A Discussion with Thalia Field

The following is excerpted from my Master's thesis Redfin[d]ing Genre.

When I was a sophomore in college, I first encountered Thalia Field’s writing in an anthology called The Next American Essay, edited by John D’Agata. The book consists of lyrical essays, ordered chronologically by author. By the time you’ve spanned Joan Didion to Thalia Field, you don’t realize what genre you’re reading anymore.

After reading Field's piece,“A [therefore] I” (from Point and Line), I wanted more because I hadn’t read anything like it before, and more importantly, I didn’t know how to categorize it. To me, the inability to clearly label it was its prevailing power. When I found her books in stores, they rested on the poetry shelves. Point and Line borders poetry, fiction, theater, and music – art in the truest sense – with narrative, mediation, and even ‘characters.' Her other books, Incarnate: Story Material and ULULU (Clown Shrapnel), offer just as much variety in form and style, and all have one thing in common: Field’s use of unique language and poetic devices, that form genre-busting collections.

In an interview I conducted with Thalia Field, we discussed the issues of genre and the distinctions between poetry, prose, and other literary forms.

EC: I read an interview with John D’agata in which he responded to someone asking him about creative nonfiction—he said he doesn’t like that term, and he’d rather it just be called Art. I’m of the opinion that literature (art) doesn’t have to subscribe to a particular genre in a given body of work. In my writing, I’ve always written some sort of conflation of the “Big 3” genres. My favorite aspect of your art is that I can pick up Point and Line or Incarnate without definitively filing it under one genre; it could be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, theater, auto/biography, whatever. I assume the main reason books, today, are classified into genres is so that when people go to bookstores, it’s easier for them to distinguish and locate certain works. Is this more important to the whole marketing process, or is it humanly intrinsic to want to label something? It’d be nice to see an area of a bookstore sectioned “Undefinable.” But then again, that in and of itself would become a genre. What are your feelings about this, about fusing genres and styles, and letting the reader conclude what “category” of art something is?

TF: I think you've already articulated much of what I think. Genres as defined by bookstores, publishers and marketing departments are for the ease of the marketplace. I think if there were shelves for writing as writers defined it – I would imagine it would all simply be by author. As you said, let the readers worry about distinctions of genre, if they matter. As for me, I write what I feel each piece wants best to be – and during the writing process many different forms will emerge and recede. Often a piece's "final form" is still provisional, as sometimes pieces will find another iteration in performance or another medium. Still, I do write mostly for books, and feel that I do have a large tool box with things from narrative, poetry, theater and nonfiction. Different pieces will use these "textures" in different measures depending on the needs of the piece. That said, I personally think of myself as most interested in questions of story-telling – its possibilities and its pitfalls and obstacles – and so all genres are sort of in service to those questions about how selves create stories and worlds over time – that most interest me at this point.

EC: Paul Valery said, "poetry is an art of Language; certain combinations of words can produce an emotion that others do not produce, and which we shall call 'poetic'." While I agree with this sentiment, I wonder why specifically poetry – and its combination of words – produces the emotional effect that Valery mentions. Why can't other forms or genres produce it? In your collections, despite, or, along with the forms, the words feel poetic. To me, that's where the electricity is.
In "The Compass Room," [from Point and Line] there’s a section where you list things for two pages:

The stomachs of a cow.
The quarters in a dollar.
The stages of life.
The essential humours.
The streets around a block.
The score and seven years ago.
The prophets.
The letters in the name of God. (40)

I think this is the kind of work that winds up coming into question: what is it as far as a type of genre, especially if it were to be removed from the context of the larger piece and viewed on its own? It reminds me of a poem in Charles Bernstein's Girly Man, where he lists fragments and images for several pages, and I can't help but ask, "Why is this poetry?" What makes this (or anything) poetic? What is a poem to you?

