snow and immediately change into my favorite red, white, and blue hockey sweater with a number 10 on the back — the jersey of my childhood idol, Guy Lafleur. To this day, I remain a dyed-in-the-wool Montreal Canadiens fan.

NOW read David’s essay at New Pop Lit: “New to Class”

Are Arts Critics Pretentious?

photo of Dwight Macdonald c/o Bettmann-Corbis

THAT WAS THE QUESTION making the rounds on social media this past weekend as a video parody of snobby film critics circulated on Tik Tok and Twitter.

BUT: Is pretentiousness a fair criticism? Seeing that synonyms of “pretentious” include “affected” and “ostentatious,” I’d guess yes— based on quick looks at a couple essays by literary critics at New Left Review, of all places.

First is this one, by Hermione Hoby:

Here’s another fast glimpse of another essay from the same venue, this one by Leo Robson:

Clear-thinking criticism or pseudo-intellectual blather?

The reason I pulled the excerpts from New Left Review, is because at a “leftist” journal, certainly, is where you’d expect to find writing accessible to ordinary workers– to millions of curious readers from all areas of society eager to find writing they can agree, or disagree, with, and sometimes be moved by. Passion! Polemics! Opinions!! WHY NOT?

Instead they get exercises in intellectualism, from former university students who never left the classroom– or the classroom never left them. They’re still writing for professors or dissertation committees, or for other inside-the-box, don’t-make-waves thinkers just like them.

Pretentious? You bet!

-Karl Wenclas

The Importance of Contention

ONE OF the reasons the literary scene today excites no one is there’s no genuine debate, much less dissent, much less contentious no-holds-barred free-for-all argument. Instead: “We’re all good.” “I’m okay, you’re okay.”

THIS APPLIES at all levels, high and low– but is most notable among the prestigious literary crowd. They think: What’s prestigious about unloosening your metaphorical bow tie, jumping off your high-horse stage and engaging face-to-face nose-to-nose with the audience?

That was the strategy utilized by pro wrestling (egads! literati exclaim) to grow from a marginalized weirdo spectator “exhibition” non-sport to a central cultural phenomenon. Mad interviews. Good guys and bad guys. Storylines. Personalities.

Elements of a strategy which was borrowed successfully, to a far more modest extent, by what soon-enough surpassed sleepy baseball as America’s #1 sport: the National Football League, aided by an upstart cable network named ESPN. Analysts and panelists dissecting disagreeing comparing pro-and-con aspects who’s #1, who’s starting, what’s your team coaches players doing WRONG have to reform do better refine those tactics or you’ll be buried by better teams, better players.

The literary game? The lit game has sucked since the Beats. Today: nearly comatose literary poets reciting in delicate voices making zero eye contact staring rigidly at a sheet of paper, no interaction, negative energy, the audience listening politely, falling asleep– the same genteel world that raucous upstarts of the Underground Literary Alliance invaded before they were frozen out by mob boss mandarins while simultaneously the recession of 2008-09 knocked half their number into couch surfing, or sleeping in inoperable pickup trucks, or vagabonding on the streets.

Needed: Energy! Disagreement. Raised voices of outrage saying, “Our work, ourselves, our art, our voices MATTER!” Enough to fight for. Or over. THEN the general public will take notice.

-Karl Wenclas

(One forum for debate and disagreement will soon be the Maximum Literature popcast. See the first test episode here. We’re seeking guests; participants. If you have recommendations or suggestions, pass them on!)

A Review of Christina Strigas’s “Love & Gaia”

A BOOK REVIEW BY CHRISSI SEPE

Christina Strigas is a Montreal poet who has published several poetry books, including Love & Vodka and Love & Metaxa.  Her words are raw and honest, written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and they reveal the inner life of a woman in love, a brave mother, and a human being who seeks to see beauty in the simple, everyday things. Her newest poetry book, Love & Gaia, completes this trilogy, but rather than speaking the thoughts of a woman, this book is told through the point of view of our planet Earth.

All the poems in Love & Gaia were originally written by hand in Christina’s journal.  Perhaps this method helped her get closer to our physical world than if she had used technology? 

In Love & Gaia, our Earth has a voice.  In one poem, the tree expresses its sorrow: “My cousin’s arms connected to mine. We were together for over four hundred years. I heard some humans and their machines coming closer, but we could not run.”

In another poem, the shells collected at the beach tell their feelings: “Take me out of the plastic bag that has killed my soul. Place me in a jar. People love to stare at me. Sometimes pick me up.”

Love & Gaia reminds us of our connection to the earth and prompts us to not take it for granted.  Christina also dedicates a chapter to “Tea Leaves,” reciting how green tea is a natural elixir: “You make my mind stop tossing and turning. Somehow, I am calm when you are on my lips.”

As a special bonus, each chapter features black and white illustrations that perfectly complement the poems printed beside them. My favorite is a drawing of a tea bag personified. The tea bag’s clothes are its tag and string, and its hat is an upside down teacup. 

Christina Strigas’ unique ode to nature is creative and refreshing.  I have never read a poetry book like Love & Gaia, and I will never take nature for granted again.

(Photo of Christina Strigas)

Christina’s book can be purchased at Amazon, here, and at Barnes & Noble, here.

Chrissi Sepe’s most recent appearance at Fast Pop was here.

