I notice that at certain times I want prose, not poetry. When I wrote My Wobbly Bicycle, this blog’s namesake, I had stage three cancer. What I wanted to write was flat-on-the-page prose. I felt no desire to play with words, to lift them out of their workaday purpose. Although of course I did, sometimes, out of habit, maybe. That book has had staying power. People keep asking for it, maybe because it’s bedrock honest and straightforward. Also, cancer is everywhere.
Again, when we sold our belongings and moved into this perfectly lovely retirement “Club.” I was reduced to prose. Reduced is an unkind word. As if prose is a diminishment. Some of the most glorious writing in the world has been prose, of course, but the best prose has invariably been lifted, set to a kind of language-music. I think that happens when the intensity of it pulls it tight.
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That’s what happened with The End-of-the-Line Club. I was strung tight. If you yourself have made this move, you may know what I mean. You’ve lifted yourself out of “ordinary” life. You don’t realize that at first, but the feeling is utterly different. That’s what I tried to decipher as I wrote this diary. Day by day I spelled out what was happening to get at some clarity. I read other diaries/memoirs, I read and read. I wrote and wrote, pretty furiously.
I wasn’t sure I had a book. I am never sure. Same with poems. I just write, pile up language until it begins to take a shape. The parts start clinging together. I can imagine a book.
The pieces of this book were simply chronological at first. Then I started thinking about you, about how it would be best to arrange it for you. It’s kind of an encyclopedia. So I decided to keep the sections separate, with separate headings so you could, if you wanted, move from section to section, and skip around.
I haven’t mentioned the Looming. What looms over such a book is Death, doesn’t it? If you’ve made this move, you have admitted your mortality. Taken it in as a fact, not a hypothetical far-off event. This will happen. To you. So you’re in a sense preparing, at the same time you’re placing yourself in a position to live the best possible life you can live, considering. You’re surrounding yourself with things to do, people to be with, potential help if you need it. It seems so practical, but at the same time, it’s incredibly brave.
Isn’t it brave? Other creatures don’t prepare for their death. The fact that we know it’s coming and the fact that we can adjust our lives to have the best last years, the best death possible, is brave. Some people hide until Death smacks them in the face, or drags them, kicking and screaming, to itself. To see it, acknowledge it, bow to it, face it with equanimity, seems to me the highest order of human deeds.
I chose a cover by an artist in Germany, Catrin Welz-Stein, the same woman who made the stunning cover for Doctor of the World. She takes images and digitally rearranges them. This one is called “Homeward Bound,” the face as a sail, setting off for home. Brilliant. She allowed me to use this image and the other one for a modest fee.
I also chose a larger type than the one the press originally picked, to make it easier to read. This is not a book for young people, although I’d like to hope it has some interest there.
Now is the writerly phase I dislike. Once a book is out there, I feel an obligation to the press and to me to “market” it. I am decidedly not a salesperson. I am utterly allergic to sitting at a table doing a “book signing,” waiting for someone to buy the book and ask me to sign it. I’m very happy with reading from the book and talking about it (as in the upcoming Zooms). I’d prefer to give the book away, but it’s true that we need to value the writer’s work enough to pay for it.
This book is probably the most intimate prose I’ve written. Maybe there are poems, but this book is, in a sense, my heart on my sleeve. Why not? What have I got to lose? That’s the gift of age.
The P.S. . . .
You can email me— bfleda@gmail.com— to sign up for one of the Zoom conversations for this book and for The End of the Clockwork Universe. I’ll send you your choices of dates. The times are always 6-7pm. Free if you hold up a copy of the book.
I’ll be Zoom reading with the very talented Kathleen McGookey on April 16th at 7:00. We’ll be reading and talking about prose poems.