TF: I don't ask myself "is this poetry" or "is this fiction," and I agree that the ways languages combine is what makes writing poetic. To this end, not just formal poetry can be poetic, as you say. A story can be poetic if it uses language to abut and collide, to provide that new way of listening or seeing which can be called poetic. In forms such as I'm working with, there are often larger units of collision and juxtaposition – not only words in a line, but also sentences, clusters, pages, paragraphs – and these larger units themselves can behave poetically as well. When a piece is working for me, it fuels itself on its own inner logic – and this logic doesn't start from the "outside in" – so that whether it's ultimately called a poem or something else – is a definition which comes from the reader, or challenges the reader, more than something which initially interested me. The piece that interests me – how does it want to come together – asks how does its particular "poetry" work? And sometimes its poetics has a lot of prose or theater in it, sometimes more language on the line level. But ultimately, form is something which stays as open as possible in my process so that what I feel is the overall poetry of the piece has the widest possible frame to play itself out in. As I mentioned before, I often think of myself as someone primarily interested in the poetry of storytelling, so from the get-go, my projects are hybrids.

EC: Speaking of hybrids, music and film are the two art mediums – two outlets – that led me to poetry. And after reading, studying, and writing, I've gained a much greater appreciation for all aesthetics. The manuscript portion of my thesis is a collection of poems that string together the factual, chronicled murder of a woman, infused with fictional elements such as a protagonist, setting, plot, etc. As I continue writing this, I find myself thinking about poems in scenes within the larger context of the overall story. I'm not limiting myself to this thinking, but it's definitely occurring.
I've heard of bands using cinematic approaches to the creation of an album. For example, in one band, the guitarist writes virtually all of the music for each instrument. The way he composes them is similar to the way some films are made: he gives a band member, for example the bassist, a part to play; the bass player will play it without knowing the context of the part in both the given song and the total album. This is then repeated for each instrument and member. In this way, there's a synergistic process occurring between film and music in the creation of the art.
Since you're interested in performance in various media – theater, opera, music – do you or have you ever written a story in which, during the creation process, you thought of it from another medium’s perspective? If so, what is your approach? Do you find this restrictive, helpful? Or, are there other types of methods you use that combine and/or borrow aspects from other art to compose a story/poem?

TF: I am interested to hear your process and your thoughts regarding the adaptation of ideas from one to another media. My own artistic journey has led me mostly through theater. It is from theater that I've probably taken the most, but whether or not it is apparent in different written pieces depends on a variety of factors. Sometimes I borrow something formal, to make statements about artistic devices and how they structure storytelling. Sometimes I use the "performance" to dynamize a page, work, or to see it as temporal in a way which the page itself works against. There have been a few instances where I've used film as the dominant trope; what comes to mind is the "silent film" section of ULULU, where text is paired with film stills, and the piece, "The Compass Room," in which the whole design is borrowed from an early film-viewer, the zoetrope. The 'editing' of imagery within narrative that is possible in language and film do seem of a piece to me, and I'm sure that influenced some of the ways I think narrative can jump or abut itself on the page.
You mention the musician's use of indeterminate process to create an ensemble in which different parts are like "tracks" laid down independently— much like John Cage and David Tudor's work. I'm very interested in this sort of process, though I have mostly used it in my theater work, and less on the page.

EC: In one of my classes, someone recently mentioned their panic over poetry being a dying art.
We have become a visually oriented society. We have music accompanied by music videos, television & movies, video games, etc. Inundated with these things, it's easy to fear this threat. However, if that's the case, then all literature would be faced with extinction, not just poetry. Maybe this is why painting has persisted for so long and seemingly will continue to do so. It's actually kind of ironic because poetry accomplishes more, visually, than other types of literature. But if it is indeed poetry and poetry only that faces this threat, then it must go beyond visual fascination. If poetry continues to diminish in popularity, is it owed to the "stigma" of the label? I can't help but think that if a person picks up a book, fans through it, and it appears interesting to that person, then he/she would want to invest in it, no matter the style, form, or genre. But if a person picks up the same book that's labeled as poetry, before even fanning through it, the person will already have certain expectations that may influence them to disregard the book without actually giving it a chance.

TF: I think that newer communication or media technology don't particularly threaten older genres. They provide new opportunities to blend the strengths of the older ways of thinking and communicating into new forms. That doesn't mean that the old forms will be forgotten. It's a concern with every age. People thought the piano would ruin the fortepiano. And in some ways it did. But when you hear Mozart on a fortepiano, it's amazing. I think people should make the work they want to make and not worry so much about the commercial end of it. If you want to make poems in books, then do so. If you want to make digital literature, or video poetry, then do so. It should be more about what communicates and expresses the poetry you feel is relevant and the way you feel you can express it.
Those are my thoughts on that. I write for books because that's what comes from me in a genuine way. I would be equally pleased if I wanted to do something more with multimedia, and even though I teach those things, with great enthusiasm, I don't feel at home there myself. But my students, who feel the times in a different way, to them, multimedia can feel equally poetic, and it often is.