“Bad Coffee” by Ben Macnair

(new poetry)

It has no warning, no health and safety, no government advisory notice.
It has no instructions, no recipe, no regular appointment time.
It has no certain way of reacting, no known behaviour when in captivity,
but we know when we see it, when we smell it, when we taste it.
you see it on the television, cop shows with not enough light, and too many donuts,
or when friends meet up, and have take after take in café scenes,
just setting the scene, just chewing the fat,
but Bad Coffee, like a bad boss, a bad memory,
will always taint memories, like that.

Ben Macnair is an award winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @benmacnair

Ben also has a piece of music, “FAT CHAFFINCH,” at our Open Mic blog.

An Excerpt from “New to Class” by David Stewart

Toronto was the first place I’d lived where political leaders made me feel welcome. When I was growing up in Quebec, governments closed my English school, banned English signs, and expropriated the asbestos mines where my dad worked. From there I went to Calgary, where the mayor at the time, Ralph Klein, called the many eastern Canadians moving there “bums and creeps” and told us to go back where we came from. One way that I coped with my outsider status was to hide parts of myself, such as my Englishness in Quebec, or my eastern-Canadian sympathies in Alberta. Imagine my pleasant surprise when Toronto’s civic leaders merely shrugged at newcomers like me. My days of hiding were over. 

But over time, I learned that Torontonians had their own ways of categorizing people: by where they lived and how much they earned. When Chris and I had been pals back in Calgary, I’d had an inkling that his parents were well-off, but neither of us had given money much thought. That all changed in Toronto. Pricey real estate and my dad’s post-asbestos career troubles pushed my family out to the suburbs of Scarborough, known for its endless rows of tract housing and strip malls. The downtown kids called it Scarberia. 

COMING SOON to New Pop Lit!

Interview: Bud Sturguess

1.)  What sparked the idea for your story “Molasses”?

My conscience. I was L-ing OL at all those Spongebob/Titan submersible memes, like so many people were, and it just struck me – “people died. Why are we laughing? What if it had been someone I know and love in that submarine?” It was the kind of sudden, sobering thought that spoils all the fun.

2.)  Who are a few of your literary role models, past or present?

I was very fortunate to happen upon William Stafford in my junior high literature textbook. The way he crafted poetry to be, as he put it, “just like talk” helped me to see the beauty and abundant possibilities in plain speaking over avant-garde riddles. I also have to cite Miguel Cervantes’ masterpiece “Don Quixote” for blending comedy and heartache, and crime writer Joseph Wambaugh for his unique way of telling a straight story with subtle prose woven throughout. 

3.)  What’s your current or future writing project?

I’m working on a non-fiction book about the Falklands War. Truth be told, it’s not going so well. But that’s writing; I’d be suspicious of myself if I thought everything I write is flawless. I welcome the challenge, and if it beats me, that’s okay. I’ll move on to something else. The possibilities in the human brain are amazing.

NOW READ the story “Molasses” by Bud Sturguess!

Dinosaurs

THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS STORY

The trick is finding a way into the body of this publication amid blocks of small print text without invitations or hooks, unwelcoming, insular, clearly written not for the ordinary reader but instead an intellectual elite of proper status, breeding, and income, at least a group of people who like to think of themselves as intellectuals and so any publication they read has to have markers of the intellectual while constructed in such a way to keep out everyone else. . . .

AN ANALYSIS

I WAS GIFTED around Christmas from one of my wife’s relatives the most recent copy of The New York Review of Books (December 21, 2023), the person knowing I have pretenses toward being a writer. The thinking being, I guess, that I’d jump right on it. Instead it sat on my admittedly enormous “To Read” stack for innumerable days, turning into weeks. (Am I sounding literary enough?)

The problem was finding an entrance into this house of prestigious writing. I have to read enough for the New Pop Lit website, as well as necessary reading (the minimum required) for my day job. Stretching myself or at least my eyes for the new arrival was no easy task.

The problem was the Review’s reader-unfriendly layout:

Clearly designed for the leisure class. A quick glance at reader demographics bears this out: those with lavish amounts of time on their hands, not involved in the ongoing fast-paced struggle to survive which afflicts most of us, but who can instead scatter through the wordy pieces at whim, then plunge, here and there, when ready, into them. Or are the issues even read?

The literary establishment dismisses all popular/genre writing as formulaic, which it is. But these intellectual essays are also formulaic. They follow a well-developed pattern in place for decades. If they didn’t, they’d never be published in The New York Review of Books.

When all-new kinds of essays and stories arise, they too will set a pattern and become formulaic. Just as Impressionist art created a formula, and Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, rock music in its various iterations: rockabilly, Motown, prog rock, punk. On to hip hop, metal, techno, EDM: you name it.

IN TRUTH I eventually read several of the articles, and found them mildly interesting, if not striking. Among them, a long dry essay by Colin B. Bailey about 19th-century Impressionist painters titled, “A New Language of Modern Art.” Can we then ask: When will we see a new language of modern literature?

HAS The New York Review of Books changed much if at all during the sixty-one years of its existence– other than offering perhaps a more diverse array of names on its masthead? No. Nor will it change. Nor will any part of the New York-based literary establishment change. Change will come from outside the moldering institutional flagships of the literary art, whether it travels from far away, or explodes directly outside the complacently-staffed high-priced gray-windowed offices. Far below them, in the alleys or streets. And it will come.

-Karl Wenclas

“Encounter” by Ken Kakareka

photo c/o topofstyledotcom

Ken Kakareka’s latest novel is Summer of Irresponsibility (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His words have appeared or are on their way in numerous rags including Gargoyle Magazine, The Gorko Gazette, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. A list of selected publications can be found at kenkakareka.com.