Field refuses to be bogged down by genre, as evidenced by her statement, “let the readers worry about distinctions of genre, if they matter. I write what I feel each piece wants best to be – and during the writing process many different forms will emerge and recede.”

Without genre, writers wouldn’t be restrained. They wouldn’t be forced to make explanations, and readers wouldn’t demand this of them. As soon as a reader opens a book that’s sold as nonfiction, the book’s universe must be absolute and true, otherwise the reader feels deceived. This isn’t entirely the reader’s fault; rather it’s the force-feeding of labels, and consequent dominant perception that art must be classified and must therefore remain within its designated class that contributes to these beliefs.

However, I’ve come to realize that on some level, genre is essential, and it exists, as it should. Rather than attempting to incite a literary riot, causing total anarchy, I think it’s more important to search for balance. Instead of trying to separate the characteristics and styles that comprise genre, we should try to embrace them, we should try to accept the fact that sometimes they will be joined as one. Not only should we be okay or merely satisfied with this concept of art as indefinable, but also we should encourage and welcome it.

That's all for now. Till next time... stay thirsty, my friends.

In-depth Book Review : The Autobiography of Red (by Anne Carson)

Prior to the actual Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson begins with a mockery of syllogism. In the hilarious Appendix C’s satire, we come away with nothing definitive. There’s no certainty, no argument proving any truth, no one, single answer, no statement of surefire fact. Nothing is clarified; however, (in #21) the onus is put on us as readers, as the section’s final words are, “either we will lie or if not not.” In the preceding statements, we were more passive, but here we are active in searching the truth. For a book that will deal with heavy issues of human existence – life, death, immortality, love, desire, loneliness, and enlightenment – this section is a perfect setup.

A book teeming with so many humanistic aspects, perhaps the most glaring is Geryon’s (the protagonist) constant struggle with loneliness and loss. From an early age, Geryon must deal with a great loss that would devastate any child – the loss of a parent. While Carson doesn’t provide much insight, it’s implied that Geryon’s mother and father are separated. We know that “Every second Tuesday in winter Geryon’s father and brother went to hockey practice. / Geryon and his mother had supper alone” (34). This sounds like visitation rights. And not only is Geryon without a father figure in the household, but also, we’re not told Geryon sees his father at all, as the brother does. This must be difficult for a child to cope with.

The consequences of this particular loss create a feeling of loneliness that, ironically, fills the house. Geryon and his mother eat supper alone; while their mother works, Geryon and his brother are babysat. Furthermore, there are plenty of moments when Geryon fully experiences loneliness. In a loss of innocence and trust, his brother molests him, in which he can do nothing about it – he won’t go to his mother, and there’s no father to seek – an awfully desperate feeling. When Geryon and his mother are alone in the house, they turn on all the lights in every room, even in the rooms they have no intention of utilizing. Why do this? It’s a shield against emptiness. Although just the two of them in the house, turning on all the lights makes them feel less alone. Less dark is less fear. Geryon and his mother fight the fear of existing alone. Even objects represent solitude and abandonment: the recurring image of the empty fruit bowl is so simple, yet starkly unforgettable.

But, not all of Geryon’s loss is heartbreaking and negative. An underlying concept of this story is self-awareness, discovery, and acceptance. The entire novel is laced with the battle between inside versus outside – physically, spiritually, literally, and metaphorically. As a child, much of Geryon’s life was extremely internalized. We always saw him indoors with his mother; we saw his thoughts, rather than his spoken word; the inception of his autobiography. His house was a barrier from the ongoing, pressing wind. Even when Carson isn’t directly addressing Geryon’s inner self, we know she associates him with the inner/outer contrast, as in this scene from “Screendoor:”

Outside the dark pink air

was already hot and alive with cries. Time to go to schoo, she said for the third time.

Her cool voice floated

over a pile of fresh tea towels and across the shadowkitchen to where Geryon stood

at the screen door.

Thus, everything outside was a fear or threat, something negative; whereas everything inside was comfortable. However, this changes once Geryon meets Herakles.

While Carson continues to paint Geryon as a chronically struggling, confused and conflicted, lovestruck, woe-is-me outcast, she also shows us his coming of age. After meeting, befriending, and growing intimately and romantically involved with Herakles, many of Geryon’s experiences occur in the outer world. We no longer see him in the house with his mother. Instead most of the scenes are outside. When Geryon visits Herakles’ house and stays with Herakles’ grandmother, Geryon and Herakles are outside on the lawn or the porch. He takes road trips with Herakles. When they return to the house, “Geryon followed Herakles to the back porch. They sat on opposite ends of the sofa” (65). Evidently, as Geryon becomes more involved with Herakles, he becomes more involved and active with the outside world. He’s not alone anymore.

Consequently, when Geryon and Herakles separate, we initially see Geryon back inside. He returns home, sits across from his mother in the kitchen, and we can feel the tension in the room. With Herakles no longer in close proximity, just like that, Geryon experiences inner turmoil – trying to discover his purpose, who he is and what he wants to accomplish. In “Water,” “Outside the natural world was enjoying a moment of strength” (70) while inside Geryon was lamenting, filled with angst, solitude, weak desperation. This is a far cry from the inside Geryon experienced as a boy before he came to begin accepting himself. Now that he’s aware of his desires (and sexual orientation), it’s an unhealthy chore to keep himself bottled up.

So now we have the Geryon who’s trapped inside, in his feelings, in love, in jealousy, and in fear of being alone. This is a changed Geryon, whom, “His mother reached out / a hand to touch his head but he ducked sideways” (73) – very unlike the Geryon who embraced his mother during childhood. When traveling on the airplane, “night darkness glided across the outer world / the inside of the aeroplane got colder and smaller” (79). How long can one remain introverted? And to what extent? Anxiety corked, Geryon’s internalization creates loneliness and emptiness because there’s no one with him but the self, a self that won’t suffice. Geryon experiences an insatiable hunger – on the plane he eats ravenously, then not much time passes and he’s hungry again. This is Geryon’s lack of self-fulfillment. He can’t seem to find a way to be completely satisfied with and within himself. And none of this is really about being a social pariah, as we see in “Mitwelt:”

It was not the fear of ridicule,

to which everyday life as a winged red person had accommodated Geryon early in life,

but his blank desertion of his own mind

that threw him into despair.

Rather, it’s the fear of being alone, losing everything around him and left with nothing but himself.

In the end, Geryon is just as ordinarily confused as is the common person. By the novel’s conclusion, he’s more enlightened than the average person may be; nevertheless, he’s still human. These are Geryon’s parting thoughts, “We are amazing beings” (146). He’s less self-loathing, less depressed, perhaps still not fully satisfied, but having experienced and learned so much; from philosophers and photography, to receiving a brief ass-kicking, to accepting himself for who and what he is – what people are – he’s a being both old a new, now knowing what it’s like to live.

Revised

Much better:

NEW AND CLEAR

Like ripe vinyl, freshly skinned leather,
burnt forest, desert, magma…
we just got this new, clear thought.
Bursting new visions. Loud and clear.
Can you hear them? Can you see them?
Smile-shards scattered across
new and clear ovations.
Renovations.
New ditch. Clear sight.
Billions of orange sliced eyes, peeled by a clear sky revealing
a relevant reveling new. Relevance. Revelance.
Revel ants revel.

A ladder, with its head in the clouds, points its finger, says
“Cut that city, and that city and that city. Cut that electricity.”

PUSH THIS BUTTON for:
histeria hersteria his story her story all of our stories
and not one none no one to tell.

Flash forward. Flash backward.
Flashes dance.
Flashes of light rip the air. Should we protect our eyes?
Eyeflashes. Seven lashes.
Ash dances to siren songs. Should we protect our eyes?
No, let’s dance.
Scorch every veil. Each and every rule.
New, clear dance.
New, clear song.

We dance in the streets
in the seas
in the fields
mountaintops
mounting rooftops
cemeteries
hospitals
cement tearing hot portals.
There’s so much more.
But come on, everybody dance.
Do the char-char.

So clear now.
So, clear now.
So clear, new.

Like how you go for a walk and your mind implodes when the earth squints.

Like the way the greenest green runs under achromatic cover.

That's all for now. Stay thirsty, my friends.

When It Pours It Rains

This is brand new. It's much more sonic and sounds better when I read it aloud, but that's okay. Happy Reading!

New and clear

Like ripe vinyl, freshly skinned leather,

burnt forest, desert, magma…

we just got this new, clear thought.

Bursting new visions. Loud and clear.

Can you hear them? Can you see them?

Smile-shards scattered across

new and clear ovations.

Renovations.

New ditch. Clear sight.

Billions of orange sliced eyes, peeled by a clear sky revealing

a relevant reveling new. Relevance. Revelance.

Revel ants revel.

A ladder, with its head in the clouds, points its finger, says

“Cut that city, and that city and that city. Cut that electricity.”

PUSH THIS BUTTON for:

histeria hersteria his story her story all of our stories

and not one none no one to tell.

Flash forward. Flash backward.

Flashes dance.

Flashes of light rip the air. Should we protect our eyes?

Eyeflashes. Seven lashes.

Ash dances to siren songs. Should we protect our eyes?

No, let’s dance.

Scorch every veil. Each and every rule.

New and clear dance.

New and clear song.

We dance in the streets

in the seas

in the fields

mountaintops

mounting rooftops

cemeteries

hospitals

cement tearing hot portals.

There’s so much more.

But come on, everybody dance.

Do the char-char.

So clear now.

So, clear now.

So clear, new.

Like the way the greenest green runs under achromatic cover.

Like how you go for a walk and lose your mind when the earth squints

and you’re afraid because you think you’ve lost your mind but then you realize

that you never lost it all, that it’s still there, and it’s nuclear.

This needs some tweaking, but I'm happy with it.

That's all for now. Stay thirsty, my friends.

Soundtracked Poetry

Having had the opportunity to witness a plethora of readings - some by amazing writers, like John Ashbery and Susan Wheeler - I've realized that, often, something gets lost in the oral presentation. While we get to hear these authors' voices, their cadence, and we're transported back to the sonic birth of a poem's words, we still don't fully experience the music of the language, which is poetry's very core.

Far too many times have I heard readings by writers who have the same inflection -- you know, that one where they hang on the last word of each line and it sounds like they're accentuating some sort of mutant that was bred by the coitus between a comma and a period... you know that one, right? That style of reading must be used by 75% of the poets out there, so much so, that it virtually becomes robotic, failing to do the musicality of the poem any justice.

Furthermore, poetry accomplishes a great deal on the page itself: line length, white space, juxtaposition, italics, and numerous other elements that make poetry a visual form of art just as much as an auditory one. When we don't have the poem in front of us, it's the author's responsibility to convey all of this orally. It's not even a responsibility, rather a chance to perform. Perhaps the best performance I was privileged enough to experience was Anne Carson, who incorporated several readers along with choreographed dance into her presentation. On a lesser scale, Cathy Park Hong, reading from Dance Dance Revolution, brought her poems to life by pacing tempo, changing pitch, and at times, nearly singing.

Not only does it make the presentation entertaining, but it also allows us to really feel the poem, its emotional current.

And that's what I wanted/want for my audience. I don't want them sitting there, hands folded, listening to each and every word, trying to determine what the poem is 'about.' I want them to be aware of how the presented experience actively makes them feel.

That got me stroking my goatee [that I don't actually have], conjuring all of the possibilities that I could achieve in presenting the poems from my manuscript, Tremulous. Without going into those details, it eventually led me to the idea of music. Since my manuscript is a story that ebbs & flows, and as I created it, I envisioned things cinematically, I thought a soundtrack could compliment it perfectly.

Soooo, I've been collaborating with my friend, Justin Rudolph (who's a brilliant musician), and we've been creating sound f/x, voice distorition, ambiance, etc to accompany each poem, based on the specific poem's tone & content. Ultimately, like a well composed soundtrack for a film, I hope to compose a soundtrack for this story.

The process is time consuming. I have approximately 70 poems that comprise the story, and thus far, we've soundtracked about 7 of them. I've uploaded them onto YouTube to provide people with a glimpse, as well as a way for me to gauge general reaction. If you'd like to czech them out, you can go to The Garden. Once there, you'll see more on the right side of the screen from Tremulous (user name: dangercurt). Also, my friend, colleage, and awesome writer, Ben Mirov, briefly mentioned these soundtracked poems in his pondering, which you can read on Ben's page (under Sunday, May 31, 2009). And if you visit that site, read some of his stuff because it's spectaculous.

That's all for now. Stay thirsty, my friends.

Good News

I just received word that eight poems from my manuscript will be published in two different journals -- Breadcrumb Scabs and Counterexample Poetics. They'll be appearing in the November and August issues respectively. Breadcrumb Scrubs is both in print and online, and Counterexample Poetics is strictly online. (I have several other poems pending in other journals, and I'll post their results when I get final word.)

Big whoop, right? Yeah, at first I was excited. Now I'm just more relieved that I'm finally getting some stuff out there in the literary world. The real positive is that, hopefully, this will give the manuscript some momentum to be published as a whole. I'm entering it in a few contests, and afterward, I immediately plan to buy several scratch-off lottery tickets because my odds of winning either about the same.

That's all for now. Till next time...

Cheers,
Ed

First Blog: Vexing Biographies

Since this is my blogging deflowerment (I hope it doesn't hurt), it's going to be lengthy. Proceed or not; it's up to you. But just know that if you choose to not proceed, you suck.

Recently, I applied for a job in which I was told to write a biography to the company's president, I suppose so that she could get a feel for who I really am.

I loathe bios. Not all bios, but most of them. Because most of them are unwarranted, pompous, cliche, and utterly boring. Unless you're a significant person in history, what can you say about yourself that will captivate me enough that I'll want to read a page about where you grew up, who your parents are, and what pastimes you enjoy? What do you bring to the table? I mean, really. (Does anyone else see the irony in all of this?)

There were several times throughout my academic life when I had to write some version of a biography, and I obliged because it was school and I was paying to be there and I could have fun with it. But never did I imagine that 'the real world' (i.e. a company) would ever request a bio from me.

Digging through some files, I found what I wrote, regarding bios, in college and grad school:

How does a mere block of words build a pedestal on which an artist stands? For some reason, there’s a need to list the artist’s details and accolades that are intended to impress you, the reader and audience. Perhaps this is its bipurpose: to merit the accomplished while waving said accomplished’s credentials in your face in a ploy to garner your attention. Musicians and bands always have biographies that extend way beyond detailing origins. They’ll tell how many shows they’ve played, how many records they’ve sold, how infectious their tunes are, how, without them, you would lose your mind searching for entertainment, and how, since their formation, “they’ve never looked back!” Similarly, an author’s achievements provide his/her education, list of works, and the plethora of awards received; else, how would you know what a great writer he or she is? Not to diminish anyone’s feats, but biographies create a distortion that make the artist appear much more enticing (i.e. qualified, talented, etc) than he/she actually is. This produces a two-fold effect: 1) it raises your expectations of the band you’re about to hear or the author you’re about to read so high that once you’ve read/listened to the crap that just infiltrated your ears and eyes, you’re thoroughly disappointed; or 2) you think what you just heard/read is crap, so you go back, re-read and re-listen, because you think you’ve ignorantly missed something that everyone else is getting, since there’s nothing so atrocious that could possibly warrant all of this praise. Quite often, biographies seem pretty vain. Perhaps I’m just too shy or modest. Or perhaps the idea of a biography in and of itself is vain – that one’s life is interesting enough to not only detail it, but to also expect people to read it and be entertained by it seems a bit narcissistic – and perhaps that’s just part of who we are.

Which was ensued by this:

To this day the birthplace and date of Ed Curtis remains a mystery. Supposedly, he was born of intergalactic intercourse between two distant planets, Fliedex and Nawsover. He’s claimed to have been marooned on an island where he raised himself by adapting to his surroundings and epitomizing the term, survival. The notion that a child could make do, abandoned on an island, is outrageous. But with a little luck and a lot of precociousness, anything is possible. Learning life and social skills from primates, such as eating, peeing, and combing hair, he managed to grow steadily and healthily. Eventually, a brigade of pirates found him, and upon meeting humans, Ed Curtis chose to leave with them because there was no possible way he could return to conversations with wild boars, wolves, and chimpanzees, especially after acquiring Pirate jargon. The goodbye between him and the primates was an emotional one which is illustrated in his memoir, There’s Nothing Wrong With Flinging Poo.

Several years later, Ed Curtis studied at Oxford, Harvard, Brown, and Iowa where he quadruple-majored in Writing, Psychology, Quantum Physics, and Extraterrestrialology. His distinguished contributions include – but are not limited to – discovering the vaccine for world peace, full comprehension of the female brain (he stated he needn’t waste time with the male brain for there’s nothing to figure out), and invention of the first time machine. He also definitively sighted Loch Ness Monster, shook hands with Sasquatch, and even smoked weed with an alien, which he relives in his book, See, I Told You All Along We Weren’t Alone. Here’s a memorable excerpt:

"Damn, earthling…that’s some good shit!"

By his early twenties, he was one of the wealthiest persons in the world and was the number one seller on every list known to man. He’s said to be one of the most influential people in the history of Western Civilization – no, make that, the most influential person ever, even more so than Jesus Christ. He can’t walk to the end of his driveway to check his mail without fanatics swarming him for autographs and pictures, which is why he currently (so it is thought) has returned to his roots, living on an island in Fiji with his beautiful significant other, where he grows his own tobacco and has the best tan you’ve ever seen.


Or maybe…

Ed Curtis is a guy who has lived as a moral human being and writes to express himself. Read his stuff if you feel like it.

While it's a tad risky to send to a potential employer, I still thought it conveyed my beliefs and personality. So I decided to tinker with it and use its foundation as my bio to the company:

This is my Bio per your request. I've also attached my resume.

I've never been one for writing Biographies. I understand their purpose, especially in this situation, but I'm of the opinion that unless you've done something pretty significant, there's really not much to say that would captivate anyone. I supposed I could tell you about the time I broke my arm when I was six years old. Or the time my older sisters were kicked out of the house. Or my first girlfriend. But they would pale in comparison to my greater accomplishments, like when I sighted the Loch Ness monster, shook hands with Sasquatch, and played chess with an alien -- not to mention, my discovery of the cure to violence and consequent implementation of permanent world peace; complete understanding of the female brain; and invention of the first time machine. But yeah, I don't really want to toot my own horn.

I've lived all over the place. I grew up in New Jersey, then went to college in North Carolina where I chose the lucrative major of Creative Writing. After that, I moved to Brooklyn while I went for an even more lucrative degree at The New School -- a Master's in Poetry. Now I've come full circle, back in New Jersey, jobless, a Master of everything and nothing, with a 63 page manuscript as the only thing keeping me afloat. I've been writing it for almost three years, and I'm still tinkering with the placement of commas. I'm actually fairly confident it will be published in one form or another (by that I mean, I'm experimenting with transforming it into a multimedia collection). In the meantime, I'm looking to work, and when I came across *******, I thought it would be the perfect environment for someone like me, mainly because I'm going through what your clients are going through -- trying to get published. But before I go any further, I just want to give you a quick rundown of my likes:

* I don't like long walks on the beach, although I like the beach itself, but more so just laying there and sometimes swimming.
* I like to write and read and explore all types of art.
* I like sports, football being my favorite. It's interesting,because I haven't met many poets/artists who are sports fanatics. I haven't quite figured out why. In my opinion, sports are the only pure form of reality TV that exists; it's the only thing that isn't scripted, and that's exciting.
* I like people who are down-to-earth.
* I dislike obnoxiously loud cars.
* I like music, although I'm stubbornly picky. My favorites are Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Incubus, The Mars Volta, Pink Floyd, YES, Rush, and The Sound of Animals Fighting.
* I like telling and listening to people tell stories.
* I like nerds because I am one.


Lately I've been torn between pursuing a career in teaching and a career in the publishing industry. I've often envisioned myself conducting a college level workshop, but I don't think this is the time for it. Since I have publishing and editorial experience, I want to stick with that; especially while I continue polishing my manuscript. I also have some other things in the works, for instance, I'm planning to host an Art show in Hoboken near the end of August, which will feature music, readings, painting, dancing, and refreshments. And laser-lights.

Bottom line is, I know what I want right now. I want to work for *******. Hopefully, this Bio gave you a glimpse of my personality. I like to joke around, but I also know when to take things seriously; I do my work professionally and meticulously (probably because my dad is anal retentive, and it rubbed off on me), and when I enjoy what I do, I'm that much better at it.

I hope you were entertained while reading this as much as I was while writing it. Thank you for your time, and I look forward speaking with you.


Best Regards,

Ed Curtis

They actually responded, and I set up an interview with them next week.

As for now, I need to shower because I feel dirty after coaxing you to read my biography. Shame on me.